Missed a week again, oops :S I was supposed to post on the weekend I posted the last songpic but stuff happened, just not that.
Over the last week I finally managed to finish the retopo and apparently it has 8k odd faces with the mirror modifier, more once the subd modifier gets turned on, and probably more again when I get around to applying the mirror modifier which will probably be pretty soon (after I version save XD). I then chucked a rig in it and tried it out.
There were a couple of new controllers I hadn't noticed in the previous version, but like with the "new" Krita brushes I've found they might have been there forever and I'm only just catching up now. This anime pose wasn't intentional, just vaguely happened as I moved stuff around to see how it would deform. As usual there are some weight mapping issues that need to be fixed but it's not too bad out of the box.
Next job was stuff around with the tail rig and the next most useful thing ever was the addition of "on surface" to the distance limits in the bone constraints settings, as now all my tail controller bones will stay as far apart as I want them (previously I think there was only inside and outside which meant either watching what I was doing carefully or using two constraints and for whatever reason I usually managed to blow things up if I did that). Prehensile tails are still a major pain in the system to manipulate but at least I can do it with a bit less headache now.
I should probably have tried out a couple more extreme poses but I don't really have too many super bendy Fliers and as far as I know, the bendy Fliers can do the splits and not a whole lot else as the wings make it super tricky (possibly impossible? XD) to do back walkovers and tumbles on the ground anyway.
I need to regenerate all my rigs and organise the Flyer ones nicely too. I was deleting and regenerating a lot in my tests, and kept overwriting instead of making new ones so ended up with a bit of a mess whre rigify didn't seem sure what should go on what layer. When I do the rigs properly I'll make some of the controllers bigger so they're outside of the mesh and I don't have to make it "in front" which is an eyesore.
So now I need to bake that normal map so I can fix his proportions.
Which requires a uv map.
Which requires cutting up.
One of my favourite things -_-
I don't know if it required applying the mirror modifier but I did so I could see things that were going to stretch across the centreline easier.
Live unwrap is somewhat useful. It took me a bit of obscure internet searches (at this stage I don't even remember what I was looking for) to find out I had to press a button labelled UV sync in the top left corner of the uv image view to make it stay visible (otherwise it's only visible when everything is selected which is annoying).
Another tool I didn't know existed is shift+ctrl+M which mirrors the selection. Clicking the "extend" checkbox hangs on to the initial selection as well as mirroring the selection, and knowing about that (assuming it's been there in all the versions of Blender I've been using and not just the last two) would have made things that tiny bit easier previously.
So with both sides selected then it's U (to unwrap, and make sure it's on the side the model is on as it doesn't do anything on the image side) and select Mark Seam.
I hate unwrapping in Blender slightly less now.
And I still suck at it.
Also for all the whining I was doing about having to bake in Blender, it's actually really easy. There's a bake dropdown thingi in the Cycles render engine, some settings and a big bake button.
I just have to figure out the settings to make it look good now x_x
This post also appears on my blog.
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All of this went straight over my head...But what I can say with certainty is that if I was a winged beast I'd want to be this one.
You probably don't want to be this one in particular, he has a bit of a bad run in the current block XD
possibly a lot of a bad run
I can definitely make you a Dragonkin cameo though XP
Basically what I'm making sure the character can move nicely and I'm going to readd all his details back on soon. It's actually a bit of a backarsewards way to do it (I should make sure he animates nicely first and then do all the colouring and details) but that's how my previous workflow was thanks to having to jump between two programs so I need to fix up this character and the last one and then I'll be able to proceed normally with the other ones :)
It all sounds very technical to an analogue dude like me. It must make you happy when things come together and it all works out.
It really, really does XD
Like last night/this morning I was up way too late because I was so excited that I finally managed a good bake.
And if it's any consolation all your shooting stuff from the bullet making to the actual shooting sounds incredibly technical to me, all the numbers especially goes flying above my head :D
I guess we're all expert in our own fields and interests huh?
On a more important note, daylight saving started last night...I lost an hour of sleep! Dang it!
LoL ergh I'm so glad we don't have that over here XD They tried to force us by having a referendum following a "trial" for three years I guess desperately hoping that by the end of it people would be so used to it they'd just vote yes but I think they got an even bigger no vote than previous referendums.
I'm not a huge fan of it. Faith loves it. I'd rather we just live as per the seasons intended rather than manipulating time. Oh well, six months of it now.
Would u pls tell me how to be a Verified Artist?
For OnChainArt pop onto the discord (link is in the information box in the sidebar along with some rules) and provide some links to your hive account and some social media accounts that you can prove you control (easiest way is to have a link to your hive profile somewhere, linking to your hive posts also works) into the get-verified channel.
👋 Hi @ryivhnn, I was flipping through the blockchain and stumbled on your work! You've been upvoted by Sketchbook / a community for design and creativity. Looking forward to crossing paths again soon.
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