Update and preview - 17/1/21

Happy new year.

Just saying it now because I can't remember if I've said that yet. Don't think so, but just to be certain...

As is standard, things have happened to get in the way of animating. For the people who don't know, I'm technically homeless and live in a van I converted for living in. The UK has had a bit of a major cold snap, with snow for the last fortnight where I am. I have a heater, but it's sucking it out of the vans diesel tank, so I've been doing insulation, in an attempt to warm it up. Which is where I found all the insulation already in it was soaked. Then I discovered the pre-installed fan vent has corroded and is also letting in water.

So I've had to strip out the roof and replace it with better insulation, and replace the two skylights with double glazed ones and a new fan unit to improve ventilation and hopefully suck the moisture out.

I've managed 2/3rds of the roof replaced and the non-fan vent, with nice fresh and toasty insulation. Unfortunately, rain has stopped the fan and other vent replacements. This has taken up 2 weekends so far.

The assumption would be that I've not made any progress.

Wrong!

Actual rendered footage is up to about the 35s mark so far, with basic animation for another 40s needing tweaked prior to render. I've also been working on a later part of the episode which is a full minute sequence for a pivotal story segment as well as a 30s scene shortly before it. These are not ready to be rendered, cos they still need characters added in, one of them someone new.

Awkward poses because they're just there for blocking and need proper models in place first.

Straight up, this episode is getting weird. So many new things to learn and stuff to make. We've got more bath simulation, some dynamic lighting effects, explosions, 8 new characters (2 unique, 6 modifications of 1 model), both Efa and Kyn need new outfits, rain, fog, a vehicle with many moving parts...

Oh, and a shitload of dialogue as well. Hooray.

It rained a lot today, and I couldn't do the work I wanted to, and I needed a break from volumetric lighting, so knocked this one out pretty quickly.

You can find it here: https://e621.net/posts/2575806

And download it here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/17jjfUwvD5yk8SvS1Q3DrTb1w53Q7UghR/view?usp=sharing

That's it for now. No major issues with rendering yet. All the stuff I've done so far has been in relatively short shots which render quite happily overnight. I've also discovered that ending a render early no longer breaks the video file, which is nice.