Story Start (nsfw!)
Flames | Chapter Start
Flames | Page 07
Flames | Page 09

This one came together much quicker than the previous one, largely because there was almost no environment work necessary. These backgrounds and settings chew up the vast majority of my time and effort, especially when they require new special props and assets. Still, I held off posting the previous one until this one was complete both so I could have a couple days of consistent updates (lol, 2 woo) but also because I have a tendency to have ideas and want to go back and add them to prior shots. The labcoat is a good example. Until the second panel on this page, they were all-white like that lackie's coat. But, I found it very hard to tell where Blythe's white suit ended and white coat started, which made it hard to tell what I was going for there. The idea of a trim is one I've had for almost as long as I've had labcoats, but I didn't implement them on this new set until that point because I didn't want to deal with UVs. It wasn't very hard, just annoying minor and each coat has its own UV set because I did a poor job keeping everything unified with those new ones.

The labcoats were another experiment into rapid clothing development work. One that proved immensely successful for its purpose, after spawning an array of extended script functions built on my spandex paradigm. I have a big ol' list of buttons with a number of tasks routinely used in clothing construction and adjustment. With these automation tools, I have a system that basically lets me pump out static meshes from dynamic simulations of cloths moved into most any position relatively easily!

Most shot's coats and spandex covers took maybe 10-30 minutes start to finish (once I had the pose I wanted for the figure). The worst of them (that funky rolled-up sleeves one) only took an evening and that was mostly because I had to experiment with ways to get the sleeve up like I wanted.

Aside from the fantastic success with the spandex and labcoats, I devised a special new character shader network specifically for background characters and unnamed folks like the Lapsa lackie here. This network takes in a user data field with a list of key color field variations. Because Mental Ray's user data system can be plugged into transforms, I can have a single shader network that provides numerous Lapsa color variations to numerous instances of a single shape (or multiple sets of instances, with shapes in different poses). Very compact, memory-wise, and an exceptionally good way to add some easy variety. Just for fun (and mebbe as a little tipoff), I gave his name tag a portrait of the shadowy/glowy-eyed style I had been previously using for background characters. While I'll likely still use that for certain kinds of background materials, this new shader adds a great middleground between totally-anonymous background character and the more important focus characters.