Latest on Project Storm

This week on Project Storm This week it was finally time to start implementing shape keys. Starting with the mouth corners and using the Pose Shape Key addon made in-house by Demeter Dzadik, I was able to get some great shapes and implementation for it. However it happened that due to Blender 5.0 updates, some features got neglected, so until the addon has been updated accordingly we have to wait for this to be solved. Meanwhile I was able to continue creating shape keys for the brows, cheeks and lips which can be seen in the new video vlog below! Enjoy the watch!

I'll be on holidays for the next 2 weeks, so no updates to be uploaded. After this we'll jump back into the project and provide you with some new juicy content! Stay tuned!

This week on Project Storm While facial rigging is in full swing, shading and body rigging are almost complete. Storm has received additional shading details for his clothing and face. The main focus of facial rigging has been completing the bone deformations and implementing additional procedural deformation functionalities.

This week on Project Storm This week, rigging and shading are making big strides where Simon made sure Storm got some nice tan and proper stitches on his clothing. Rik worked on the main bone structure for the face, making sure the initial weights were resulting in appealing and expected deformations. This will be the foundation the shapekeys added later. Demeter has been working on the body rig, where most of the work has been done and ready for some proper animation testing. Aside that, tooling and the pipeline requiring improvements where both Demeter and Simon take part in this to make our lives happier.

This week on Project Storm This week, the team working on the character has expanded. Both Simon Thommes and Demeter Dzadik have joined to contribute to shading and rigging. To collaborate in a non-destructive way, we use the studio asset pipeline introduced during Project Gold. The studio asset pipeline focuses on syncing data between tasks and allows each artist to claim specific aspects of the assets, such as shading, rigging, or vertex groups.

Since it has been a while since we last used the studio asset pipeline, a few tweaks were necessary to make it work properly for this particular project. A unique aspect of Project Storm is that we are splitting the rigging into two separate tasks: rigging the body and rigging the face. This approach is quite common in larger studios, as both tasks require different skill sets and can be worked on simultaneously.