Update 54: Change


Hello everyone. 
This was an extremely productive month. I don’t think a single waking hour has passed since my last update when I’ve not been thinking about, actively working on, or planning this project in some capacity.
I thought I’d keep it simple and go through a shot breakdown, whilst communicating some important information about the future of productions here.
Here’s the shot. Let’s break down how I got there.

My workflow for productions has usually followed a pretty distinctive pattern thus far:
I write the episode, usually consulting with writers to refine the outline.
I model the scene or have it modelled, then prep the characters. If it’s a new character model to me, it needs to be sourced and usually fixed.
I request voice work based on the script. Then, when that arrives, I listen to the audio and do my mocap take.
This time, I wanted to do things a bit differently. I had the spoken lines done in advance, as I needed them for pacing, leaving gaps so I could freeform the machine segments and then have the voice work filled to the animation.
So, the first thing to nail was the timing and ultimate length of the episode.
It took about a week to decide on this. During that time, I outlined the rough machine animation, what I wanted to happen, and get the pacing right.

Then, when I was happy with that, I ran through a mocap run for the hip and leg secondary motions.

Next up; the balls. More on this later, but I went through two stages with this: first, adding major motion and contractions.

Then I added a shape key to create visible ‘tension’ to the scrotum, so we get the effect of the skin constricting, as it does.

Then I worked on the penis using a combination of shape keys and bone animation to fully refine the movement of the organ. 
Usually I set myself up a little controller for going through it.

This model also has a foreskin, and that had to be animated. It was not the best put together model. Requiring a lot of corrective shape keys that needed manually animating, choosing to have this foreskin is also going to bite me in the ass later down the line when I get to the simulation stage.

I found the initial pass wasn’t quite enough so I went back through adding some more distinctive twitches

This polish took about another week, now it was time to start simming. If my previous comments about simulation were anything to go by, and you were picturing my reaction to this as a PTSD meme, you’re about on the money.

Suffice to say, I wasn’t looking forward to the endless iteration involved or the commitment.
As soon as you start a simulation stack, you’re effectively locking changes behind a very tall time gate. It’s not unusual for the entire stack to take a day or more to bake, so you better be sure your animation is on point.
Before I set off on the big sims, though, I thought I’d try the old setup from the Edging Lab set. It worked last time. Why shouldn’t it work again?
This was taking ages to bake so I decided to move onto one of the big sims that wouldn’t rely on it. 
I would then not leave my desk, other than for essential body activities, for the next 26 hours. I know it was that long because that’s how long this sim took to bake.
The first ‘big’ sim was to add some deformation to the parts where the penis is manipulated by the machines. I also wanted to try a new approach to the ball animation.
A friend had shown me a quick solution he whipped up for simulating the balls as actual spheres, then letting the cloth handle the scrotum.
The first tests were promising, and I found that some settings I’d previously ignored in Houdini’s maze of settings were actually very useful dials. This whole sim took me the day to refine and get right. I got it close enough that the whole thing was worth baking.



When this was done I took a look at the sim Blender was running. 
The same sim I’ve run before in near-identical circumstances in previous episodes. 
The sim I thought I could rely on to save me a bunch of time. One of the benefits of re using an old set. 
Complete and utter disaster.
I honestly briefly considered using it just for the comedy.

More on that later. But decided at this point I’d just re-simulate it in Houdini.
Returning to the skin sim, my intended motion for the testicles was a bit too subtle. I was going for subtle, but I did want to make it more obvious what was happening.
This ultimately made me throw away all the shape key animation I’d done before, but I used the action to drive the spheres instead, using them to push the scrotum around. This resulted in a much more realistic-looking action.
It’s very easy to overanimate when you do passes like this. You try to compensate for the lack of movement in other areas. But in this case, I think I found a nice line: distinctive but realistic.

This sim was a bit of a rollercoaster. It was frustrating at first, since no matter how many times I return to this software, it always feels like I’m starting from square zero.
However, I do feel like I’ve learned something this time. There were a couple of dials I didn’t know about before that I do now. They generally improved the stability of the entire simulation and added another arrow to my quiver for future use.
Emboldened by this, I approached the next sim with renewed vigour. This was to be the glans chamber or, as I originally called it, the ‘sample collection interface’.
Off the back of the last project I did, I took the original model from the Edging Lab and decided to add the popular ‘beads’ addition. This would not be the last modification I made to this model.


Since I’d already simulated a very similar material recently for that project, I used the same setup as my starting point.
Now, this sim nearly broke me. It took a LOT of iteration to get it right.
By the end of the second day working on this, I had something kind of close.

But this is where my decision to animate a foreskin came back to bite me. At a certain point, the cloth sim would become pinched in the collider, resulting in ugly, unacceptable collision failures.
I continued to iterate. I knew this had been accomplished before, so I knew it was possible, but the more I kept messing with it, the more it felt like I was trying to put a square peg into a round hole.
I tried workarounds, like building a temporary collider to guide the sim around the offending geometry.

I even tried changing the animation around the area so it was clear of the intersection events, and still nothing.
I was now three full days into iterating on this sim, meaning about 36 hours sat at my desk, and getting nowhere. As I moved on to a new segment, I encountered a new issue: the collider would collapse during certain fast-moving parts.
It was coming up to another trip I had planned, that time of year, and I’d spent the last 30 to 40 hours failing to accomplish an effect I’d done before and would likely need to do again.
I finally decided to try a new simulation approach. You see, so far, I’d been using Houdini’s cloth simulation system.
The idea is that you describe the material and tell the software where it’s being supported or driven from. Then you describe how stretchy and bendy the cloth is. Finally, you have ‘struts’, which are a force that tells the solver to maintain volume.
The trouble is that you then end up with three conflicting forces. You have the pin telling the cloth to try to maintain its original position. You have the stretch needing to be high enough to maintain the shape but low enough to allow expansion, while also not being so strong that it resists the influence of the struts or prevents volume preservation.
Instead, I opted to try a tetrahedral-style simulation, where the entire mesh is divided into tetrahedrons.
And it worked basically instantly.

And it has two dials: Stretch and volume


I got a small taste of success just before I went away on holiday for a short break, leaving the machine to cook a full run for review on my return.
I cannot overstate just how much of a breakthrough this simulation method is. For someone who often needs to simulate soft bodies (sleeves, strokers, fat bodies, breasts, genitals), it felt like the world opened up in front of me.
I then used this same method on the licker wheel and got an almost perfect result straight away.
I then needed to simulate the brush. I tried the same settings I used last time in Blender, which had previously worked in the Edging Lab scenes. That went pretty much how you’d predict.



So, this was another new thing to learn in Houdini. It ultimately led to a much better result than before. The brush looks softer and less wire-like, and it didn’t even take a full day to get a successful result.

I also took the opportunity to change their shape so the brush looked a bit more tailored to its intended purpose.


I did have to run back to Blender a couple of times and adjust the animation to accommodate some intersections caused by their length.
I have since moved on to doing some other sims for effects not included in this shot. I have the last major sim to complete, and then I’m ready to start putting everything back together.

Precum

The last step I’m considering is whether to animate the breathing or the camera in any way. That’s an artistic decision I’ve not quite made yet. I’m divided between providing possible non-visual storytelling and direction, and preserving the self-insert intention of the piece. In either case, the intention would be to provide alternatives.

This is the main camera angle, whereas the lack of movement in the chest is noticeable in the previews, it's totally out of shot here.


Otherwise, pending a few final sims, the project is more or less done. It will be passed to audio and fill work soon, then set for rendering once I’ve done a final pass.
Rapid progress I did indeed make. The full scene runs for 13.5 minutes and has reached this stage in about a month. Pending no major hiccups, it should be out this month.
Which leads me nicely into the big thing I wanted to talk about in this update.


Fuck the Algorithm


Working on this project is the most engaged I’ve been with this work since I started it.
I’m talking 12 to 16-hour days. Every day. Most days, I’ve finished up sometime between 5 and 7 a.m. local time. I have been a man possessed.
And I have loved every second of it.
It reminded me why I got into this work to begin with. This was never a way for me to earn a living. It was always just me making something because the porn I wanted to see didn’t exist. So I decided to make it. Somewhere along the line, things got bigger, priorities shifted, and I lost sight of that goal.
A lot of this shift in priorities was financially driven. I needed to rely on this to keep myself and, later, other individuals involved in the work secure. Most of the work I outsource is on a contract or ‘per-project’ basis, but a couple of those arrangements evolved into something more retainer-like.
This unfortunately led to some of the pressure behind many of the issues I’ve been working through over the last year or so and, most painfully of all, the loss of a friend.
It’s one thing for the success of your product to be responsible for keeping you solvent. It’s another thing entirely for those decisions to also affect people you care about.
This ultimately led me to withdraw and stop exploring those opportunities. Plans were abandoned or simplified. I had a never-ending list of projects that different sections of my audience wanted and no idea which one to make first.
I started looking towards my greatest hits for quick wins, easy projects I could make to appease the audience and give myself time. Rivals Edging Lab and the MIP Remaster were examples of those.
As I approached those projects, though, I had a building, nagging feeling that something wasn’t right. I have this story I want to tell and a specific way I want it to go down. If I keep diverting to these ‘quick wins’, I’m basically never going to get around to the stuff I actually want to do.
It took me deciding one day: Fuck the algorithm. Fuck what you guys want (I say, with all the love in the world). Fuck the money. This one’s for me.
That’s what it took to find the passion that, for so long, I thought was lost to me.
It’s why I react so strongly to comments that question my passion. Those comments hurt because they hit. I had lost my way. I had lost my passion. I wasn’t sure I was ever going to find it again.
Now, though, I’ve found it, and it’s clear some things need to change.


The changes


First, I will no longer be creating franchise-based work with characters that are not my own.
I plan to finish:
  • Rivals Edging Lab
  • Gwen’s Fate
  • Juno’s Arc
  • Maybe some Lara stuff

Other than that, all my focus will be on establishing characters within my own world and exploring the storylines and themes I’ve had planned for so long that have been left rotting on the shelf.
The reasons behind this go beyond satisfying my own creative needs. Here are a few:

Problem 1: The Model


Every time I decide to bring in a new character, I need to acquire a decent model, weld a dick onto it if it doesn’t have one already, and usually fix the materials and rig.
I lose so much time overcoming these limitations. Even this project, which uses the same model I’ve always used for A414, was an absolute pain to wrangle. I chose it at a time when I had little to no knowledge of modelling and rigging, and simply grabbed the best I could find with zero budget.
A prime example is this Black Cat model. I had to find one and get a dick welded onto it. Everything looks fine, then you pose it in a slightly unusual way and get stuff like this:

Badly mismatched topology, broken verts, dodgy shading
Or, in Juno’s case, stuff like this:

Intersecting geometry, every one of these issues propogate down the chain

I’ve not even gotten to sourcing Squirrel Girl and Emma Frost models yet, but I imagine they will have similar issues to overcome.
THEN, when you finally do get something decent that will actually animate reasonably well, you get comments like:

‘This isn’t recognisable as this character.’

I am tired of these limitations. While I do have contacts who can stitch things together, their time is not guaranteed, and their availability does not always line up with the start of my projects.

Problem 2: The Character


If I’m being totally honest with you all, and I have always strived for absolute honesty, I really don’t care about these characters.
I appreciate good character design, but introducing a character into a world and making it canonical means addressing the inherent mixing of those universes. How do the characters’ abilities translate? How does that compare to the world they find themselves in now? How is their presence going to affect the greater story arcs?
I care about imagining hot scenarios and putting hot characters in them. I really don’t want to have to consider, interweave, and embrace systems that I don’t want to be part of my universe.
I have my own plans for the way things work in this world, and complicating that with other people’s rules is not gonna work for me.


Problem 3: The IP


We adult creators skirt a fine line.
A very fine line.
Most companies turn a blind eye to the use of their characters in this content, a fact that many take advantage of, including myself.
Despite this, it remains an ever-present concern. If I get a letter from Blizzard or Marvel that says ‘stop’, I really can’t do anything about it.
This world and the stories I want to tell in it are far too important to me to leave that as a possibility. That’s not even accounting for the substantial cost that might already have been invested in a project by that point.
I’m taking this approach seriously. I plan to build a roster of my own ‘subjects’ that cover the archetypes, acquiring concept art and working towards creating truly appealing characters for my own use.
Then I’ll get them professionally sculpted, rigged, and prepared for all the wild shit I’m going to put them through.
The goal is to pick one of my roster of ready-to-go characters, place them in a well-established, well-rigged scene, and get right to exploring ideas as they come, rather than reacting to trends and requests.
This will be a slow transition. I still have the other work to complete in the meantime, but this will be the direction moving forward. I’ll keep you all up to date as it evolves, sharing concept art and development as I work through the backlog of projects I’ve committed to.
It’s risky, but I am nothing if not a risk-taker. I don’t expect you all to take my word for it. I believe the work will speak for itself.


Final thing: Timescales


It’s a subject that comes up from time to time. Just to be clear, this is not an issue I experience with 99% of my audience, but it does come up.
I’ve made mistakes with promises and given inaccurate or ambitious estimates. I beat myself up every single time I miss one. Whether you choose to believe it or not, there is nobody who cares more about how long this stuff takes than me.
Let’s just be, as I have always strived to be, absolutely clear:
  • I am likely never going to be a creator who releases things on a fixed schedule.
  • I do not accept compromise if I can avoid it.
  • I am not wasting hours sat on my ass doing nothing while collecting your money.
  • There are times when I’ve wasted weeks with no idea what to do.

The reason the comments smart is because I believe them. There was a long period when I felt the pace of the work had fallen off. At some point within the last couple of years, it got a lot slower.
Some of that has come from my constant need to improve and change things every time I start a new project, to not repeat myself, and to always make something new.
That’s not likely to change. A true artist never repeats themselves.
There is, however, a stark contrast between the rate at which I’ve worked on this project versus anything I’ve done in the last two years.
I don’t expect that to be the norm. Not everything is going to capture me in quite the same way this one has. Not every project I undertake is going to resonate with me on a deeper level.
I have been reminded of a time when this was all I could think about. Somewhere along the line, it became just work, and I approached it with the same slow pace as any worker doing a job they don’t really care about.
Platforms like Patreon and SubscribeStar exist to fund exactly these types of people: people who can just do the work they want to do and find an audience for it.
I know that I’m in a privileged position. Many people never get the opportunity to do what they love for a living, let alone with every project. There will likely be a balance to find in the types of content I create.
I feel it’s important to reinforce the message that I’m going to do what I want from now on. Some of it might appeal to you, and some of it might not. It’s going to take time, and I understand that won’t work for everyone.
I’m getting to the age now where regrets are not something I want to carry forward. Even if it means this all dwindles to nothing, it would be a far greater tragedy for me not to give this everything I’ve got.

I have something to show you all, and I am prepared to fail trying.