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Bull riding
🕑 Added 2025-01-01 11:14:37 +0000 UTCStory
"A lot of lube - check, Healing salve and Mekansm for an emergency - check, my trustworthy crossbow for way too nasty guests - check. Ready to make someone happy this night!" - A fluffy squirrel packing herself into a present box.
In the middle of the night, when all guests go home after the New Year's celebration. The honorable noble bull is left alone with himself and a few presents under the Christmas tree. Suddenly one of the presents begins to twitch slightly. Bull notices this, his attention was drawn not only to the strange shape of the gift but also to the fact that it could move. He decides to open it early. "What it could be?" - he asks himself in mind. He starts to unwrap this gift preparing for the worst.
He removes the lid of the gift box and sees a fluffy squirrel looking right at him with a kind but intimidating smile. Her inner maniac wants to yell, “Time to die!” but she holds him back and says “Happy New Year dearie” instead.
Different ideas for this special
I almost finished it in time. Sadly, I come up with this idea way too late. I've had multiple ideas for this new year's special release, and this one seems to be the best of all of them.
initially, I wanted to make a simple poster with a wrapped original Hoodwink model holding coal in her hands with a "Naughty" tag on her tail. But failed to properly pose her and the overall scene was lacking something. Then I made a few attempts with other poses. In the end, I decided that making a simple poster would be quite lazy (No, not at all) and I wanted to make something better. I was thinking about making animation with Unreal's render engine instead of Blender's EEVEE or Cycles. But quickly threw it away as even if I succeeded in porting a test animation into Unreal, the deformations were off. The problem lies in how rigs made with Rigify work. Rigify uses Blender's bendy bones, it's a bone that can bend. Blender is the only software that have them (as I know). So nope, not this time.
About this animation
So instead, I went into my usual workflow. But even here, I wanted to get some sort of challenge. The first challenge was using the original hoodwink model which I failed with incredible speed. The second challenge - I want to make her wear a Christmas outfit. This one killed the first challenge, as her model isn't great for socks and similar stuff. Meanwhile, using the thick model was a good option for this, but not without difficulties. While I've got her a new outfit, It was lacking something once again. The thing is, such socks on 3D characters with fur didn't look good as they began to emphasize the flatness of textures especially when the texture has long fur. This was the time when I got the biggest challenge for this animation - Make her look fluffy.
This is the first animation where I've used RuFur nodes (Stylized fur system created by Ruaidri). And I hope I succeed at making her look fluffy.
I should notice you - don't wait to see me using RuFur nodes anytime soon. Despite making her look better, this system is incredibly unstable and limiting, for this time at least. I need to create a separate model with this fur to begin using it more often.
Also, this animation will be public from the start. This is only for special releases.
Credits
Bull model - SLaD (@Sladdoska) / X
Christmas props - Open3DLab • Cozy Christmas Room
Environment - Valve, Team Fortress 2, Open3DLab • Manor room
Happy New Year!
