Painting the View: Furganomics (Patreon)

A slightly less glamorous part of this animation was dealing with Madelyn’s tail. Since it’s dynamically simulated, having her sit in a normal chair would just mean constantly fighting intersections and collisions. So I went back to one of the chairs from the previous mansion scene and remodelled it with a proper opening in the back for her tail to pass through. It’s a small detail, but it makes the posing and simulation much cleaner.

I’ve also been changing my rendering setup as part of trying to bring production costs down. I’ve moved away from V-Ray and started using Arnold instead, since it’s built directly into Maya and I only need a licence when I’m doing batch rendering. That makes a lot more sense for how I’m working now, but it has meant going back through a lot of old assets and rebuilding or converting shaders.

So at the moment there’s been quite a bit of behind-the-scenes cleanup going on, from character materials to furniture and full environments. It’s extra work upfront, but hopefully it’ll make future animations cheaper and a lot easier to manage.