July XV Crowe + Blender 4.2 Report

Hello hello~ debuting Crowe this month. and the usual Aranea to fill my energy. nothing too fancy.

PIXIV

MEGA

I had fun animating Aranea wearing this outfit.. I still plan to animate her with the same theme next month, long version is coming later too. for Crowe, I can't find more acceptable camera angle without it edge clipping the shadow in POV. tried to change the clip start settings and all but no dice. This has happened in past animations of mine, but never this severe. I could disable the contact shadow, but it'll look too flat.

Eevee's shadow is known to be really finicky sometimes.

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Blender 4.2 REPORT

Speaking of finicky shadows, Blender 4.2 LTS released today, and now Eevee have "Ray Tracing". (looking more like Pseudo-raytracing so far). I never touched 4.2 Alpha, so this is my first time in 4.2. I've tested it with some of my scenes, but of course the first thing new features do, is messing up how my models look lol.

At first glance, immediately there is noticeably worse shadow and shadow flickering. And everything is new, so I don't know what each new settings do. ...Why there is no bloom and contact shadow options in 4.2?

I didn't change the lighting setup for the comparison above. take a closer look at the hard shadows on her butt and hair. Pretty surprising difference huh? the shadow in 4.2 one have this weird jaggy edge. Then I found out there is this new settings under each individual area lighting now called "resolution limit" and "filter".

Disabling resolution limit get rid of the jaggy edge, and increasing filter make the shadow look softer somewhat. but I still have no clue on how to bring back contact shadows. perhaps it's gone forever.

However,I noticed that light size affect shadows immensely now compared to before. small light gives hard shadows and big one gives softer shadows. I think it's because of the new Global Illumination. Seems the dev really want Eevee to behave like Cycles. I don't know if I should be sad or excited lol.

Yep. plenty of stuff to figure out and fix. and I don't really want to get stuck with the old Blender version if I can. Because I know some friends who decided to stay with Blender 2.7 having trouble catching up to Blender 4.0 merely because they didn't like how 2.8 look.

So, future renders might have some shadow flickering issues and other anomalies. but of course I'll find some way to make it look better if I'm able. I'm still not finished reading the 4.2 threads, so I hope to find something useful for me to adapt to the new version.

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NEW MODEL

Well, it's finally Cindy's turn to get rigged.

She is the most popular girl from XV, and I can see why. ...who wouldn't want a sexy mechanic taking care of your car and your needs.

Her original model cut the top part of her hair inside the cap. but no big deal, I found a solution just from minutes browsing.

....she has ton of animations made already out there, but I do want to try several ideas I have for her. like how I want to animate her without her cap for her debut. because pretty sure close to no one animated her that way. or would you rather have her wearing the cap?

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UP NEXT

Sarafa from Nier Reincarnation is next, followed by Lumina the week after.

I intend to make her wear the veil in all of her scenes, ...but idk yet. . ......eh but maybe I'll do one position without her veil after all. For Lumina, I haven't got any Idea yet. Lumina is so cheeky and cute, so I might go a little rough on her. we'll see...

Yep. That is it for now. I'm so tired, so I'll sleep really early today.

Thanks for all your support and donations as always m(_ _)m

Do take care, and see you next week~~