Hi everyone,A small update posts about why things took a while, what you might not notice in the new Reina release, and what to expect in the future.
Reina first version has been made a while ago, it is to the right. Clothes were much more oversized and less fit. That brought the feeling of Bigness to the character that not supposed to have it.
Plus there were lots of clipping and issues with weights such as those.
As you can see, the clothes are stretches unrealistically, and some of the belts weren't follow legs too. I got a feetback that cliping and such things are important to some people, so I started to work.
It is important to note that I am not a 3D artist, so a lot of the time, my work progress was close to "one step forward, two steps back". I fixed one thing, but more clipping appeared in other places.
The WL rig is very complex, and simple tuturials on weight painting aren't much of help.
In my case, there's often times I spend days working on things, but there not much progress, because things break while fixing others.
Finally, I got myself together.
That was the point when we got to Reina v2 model that you saw on the left. It was working almost perfectly with some small clipping that can be fixed. And I also fixed short and made them stretch correctly.
Then one thing start bothering me. The placement of the shorts were correct from the bottom, but waist line was too high.
So I decided to redo it.
I did it again, and again. But the results were worse and worse.
There were lots of unexpected clipping that I could not fix. And redoing stretching between the legs lead to the worse result than I got before.
After days of work with no progress, I did kinda crashout at some point and could not work on two presets that were in the work. It is one thing, when you does not fix something completely, but there's still forward movement forward, and another when you has not moved forward after days of work and dozens of spent. It was a bit hard to take in.
That was the moment of long gap after my last message. Then a lot of work came in and I could not work on the presets.
To be honest, I was really stressed out about our whole thing.
Finally, I contacted Minervha about some specific question. Some things became clearer, though I still don't understand it all.
Then I read some stuff. And I decided to loosen my grip on things a little, allow myself to not be perfect.
The next Reina iteration would be the one you got. Shorts corrected and fixed. All of clothes elements were iterated. Clipping minized while suit is tightly fit to the best of my ability, but it is still there. I resculpted the face multiple times, but decided to change only the lower part and left the eyes from previous iteration. I added idle animation and really enjoyed my time working on it. Right before release, I noticed that jacket was also stretching wrong, so I made a quick fix as well. It can be improved further, but it is good enough for the moment.
There are things that truly mine and I greatly enjoy them. Set uping overall character, colors, makeup, giving a personality through animation. And there are things that are not much fun like face sculpting. And there are thing that are a pain like a weight paiting, making clothes stretch correctly, etc.
What I decided to do is loosen my grip a little. I enjoy doing presets, but I want to spend more time doing things that bring me joy and less time on things that really frustrate me. So I am gonna forgive myself some clipping and imperfections in the future and hope you are okay with it too.
If you read to this point, I have a big plans for October. And there are still some things to celebrate this month and I will try to make it.
And here is some look on updated Lady preset. Damn, weightpaiting her shirt is also really driving me nuts. There lots of issues, but even if I won't fix all of them - know I did my best.
Batfeck out.