Astro Vulpus (Still Dead) Aug 02

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Oof, no, that would look super weird. If I were going to go that route, I could make some kind of tuft of fur where the ear should go, kinda like the tufts on her cheeks, but in the ear place. Actually, I'm kinda curious to see what that would look like, whether that ends up being the final version or not. That's more or less how I draw bird anthros, with feathers where the ears should be. And frogs have ears in the right place, just kinda weird looking.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

I decided that rather than try and bring my own rig up to professional quality for this game, I'm going to try working with Blender's Rigify system, which is supposed to be a one-button pro-rig on its own. This means throwing out a bunch of what I had before, but I think in the long run, I'll be able to make better animations with this rig than with mine. I'm already seeing improvement, but there's still a level of unfamiliarity for me.

I'm testing a theory that I think our LoK artists might find interesting. As part of learning 3D, we've been encouraged to study information about real-life cinema and photography. Now, as a 2D artist, you probably think to yourself that a photograph of a person is exactly what the person looks like, no horseplay. But apparently, the height of the camera can alter the apparent proportions of the subject. Huh? So ratios like how many heads tall a person is can be different depending on how you're looking at someone, something that I've never considered when making cartoon artwork, but I have noticed a certain weirdness when doing perspective renders in 3D.

So I decided I want to study this phenomenon and I want to share it with you. What you are looking at, from left to right, is the camera at ankle height, then waist height, breast height, forehead height and finally ceiling height. The distance and focal length obviously matter too, but these measurements are a bit arbitrary in 3D, probably too technical to be interesting. I've got no conclusions to draw at the moment, but it's something I'll have to think about when planning animations.



You may have noticed at this point that there are also varying level of nudity. I mentioned before that transparent clothing would be a pain in the ass to draw, but it's relatively simple to do in 3D. I thought I'd show that again. I think the transparent outfit is a little too sexy for a daily outfit, but something slightly transparent can look like a futuristic fashion statement and not like straight up stripper gear. A final version should probably also have some reflectivity to it, but this requires something to reflect, which I don't have yet.

You may have also noticed that I changed the color palette and adjusted the model a little. The first colors were too close to Lola Rabbit for my liking, so I gave Pepper more of a chocolate bunny look.



Sometime soon, I want to replace some of the 2D placeholder graphics for the girls with 3D, so that people who only read the first post will know what's up. I think I'm still far from ready to do a final animation, I'd need Renard's model, and to finish the environment model too, so it'll just be a 3D placeholder instead of a 2D placeholder. If I'm looking at a new update, I've also been thinking that I might be better off switching to a real blit engine, since I've got no vector graphics at this point, and I definitely want to switch to a different "event" system for combat missions that will give me more control. Unfortunately, these will probably not be noticeable.

[Lucky777]

I mean, a change of sentence from "Character art will still be 2D" to "Character art will eventually be 3D" will help the first post readers to know what's up.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Oh come on, nobody reads anymore.

(...good idea though)

[AcetheSuperVillain]

I thought I'd see how much animation I could get done, and the answer is, kind of a lot.

-- To be kind to LoK's data, I've deleted the incomplete animation, check the complete animation below --

I'm not sure how to end it. The logical thing would be to do some goop effects, but that's a liquid simulation (or a soft-body at least) and that's complicated to set up.

I turned off the soft-body effects that were in the last demo animation, a product of switching from my rig to the rigify.

[Lucky777]

GO GOOP OR GO HOME

(Or I mean, something that achieves the same effect with less effort if possible.

There's probably no substitute though, also the jiggle was nice to have.)

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Then to GOOP we go! With jiggles for all!

An SWF this time, with sounds, but not sex sounds... exactly...
EDIT: updated Apr4

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

Click to Play
(Javascript Required)

pepper_demo_anim.swf [ 9.48 MiB | Viewed 3216 times ]

So one of the big questions has been, how difficult is it to actually make an animation like this? Honestly, this whole animation is probably on-par with making a really good single drawing. I'm really pleasantly surprised. So the limiting factor will probably be how many graphics I can cram into the .fla before it crashes, or how I get around that.

One little hang-up was that I don't know how to adjust the vertex density of the liquid simulator, hence the comical amount. For now, I'm content to be comical, but if anyone knows how to adjust that or wants to look up some tutorials for me, I would appreciate it. It might also be preferable to use soft-bodies or particle effects instead of the fluid simulator.

I tried doing some cloth soft-body effects on Pepper's outfit, but it's more hassle than it's worth. I might do a future game where clothing dynamics are the main hook.

[Lucky777]

...When you said comical I didn't expect to actually laugh.
I actually laughed.
This is a victory of sorts.

It has the makings of something fappable too, but that oval and coloured patch isn't the BEST this particular version can do for a vagina though, is it?

: o

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Ah yes, so that bears discussing. How much vaj is the right amount of vaj? I feel like if I try to make something super realistic for close up shots, it's going to look gross or stupid, but there's definitely room for something better than the barbie doll vaj we've got now. I'm just not sure what to do yet.

The other thing is that I'm still mostly used to making game sprites, which are designed to take up less screen space, and I tend to be looking at smaller viewports while I'm working, so it doesn't necessarily occur to me that the vaj's resolution is too low until I've waited an hour to render the final animation. So another potential cure for this problem is to just zoom out more so that the characters take up less screen space and you can't see the low resolution vaj so closely.

[Lucky777]

..."Gross" or "Stupid" would be the result of fucking up, not the result of realism or detail.
If detailed vag is beyond your skill that's a shame, but what can you do?
Just give it the best you've got.
(Of course, if only ONE part of the entire model has perfect detail and the rest is a sketch, things will look quite strange.
You'd just have to keep a pretty consistent level of detail between the model and the vagina, while keeping that level sufficiently detailed to be attractive.)

Since you could do mouths well enough I don't foresee vaginal and anal orifices being some kind of insuperable hurdle.

(I mean, the depth of the mouth needs a little work too, but for a start it certainly seems good enough.
Practice makes perfect and all; if you can't pull orifices off yet then maybe you can in the future.
But the main thing is, it's not just "beyond the capabilities of this model/program", right?
'Cause if it IS, then y'know.
That'd mean this just isn't the model/program to be using for porn.)

[AcetheSuperVillain]

The program I'm using is Blender3D and it has no limitations. Here's a demo reel they did of professional projects from 2013: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XZGulDxz9o

No, the problem is me. There's just something about doing that region in 3D that's fundamentally different from how I would approach it in 2D. Possibly because this is the first time I've ever actually set out to make movie-porn with Blender, so I've made boobs and goop and rockin' bods before, but always stopped short of the shaping the snatch. So I'm just not sure what to do.

[Lucky777]

Oh, that's fine then.
Study some 3D stuff by duders like Umemaro and bash your head against the problem for a while, which may be between hours and years.
If the problem is you then you will fortunately also be the solution.

I'd give you some pointers but I'm even more hopeless at visual art than I am at composing music.

: D

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Quick update today, cleaned up the cooter a bit and fiddled with the look of the facial changes and goop material.

In the previous post: viewtopic.php?f=34&t=7484&p=619380#p618978

[Biles]

Hehe, that's a buttload of goop. BTW, do you plan to make the bunny girl gasp her mouth open upon penetration? Cause that's how I imagine how her facial expression would look.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

No, I feel like gasping would happen if the penetration was surprising in some way. Pepper is supposed to be a character who is used to having sex, and obviously she's inviting him in, so the gasp wouldn't make sense here. Harriet and Slick might do something like that.

That said, the whole animation moves pretty fast right now. I could see value in slowing down and soaking in a few moments, and the point of penetration could be a moment worth sticking on. That said, I know they make a big deal out of the moment of penetration in hentai, but I feel like that's less of a thing in real people porn, and logically, the fun part comes later, not at the beginning. So a big, hentai GASP strikes me as unrealistic, but then I don't really know. If anyone who is in the habit of getting penetrated would like to comment on this, I would appreciate the info. (EDIT: And now, I've got NewGrounds weighing in)

And just, for the record, this animation may go in the incomplete game as a placeholder, but it's probably not going to be in the final game, since final game animations should show Renard instead of a disembodied floating dick.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Well, I just tried rendering a 60fps version (the current animation is 24fps, Astro Vulpus runs at 30fps). Unfortunately, I'm not sure that even my computer can actually run an animation at 60fps consistently, and this will be worse if it's in a browser. Second problem is that I cannot run Blender at 60fps, so I have to let it render for over an hour before I can see what's going on. When I made the 60fps animation, I made a baking mistake that caused her hair to go flying off of her head for a few seconds. Oops, gotta render the whole thing over again for another 3 hours. That is also a problem with the physical simulations, jiggles and fluids, once there are made, I can't test the animation at animation speeds anymore.

So as I move forward, I need to come up with what they call an animation proxy for working while animating. An extra step, but hopefully a quick one.

[Biles]

...When I made the 60fps animation, I made a baking mistake that caused her hair to go flying off of her head for a few seconds...

ROFL! That would've been hilarious to see XD. It reminds me of the time when I fucked around with a Blender model of April O'Neil

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Alright, so I'm hoping to get back to work on Astro Vulpus gameplay this week. The main thing on my plate will be importing the 3D video to Flash and the existing reward CG system, and testing to see how much 3D video I can import before Flash CS loses its lunch, and probably looking for a way to import video without making Flash CS lose its lunch. (For recap, both Knarf's Quest and Amazon Brawler both caused big slow down issues)

However, I also want to think about revamping some of the scrolling shooter gameplay. I'm not convinced that the current upgrade system is going to hold up for a longer game, so I'm thinking about replacing it with something more like other upgrade shooters like Frantic or Reactance. If you have a favorite upgrade shooter, or have a specific idea about it, let me know.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Well, great news everybody, apparently just adding one 3D video to Astro Vulpus is enough to make Flash CS4 lose its lunch. God fucking dammit shitfaced ass burns. UGHHHHHH

So I'm honestly not sure how to fix this. I could try to do it completely in Flash Develop, like I was doing for the brawler engine, but I don't really know where to start, and it would be a pain not to be able to use MovieClips and the timeline to guide the player through the game. A full blit engine might be in order, but, making full blit menus is... ugh.

But I'm honestly not sure I want to fix this. I've been drooling over Unity tutorials lately, and I've known all along that Flash CS4 was going to be difficult, though I was hoping not quite this difficult. So either way, I'm going to walk away from this project for a bit and see what's out there. Maybe I'll think of a way around and come back to it. Maybe I'll redo the project in Unity. Maybe I'll say to heck with games and just make porn animations. Who knows? Who the fuck knows?

[Dead2112man]

Well, great news everybody, apparently just adding one 3D video to Astro Vulpus is enough to make Flash CS4 lose its lunch. God fucking dammit shitfaced ass burns. UGHHHHHH

So I'm honestly not sure how to fix this. I could try to do it completely in Flash Develop, like I was doing for the brawler engine, but I don't really know where to start, and it would be a pain not to be able to use MovieClips and the timeline to guide the player through the game. A full blit engine might be in order, but, making full blit menus is... ugh.

But I'm honestly not sure I want to fix this. I've been drooling over Unity tutorials lately, and I've known all along that Flash CS4 was going to be difficult, though I was hoping not quite this difficult. So either way, I'm going to walk away from this project for a bit and see what's out there. Maybe I'll think of a way around and come back to it. Maybe I'll redo the project in Unity. Maybe I'll say to heck with games and just make porn animations. Who knows? Who the fuck knows?

Time to strech you wings and give unity a try then.