(MA1-3) Transition between two parts and some progress on environment

I’ve found a good way to animate transitions between 2 poses, It’s handy for situations where just a simple smooth transition will not work (like here). Also, it makes it possible to adjust the transition more precisely.

For this animation just making 2 sequences blend into each other is possible, but I want to try a new approach.

How it works? You take 2 sequences, blend them, and bake the resulting sequence into a new Action (sequence). Then adjust resulted Action. It’s easy to do and allows more freedom.

New workflow

I’ve developed a new workflow for animations with multiple loops and transitions between them. The general idea is to create a skeleton of the animation using base loops, and then create transitions between them. Now transitions will be the main influencer on additional movements for base loops. The more dynamic you make the transition the more additional movements your animation should have. This is done so transitions don’t stand out from the whole animation. As a side effect, you get a more fluid animation with fewer bumps in its flow.

From previous experience and looking on projects from other creators I’ve found out that most of the time you don’t need to add a lot of movements to the animation. Just make a loop and a few variations you cycle between. Yeah, it’s quite lazy way but saves a ton of time.

Working on 2 similar structure animations is quite useful. I can test some things on my project and if it works great, apply it to a second work. Like here with a new workflow approach.

Scene changes

I’ve done a little work on the environment and added a few tentacles so the whole scene had a feel of her being surrounded by tenta-trees and their roots.

I want to try something with textures here. More specifically - draw them like in Arcane (LoL TV Series). If you don’t know, in Arcane most of the scenes is using unique hand-drawn textures in each scene. I plan to try it on grass and trees. This technique is good at giving a 2D-ish stylized look. But one issue with it that it doesn’t work well when used as PBR Material (90% of materials in Blender), that’s means that it doesn’t have Normal, Roughness, and other maps which is crucial to making good-looking material. One way to “fix” it is to “bake” them into texture yourself, but the problem is - if you touch at least one light or lighting affecter your texture is now outdated and needs to be redrawn again. I don’t know how it will affect the animation's overall look, but I hope it will become a step toward solving “The Grass” problem I currently have. I’m still searching for the best way to recreate a grass from Dota 2 Cinematic. Currently using Unreal Engine seems to be the best option, but I have a lot of problems with it so it’s not a viable option.

The biggest issue I currently have with this scene is lighting. I just can't figure out a good setup for it. The current lighting iteration shows how bad it is.

I will change Hoodwink's mood to be more pleasured and relaxed. This will help make the animation loop more fluidly.

The next model I will work on - the Original Hoodwink NSFW Model Remastered. I gathered enough experience to not screw up this time so it should be the last attempt of remaking this cursed model.