Hey studio family. Its update time! The poster above is a bit of a preview for our next pose pack, and is also sort of a reflection of my current status.. tired lol.
I have been indulging in perhaps a bit too much "vibe coding," in my spare time, leaving way too few hours for sleep. What can I say, its too addictive! Though these late nights, I have been slowly feeling out the inner workings of HS2 with Claude, identifying its many eccentricities and pitfalls, clearing the fog of war as we go. We have made great progress, and of course, you will soon share in the fruits of our labor. More on this later. Lets start with the pose previews as usual.
Pose Previews
This month's first set of poses will round out the base emotive poses collection with some actions that have specific practical uses. I deliberately made whatever came to mind, so there is no rhyme or reason to what was included:
The hope is that these will come in handy for the comic and storyboard creators among you who have been asking for something other than deliberate modelling poses. Themes covered include, hitch hiking, slipping on a banana peel, dozing off on a train and more.
Character Preview:
I have put a bit more time into our girl of the month, Dionne since our last meeting. I have rounded out a few of her features, giving her a bit more of that Douyin conventional beauty. I hope you like her final look:
Plugins:
I am really happy to see that many of you are liking the AntiGravity plugin and are finding it useful. This plugin addressed the issue of simulated cloth being uncontrollable and always misbehaving in the studio. My plugin allows the user to turn gravity (for simulated cloth objects in the scene) on and off with the N button. It also allows the user to direct gravity towards their mouse in real time using the B button. Skillful use of these two buttons in tandem will allow you to effectively drag and pose cloth sim objects in dramatic ways.
The Anti-Gravity plugin is currently in early access and will be going public later this month.
The next plugin that I am working on is an upgrade to the posing tool that I use most in the studio; the Extra Move Axis by ManlyMarco. I have spoken to Marco and received their blessing to iterate on their previous work, so let us give thanks to their benevolence! The upgrade that I am making to the gizmo is the ability to use the mouse wheel to scroll through FK bones. This allows extremely quick and efficient posing. You just rotate the gizmo orb to pose one node, scroll to the next node, rotate to pose, and on to the next etc. Once you internalize the scrolling order, posing will be such a fast and easy process that you wont be able to resist that "pat yourself on the back" feeling!
The plugin uses a raycast method to detect that your mouse is on the orb when scrolling, so you never have to move your mouse away and can pose the entire character in one swift set of movements if your badass enough! I have also implemented smart restraints that disallow rotation of the knees and elbows on anatomically incorrect axis, so you will get perfection each and every time ✨Sadly, I hit my usage limit on the AI before I had a chance to polish up the plugin with some finishing touches, so once I'm allocated more tokens, I will finish the plugin and release it to you guys.
Mods:
I am currently working on an exclusive mod in the form of a cool mini jacket:
I am having some difficulties with it at the mesh level so I currently cannot state a release date! Besides that project, there is one thing I have worked on and released since our last meeting, so lets recap.
TechBunny Set
It turns out that I managed to pull through on my resolution from the last update that I would create something with hard surfaces. This brought about my first "Tech" themed clothing mod:
Its my most ambitious work to date so I hope your impressed! The explorations and tribulations I detailed in my last update brought about the brand new workflow that made this project possible. My inexperience has left a few visual artifacts and inconsistencies, but as I refine my workflow those should be tidied up for future projects.
The Techbunny chest piece with exo-spine will be going public in April, and if you want the extra parts of the set, you'll have to chip in and support me a bit 😉 The cybernetic legs and floppy bunny headpiece will be waiting for you in the 😎Fashionista😎 collection.
Okay that does it for this update. Thank you all of your support, engagement, and visitation!