I am about to put CyberLeek out of business with this one.

How'd that get in there?

Some of you might be confused, some of you might start asking questions - shouldn't this be Geralt instead?That’s ok, he'll probably get maimed or crippled by the end of the game, so you don't have to worry about him being the main character in Witcher 4.

No, but seriously, let me tell you something.

Clapping Cheeks

Ciri_claps_Yenn.mp4Yenn_claps_Ciri.mp4

If you missed it, this is the clip from X in better quality. I didn't make a post about this one since it was just a quick test, but it's finally uploaded to the drive in max quality if you need it.

Audio

You know how they say, "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together."

I wanted my big boy pants on and tried to cosplay as a professional. If I want to go far, I probably should try splitting the work and optimizing the pipeline, so to speak. I am not sure if I liked how this one went.

Yapping incoming, ye be warned!

What is the usual, non-professional NSFW workflow? Animate, render everything out, add audio, and then a bit of post-work. That's pretty much it.

But since you are adding audio after you're done animating, it usually doesn't fit well. How often do you see a character moaning like crazy, but their mouth, face, and eyes are barely moving? To some extent, you can try to find matching audio clips, but sometimes it's just badly animated and you can't salvage it. Like, that's it, face isn't moving fast enough, it's a wrap, it's done.

The proper way to do it is to get the audio out first. You do some simple blockout/preview, you do your characters' voices, and then you animate everything to it. Having the sound will help you with the timing of everything so that it all fits together nicely.

Animatic from "The Incredibles"

This was my plan back then:

Animate everything but the faces from the second shot.

Hire someone who can do the sound for me.

Render out shot 1 and 3 while waiting for the sound.

Get the sound, finish the second shot, and render it out to complete the whole thing.

Sure, I could do this. I can pay some money to save some time, why not?Heh )))

Basically, nothing worked out. Now I see why, Now I understand THE WAY IT IS.

I wanted a chill, laid back type of management - I give you money and a general idea/direction, and I fuck off. I don't micromanage you, I simply collect the result. Basically Phil Spencer, playing Vampire Survivors, type management.

The problem is - this shit doesn't work in real life, and he got booted exactly for doing this,

I didn't set a deadline - everything started to drag.I didn't give instructions for voices - Ciri sounded like a hag and Yennefer like a schoolgirl.I wanted to fuck off - now I’m constantly talking back and forth about shit in DMs.

Imagine saying it's "sooner than later", and NOTHING comes out. Well, you don't have to. Made me look like a retard. I couldn't wait for sound any longer, I went and did it myself.

And you know what, I don't blame them, that's all on me. I thought I was so smart, I thought it was such a witty thing to "let the workers do the job". I thought it could be done the way I wanted, turned out it can't. You really do need to control every step, otherwise you might be in for a surprise, and not a good one.

Speaking of positives:

I think this was a really good lesson, that didn't cost me that much money. Next time I need something, I'll be using Asha Sharma-type management. "Hey, Todd, see this strapon I have? It'll be right up your ass if I don't see any games by 2030."

Wooow, that was quick, can you believe that?)

Anyway, I don't know if you'll hear the alternative sound - maybe yes, maybe no. Probably yes? Maybe I'll do a poll later to see if it was better or worse (hopefully it's not worse, wth).

Talking about the project itself

Usually, I split the animation and the overview into different posts, but today is not that day. Let’s briefly talk about it here.

It was alright. I don't know if anything really stands out, maybe slightly better fidelity? I think this one relied on compositing much more than anything I've done so far.

Well, maybe not this shot; this one is pretty good on its own.

Yeah, this one is better.

I think the second shot had the most problems: the lighting was shit, the physics broke mid-shot, you can see it when Ciri bounces at the end, the pillow's normals are broken, the bed cover is intersecting itself, and there's some questionable hair and a broken Z pass.

That one was basically the first one, but with different compositing - adding cum stains, scratches, marks, fixing the pulsating book, and so on.Cum strings weren't present at first, and they weren't done in the compositing. I didn't do them that well, still, I think it's a very nice addition. It was kind of too "clean" without them. You know what I mean?

Also, I thought maybe it would be better to go with a less saturated look, but I decided to stick with a more colorful image to keep it more "game-like" and closer the the DLC poster. If it were a Resident Evil animation, I think a less-saturated look might have been a better fit.

Projects in the queue

The next project is already done - yes, I simply need to add the physics and render it, that's it. I'm not going to spoil its duration, but let me tell you this: it was supposed to be a 10-second clip bundled with this release, but again, I got stupid... and well, you'll see.

Now that I think about it, it was actually easy to do. You know what I need to do: I need to stop putting them on other soft objects. The less physics there are, the less time you need to spend setting everything up.

There is also a wheel winner still on hold. We talked, and everything seems alright - nothing weird will be coming out, so that's that.

Then... there is potentially something weird coming out. But it's a bit far off in the future, and hey, this time it’s not on me. 🙂

What else? Probably that's it for now.

Thank you, and I'll see you in the next post. Bye!