I am having a go at a 3D animated comic series. I am getting closer, getting the ground work out of the way (e.g. https://twitter.com/xordinary99/status/1344592878509572096?s=21). But wow, how hard it is to create a good result! Since this is a hobby, I take lots of short cuts to save time and use free tools as … More Creating your own animation teaches greater appreciation for the experts!
Yesterday I wrote a blog post on a list of low end motion capture tools. Today I thought I would share my opinions and (limited) experiences of the different options. My goal is to create short animated cartoon sequences, not be a VTuber, so my requirements may different from what most people are after. To … More First Experiences with Low End Motion Capture Tools
One of my personal challenges is how to create 3D animated content with relatively low effort and decent quality. I have been building up a library of animation clips in Unity (a game creation platform) which I stitch into a sequence to make up a scene, but it is proving time consuming. Another approach is … More Low End Motion Capture Tools
If you search online for how to structure Manga, Anime, a Webtoon comic, or more you will find various discussions on what terminology to use to describe the structure of content. In this post I describe the terminology that I think makes the most sense for web stories, the format I am planning to use … More Plot and Story Structure
My personal goal is to create an semi-animated comic. In particular, create a “web story” per episode of a series. I do not plan to create fully animated episodes, but instead create pages with short animation clips – more like a comic book where the pictures move a bit (the eyes widen, a punch in … More 3D Anime Approaches (and thoughts for myself)
VRoid gives you a lot of flexibility over many things of a character, but arm thickness is not one of them. You can control the muscular/plumpness of the chest somewhat, but there are no controls on the arms. This can look a bit strange when the rest of the body is of larger dimensions, but … More Unity Blendshapes to add Muscles to VRoid Characters
I wanted to have a character ride an electric scooter. I am not going to worry initially about mounting and dismounting, but I do want the character to have the hands on the handlebars as the scooter turns left and right as it moves. Later I would want to scooter to follow a target, but … More Riding a Scooter in Unity with VRoid Characters
Some expressions involve changing the face structure (a smile is created by a blend shape) while others involve changing the texture of the face (like blushing). The following describes my current plans to fade between textures for blushing and other expressions that work by changing the texture of a material. Multiple Textures In order to … More Animating VRoid Facial Texture Changes in Unity
I recently shared a blog post on a Unity script I am experimenting with to add ARKit compatible expressions to VRoid characters. Of course the day after, another tool became available that could have saved me quite a bit of hair pulling! Lol! I thought I would write up my brief experience with Hana_Tool and … More Changing Facial Expressions (part 3)
I have described challenges in animating facial expressions in a previous post. Facial expressions are based on “blend shapes” to adjust the shape of the face (e.g. move eye brows lower to indicate anger). Animating hand positions is different as it relates to moving bones rather than blend shapes. There are two ways to animate … More Animating Hand Poses in Unity
Extra Ordinary, the Series 