Lab Access & Anim Update (WIP) (Patreon)

Hey everyone! We're back to Raccoon City with another Claire set!

This actually turned out pretty similar to my previous Claire set. The main difference, of course, it's the angle. At first I wanted to maybe try a different color combination, but that low key blue with a red emergency back light worked surprisingly well for this one too. Consider this a... continuation(?) of the previous set.

Now, you might be wondering why the GIFs show a beach scene. Well, long story.

I've spent this past week tweaking the animation, adding a whole facial expressions layer, and doing the fluids. It all went surprisingly well. I ended up ditching my idea of using actual fluid simulations again. It's just a mess.

After that, it was time for my greatest weakness: the environment. At first I had a good idea of what I wanted. I started working on the lighting first, and although it looked a bit flat, it wasn't bad. As I continued to work on it, I quickly realized that the environment would be a bigger challenge than I imagined.

You might remember that I mentioned switching to EEVEE, Blender's faster render engine, in order to make longer animations in 60 FPS without worrying about it taking forever to render. In that regard, EEVEE is great. The problem with it though, is that it's pretty challenging to work with.

If you look at the actual rendered images I attached, you might think: "This doesn't look too good". The reason is that EEVEE has a very particular way of dealing with shadows and light. Unlike in Cycles, you have to do quite a lot of tweaking to make things look right in EEVEE. And the problem? I don't quite know how to do that yet. And yes, there's quite a lot of noise showing in the darker areas of the second image. I'll fix that.

This animation has showed me that I still have a lot to learn when it comes to EEVEE. This is the reason why I decided to switch to a beach scene instead. It's simpler and it has light coming from everywhere, not to mention the good contrast between warm skin and cool blue sky.

What's next? Well, I'll give the lighting a few more tries. I haven't given up on the Dr Mercy idea just yet. I have at least one more setup in mind. If it doesn't work, I'll be tweaking a few last details and rendering the animation ASP. I might have to take a few days to prep more content for the coming weeks too.

These past days have been exhausting, and with the recent drop in membership, I can't help but to feel a bit unmotivated. That being said, I wanted to thank you all who have been supporting me through all the good and bad content. I know I don't always deliver, though I do want to keep improving.

And also, thank you to everyone who has been answering the form. I've been getting some great feedback and suggestions.

As usual, early access to this week's set will be available on Wednesday. Thank you all for your continued support!

All characters seen in my work are fictional and consenting adults over the age of 18.