Hey, don't mean to bother, but I have a (hopefully) small reskinning question? There've been a few times where you've reskinned Miss Pauling's standard shirt to give it some sort of seamless pattern, and I was wondering if there's a trick to doing that? I'm slowly learning how to reskin, but the seamless pattern looks like it might require more work. Hope life's treating you well.
No bother at all! The trick about seamless patterns is you’re probably better off finding one that was designed to be seamless, rather than trying to make a random pattern seamless. The TF2 gun patterns are all or mostly seamless, for example. The average thing I used to find on google was not seamless, though. In the case where one isn’t seamless, I usually had to resort to manually lining up and tiling copied layers of it until it matched up, and most of the time it still didn’t. GIMP has a ‘tile’ function, but often times it still leaves a seam even if the pattern didn’t have one, so I usually tile it manually anyway. Takes a few minutes of work sometimes if I ended up wanting to shrink the pattern down a lot, but it usually worked in the end. Hope this helps!
So I've seen a lot of the Bidwell model floating around, is that something that's put up publicly somewhere? It's one of the few still not... Well, in existence really, at least not on the steam workshop. I know this is a really out of the blue ask, but assuming you're still answering questions here I'd like to know if there's any way to get it ;v;b
Unfortunately nope, still not a released model. We hope to release it someday (that being Uberchain and I), but since the original body I had hacked together in Blender was made of a model that we didn’t (and still don’t have) permission for- Gray Mann made by Rebbacus- we couldn’t release it. Recently, probably more like a year ago at this point, I had remade a body using Alaxe’s spy since I have permission from him to do that, but I never finished the remake of it. Theoretically that could be released at a later date. I’m glad people are still interested, at least!
Just putting this up so that people know that yes, I know, my videos are all gone. You don’t need to spam the inbox, not that anyone has yet, this is just to nip it in the bud. I’ve taken them all down as a personal choice. Please don’t reupload them, please don’t panic. This was my decision for my own personal stuff moving forward. I’m still around, I’ve been working on models recently, one I collaborated on should even be released soon. My posters shouldn’t be going anywhere, at least I don’t plan for them to.Â
I’m quite likely not going to answer questions on why or what’ll happen next or if I’ll ever animate again (I probably will, just not as much... but I was never animating much to begin with.) I can promise it wasn’t a hissy fit over having less than 20 billion views or anything like that, I was never in this for glory or shit. This is just what I’ve chosen to do for now. Chin up! No bodily harm done.
On top of Borealis/HL3 themes edits to models, I started doing other random shit on the side as I worked. I kept a todo list that I wish I hadn’t backspaced as I went, because I shit you not, I’m pretty sure I’ve forgotten a good portion of random edits made along the way, simply because so many were made. But yeah. Casual versions of characters, more edits to Barney, and a Kleiner. Doesn’t really look like the unreleased one seen in that making-of interactive thing for HLA, but I never expected to get it to that quality anyway, I’m not doing any of this from scratch. And Chell and Wheatley have a bunch of casual versions not seen. Her shirt pattern was originally on him before I figured I’d stick with their original color schemes.
So, three months later, here’s a bunch of shit I worked way too hard on. It began with a shitty camera zoom out animation test, then I accidentally found a better angle that looked good for a poster. That process was casually documented here.
Two versions of Shephard, remade android/humanoid Wheatley and Glados, updated Chell, two versions of Doug Rattmann, arctic-dressed Alyx and Gordon (and Posthuman Gordon), and that’s not even it.Â
Another photoset of random shit made alongside this is here.Â
4k here. Do click through! Each pic has details on the process of the model editing, and most have more in-depth plot ideas, in case I never animate anything to do with the project (which I probably never will).
Hi there, I know you haven't been all that active as of late, but I have a small question. I understand that a lot of your TF2 models and assets can't be released due to permissions, but what about your wigs? I see a lot of modified hair models in your work, and even if they require a bit of editing/manual work, they may be nice to use. If the permission issue applies here too, that's fine, I was just curious.
Unfortunately yes, pretty much all the wigs can’t be re-released, since they’re sims 4 mods I didn’t have permission to edit. The gist of all my old shit is that I never expected people to actually like my shit enough to want it, which is my bad. Some wigs were just from the Life Is Strange models off the workshop, with little to no edits to the model, just reskins. A couple are custom made by me but very shit and I’m not ready to release them. I may someday eventually fix up the ones I’ve made myself and release them, I dunno. Won’t be any time soon. Sorry! Glad you like them though! I know there’s always been some demand for the custom model shit I do, and I’m working on actually learning to do shit from scratch so that if I ever do something amazing, I may actually someday be comfortable with releasing it. But that day is not today.
In other news, in case anyone’s worried, no, tf2 has no been abandoned on the blog now that I’ve been working a bit on half-life/portal stuff. God, so much half-life/portal stuff. I have posters lined up for release, I was just wanted to do a couple extra before sharing.
 Speaking of permissions, I’ve been working on a new body for bidwell using a body model I do actually have permission for. It’s not finished yet, and it’s not a guaranteed immediate release when it’s done at all, but it’s being worked on. I’ve made plans with a new modelling friend to do an as-close-to-canon Expiration Date pauling as possible, and maybe even a comic pauling that we can actually release, since the current one I have is from Rebbacus, and she specifically asked that it not be released. But those plans aren’t being done right now, we’ll get to it eventually.Â
Part 2 of the ‘shit I made too many whoops’ Half Life photoset, this time with a bit more story to each pic, rather than random model tests/me copying myself with poses without meaning to.
4k here, all together with the first photoset. Also includes alt versions of some posters.
Part 1 of the ‘shit I made too many’ Half Life photosets. I’ll call this one the ‘random dump’ bunch. Was mostly model tests, including multiple along the top where Gordon and Alyx had HWM flexes by me before other people released proper models of them. (My versions were shit, trust me.)
Oh and random Chell/Human Wheatley/Human Glados. Cuz why not. Haven’t made posters with them in years, and I don’t have the portal SFM pack installed right now.
4k here, all together with the second photoset. Also includes alt versions of some posters.
4k of transparent Gordon, because imgur converts big shit to .jpg.
I figured I’d show a little behind the scenes on the process of working on the Bidwell model, and specifically, animating with it. With color commentary! This is two of two behind the scenes of very old animations I figured I’d do. The first is over here.
Commentary below the cut! And the full compilation is over here.
@ardate The song is ‘I Am The Walrus’, by the Beatles, but this here is a cover by Styx. (Sorry, I replied with the wrong blog. Still can’t answer replies on posts with a secondary blog.)
Oh so comic pauling is just a customized valve ED model?
Sort of. The face is edited from Crazyb2000′s ED pauling, since Valve never released theirs, and I don’t currently have permission to release it and it isn’t don’t yet/not great quality either, and the body is a heavily modified version of a model I got from Rebbacus, which she specifically asked me not to publicly release.
A comic pauling is achievable with Crazyb’s model though, he included an extra color for the dress, different glasses, and flexes to make the hair shorter. The flexes are under the ‘unknown’ tab on the model in SFM, and if you have a model rigged, you can right click in the open grey area and hit ‘show hidden controls’, and the stuff hidden by the rig will appear again.
Unrelated to the ask, but apologies to anyone who dropped by the page recently! I don’t know when it broke but I think I’ve fixed it now. Tumblr rolled out an https change for html code that I didn’t notice, and also the wooden background image I was linking to is gone now. I’ve switched it to a similar one, hopefully that one will stay up.
And finally, a compilation of some of the more put together Bidwell animations I’ve been doing since about April 2016.
There are behind the scenes wip shots/explanations of two of the shorts here and here. (WAIT A SECOND BEFORE REBLOGGING, let me edit in the links first!)
I figured I’d show a little behind the scenes on the process of working on the Bidwell model, and specifically, animating with it. With color commentary! This is two of two behind the scenes of very old animations I figured I’d do. The first is over here.
Commentary below the cut! And the full compilation is over here.
My original plan was to have the guy walk down the stairs with a little bit more of the song present, but I’m still not experienced with animating walking, and I REALLY wasn’t in November 2016, when I rendered the first WIP of this. I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve ever actually manually animated a person stepping, with the full body visible, at least.
I think, in the end, I started this animation as a test for the tie and hair physics, which I manually animated because jiggle physics often aren’t great in SFM. And then it just got out of hand.
Shot 1- Test for the Gray Mann body, fresh without just slapping it on animation I had already done before, as in the Disintegration video. I knew I wanted him to have a glasses bodygroup for kicks, but it helped to put that bodygroup on early since I could use it in place of a head, since we didn’t have the head model yet.
Shot 2- Added in Scout with Bidwell’s face texture and a wig as a placeholder so I could animate lipsyncing and eye movements. I count this as proof Bidwell doesn’t literally just look like Scout with darker hair.
Shot 3- Bidwell’s real head! With facial bones. Ouch.
Shot 4- Still facial bones, still ouch. Notice it was an update, and his jaw has collapsed inward on this old save file. Also, short continuation of the song.
Shot 5- First addition of the poseable coat bodygroup. Honestly, isn’t much better now than it was then.
Shot 6- First HWM pass by me, the first time I ever HWM’d a model at all. This animation and the Disintegration one were both used by me to calibrate whether the HWM looked good without having to dick around too long before the next update. Load a save, play it, does it look like talking, if so, keep it.
Shot 7- I might’ve actually fixed some clipping? Not sure. Got Crazyb’s textures for the head, anyway.
Shot 8, final version- Using the officially done (I think, mostly?) head from Crazyb2000 with his HWMing. Much better than the shit I did. About as done as this old thing will ever be.
I figured I’d show a little behind the scenes on the process of working on the Bidwell model, and specifically, animating with it. With color commentary! This is one of two behind the scenes of very old animations I figured I’d do. The second is over here.
Commentary below the cut! And the full compilation is here.
Shot 1- Initial concept from April 2016, I had just rerendered Your Eternal Reward, so I figured more plain white background animations would do good. I kinda wanna already remaster this to be on that background instead. Oh well.
Shot 2- HAARP map. Still want to do more animations/posters on it. If I’ve ever done any at all.
Shot 3- Added Femscout.
Shot 4- New suit color option added to skins, added movement to legs in the bow, added in the wig, and a test wig on Femscout, plus extra movement to her.
Shot 5- Marks the beginning of the use of the Gray Mann body instead of Suited Demo, and the beginning of the incredibly fucking stupid process of me continually puppeting updated models to the old body’s animation rather than just fucking re-animating it, which would have undoubtedly been less work. Take notice of the length of the pelvis/legs, it’ll change by the end. I think I ended up making his legs longer by just dragging them upwards. Also, the arms get shorter.
Shot 6- Bidwell’s actual head! With my shitty HWM job. But at least it’s his real head. Also, the beginning of Dat Grin.
Shot 7- Blur that shit so we can’t see his arms breaking like in the beginning of Shot 6.
Shot 8- Redone Femscout. Was going to post this as a wip before we could show Bidwell’s face and just forgot.
Shot 9, final- Lighting, mostly. And the (probably) final version of Bidwell’s head, with Crazyb’s official HWMing. I must’ve gone through at least five or six versions of the save at this point as they corrupted over time after multiple model updates, but I still salvaged this piece of shit. The universe will surely punish me someday.
Thanks so much for the continued support over the years! As per usual with each new follower milestone, lemme introduce myself- I’m Rachel and I do SFM shit, since sometime in 2013. I know I don’t post as much as I should, since I’m often busy with other shit, and I’m a little bummed I didn’t have time to work on some specifically spooky stuff, but I’m always still alive, if not online all the time. I’ve got some animation shit lined up for release while I iron out the kinks on how exactly I’m going to post behind the scenes stuff at the same time.
Unrelated to the animations ready to be posted, I have a sneak peek for another thing I’ve been working on recently here. Thanks again!
Your pauling models are great you should release them
Don’t have permission to, unfortunately. In the comic pauling case I’ve been specifically asked not to. You can get pretty close though, I haven’t edited her that far off the base model (save for some face edits recently that I might not keep, I still like Crazyb’s original better). Just nab the model off the workshop and nab this reskin pack to change skintone. Also pauling’s real glasses can technically be found in game, in that pile of sunglasses hat. The separated model is here.
Also, because I see this a lot, just for anyone at all seeing this post, not necessarily the asker- Crazyb’s model has flexes to change the hair shape. If you’re making a comic pauling, she doesn’t have bangs hanging down like ED pauling. Use the hair shape flexes, it makes her look much different, rather than ONLY switching to the solid purple dress. That ain’t comic pauling, that’s ED pauling with a solid purple dress. Crazyb even demonstrates them in the pictures for the model download on steam, I don’t know how more people don’t notice the flexes.
If you’ve applied an ik rig to the model (rig_biped_simple, usually), you can right click in the blank grey area in sfm where the models are listed (to your left by default), and show hidden shit. It’ll show the ‘unknown’ tab again, which the ik rig provided by sfm hides, for some reason. Use the flexes! You can get pauling to look very different with different hairstyles. I’ve had people ask me who a model even is just by changing the style and removing her glasses, without even editing the model personally.
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