Hey all, sorry for the quiet spell this month! I like to keep update posts reserved for whenever there's a lot to say at once instead of a bunch of smaller posts. There's some reading and a gif ahead in case you're interested.
Things turned out to be pretty busy with appointments and events this month so I've been on-and-off the computer for good parts of the day (all while readjusting my sleep pattern to a healthier standard). If you've messaged here on Patreon or in Discord you've likely noticed delays in response time.
I'm always working on animations as usual, some are behind-the-scenes test commissions I can't show yet until completion. And of course the ice mom scene slice is still making its way along with everything else in due time.
Preparations for more advanced future projects: My mocap kit made a lot of improvements over time like fixing the inverted hand issue I was experiencing and including support for various start positions, which is really convenient for different models that aren't already t-posed and makes them easier to consider.
I'm getting a lot more comfortable using the tech and configuring models to support it, and the results are pretty good! Although there's still an issue with foot sliding when the proportions are adapted to different characters while still supporting handmade animation, which isn't normally an issue in the raw capture. Documentation is pretty rough on that front so for now it's unavoidable, but I think it can minimized with further dedicated cleanup and other modifiers.
The folks on the Discord always meme about doing dances or backflipping so here's a take I animated over and polished slightly. This model is in a t-pose so it was the easiest to configure and set up.
I'm still trying to find good time to balance experimenting with mocap/physics, model setup, and animation work but it's not shabby.
I've mentioned before that the tech will be used to support and assist full body motion for more elaborate transitions, intro sequences, etc as this is a daunting task for one individual. When that happens is yet to be decided but I'm already thinking about how to approach different scenes using it and how that can speed up certain workflows. Everything else you've come to expect from my animations will still be manually done. :)
Anyways that's it for this quick-ish update, as always thank you so much for your support - more is always on the way.