Hi everyone. Happy Easter to all who celebrate!

Got some updates I want to share with you.

Today’s topics:

Witcher animation

Poll results

Eevee vs Cycles

Witcher animation

It’s sloooooowly getting closer to the finish line… currently at 5 FPH.

Going with 2K might have been my biggest mistake of March. Well, right now it’s actually rendering at 5632x3168. I’ll scale it down to 2K afterwards, which should give a much cleaner image with way less noise than this:

(Never-mind, wanted to show it with a GIF, but you can't really see it with such a low quality)Hopefully, potentially, in theory.

I also wanted to replicate that VFX effect for Ciri, but guys… I don’t think it’s happening.

It’s way too complex and I don’t even know where to start. I tried, but the result isn’t even close to the reference. If they did it in full 3D - forget it, there’s no chance I can replicate it. I want to try to do this in Fusion, but first I need to finish rendering the frames.

Here is what I've got after some time with geo nodes and shaders. It lacks compositing, but the general idea is there:

Btw, I switched to camera motion blur instead of the post-effect one. It looks much nicer and doesn’t have the artifacts that usually plague the Vector Blur node.

-That’s nice, good for you… now we’ll have to wait even longer for the render to finish.

Yeah, but just look at the difference:

Uuufff, look at these jagged smeared edges on the left. Disgusting! Now compare it to the silky smooth, physically accurate blur on the right.Jokes aside, I don't see myself ever going back to use a post blur after this. All in the name of "flexibility" and the result you get is on the left (and this one isn't even that bad).

Garbage.

If you can plan ahead and set up a camera blur the way you like - this is the way to go.

Poll results

Aaaaaand the winners are… Widowmaker, Domina, Ashe, and Pharah!

That’s interesting. I expected a slightly different outcome, but I can totally see why they won.

I was originally thinking of putting them all in a gym, but I scrapped that idea pretty quickly - too much work for a questionable result.

What happened is that I started doing it, quickly realized it wasn't good enough and aborted it early.Instead, there will be two separate projects. You can see a preview of the first one below, and the second one will feature all four of them together.

Eevee vs Cycles

That being said, I can’t afford to render these with Cycles… I have to use Eevee.

As its biggest hater, I’m a bit worried about the final look because I’ve never used Eevee for anything serious before.

With Cycles, you work with the engine. With Eevee, you work against it. Or more accurately… it works against you.

I don’t love the situation, but I’ll make it work.

About the timeline:

The first Overwatch animation should be ready before the Witcher one. The second one is likely, but not 100% guaranteed.

Either way, it definitely can’t go worse (time wise) than the Witcher project.Peace.