BTS: Quiet updates and next scene

I've been thinking about opening a Discord server and giving you guys a private channel there for more regular BTS updates, but I still need to figure all that out. Also with the BTS videos I end up repeating myself a bit when I'm showing the same techniques over and over, so a dedicated channel for frequent image previews and that kind of thing might be better for you. I'll have a think over it, I don't have any experience running a Discord server so it might take time :)

Anyway with Quiet appearing in the next video with WildeerStudio's very good quality Lara model, I felt she needed a bit of improving to hold up against Lara.

The first step was to manually convert the triangles to quads for better subdivision of the mesh (simple way to make it higher poly for smooth edges). Blender has an auto feature but it's not a perfect solution by a long shot so I prefer to do it by hand. This is the original mesh:

And here after cleaning it up and retopologizing in places like between her right thigh straps:

I took the time to edge split hard edges too. This helps guide the shader to have proper lighting around edges like the metal on the belts. Here she is without edge splitting:

And here you can see the much more defined look edge split brings, especially around the belts:

The purple lines in the earlier screenshot are creases, which guide the subdivision surface modifier to have clean edges where you set them. This prevents the textures warping like this:

Instead producing clean lines for the straps:

The textures are also 1024 or 2048 pixels which is good for distant shots, but up close I need it better:

So I've upscaled them to as high as 8192 pixels, look in particular at the sharpness on the belt metals:

And lastly for the futa version of Quiet, I previously painted little fabric tears onto the dick model in 2D:

But now they are modelled in 3D and textured from the thong which will look better:

I'll probably continue to tweak her as I did for Lara, and I'd like to give her particle hair too, but for now I've spent enough time and need to get back to animating for you!

This is the environment set up for the animation I'm making with Quiet and Lara (it's a gif so might need a second to load):

If I can pull it off, this should be a fellatio scene. I've seen requests for autofellatio too which I am looking at for future animations :)

And lastly, it's still in the discussion phase so this isn't a confirmation, but Esk and I are in talks about a collaboration animation! Likely with Lightning and Fang from Final Fantasy XIII, two characters he commissioned me to make futa models for. I'll share more if it goes ahead.

Thank you for reading!