Mike the3DGuy

Release 2 Update 7

Added 2023-07-23 04:27:37 +0000 UTC

I'm battling flagging optimism this week. The group of renders I completed took huge amounts of effort, simply due to their complexity. SO many articles of clothing that had to work ON characters, and OFF them, as props. And for all of them I had to use physics engines to make them conform naturally, and also had to try multiple articles of clothing for many of them to find one that would work without exploding.

"Exploding" you ask? yes: EXPLODING. When I use a physics engine to have clothing or hair settle into a natural position (which involves a "simulation" that usually takes a lot of time and often multiple attempts), if things aren't perfect, the item will actually "explode" in the scene! You're watching a shirt slowly fall and settle on a figure or lying on a table or something, when all of a sudden your whole monitor image is nothing but a literal explosion of cloth. Sometimes this freezes or crashes Daz Studio, sometimes you can recover, try to figure out what caused it, make some changes, try again and cross your fingers. This happened a LOT this week.

In addition, while I thought I was going to get to the animation I'd planned, i decided instead to try another one first. This involves Olivia lifting the MC onto a bar which knocks down a stack of champagne glasses, shattering all over the place. That last part sounds like a nightmare, and it is quite difficult, but I've actually got that problem solved. And now I'm struggling with trying to have Olivia lift the MC convincingly... or even in a way that doesn't look like a disaster. Hopefully there will be a way to accomplish this, because if there isn't, then I won't be able to accomplish the next one either, which is similar.