I Hate Animation (Release 2 Update 8)

Not really... but sometimes it makes you want to tear your hair out. I'm exhausted and it's very, very late. Below is a preview of the animation I'm working on, or at least part of it! The image is a still render from one of the animation frames. I'll add more text here to explain in the morning. Right now I need to sleep.

TAG-C-168 Test8 animation

Update:

Okay, this part of the animation (before the glasses get knocked over) took a huge amount of effort to get there. Lots of tweaking! But the beauty part is: I've finally got a quality method of one character lifting (end next: throwing) another! 🎰 It's a script called Limbstick. In my early attempts to make this animation work, before I tried the script, I got very frustrated: I thought I'd tried everything, but couldn't find a way to have her lift him naturally, wiere her hands were firmly attached to his body.

I sent a PM to the guy who created that Daz animation tutorial series I'd mentioned here before. While I'd never seen anything he created involving a lift, carry or throw, his stuff was so fluid and natural that I hoped he had a way to do it. He responded within 2-3 days and described how he'd do it. It involved a huge amount of just manual tweaking, but with no actual connection in the animation between her hands and his body. By the time I'd gotten his response though I tested Limbstick, and found a way to make it work! I responded to him and told him about the script. He'd never heard of it, but bought it immediately for his own use.

But: animation frustration never ends! I'd spent DAYS testing and tweaking a glass knock-off-the bar, hit-the-floor-and shatter, and got it to work well! 🍷 I assumed that all I had to do in the final animation when it was ready is set up the same thing for multiple glasses, right? WRONG. Hasn't worked out that way. Had all sorts of problems with the glasses sinking into the bar, or into the MC's body, and getting knocked off the bar when the MC's body was still 5-6 inches away from them, or shooting off into space like they were shot out of a cannon! 💥

I messaged back and forth with the creator of the physics engine to try and figure it all out with him. We improved some things but it's still not there. He hasn't responded to me in a day and a half now, so either he's sick of me, or is off doing some "real-life" thing, lol!

Anyway, going to do some more experimentation today and see what I can do. I have an idea now for how to keep some glasses from shooting off into space (a little sleep 😴 is wonderful for ideas!) 💡

Anyway, sorry for the light payload this week. Animation is a bitch!