(MA1-12) Ending is done

The ending is now done (mostly).

Next thing on my list - environment rework. I still have the polishing stage on my list, but it goes right after environment.

Table of contents: A different animation technique - Fluids - MA1 - Progress post frequency

A different animation technique

And I changed how I animate once again. If you followed me for a while, you know that I change and adapt different animation techniques from time to time to find the most suitable one.

This time instead of making a base animation and adding layer by layer, I instead create a simple storyboard animation and animate tiny chunks of animation using storyboard as a reference. It feels like "full forward" technique where you work on tiny parts of animation until each tiny part is looking good. This way I spend more time on one part adding extra details I might skip before. This also makes polish part less time-consuming as all details I usually add on this stage are already done. This also make showing progress easier because you can clearly see what parts are done and what parts aren't. It should eliminate posts where a ton of work was done, but you cant see a big difference without looking side to side with old animation iteration.

Fluids

GIF is huge, wait a bit. It's big for a reason.

And this is how fluids made in Houdini looks like. I should admit, these fluids look a lot better than fluids made inside Blender. But I feel like something is wrong, and I can't really tell what is. Therefore I would like to know - Do you like how fluids look like? And if you have any ideas on how it can be improved, just tell me!
*Note: Almost any idea you come up with is possible to implement, like really.

There is still a ton of settings and features inside that I didn't tweak or use, so most likely there is a way to improve them. My main concern for now is how fluid particles are converted into mesh. It suffers from "remesh" feel I had in Blender. This is something that FlipFluids addon had fixed, and I don't understand how. I guess it's another theme I'll research soon or later.

MA1

And finally a paragraph for main star of this post.

We are getting closer and closer to release. I hope to release it this month, but most likely it will get released somewhere in early-August.

As I said the animation part is almost done, I need to animate her tail and refine some things in intro. This will be done after environment is done.

For stage list:

• Animation - Done

• Environment - We are here

• Final animation pass (Polish stage)

• VFX

• Port to Unreal and render

Hope I didn't forget anything.

I plan to spend more time on environment. I kinda like how new environment looks in my previous projects, but a simple grass field getting boring quite fast. Thus it won't work here. I'll tell more in next WIP.

For VFX... I hope It will go without any issues. All my animations suffer from one thing - they are not animated with future use of simulations in mind. This leads to a ton of mesh intersections that nor Blender, nor Houdini likes. Cloth sims are most affected by this. In Blender mesh with intersections leads to cloth literally exploding (this is what I had in A15). In Houdini it's doesn't lead to explosions, but screws cloth surface pretty badly. MA1 suffers from this too. This was for cloth sims (her cape, and pants I guess).

For fluids and other stuff. You already saw how fluids look like. I'm thinking about adding strings like I showcased in Houdini test post, but I feel like it will be unnecessary. On other stuff I meant egg physics and tail animation sim. Egg physics is going to be simulated, that's why it just float in air. For a tail... welp, seems like tactic I used in CA11 wont work here. Issue is how I export her model to Houdini. Alembic files write final mesh deformations and info, without skeleton I was relying in CA11 for tail sim. I have an idea how I can work around this issue, but we'll see how it goes.

And I guess you would like to see a full animation. I got you covered!
Here is full animation in its current state: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/q9dczddptw1o1ab58neqg/MA1_LowRenderFull_Blender.mp4?rlkey=lkmdgt4bpkw1f4tz7mf177xg2&st=w5nd9oen&dl=0
*Note: It's without fluids.

And here is fluid render in HQ:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/0s3yvp6adrnk9viq7uwrx/MA1FluidsTest.mp4?rlkey=aoae87qupsrlwayi5i6zrluo6&st=4t7qjnz9&dl=0

I would like to know your opinion on removing camera tilt, is it better with or without?

Progress post frequency

As you may noticed, last week went without any posts or updates. This was due life troubles, issues with pc and CA12. I've begun working on CA12 and like with CA10, there won't be any WIP posts, sorry. The reason is same.

This will affect how often new posts will appear. Currently I'm looking to post at least one WIP post each week until I finish CA12 or MA1.