I've managed to maintain a pace of 6000 frames of animation per month, which is quite fast considering it would constitute a complete dance if it were just one model. This speed is a significant improvement compared to my previous experience with MikuMikuMoving.

Besides animation, I've been continuing to refine the Blender rig I created for Izumi as I progress with the animation. Specifically, I've been focusing on fine-tuning the parts of the rig that I developed myself, such as the head/neck and torso mechanisms. I anticipate completing the dance by the end of this month. Once I finish animating the bodies, the only remaining task will be animating the face. Since there is no rig for Izumi's morphs, I'll need to animate them manually, as I've done in the past. However, considering Izumi has more facial morphs than your average model, and I've already exhausted most of the bone layers available, creating a rig for her morphs will likely have to wait until I can transition to Blender 4. Whether I'll create a rig for that version is still undecided.

Attached is another preview of the dance in case you'd like to review it again. I'll also be posting updates on X this month to keep you informed of my progress. Currently, I've completed 75% of the dance, equivalent to 4500 (x4) frames of animation.

Thanks again for your patience and continued support.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwJSYKhG8nQ

Gentlemen, and ladies if there are any present.

I've completed 50% of the frames required for the 4-model “Oppa, Do You Trust Me” dance I'm working on, which amounts to 3000x4 frames of animation. Despite the time it's taking me, it's honestly much faster than it would have been if I had stuck with MikuMikuMoving.

Fortunately, the next 50% consists of some moves already present in the first half of the dance, allowing me to copy and paste the necessary frames. There are also similar dance moves made by the dancers, which are being copied and pasted as well.

Additionally, I've been ironing out more kinks with Izumi’s blender rig. Some adjustments were made, but nothing game-changing. I'm using this as an opportunity to learn and improve my animation skills with Blender. Consequently, I'm finally making use of some Blender plugins for animation, and I have to say, there's not much that would make me go back to animating the way I was three months ago. Maybe for some MMD specific stuff, but I hope that wouldn't be too often.

Thanks again for your patience, both to those who are still here and to those who have left. Hopefully, you will come back once this project is done so I can continue creating the usual sexy animations.

Before I forget, the blender file for Izumi has been updated as well as the 4 enhanced .pmx models that are being used for this dance, $30 tier members can download the updates from the “Izumi Blender Rig” folder.

Ok guys, it’s been a bit over a month since I started animating in Blender, I gotta say, the experience has been good so far, I can pretty much do whatever I could do in MMM before and more, even though I haven even started using Blender’s tools for animation other than the “tweening” tools, I haven even whipped out my plug ins, the process of animation is going much faster than MMM, not to mention MMD.

Just yesterday I hit the 30% mark, approximately, I am 1720-1780(x4) frames into the animation, out of 6200(x4), which means that if the dance were just for one model I would be done already, which is remarkable given that my longest dance (I think) Girls Day – Expectation with a little over 5700 frames, took me around 3 months to complete.

Not to mention, when I started this dance on MMM, I had barely animated the arms, almost nothing for the fingers and there was no interpolation for anything, in blender, the only thing I am not animating so far is the face, the animation for the body, every part, is already interpolated and smooth, I had to take some days of to tweak and tighten Izumi’s rig, and I am confident that it doesn’t need any more adjustments, at least for the mechanisms that it currently has, I won’t mention future additions since I think it can perform nicely as is, but will see, the next time I update her is gonna be whenever the MMDTools pulg-in for Blender is updated to work with Blender 4, the rig can benefit from more layers for the Rig UI, supporters from the $30 tier can download her rig and see for themselves, there is also a “bone layers” plug in in that folder that is used to show the rig UI, it is a free add on btw, but since the official download has been updated for Blender 4, I provide a Blender 3 download just in case, so I recommend installing that add on in case you want to play with Izumi’s rig for blender, I’ve been updating those blend files constantly so if you already have it, it doesn’t hurt to get a fresh copy.

I include a small free sample of the motion so far just to proof to you that my rig works and the export process works flawlessly, the dance as is should work in any model without modifications, but the difference in body proportions will make it look different as usual, the dance doesn’t use IK controls for the legs but I can just as easily prepare a version that does use IK controls, also take into account that the motion will be rather heavy on the amount of key frames, so far I just focused on decimating the key frames for the fingers since those don’t need interpolation that much, so in case the final dance goes over MMD’s limit (which I doubt), I can make an effort to reduce other areas, prime targets would be the center bone as well as twist bones, but time will tell.

Anyway here is the download for the sample as well as the video showing off the progress for all 4 models, let me know what you think in the comments.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/4mwquenlbxmg9q2/WIP_01-b.rar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jz3BhaUrIw

Well, first of all, there is a new video up in the folders as well as Iwara, this one was another patron request, go check it out.

Second, I've been spending my time fine tuning my new rig and fixing my mistakes, at this point I am not adding more mechanisms, rather testing them until I break them and try to improve them and removing what doesn't work, by now I am pretty happy with what I have so I will stop testing for now.

 I've been updating the $30 rewards every time I make a change to the rig and the latest version of the rig is up as well as 4 of Izumi's PMX models in blend format, ready to start animating and exporting animations back to MVD fromat.

Those are her Gantz suit, Bunny girl, Lounge Clothes and Cat girl suit, why those 4?, well those are the same models I was using when I started  animating the next 4 model dance in MikuMikuMoving, but I just realized that I was honestly wasting a lot of time counter animating stuff that my new rig just does automatically and since I was going to finish the animation in Blender anyway I decided to stop, finish the rig and re-start from scratch the animation in Blender. 

This will be a lot faster than working on MMM an wasting a lot of time.

Right now I think the rig is ready to test it making this animation, however I am currently speed running 2 animation courses that I bought for Blender, one from Pierrick Picaut called "Alive" and another called TOAnimate, not sure about the creator since it was made by several people it seems. 

I am not going to study the whole thing right now, for now all I want is to learn the basics about Blender's UI for animation and see what I can use for now, I'll study it in depth in due time.

Right after that I will start animating again, in Blender this time of course.

I should be getting started with animation this week and I will be making reports to you again, most likely in Twitter/X as usual and  sometimes here when I have a bit more to talk about.

In the mean time, thanks for your patience and support will I've been working in these upgrades and let me know if you have any questions.

Ok I think the Blender rig I've been building since last month is ready for testing, this will be up in the $30 tier for people that are interested, this rig is meant to be used to create MMD animations as well as Blender animations of course, also the goal is to be able to use it on any MMD model I want of course there are some aspects that can not be used by other models, her mouth and tongue for example and other stuff, you know what I mean.

For the people that have access to it and have any questions, let me know, this is still in testing phase.

Also the base body that previously occupied the $30 has been moved down to the $20 tier and any future animations made with this new rig will be in the $30 tier, including any models I decide to adapt this rig to.

Here is another request being fulfilled, the video is up in Iwara, as well as the 1080 and 4k folders.