Progress Update #113

Man... I wrote a full draft for this post yesterday, and somehow it wasn't saved 😩. You guys are getting the abridged version.

Anyway, here's the Sabrina assets:

Video Download -  https://www.patreon.com/posts/hololive-43990121

Basic Asset Pack - https://www.patreon.com/posts/12674978 - Posed models, room background and textures.

Big Asset Pack - https://www.patreon.com/posts/12675354 - Pokemon rigs, idle animations and texture PSDs.

Huge Asset Pack - https://www.patreon.com/posts/12675738 -  Sabrina scene, rig and animations (+Alakazam animations).

If you're interested in the original models, they are available in The Models Resource. I modified all the textures and materials to have a cel-shaded look. Sabrina is the most heavily modified model; I changed the textures, the geometry, the topology (it's quads now, but it's a bit rough... :p), and it has a whole new armature, with controls and everything.

She finally graduated. I wanted to do a longer animation, but I wasn't gonna be able to finish it in time, so I just made this little loop of Gura and Bloop waving goodbye... There's been so many graduations recently, it really feels like the end of an era for hololive. I still enjoy the new members though, Justice and Advent are great, and everybody who left is doing well as an indie VTuber, so that's good!

I was actually working on some other stuff before Gura announced her graduation. Cover released the official MMD models for Advent last month, and I was converting those to use in Blender. Turns out that they have no proper face rigging, it's just a lot of shape keys for the mouth and the eyes, which is fine for MikuMikuDance, but it's not very useful for me. 

Making a good facial rig for a 3D character can take a very long time (lots of controls, drivers and corrective shape keys), so I decided to take a different approach: removing the eyes and mouth and adding a 2D face. It's something that can be easily applied to any character, and is not limited by the geometry of the head, so the face can be a lot more expressive!

The downside is that I'm animating the face in After Effects and then exporting it to Blender, so I have to switch between the two programs, which is not ideal. Also, it's gonna be a bit complicated if these textures have to interact with 3D objects in the future, like a character sticking out their tongue or something. But for now it's the best option I have, and I'll be using it in the next animation!