Renate Noel-Tagoe: Sketch #64

Hey everyone!!

Super happy to be joining the Real-Time VFX challenge for the first time!!
For this challenge there was only ever really one concept option - A MIMIC!!

I’m hoping to explore more semi-realistic effects in this challenge so I’m really excited and look forward to making some cool stuff with you all :smiley:

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That’s a really fun idea, looking forward to seeing how this turns out!

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I agree with Niels! Really creative!

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Thursday’s Progress!!

After many Blender tutorials, I now have the foundation for a cute mimic!!! I still want to give him more creepy looking eyes that blink but I think that’s better done in engine with shaders. If I have time to spare I might also try and make his chest more fancy. But I gotta make sure he can be animated and attack first!!!


^ Cute mimic - Open to name suggestions.

I managed to get some basic animation so I let him have a nap.

^ Video is with less light quality as my blender suffered XD

I then realised I would like to have more control of the tongue movement so I made a very weird looking tongue with bones, which I’m sure will keep me up at night. After finishing this, I was ready to animate the attack!!

This is where I started to run into problems

For some reason blender keeps creating new actions and things are rotating, repositioning themselves and scaling up and down like there’s no tomorrow, so whenever I wanted to animate, things moved around like my computer was haunted.

My solution? Move out of blender and into Unity - as you might imagine, this did not magically resolve whatever error I had made that caused this problem to begin with XD


^Emotionally troubled mimic

I still would prefer doing all the animation in Blender, so I reckon I will just need to practice that a lot more this weekend (and then figure out how to export successfully it XD)

Any advice, please do let me know, I would really appreciate it!

Really helpful tutorials during this part were:

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This already looks good in blender!
Are you planning to make the FX in unity? or were you planning to make the entire FX along with animations in blender?

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Frieren approves!

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I hadn’t considered making the whole thing in Blender, as I usually only use it for models to export. However making the whole thing in Blender would force me far out of my comfort-zone, which is what this is all about!

I’m playing around this weekend with Blender tutorials anyway so might as well see if I can find something about VFX and filming in Blender!!

Thank you for the suggestion, if you know any good Blender tutorials, please do send them my way :smiley:

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Today’s positive note: I figured out how to work the Blender timeline!

Today’s improvement point: GO BACK IN TIME AND STOP ME FROM MAKING A JUMPSCARE

In all seriousness, I will probably need to speed up the animation a bit more but I want to keep room for the effects and speed them up once they are in place :slight_smile:

Very excited to keep exploring Blender further!
Used this amazing tutorial to get more comfortable with using the timeline:
Animation for Beginners! (Blender Tutorial) (youtube.com)

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HE IS SO DARN CUTE ON STILL FRAMES!!! :heart_eyes_cat:
Pretty sure that’s gone after I give him better eyes, but Imma enjoy it while it lasts.

Full video progress for today here:

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He now has eyes - maybe it’s me but he’s giving my puppy vibes and I love him :heart_eyes_cat:

I found a Udemy course for procedural Effects in Blender (it’s a paid course so not sure I can share the link?) so working through that while also improving the animation and overall fuzziness of my little mimic

Full video progress here:

Eye tutorial in Blender:

Thank you all for going on this journey with me, any tips and tricks for improvement would be greatly appreciated!

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Finally getting around to the VFX part in Blender!
Would love any and all feedback as I explore this new side of Blender!

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Apologies for the lack of updates, I know it’s a requirement for the challenge but Covid and I have been having a bit of a disagreement. I hope to update with effect updates again later this week.

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Take your time! You don’t have to update regularly! Just when you do progress :smiley:

I hope you will feel better soon <3

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Finally able to make progress on my lovely little mimic friend!! Any and all feedback to improve would be greatly appreciated!

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