Hey everyone, the weekly update is already here?!

First thing first... HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

As I might not be available tomorrow (or be back home late and tired), I prefer dropping this weekly update today.

This week marks the release of  "Interceptor Cooling Unit" the special content for Voretober, Available on Discord. First of a kind animation for me.
This animation was my side project for October. And with it came a lot of experimentation, or my war against splotchy shadow.

For the boring technical stuff.

One of the main issues of Blender Cycle engine is splotchy shadow when an object is receiving rays of light indirectly;  this can "easily" be fixed by: 
- Rendering each frame with a higher setting.
- Adding additional light sources to lighten the area.
- Switch to EEVEE engine. 
- Render with the CPU.

None of these solutions are good for me: 
- Rendering at higher settings to reduce the amount of splotchy shadow by 2 increases rendering time by 4. 
- Adding extra light to lighten is not good for my taste in an animation.
- Using EEVEE with optimal settings and equivalent render time always has less quality than Cycle and brings other problems that are way more visible.
- CPU rendering is probably the best at removing every rendering error but would take MONTHS rendering 3840 frame.

With none of the "easy" solutions suitable for my need, I have to improvise a bit... Find a solution that gives the best quality, for the least amount of render time, and the least rendering errors possible. 

After many failed attempts I've decided to go with a dumb but effective solution... 
SSAA or Super-Sample Anti-Aliasing. 
Blender cycle and denoise node work better on larger resolution; it gives more data for the rendering engine and the denser to work with. With that idea in mind I've come to a 125% resolution for 4k rendering and 150% for 1080p rendering. This was also a reason why 1080p versions were usually more precise, because I simply take my 4k render and scale it down to 1080p so many errors simply end up squished.
Complete overall of the way I use Cycle sampling and noise threshold. 
Before that, my setting was a .0150 noise threshold for 512 maximum samples and 64 minimum samples. 
Now my settings are at .0700 noise threshold for 2048 maximum sample and 200 minimum sample. 
With almost no cost in render time, more minimum samples help the quality greatly and reduce shadow error. Maximum sample now properly fixes rendering errors without wasting time on the clean part of the rendering thanks to a higher threshold.
No more fast GI approximation, light paths greatly enhanced from blender default to a better global illumination setting with no change in render time.   

Now there will always be a slight amount of splotchy shadow with cycle with my current material, I even push Interceptor normal up to make it harder for me and basically beg for rendering error... I am still impressed at the amount of work a 4070 TI Super can achieve with all the Doom posters saying you need a XX90 to have good quality. At some point, the only way forward will be with better hardware, but I'm sure I can still improve with what I have and keep my ~90 seconds/frame rendering time.

With that came the end of a week of actual animation and three weeks of hitting my head against the wall... Between this and the Motion blur I'm not sure what is worse...

Now for the Halloween animation, I will fully use the extra time I allowed on myself; a small project for such a gorgeous model was a bit of an insult, so I've upgraded this project from a small to a medium size project. 
Hope everyone is ready for SCP-682 by Da.nilkaz.

That's it for this week!

Take care, be safe and have a good one!

Hey everyone, the weekly update is here!

With this week, the release of "Lay Aurealis" an animation created to test many new things and my new compositor. I've managed to put everything I needed to test in one animation. Motion feels a bit sluggish and no VA this time but this will enhance future animation.
So what changed. Mainly the introduction of very slight motion blur. One issue on my past 2 animations is that even at 60 FPS motion was so fast some body parts were like jumping between frames, and it became even worse with the 30FPS free version. So after many trial and error I've finally managed a motion blur that does not multiply my rendering time by 2 and does not blur slower and fine detail when velocity is slow. It took a considerable amount of time to find the right setting.
I also invested a bit in hardware with a new storage. I can now render my image sequence in TIFF file format without having to worry with file size or lose time compressing. This can also fix many issue usually seen in the JPEG file format and enhance graphical quality. And a lot of minor thing.

Next project (without thing to test) is the Halloween animation with SCP-███. It might come out a bit late as I didn't expect a certain "PHP2SHELL" to also slow me down even more on "Lay Aurealis".
I have also a side project for Vo..Hum October. This is near complete and is in the rendering process. Due to the special nature of the content, this will be available at 1k60FPS for everyone.

For subscriber, dropbox link change is set to November 9 just to give me more time with the Halloween project if I have issues.


That's it for this week! Take care, be safe and have a good one!

Hey everyone, Monday update is here!

If you are still not aware "Cynder Space" is released and available on public platforms and Discord!

This animation's focus was velocity, speed, and how physical cages behave. Another reason was to see any issue with my update of Grimm Cynder model for a future major project. 
Changed the way I handle video encoding and compression.

Now for my next small project I will go back to the anthro side of the force, this time featuring Bourora Aurealis by Furromantic. I have been waiting a long time to do something new with that model. Next animation focus is working on a slight motion blur to make the animation feel smoother for every version.

That's it for this week!

Take care, be safe and have a good one!

Hey everyone! A new week and a new small update!
With Blue release a new project is underway. This time with Cynder.
(Available on discord and on dropbox!)
I finished cleaning her model, fixed many major issues that would make the physical cage not work. Now she's fully ready with every physical aspect, constraint, and collision setup.
Roughly the same length as Blue so a 30ish seconds loop.

Today was focused on cleaning my PC file from the ground up, mostly from old projects and renders. Tomorrow I start with the initial positioning and the main loop.

A change was applied on Discord; it's now easier to find access to the scrap and extra Dropbox folder available for EVERYONE.

That's it for this week, take care, be safe and have a good one!

Hey everyone! A new week and a new update on time!

A new small project is in progress, this time featuring Blue the raptor (Feral). Initial position is almost complete; soon to be animated.

This time extra work and focus on physical cage and deformation. Mainly put into application all the theatrical work I've done while I was away. So far, I'm happy with the result and all that with a low performance cost.

New month new dropbox link at the usual post!

That's it for this week, take care, be safe and have a good one!

Hey everyone, Monday update and I am finally back.

So first question... Where the hell have you been? 
I have been most of the time either unable or way too much busy to do anything else. My early July was already a mess because of a forest fire, no damage for me or anyone else, except for most of the power lines and telecommunication infrastructure that were damaged or destroyed. The only side effect was the smell of smoke that got inside.  

But it didn't stop there; I was aware that another forest fire was threatening a member of my family, my godmother and aunt. She was quickly evacuated, with no improvement in telecommunication going back to normal and a shaky power grid. I've decided to pick my stuff up for a 2-week move to my uncle's house, with my father, so I can help her out. In the meantime my mother would go to my house and do a full clean-up and get rid of the pregnant smoke smell and take care of both my cats. 
We didn't decide to go out in an emergency without reason; early reports were that many houses were destroyed and evacuations had to be evacuated because the fire could not be stopped. This fire started July 23 and was officially stopped July 31 and managed to burn down 381km² of area. 
Damage was extensive, but we were lucky her house was only partially damaged not by fire but by water and fire retardant air drop. This is way better than having it burnt down, some of her neibor were not so lucky and became a new headline called Porge's 'Desolation Avenue'.
We stayed 4 more weeks to fix what needed to be fixed, then the rest of the family slowly came over and helped things out. 
This was my strange holiday, I guess.

Second question... Why were we not informed?
This one is 50% my fault.

When we departed, at some point we stopped to take a break; at this moment I was going to send a notice that I would probably be unavailable. I made the critical mistake, in order to preserve my allowed data traffic, to use a local PUBLIC internet connection, and oh man what I have done; I don't know if someone malicious tried to do something shady but Google promptly locked down my Gmail for security reasons, having 2FA on EVERYTHING, I could not access anything. My only way to unlock my phone was to log in under the same internet connection with another "known" device. Contacted Google support and my ticket is still with no answer. 

I also took the time to learn new stuff when I was away.


*Sigh*


So, I am finally back, a bit tired but fine. Now I need to resume what I was doing before all this mess.
First off, compile all of "KSI" and finally upload it; this is way long overdue. Then start a few new projects I had in mind lately. Dropbox link that was supposed to change in September is delayed to October. 

Sorry for all the delay. On that, I hope everyone is doing great.

Have a good one! 

Thanks, my house is not smelling smoke anymore, or I simply cannot smell it after so long...