Icebell textures DONE, blendshapes progress!

HELLOOOO!! I just wanted to update you on model progress! I finished up all the textures, which took some time because I had to study some shading, but I DID IT WOO!! I like it a lot, it's very different from my past models, but I wanted to put on more details this time. I also scaled up the pupils a bit, since I think I was looking a bit scary earlier, now I look more approachable! ALSO!!! I have plans on making outlines on the model too, but it wont be until I'm finished!

Right now I'm at the rigging stage, which is the LAST step! I gotta make some bones and attach it to the mesh, but before that I'm doing blendshapes, and I'm not taking any shortcuts! I'm doing the ARkit blendshapes, which means the fancy facetracking you see some vtubers have, with spesific mouth movements and all! I think there are 52 blendshapes, so I gotta make all of those, and those will help me with getting the facetracking I want! It's just gonna take a whileee, I've also been fighting with maya's blendshape controls, but I think I have it under control now (hehe)

Right now that kind of tracking only works with iphones with face recognition, but Suvidriel, another vtuber and content creator, made an app for android that tracks ARKit blendshapes based on the camera on your phone! It's called Meowface, so I hope that app can help me with the tracking without me having to buy an iphone aaaaa. It doesn't track as good because it doesn't have the infrared technology, but it works!

As soon as I rig everything here I will probably try to make a new Ice Channel 9 outfit too, since I wanna make more episodes!!!! I just wanna do it with the new model!! I was thinking of redoing the design now that I can make absolutely whatever I want, so we'll see what I end up with! I also wanna make a cool video as a introduction to the new model, but I'm not sure what I'll do there yet, but it needs to be COOL! I wish I had my full body tracking so I could move with my whole body, but there's still an issue with a chip shortage, so the SlimeVR tracking I backed will arrive when it arrives. But I'm still excited!!

Hope you're having a good time, lately I've been listening to a lot of capsule's old songs. I'm a huge fan of Yasutaka Nakata, when writing this I'm listening to this compilation of his works, I recommend it!!! I might have to take a week off from working on the model now because of other work, so I thought it would be nice to work as much as I could on the model now, and post here!

Until next timeeeeeeeeee, HOPEFULLY I'M DONEEEEE

hugs from Icebell<333333333333333333333333