CGMan

Setbacks and Resolution

Added 2022-07-15 12:24:51 +0000 UTC

Hi everyone. I wish I had a better report for you. It's not all bad, however.

The sim of Nadia's medium sized body went fine. But the large one was having issues. I probably wasted four days simming, then trying different things.. and then simming again. Ultimately it was not working.

I managed to catch a Storm-brain when he had some time and he sat me down and went over with me in detail how to make the particles guided. It is ridiculously complex, but I cracked the code. Now I can animate a shape that the particles will want to follow; yet they will still inter-collide when there is not enough space for everything. And I can limit it to certain parts of the body. So it's basically everything I could have hoped for. It took me a couple of days to get everything set up the way it needed to be for this new approach. I had to create a more traditional style rig for her arm and shoulder joints. This would have taken a long time but I found a way to rig the pecs without having to create a bunch of joint deformation shapes. And they stretch the way they should has she raises her arms. That saved a ton of time. Whew.

The best news is that it appears everything is going swimmingly now. It is only the start of the sim but so far it looks solid. I'm going to get some rest and see how it looks after a while. I'll update this post with the results I see.

If I had known at the start of this project what I know now, I would have done a few things differently.. That will have to wait for future animations.