CGMan

Major Announcement! Potentially Very Good News.

Hello everyone!  One of you, I will not mention the name, has either sent me, or let me borrow a 3080 graphics card.  It may or may not be the exact model shown above.

If whomever sent me this wishes to identify yourself you can do so in the responses below.  But feel free to send him a neighborly "Thank you kindly" below. 2023-05-03 21:54:16 +0000 UTC View Post

CGM - Post #074 (May 2023)

This is an advance post for a future release.  Send me a private message if you have any questions.  Thank you so very much for your support!  It makes these fun animations possible!  Thank you so very much!

Miku First Signs of Life And Other Interesting Things

Hello!  I've completed the displacement maps for Miku's body*, and then I modeled the low poly cage mesh.  And as you can see from the attached short video clip I have her arm bending with all of the joint deformation morphs complete for natural bending (no flexing yet).

I have some good news...  At least, I don't think I ha...

Miku Progress

Howdy!  Just dropping in to show you what's going on with Miku.  I completed a preliminary sculpt, and then I retopologized this sculpt into the optimized mesh you see here.  I am still making some tweaks before I begin the final sculpt to add more details.  I want to make her legs bigger and such.

Nadia's foreground re...

Render Comp And Other Stuff

Hello!  I just put together all of the layers of the Nadia animation currently rendering for a mock-up composite.  You can see the blurred subsurface scattering and the increased resolution.  The resulting quality is really quite nice; even with the faster-rendering hair.

As you can see, I haven't started rendering the backg...

SSS Blur Strategy End Result

Here is a look at frame 1200, along with how she looked before the SSS data was blurred using my newly patented technique.  How much faster did this render?  Well...  About a minute?  Oof.

Yeah, I was surprised that is all it saved.  It cut the rendering time nearly in half in the other scene.  Do note that th...

Sub Surface Scattering Experiment Part 2

Apparently blurring the SSS pass is a fairly common practice.  I hadn't heard about it until yesterday.  See attached video for more details.

I did some experiments with render optimization

I got pretty close to really speeding up the rendering, but it's not...quite there..  If you have any opinions about this I'd love to hear them below.

Hair Complete

This is really cool..  Best hair system I've made.  It took a little longer because I needed to make some modifications.  What I am doing is adding a couple of "forces."  They act like little blow-dryers to force the hair in a direction I want instead of falling straight down like wet noodles.

CGM - Post #073 (Mar 2023)

This is an advance post for a future release.  Send me a private message if you have any questions.  Thank you so very much for your support!  It makes these fun animations possible!  Thank you!!

Miku's Hair Ready for Simming

Whew!  This was as tedious as it looks.  I'll do a test sim tomorrow.

Later tonight I'll be posting a Paid Creation.  If you want to skip this one, you should remove your pledge now..  Then you can make a new pledge after the 1st to avoid getting charged.  But I do very much appreciate your support if you can swing...

Preliminary Hair Test

I haven't styled it yet.  By the way I have been calling her Miku... So that will likely be her name.

Updated Turntable

Skin textures, various geometry adjustments, eyelashes.  She still needs a specular map and eyebrows, etc.

EDIT: She now has eyebrows..  Image render attached.

EDIT2: Eyebrows tweaked

EDIT3: Turntable now has eyebrows

Turntable

Placeholder textures.

Revisiting the New Girl's Head

For the past 6 months or so I've been doing a lot of research on the differences between male and female skeletal differences.  You could say I have been obsessing over it.  I think my girlfriend would tell you that.  Anyway..  Nadia has benefited from this, but I have learned quite a bit since I made Nadia.  I did a rem...

How About This?

Check out the attached image.  The faster render has Radiosity (bounced light) turned off for the hair.  The reason why there is no motion blur is because I only rendered a single test image.  Also I forgot to turn on her eyelashes.  But other than that..  The slightly less realistic lighting on the hair is rendering is ...

I'm going to try something....

Feel free to vote on the poll but I want to try something that may make it a moot issue..  We shall see.  But first I need to vacuum the house!

Big Decision

Hey everyone...  I have a somewhat educated estimate of how long this will take to render based on how long it has taken thusfar.  Look at the attached video clip.  The medium shot took around 14 minutes per frame to render.  The closer shot at the end... It is very brief, is cooking at around 49 minutes per frame to render. ...

Render Settings

I spent a lot of time experimenting with how much quality I can squeeze out of this without taking a ridiculous amount of time.  At the resolution of 1068x600, I am getting the look of the images above.  In fact, these may be final render images for the foreground pass unless I need to make a major change.

So 1068x600 is 1.25 the...

Render Started and Stopped

I started the rendering before I went to sleep as the things I need to fix are in the middle of the animation.  But I think I am going to stop it and make some adjustments.  The denoiser is adding (ironically) a layer of noise on her blouse.  It is everywhere but most obvious on her blouse.  You can also see the glittery effe...

Almost

Wish I had a better report for you today.  I need just a bit more time.  I added a glittery effect to her blouse which cannot be fully appreciated until it is seen in motion.  I textured the walls of the set and modeled another prop to add more details.  Also I set up the camera lensing which gives it a fish-eye kind of look ...

Not Quite Yet

Sorry it's not quite ready for render just yet.  I made a nice looking floor tile texture.  The actual texture is attached if you want to use it in your own projects.

I also created and animated an additional destruction element.  I wasn't expecting to make this but it is a nice icing on the cake.  Sorry, no spoilers. :...

So Close...

Hey all...  I got a lot of details resolved today.  Just a few more to go.. Easy stuff.

Today I re-did some physics on some elements, re-animated some elements that get thrown, and added physics to other elements.  Then I set up the volumetrics for some dust.  I don't want to be too specific because spoilers.

I ha...

Nadia Dress Rehearsal

Getting so close :D

Coming Along Nicely...

I haven't brought in her eyebrows or eyelashes yet.  That is why she looks surprised.

I also had to re-animate her fingers for this shot.. Hopefully that is all done now.

There is some bad news, however.. That de-noiser tool doesn't work miracles.  The 3 minute render had terrible artifacting upon closer inspection.  I...

Blouse Simmed

I am pleased to announce Nadia's blouse is simmed.  It is not yet textured, so it looks like pink plastic at the moment.  And I will fix her nipples poking through.

So there are a few things to do yet..  Texture her blouse, load up the background props, set up the hair, and I want to make the ground more interesting than a s...

"She Wears Short Shorts"

That's what my girlfriend said when I showed her this image..  It's from an old commercial. :D

Anyway, I've finished modeling, texturing and simulating her shorts.  I added those strings that hang down from cut-off jeans.

More to come! :)

Milestones!

Howdy.  I've just finished animating Nadia's toes for the entire animation.  This finalizes all of Nadia's body animation; barring any unexpected issues that may arise before rendering begins.  I also finished the camera animation*.  There are still a few things to do; cloth sim to put clothes on her most notably.  Oh an...

CGM - Post #072 (Jan 2023)

This is an advance post for a future release.  Send me a private message if you have any questions.  Thank you so very much for your support!  It makes these fun animations possible!  Thank you!!  Happy New Year!

Patreon Email is Down at the moment

Patreon's email service seems to be down...  I have some notifications from Patreon in my personal email, so I was able to read what messages you sent to me.. in some cases I replied directly to your email address.  So I don't know what to say..  It's not working.  If you have an emergency issue reply to this post and I will ...