#and learn new things like model rigging and animation

[dotmander]

How To Get Your Character Models Out Of A Game: Tips And Tricks For Bitches That Have Never Used Blender

(it's me, i'm bitches)

(also ignore how messy that lighting is it's 1am and i should have been asleep hours ago. he's there for proof of concept 💕)

a couple people (specifically @forsaken-constellation and @ratasum) asked for a tutorial on how to rip models out of the game. this is not that, but it is a compilation of resources i used to learn about ripping, blender, and 3d modeling in general. i desperately wanted a post like this to exist when i was trying to figure this out, so here we go! all the resources below are completely free, with the exception of a link to the patreon of the person that created ninjaripper.

disclaimers:

there are probably more efficient ways to do the things i am doing. i watched a tutorial to learn shortcuts and then skipped to character models. if you have tips to add, corrections to make, or other thoughts, please feel free to share! i'll link to your post here. ^^

i do not know if any of this will get your account banned. i've ripped several models, so i'm going to assume it's fine as long as you don't try to make money off of it. use your best judgment, be an adult, etc etc etc

last updated: june 30, 2024

PROGRAMS & WEBSITES

ninjaripper 1.7.1 - there's a newer version on the creator's patreon, presumably with support for newer versions of blender and fewer bugs, but i haven't tried that

blender 2.79 - the import addon that comes with ninjaripper 1.7.1 is outdated for the current version of blender (3.5 as of this post), so 2.79 is needed to combine the .RIP files into a .BLEND (blender) file

noesis - ninjaripper saves your textures as .DDS files, noesis lets you view them and export them as .PNGs

blender 3.5 (optional?) - i just like it better than 2.79. if you're completely new it might not matter to you. all of the tutorials linked later are for later versions, though.

mixamo (optional) - rigs your character for you and lets you put them in Situations (like my guy above.) there's a whole library of free animations and poses you can try!

TUTORIALS

how to use ninjaripper - most of what you need to know about actually ripping the files and using ninjaripper is covered here. do not skip this one.

how to use blender 3.5 - full disclosure i haven't finished this series because it's uhhhh many hours long. but if you are a complete newbie to blender, i do recommend at least the first few videos; you'll learn about shortcuts that will make your life easier, how to unfuck your model when it fucks itself for no reason, and different terms that will help you google things you don't know later on. possibly he even covers some of the things i'm about to link! anyway.

what's a uv map?

how to apply textures

how to apply bump maps (note: for our purposes, you wouldn't add a color ramp node, you would add an image node with your bump map, and attach it to the bump node as the person does in the video)

there should be stuff here about weight painting, cloth physics, emission maps (makes your sylvari glow), and other stuff, but um. i haven't figured those out <3  

TIPS

TURN UP YOUR GRAPHICS BEFORE YOU RIP - if you don't, you might end up missing certain textures/glows/etc. HOWEVER, you should turn animations down, because apparently high animation can make your meshes misplace themselves

rip from the character select screen, rather than an instance, because you will have 100 meshes to sort through instead of 1400. i am not exaggerating either of those numbers. if you are new to blender, please love yourself and start with character select.

your textures will be fucked up the first time you try to apply them. this is because the UV maps (the things that tell your textures where to go) of your models are flipped upside down in relation to the texture image. you can flip them back over manually, ooooor you can just flip the entire texture file in something like CSP or photoshop.

for some reason all eyes are red in the texture files. i have not figured out why. i recommend editing the .PNG to have the correct eye color before applying the texture.

that's all i can think of for now - if you have other questions, feel free to shoot them my way, although i can't promise i'll have a straight answer ^^;;

mixamo only works for humanoid characters with tight clothing (or without clothing at all). if you try to use it to rig a charr or asura, or someone with a skirt or big sleeves, you will most likely be disappointed.

2024 edit: sometimes parts of hair meshes just...disappear. i have no idea why. if you can figure it out please let me know LMAO

information from bookahlogy about character proportions, fixing normals, and other fun tips

[pokituu]

I’m so impressed with how many styles you have and that you use them regularly (realistic, semi realistic, 2d, and 2d, 3d & pixel animation)! How did you learn to balance this many and get so good in all of them?

THANK YOUUUU this compliment means so much to me because so often i feel so worried I will stagnate since I basically like to draw the same subject matter over and over again 😳 but I do like to periodically try new things that I'll become invested in for chunks of time.

i guess advice more than just 'practice' is to be willing to try out new things that you have an interest in, even if it doesn't work out at first and is frustrating. you gotta be persistent to learn something new BUT if you get bored then just move on! if it sucks hit da bricks.... I really like this bjork quote abt creativity

idk throughout my life in art i just try to learn about stuff i'm interested in and practice what i wanna practice. like i wanted to get good at pixeling when i was like 14 so i kept practicing and trying new ways to go about it until i started to figure it out. same with digital painting when i was 15 and i just kept trying again and again until it clicked, even though i was frustrated a lot, i never actually lost the interest when i saw people's pretty paintings and that feeling of 'man i wish i could do that!'.... so i literally couldn't stop myself from trying over and over at painting. it goes beyond just drawing too. planet earth is fun because ANYTHING u are interested in you can try........ i make fursuit heads and other crafts to see if i can! this year i started making my own songs and also learned leather-working because i saw a cool craft and wanted to try :3

part of it is letting yourself age too because as you get older you will grow interested in new things. i am 27!! i've been drawing since i could hold a pencil. that's a long time to encounter a lot of stuff to get obsessed about and wanna try out for myself. SUCCESS TIP!: i typically pursue things that are adjacent to other skills i already have invested in, like drawing to 3d sculpture to digital modeling, or start blending them like sculpture + coding skills = 3d animation rigging. The reason is because a lot of these skills are transferable and make it easier to pick up. like a skill tree in a video game... and you'll end up in weird places like sculpture to sewing to leathercraft. It's nice to have creative hobbies you can be sorta be mediocre at without attaching your self worth to it, but other people still often find it impressive anyways because it's stuff they've never tried to do. It's really healing and easier to like what you create And yourself by extension when you're just having fun and learning without having to worry about the end product being "good". Anything you try is not a waste because you are learning new skills and more often than not, something you've learned is transferable to some other area of your life!!!!!!!!! nothing is ever a waste of time.

this is also the secret cure to art block btw well actually there are two secret cures. a) is you have to embrace the art block and go get obsessed with some other creative thing for a bit. either that or b) go absorb other people's creativity to a bit and watch some shows and read books or talk to people. c) is a mix of both. eventually you'll return to art again feeling fresh and motivated if you're willing to give it a few months. I think art block really just means you're bored and need a change of scenery one way or another 🤔 that's just my onion though

TL;DR have fun pursuing things just because you like them. as you keep doing it you'll just get better at it through practice whether you really intend to or not.

[lttleghost]

so like forever ago I did this sketch of myself and Jesse, and I never really liked it enough to finish it because I just, have such a hard time with human anatomy and couldn't get it to look the way I wanted, I actually have a few sketches kinda like this at various stages of completion

AND THIS IS WHY I TOOK UP 3D MODELING, because if you've been following me for awhile you might've seen me say that my biggest problem with humans and stuff has been translating what I know of human structure and form into something flat on a page

and while this isn't actually fully finished yet (my painterly shaders... broke? when I appended my and Jesse's model into a new file and I still wanna make some edits where the rig bended stuff too sharply and all that with a paintover, also I might change the lighting and a billion other lil tiny things) but I am so so so so excited that this ridiculous way of me avoiding just learning how to DRAW humans in the way that I can with animals and taking up and entirely new art skill has payed off

eheheheeee

[littlemisstired]

something that has always fucked me up is the frankly terrifying exponential skill acceleration in the creative field. so many of the young artists I know now, even myself, are at a skill level that 25-30 years ago could have gotten them real jobs in animation or game design, even lauded as being top of their line of work, but are hardly even a blip on the radar in today’s industry where the skill ceiling is now miles above achievable for so many.

I look back at the kinds of art that was being made by the professional artists back in the 80s and 90s for comics and animation and some of it is downright amateurish compared to today’s work. It was roughshod, silly, scratchy, experimental. It wasn’t preoccupied with fitting into the bland Triple A standards or warping to fit what huge corporations expected, because those expectations simply didn’t exist yet in a world where video games and animated film and fantasy illustration were still in their infancy. The art in concept art felt so much more alive, more human. Nowadays I see people trying to get their feet in the door slaving for years trying to learn rendering techniques or portfolio tricks to even get their work in front of a recruiter, making stuff they don’t even care about just for the chance to be taken seriously. Strange how now more than even bigger studios are being ridiculed for their bland and uninteresting design/writing choices, where smaller studios with more creative control and more ready access to independent voices and visions are cranking out wildly popular, original titles left and right.

this sort of ended up longer than I expected, and rambling, but it’s something I’ve felt for so long as an artist who spent 15 years desperately trying to “get good enough” for a professional studio. The problem is that in the corporate capitalist hell we live in here in the US, “getting good enough” is almost never achievable, because those goalposts are always moving. You want to be a background artist? Well you need to learn how to do 3D modeling, texture mapping, physics simulation, how to use lighting in game engines. You want to be a character designer? You need to know rigging and clothing simulation and how to apply animation in X software. Also you need to do every style known to the world plus more, except in the end the studio will probably just ask you to photobash three dozen designs that all look the same anyway.

I understand there’s more to this than I’ve mentioned, that the world has changed in the 3 decades since the mid 90s, that there are millions of artists and only a few hundred thousand jobs in any creative field at any given time, that it’s reasonable to expect people to learn new things to better work as technology advances… but it seems so particularly crushing to artists, who oftentimes pour so much of their own heart and soul into what they do, and who are still expected to monetize, adapt, and distribute their skill like it’s some corporate tool and not a gift from evolution for us to record and express ourselves. Art and design are the building blocks for humans to understand and capture beauty and pain, joy and sorrow, and it’s disheartening to see that vulnerable creativity stripped away in favor of producing sterilized, corporate friendly “products”.

[gumbuk9]

idk if you listen to femtanyl, but could you make the femtanyl creature in blender? thanks!!!!!

sorry for taking like a month to reply to this i was doing this on and off and got burnt out in the middle and was working on this in parallel with some other things and it's still not done yet probably but as of now here it is

i tried

all in all this model was a pretty decent learning experience for blender functionality i never touched before; like rigging, shape keying, and rendering (rendering iv'e partially touched)

under the cut; 11 renders, 9 editor screenshots, 2 editor gifs, and a lot of text

base pose

fuckem!!!!!

leaning forward

jump for joy (with & without torn off ear)

death

lab animal finds camera

"hey girliepop how many times did you hit your head against the ceiling girder today?"

i don't know what to call this

hiiiiii!!!! heyooooooo!!!!!!

(extra nerd shit inbound!)

full scene tree

i'm very new to posing and as such am pretty bad at it

everything is split into individual segments because of how i chose to do things

i was planning to add a face with different frames for eyes & mouth you could mix and match but i didn't have the time, mental capacity, and confidence to do it, but i might update this model later with more things including a face

a friend said she doesn't need a face and i agree but i don't stop thinking about it

closeups of the "emo" details (this was a suggestion by a friend)

closeups of the bandage & suture

do people even read this far into these long ass posts? let me know if you do or something

also let me know if you'd like me to do anything with the model, like make an extra pose or add more optional cosmetics i guess, i'll try to follow through with it as best i can,

i'll post updates on this model in a reblog to this post most likely, look out for that i guess

[wind-up-thancred]

Hey I saw ur Thancred face mod and wanted to say…thank you so much!!!! And I miss his old face 🥺 do you think it’s possible to ever get it back? I’m tempted to learn modding just to fix up my boy bc they really massacred him 💀

hi anon! im glad you like the mod. yeah i dont blame you for missing the old face lol, i took one look at it in textools when the patch dropped and went "wtf did they do to my boy... 😢" i think it depends on what you mean by "getting his old face back":

-if you want to start with the 7.0 base face, you could probably open it up in blender next to his old face and use the sculpt tool to physically sculpt his mesh to be closer to what it used to be, but i think past the lips there isn't too much else on the actual geometry to change— maybe his nose and jawline? but to me it feels like a lot of the change also happened to his normal maps, which are the textures that add extra shading detail and volume to the face. the old textures cant be ported over because the new mesh isn't laid out for them, buuuut im aware of a tool being developed currently in the ffxiv loose texture compiler for automatically transforming the old textures to match the new mesh layout. will that work for thancred's unique face? i'm not sure, but it could be worth a try— im fairly certain his unique sculpt is an edited version of one of the male midlander faces, so once that specific face is supported in the tool, it might work. if not, you can always manually adjust the new normal map while referencing the other one. -if you want to start with the OLD 6.58 base face, i believe there is a blender script going around (i saw it in the textools discord last iirc?) for converting old face sculpts to new ones. this is necessary because the new faces have QUITE a few new bones in them that need to be rigged, or else the face will not animate. from there, you MIGHT have to convert some of the old textures as well, but i'm not 100% sure, i think it depends on how well they work at baseline for 7.0. i know there's still a legacy skin shader in the game for older faces since not all of them have been updated yet, so you might be able to switch it to that so that the old textures still work. if that sounds like A Lot, uh... i dont blame you 😅ive been learning xiv modding for about two years ish now so ive got a lil bit of know-how under my belt, but if you want somewhere good to start, i would recommend joining the textools discord, there are multiple channels there for people to ask questions about how modding works, how to mod specific things, lots of tutorials, etc, and im sure therell be something in there to help you along. buuuuut in the meantime, i HAVE seen two other existing mods so far on XMA that do both of the things i mentioned before: https://www.xivmodarchive.com/modid/109670 this one seems to be a very good version of the first fix, where they went in and sculpted his new 7.0 face to be closer to the old one to a higher extent than i did, with his lips, jaw, and nose tweaked. it doesnt have heterochromia or scruff like mine does but i think you should theoretically be able to do that easily— feel free to send another ask if you want me to explain how i did it on my mod. https://www.xivmodarchive.com/modid/109665 this one, meanwhile, is the second fix— they ported the old face model over the new one. it has stubble and no heterochromia but again, if you want to change either of those, id be happy to explain how i did it. i have not tested either of these myself so i have no clue how well these work in-game but im sure they work fine!! i hope either of those help you out and if not i wish you good luck on your modding journey.... esp learning blender ^^" its a pain in the ass at first but trust me it feels really really good once youve figured stuff out!

[nekobami]

I need to know how you do your vectors

OH MY GOD you have no idea, I love vector so much, even if I can't actually get the full potential of it. Thank you for asking, also! <3

You see, most of my animations are not only vector, even if I wish I could do more of it to be ACTUAL vector moving

But the part of the animation that doesn't vividly moves, is actually tweening and stretch, combined with a little bit of vector.

I can talk about the process of this Evil Morty gif, which I'll be using for example!!! (sorry for writing much!!! I LOVE TALKING ABOUT VECTOR)

First, I come up with an idea. Y'know, mostly the first step for art!!

So the first thing I did was a very... rough silhouette sketch. (It looks a little... Well, "ehh"... But that's all part of the process!!! I kinda do that for every single piece I do.) I just needed a base so I could really sketch shapes.

Then, I get to transfer the preset I've previously made to this new pose. (So I don't have to draw it all over again - I'm lazy and have 0 patience.)

Posed Evil Morty VS standard Morty preset

Oh also, recently I've learned that we can call a character made in vector passed to a new project "preset" instead of "model" like I was calling in other posts. Lol

For the arm movement what I had to do was work over some geometry and try to apply the movement into Morty's arm. (Illustration of the principle I've used)

Morty is also made of points, just like this shape!!

Every single little part of him is made with these dots, which I move around to make the animation :3 and the same for all my vector animations!! (same applies to chest and foot/leg movement)

I can tell the easiest part of the process is the blinking and the swinging

About the blinking, well, currently, all my Rick and Morty presets have the same structure of eye, Which I made so to make a natural blinking/expressioning Animation I only need to move 1 point (the central one) and adjust the interpolation and easing

Now for the head, which is a little conplicated... Well, I don't... have exactly how to program a real rig system (even tho I WISH I could). So I had to make it simple.

Instead of moving the actual head, I can link the head with another shape (mostly I use squares) and make my animation process more easy, since I won't have to search for the head in a pile of other pieces and layers everytime I need to move it :]

But not only for the head, I also used that to make it possible that I could move his face around, using the same principle!

Then, all I had to do was ease the animation, and calibrate the number of frames (that are generated from the key frames formed with the dots!)

Thank you for reading this if you did<3 have a nice week!!! :D

[lizardsarecute]

Your Korsica model looks really good, and the outlines are great! I was wondering how you did her outlines since the models don’t come with them when you download them into blender.

While there are methods to outline models in blender, I found out that unreal engine actually uses a whole separate mesh that is the outlines of the character. I personally haven’t figured out how to make an outline through making a whole new mesh like the unreal engine, but your model looks so good!

I just had to ask if you made a new mesh over the model for the outlines or used another method like geometry nodes or the inverted hull method.

Also, if you did figure it out by making a whole new mesh, could you share that secret? I’ve been trying to find out how to replicate the outlines by making another mesh, but the closest I’ve got was a vague and unhelpful post about it years ago. And even if you didn’t use a new mesh, I’d still like to hear how you went about making the outlines.

good news: the outlines do come with the models

I have tried everything you've described initially but I got lucky and figured this one out one day after a really good nap (ngl i've been pretty happy about it ever since).

The outlines are already here.

Select the mesh and go into Edit mode.

Go to the materials, click the material with 'outline' in its name and press Select, down at the bottom circled in red. It should select the corresponding mesh that is meant for the character/object's outline.

Right-click on the mesh, select Separate > Selection. Do that for all the materials with outline in its name.

I rename the separated meshes for cleanliness.

Then at this point you can add either a geonode or a Solidify for each of those objects. I do prefer geonodes but they both work. I use the one from Komikaze's shader pack because it's an easy drag and drop, then tweak settings like flipping normals, increasing the thickness and whatnot.

There you go :) I kept the outline on my Korsica model thin because they were a little distracting while I was doing my rigging lmao. But when I start learning 3D animation and rendering things, it's good to be able to adjust the outline thickness to whatever your needs are. Maybe even make a driver for the outline thickness to adjust based on camera location?

It's not a perfect solution. When you zoom into the character, there may be areas where the outline leaves gaps when thickness is set high, or there's an unwanted stray line (particularly in the face but I've also seen it in hair). But it's a great start. If you find anything about it to clean it up some more, feel free to dm me.

[greenplumbboblover]

Hi! Do you think potentially that with this new age if AI, do you think it would be able to create mods and animations for us for games like the sims 3 and so on? I was wondering how amazing it would be if we can use it to our advantage and create all the content we ever desired lol

Hey!! Sorry for not gettting to this in like an entire month! I actually wanted to do some research on it (including asking some people I know who are super into AI stuff right now).

Just a disclaimer: I'm not much of a fan of using AI when it comes to artistic works. Such as Artwork generative AI, or even Photography. Especially when things people worked hours on are being used without their consent for an AI to poop out an artwork/photograph.

With that out of the way, here are my findings:

Textures:

So, as of right now, AI texture generating is something that is actually used these days in games to cut the cost of otherwise purchasing licenses of already made bundles of ground textures and what-not. Indie developers make use of this a lot too. So technically this is already possible, but I'd definetly only use this approach to train the AI on your own portfolio of textures or imagery to make something cool.

Animations:

However, animations, I think would be sort of possible, I just don't know if it would be fully AI though, judging from the industry's development as of right now.

Assuming that the RIG is setup in such a way that it meets the requirements to animate the item from a huge library of movements (think Mixamo, I'm hoping to soon release a tutorial on how to use that for the sims :)), then we really don't need AI really to create animations much. The only thing I'm a bit afraid of though, is that eventually it could feel a bit too "same-y" in mods or even games coming out, if they all used it. AI might change that up a bit though.

Though, as of right now, I don't really believe AI is up for the test though :P Imagine, training a computer that has no limbs and head, to be a human... It just doesn't know how to lol. Here's a great example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJHQXmOpkUE

Scripting:

Just like I don't think scripting will be fully AI anytime soon, I don't think scripting for the sims will either therefore. And here's the thing: AI takes snippets from Stackoverflow and other sources when you ask it to come up with code for a feature.

For example, if I ask ChatGPT for example to create a commenting system in javascript, it comes up with something somewhat great, but it's also missing a lot of crucial bits. For example, how do I delete replies? How do I edit replies? Etc.

With the sims I think that issue would be even bigger. AI simply wouldn't be able to answer properly how to help you create a, let's say, a grassmower mod. That's to do with the database of mods out there, open source like (think github, forums etc) is just too small for it to do. So unless that library gets bigger, I don't think this will be possible any time soon.

Conclusion:

AI is amazing right now with what it shows us what they can do with it. But once you've worked with it, you also realise how limiting it is right now. How counterintuitive it even can be to teach it something.

Sometimes, it's quicker to learn to do it yourself, than to teach AI to do it, because it takes such odd roundabout ways at times that you scratch your head and wonder "How tf did you even come up with that??". And that's because we're asking a computer to think and act like us in some way. It's like asking a puppy to be a cat. It could work out if you add a lot of energy and time into it, but it also won't 100% be the result you want.

At least, with the current way AI functions and learns.

If there's one thing I do hope would come to the sims, is actually those character language models like Skyrim has, where you can talk to your sim, and train it on that sim's background to give you appropiate answers. But I think we'll have to wait a while for that to come out :p.... I tried my hand at it one weekend but I'm not that well adversed into AI training and stuff yet.

[veetri-bitcrush]

Yo your rigging skills are immaculate! Where did you learn such dark magics, I'm still learning modeling as a baseline. But I figured I might aswell ask then post it for others!

Helloo! Thanks for your compliment 🥹 I'm glad the stuff I do looks cool enough to make you say that.

Part 1st - The Inception

When it comes to 3D I still consider myself more on the hobbyist side than the professional one.

I have a weird past in self-taught 3D modeling and game development at the same time so the logic for topology, weights, constraints and such seems to have a dedicated core in my brain that developed through sheer trial, error, tutorials and some actual studying. But I don't think I can exactly pinpoint a linear path that has taught me all of this.

Part 2nd - The Ruse

On the other hand, low poly models are much more manageable than modern high fidelity stuff. That certainly works in favour of hiding my weak spots hahaha.

Part 3rd - The Rigs

When it comes to the rigs I use in my videos, I've been testing different approaches. Thankfully, the extraction tools do preserve the original weights for the most part, but I have had to do weight necromancy to recover missing information sometimes, I made a script to recover missing weights whenever that happens.

My older MGS animations use just some basic IKs and Drivers on top of the deform bones (I should get fined for those crimes) because they were a ton of characters, I wanted to save time and the extraction workflow was pretty new to me and I didn't know what to expect next.

For the newer ones, I started adding more complex control rigs until I hit a limit where it was not scalable.

To speed things up, I now have a custom set of tools to quickly name bones and then I map them to a Rigify uh... rig. That's how I rigged The Boss for a recent video.

Part 4th - The Craftpersonship

I do continue to make new rigs for original characters from scratch because I like to learn and improve in that front rather than just rely on tools to make them for me whenever I have the time for that.

[bosskie]

2 Years Ol' Blog 'n' 3D Molluck Stuff

Man, having this blog has been a ride... I posted my first post here on 1st April 2022 and created this blog/account a few days before. During this whole time, my mental health issues have affected my blog and I was about to delete it before I even posted anything but I still decided to give it a try since I already got some followers; it felt supportive. I was surprised to have such a warm welcoming here and it still warms my heart. I still had some moments when I had to hide all my posts since I just couldn't stand my own stuff. Sometimes, it still comes to my mind but I'm doing my best to try to learn to at least tolerate my own creations. I feel sorry for being like this but only if it was easy to get rid of self-hatred... I also just tend to only see all my mistakes I have made when I look at my stuff, all the things I should learn...

But I try to be positive here, even I just tend to see darkness when I think about my own future. I just don't believe in myself... Originally, I didn't wanna be personal here but it just happened when one anon asked me if I had more art to show... I didn't since I have hidden all my old art. I have been on Tumblr for 10+ years but never posted anything until I created this blog. What brought me here was the active Oddworld community, the lovely people here. Even I think dim things about myself like every day, I do appreciate your support! Even I have my own difficulties with believing in that I have any talent/skills, compliments are light to my own dark image of myself.

I'll talk more later on this post but now, I'll show some 3D Molluck stuff and well, talk about Molluck... I show first my first Molluck sculpt I did improve today (yesterday):

I would still say that this is a WIP since well, there do is stuff to improve and do but yeah, I think that it would be wiser to let this be now and redo this since this is done in such an amateur way... There is no way to animate this since its geometry is a nightmare... I was able to rig this a bit when it wasn't so detailed, test out animating it but then, it became impossible. But well, the truth is that I do have still made animations with this despite of that... Frankly, the reason why I created this sculpt was my thirst for Molluck, how much I wish I was able to be with him... But this has helped me out multiple times with my drawings too!

I'm still not totally sure about some things of his anatomy but I have been doing my best to figure it out. I also realize that this sculpt makes Molluck look a bit more muscular/bigger than he is (see his neck and head size) but I have tried my best with fixing this situation since he did look even more bulky back then... The difference ain't too big but well, I do can create my own version of him too! I also see that this ain't 100 % correct when it comes to his face too but I tried my best. I'm still a beginner with 3D stuff, so I didn't use the best methods to do this either... I also feel like I just learned new things about his head when I compared this to the SoulStorm model recently... So yeah, this sculpt is a mixture of SoulStorm model, good ol' concept art of Gluk anatomy and my own adjustments. I only say SoulStorm model because it's based on New 'n' Tasty model, so he probably looks like the same under the suit but yes, that naked Molluck model has been my main reference for his body. The biggest change I have done compared to that has been his hands since I love his hand in that concept art! They are just the best hands, the most beautiful hands I know... But well, his whole body is the most beautiful body, at least for me!

Yeah, I think that I have made it quite clear how much I would love to have him... I already have said it but, he is my only desire... I cannot help myself with that Molluck is 'a perfect man' for me... No one else has felt right for me, there was always something off... But frankly, even I have seen multiple people being thirsty for Molluck, I have seen no one else wanting him like I do... None of that 'spicy' Molluck art I have seen reminds me of mine. It's just interesting how differently I see him since in the others' 'spicy art' Molluck has similar vibe and role... I don't really want Molluck because I have a thirst for him; I only have a thirst for him because I love him and for me, it's about sharing and giving love! I truly wish to make him feel good and loved. I have decided that I don't post my NSFW Molluck content but some cropped stuff but I could still post some suggestive things, though like I have said, I see him from a different perspective than the ones I have seen, with what I mean that he is 'the receiver'. I have just never seen him in this role by the others. I guess that this can explain why I have said that for me, he already has 'the stuff', no need for 'the usual additions'. His body also just feels more 'elegant' when there is no such a thing. This is just my preference, you can have yours. But it's just interesting to see how my way to imagine/see Molluck differs from the others. Though yes, I do remember when that one Molluck ask blog was still active and at least one person asked if Molluck liked things in his ass... Might have been just harassment or no one has just published such a content...

Frankly, I do actually prefer his back view instead of his front view, even I have been drawing it more... It's just that I'm unsure of how to handle nudity here... I don't wanna post his ass in front of the people who don't wanna see it... Nudity is natural for me but I just don't wanna make anyone feel uncomfortable because of my naked Molluck stuff... I just adore his body, so gotta draw it... Man, I would just keep talking how much I love his different body parts but I save you from that...

So, yeah, let's move on! I have already shown this one but I feel like reposting it now:

This is my stylized, simple Molluck model from last summer (2023). It's close to be finished since it's meant to be simple but some details are missing. You might wonder what's this style: Back then, I was inspired by Osamu Sato and his old video game graphics, so I wanted to create something similar to his style. I would like to try to rig this and then try to create more 3D models. Man, I would like to do so much 3D stuff... Oh, and yeah, it would be fun to make a naked version of him with this style too! I just have so much Molluck art ideas inside my head...

Oh, and yeah, I have been thinking for a longer time if I should show this or not but this feels like the right place to do it. So yes, I have created like a year ago a Molluck sim for The Sims 2. I know that it can look odd but he cannot look much better without doing own mods... I don't know how to mod these games but would like to learn it.

But yeah, I pretty muchly abused the face sliders here and did my own textures but also found a cigar for him. I did improve his face over time since I also needed to see how it works in the game. I also needed to lift his face after I found the cigar to place it into his mouth. It's basically only possible to create him to The Sims 2 like this because of the Body Shop is such a great tool and it actually lets you to use those face sliders without a limit: just edit the sim over and over again. Though yes, there is a tool to paint your sim's textures in The Sims 1 but it's such a pain to use... Oh, and you might notice those little dots: I just love to add his nevi to him, like you might have noticed from my drawings!

And yeah, my only reason for creating this Molluck sim was my self-insert stuff, even I do prefer him like he is, not as 'an anthro'... I just crave for this Gluk every day... Well, the good thing is that I'm able to create stuff about him, so I get some help even I know that I'll never get him... Also, even I recently said that marriage feels odd, it has now started to make some sense to me... I mean, I have started to feel alright about it. Maybe it's that my feeling of Molluck being 'the one' for me is getting stronger and stronger or it's a sign of my healing since I have just felt like it's better that no one is bound to me... Maybe it's the both. But despite of this, I still value the friendship the most since it's the strongest relationship type, so when the relationship is based on it, it's stronger than mere romance ect. I don't know if it sounds odd or not but for the first time, I actually feel good about marrying Molluck.

But yeah, this has already been a long post but just wanna say some stuff related to my blog:

I have multiple reasons why I tend to turn reblogs off and it's only for my own mental health, not that I had anything against you. Sometimes, I just kinda hate to see myself posting so actively, so I don't really like to see my stuff on someone else's blog either... I have never really known what to think about reblogs... Also, I don't like some technical things related to them, so it also makes me prefer to have them off. Maybe there somewhere my feeling of that I'm just ruining everything, also this community, affects this too... It's at least one big reason why I don't really interact here, even I would like to.

The truth is that I have never pressed the like button here, even I would have liked to, and it's just because of me feeling like it's better that I'm invisible. I tend to feel ashamed of myself, think that I'm a failure... It's not easy for me to be open and relaxed but I just wish to talk about Molluck so much that this happens... I do have other things in my life too but it's much more difficult for me to talk about them... I just feel like that if I didn't have Molluck, I wouldn't post any content right now, would have disappeared from the Internet. It's like extremely difficult for me to create an online imago, 'sell myself', build a portfolio... It has felt like this is gonna be my doom... My own self-hatred... But I'm still trying my best and going to make a big investment to this stuff this year, so that I can create better 3D stuff and use Unreal Engine. It's just for my future, otherwise I wouldn't feel ready to do it. I'm just trying to believe in myself, even it feels so difficult... I just wanna be honest about what I'm going thru since it affects my content a lot.

I have already written so much, so it's probably the best to end this post. But before that, I do wanna thank for all your support and your understanding, patience... I thought that I would probably be left all alone again after I open up about the hell I have inside my mind, that probably no one actually wants me to be here, like I'm used to think, but I have been wrong. It really touches me that I have been welcomed here and despite of everything, you still wish to support me. It's just about to make me cry, especially when, frankly, suicidal thoughts are quite common for me, been for over a decade. It's just like something daily... I'm so used to it. But something always just tells me not to do it, even I have thought about it like over a thousand times, if not thousands of times... Sometimes, I just think that I should be Molluck's next meat product but in my imagination, he still tells me that he would only lose money if he did that because I'm priceless.

I don't expect that people really read my stuff but I do really appreciate all the time you spend on my stuff since time is valuable! I just kinda need to write this stuff to here since I spend like almost all of my time alone and there somewhere I also wish that all this writing could help the others who also deal with similar mental health problems. I often feel like no healing has actually happened but I see from little things that slow healing is happening, like that I feel now alright about marrying Molluck and it only happened like a few days ago. I'm just starting to find happiness thru Molluck but he alone hasn't still helped me to heal. Even my mind keeps telling me it's a waste to support me and I have difficulties with receiving compliments, all support is still helping me.

Sometimes, I still think about this anon's words from about two years ago: 'I am cheering you and Molluck on and toasting to your brilliance.' The other compliments I have also gotten do also echo inside my head from time to time but I just wanted to say that I would have never imagined something like this to be said to me and these words do really mean a lot to me still. Toasting also just sounded fitting for this anniversary, so even this feels difficult for me, because I suffer from this severe self-hatred, I wish to toast to myself, for keeping going, even it has been so difficult, felt so tempting to end this all... But I wouldn't have still made it this far alone, so thanks for my family, all the lovely people who have supported me thru my life but also OWI for creating Molluck( and Oddworld)! It just feels like a miracle that I'm still here.

~ Much love!

[clovapatch]

One Year

TW: Talk of Suicide, Suicidal Ideation, That Whole Jazz just really heavy shit.

About a year ago today I made an attempt on my life. I had notes written out, I had planned the entire thing out and I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t think that anyone would take me seriously or like. Care. In the past, when I expressed how upset I was about things, I got laughed at a lot or I was ignored, especially by my parents who refused to understand the gravity of what was going on. I genuinely felt like nobody actually wanted me around and everyone would be a lot happier without me in their life. I just didn’t want to be alone anymore, and I wanted to stop being a burden to everyone I met.

After it happened, I tried to reach out to a lot of people to at least get my mind off of it or to not be so lonely, but nobody was around (granted, it was like incredibly early morning). I have vivid memories of sitting on the tile by myself at 2 am that night, and every now and then I’m haunted by that feeling. I don’t bother leaving my room past 1 or 2am if I can help it.

It’s really tough thinking about that. So, I think what I actually want to do is talk about what I was able to do in this year after I survived.

I made some friends

I quit the team with the coach who was abusing me.

I got to spend an entire semester acting my heart out. I never got to be on the stage before.

I tried Harissa Chicken.

I had an apple. I forgot how much I loved them.

I tried Chicken Bacon Ranch Pizza for the first time. It might be my new favorite pizza.

I tried ganache and Pho for the first time. I also tried chicken parm sandwiches, chicken pesto mozzarella sandwiches and had my first panini.

I made and rigged my own vtuber model from scratch.

I was invited to my first party and did a group cosplay with my friends (FNAF, I was Bonnie)

I started roleplaying and playing Minecraft again.

I learned I’m actually a pretty decent builder… and I have a sculk curse.

I got back into voice acting.

I fell in love with drawing again.

I got my first ever true commission.

I really fell in love with vtubers. Hololive Advent and Hoshimachi Suisei really just hits different.

I learned how to make pizza from scratch.

I switched my minor to double major in Biology and Psychology.

I had the most fun job ever as a pancake chef. They dubbed me the Pancake Queen.

My coworker would talk all shift about memes, internet drama and vtubers with me.

I learned how to make an omelette. And pumpkin pies.

I learned coconut flour is not good for pies.

I got to plan and participate in so many fun Minecraft events.

I learned how to edit audio and edit videos.

I conducted my own research project.

I swam for the first time in years.

I was part of a true stage production for the first time.

Tried out Mario Kart for the first time!

I got to climb a belltower.

I had a birthday party. I turned 22. I never thought I would make it that far.

I went back to the hospital. Wahoo.

I made gnocchi for my irls for the first time from scratch. (They loved it)

My mentors hugged me and told me that they always believed in me. One offered to write me a letter of recommendation anywhere I went.

I showed my friend my favorite anime. I got to watch more anime with more friends.

I picked up my cap and gown.

I dressed fancy for an event and Phthalo offered we throw our own dance party in our room when there was no seating for us.

A neuroscientist praised my research and scientific mind.

I wore pins of my friends on my gown for graduation. I wore my favorite green dress.

I got to graduate from college. I walked the stage for the first time. (My friends cheered for me. Phthalo was there with me. He said he was proud of me).

I got to visit a True Crime Museum. I got to learn more about forensics

An IHOP we went to gave me a very doctored up milkshake to celebrate my graduation.

I got to meet up with family friends again. They treated me like one of their own.

I felt loved.

My mom gave me clover cookies.

I got invited to a swimming pool party.

I went to visit my Grandparents. They took me on stage and I felt my dreams spark back to life again.

I coached a baseball team for an entire season.

I coached my first solo softball lesson.

I watched Hololive English Justice debut. ERB and her past life is the reason I started acting in the first place.

I held a duckling. It fell asleep in my hands.

I got my hair cut. It finally looks like something a bit more like I want it to be.

I learned more dance choreography. I realized I really love dancing.

I submitted my research paper for publication.

I have been able to read some tweets in Japanese now. The QSMP taught me I can read some Spanish and Portuguese.

Got my passport lol

Laughed so hard I cried for the first time in years.

I ate ice cream with my friends.

I did Art Fight for the first time this year!

I signed up for my first ever gift exchange.

I got invited to my first ever DND campaign. I have always dreamed of being in one.

I showed a friend my written works. I’m inspired to write more for the first time in years.

I found a reason to wake up every morning.

I allowed myself to dream for the future again.

I still to this day credit Phthalo for saving my life. He is my MVP forever. And I thank people for being so chill with me. It’s nice to not feel so alone even if it’s just for a little bit. I am definitely not healthy by any means, but I think that where I am is a lot better than where I was.

I don’t have anything else much to say. I guess if you read this far, thanks for listening. Jury’s still out but I’d say at least some of it was worth it.

Tldr: I lived bitch.

[squiggle-duck]

I've been experimenting with live2d again \o-o/

I saw this tutorial (https://youtu.be/EZPI72EGbnY?si=NM4oB3bxwVVgwabM) for tails. I found it helpful for understanding skinning... Andddd then I wanted to try and recreate the tail movement in it in pixels by ignoring basically every step of the tutorial :D

I'd made 1 model with a tail before this, I think I prefer the new technique, though it takes a longer and I still need to iron a few things out, but for now \owo/ tah dahhh:

The old technique was made of 2 parts, the tip that could wag and the rest that was connected to body x. The tip was key framed directly on the breath parameter so it can't react to physics , but I could also connect it to mouth form so when the character smiled it wagged harder, and when they were sad it wagged less. It took maybe an hour, it was only 10 layers, I hadn't used physics much before then so it's fine but I think I could make it fancier now.

The newer technique is broken into 4 pieces, took 160 layers and a couple hours to rig and tweak the physics. It's still a little rough, though I can't tell if that's a problem with the physics settings, if I should have drawn some curves a little smoother , or if my geriatric computer was just lagging , but as a proof of concept I'm quite chuffed with it :3 I haven't yet figured out a way to make the tail wag softer/harder depending on the mouth form like in the old rigging but I'm assuming it's either a toggle or there's some physics setting I just haven't learned about yet.

On the plus side I think I can use a similar technique for animating other pixel things like long hair. I broke the tail into pieces based on where the rotation deformers would be if i was using skinning. Theoretically, it should be doable to break hair into similar sections so long stuff can move more :P already got a design ready to test that and a few other fancy techniques I've seen I just have to get the model art done \o-o/

[animatedjen]

I have a question about the scenes from different angles! I often wonder why they seem to...jolt or maybe stutter (for lack of better words) and yet the actual finished scene presented in the game seems so much more fluid.

I was thinking of this with the one with Kata boosting herself up and settling herself on the couch you just posted but I've wondered about this before. I know that other examples, like BD jumping into Cal's arms makes a little more sense since BD doesn't actually exist and is added separate where they definitely need to change the angles to make it more seamless but it's fascinating how the raw product (again, lack of better words!) reveals just how much those angles and panning in (not so much out) matter.

Or is this just a technical thing that has an easy explanation and I'm making it far more complicated? LOL

Good question! I'm not a game dev and my animation days were a long time ago, but there's probably a few things at play:

Every cutscene in the game would be designed, polished, and optimized specifically for the end visual. Disconnecting from the intended camera always look worse when the entire scene is built around a specific POV.

Sometimes animators will "cheat" a movement if it ends up looking better from the camera's perspective. Or if a character's hand or face isn't visible to camera, there's no need to fully animate it. My guess is: here Cal's hand "snaps" to BD-1 as the animation transitions from PCAP (performance capture) data to locking onto BD's character model. We don't see it in the final cutscene, so it doesn't need to be polished.

Kata's hands/legs aren't seen in the actual cutscene, so any animation left there is to better serve the in-camera visuals-- could also be the PCAP moving her character rig. Or the animator selected two finger controls while adjusting torso movement, idk for sure. But her face is cute :') Don't ask me about Merrin's leg though.

Notice how the camera is shifting too! That changes how we perceive movement. I'm also very new at capturing game footage and may not be using the ideal framerate/settings to best showcase the visuals, which could definitely add some stutter.

The alt-angle cutscenes are fun to explore (Twitter found one of them and it got a little crazy hah) and it's WILD to "re-film" a scene after it's been created, which is something I can't do in live-action or 2D animation. Outside of VR, most things aren't designed for 360 viewing! And I'll always, always uphold Respawn's decisions with its visual narrative and how they wanted to present it.

TLDR; cutscenes are designed around the camera, animation is super time consuming so prioritizes in-camera visuals, and Jen is still learning how to capture game footage

[p5x-theories]

hey ! sorry if this has been asked before , just generally curious

how do you normally get access to all of these files ? do you yourself somehow rip them from the beta or something or do you obtain them secondhand ?

sorry if this sounds weird , ive never been able to figure out how people rip files n im curious as someone really into programming n such

Haha, I actually learned how to datamine just for getting the files from this game! I was annoyed that it felt like none of the dataminers I was seeing on Twitter were posting as thoroughly as they could be, so I decided to start going through everything myself.

I've posted about my process before, but things changed a little with the open beta, so here's what I currently do. I don't know how universally applicable for other games this is, but it works for this one!

I download the latest version of the mainland China open beta. I could datamine the Hong Kong/Macau/Taiwan one instead, since that's the one I actually play, but mainland gets the updates a week sooner, so even though it has more censorship that's the one I always grab files from. If you already have the game, you don't need to download it from the site again, you can just run the game and it'll update upon startup whenever there's an update available.

I close the game once the update's done, and check which files updated (if you're downloading the game for the first time, obviously they'll all be new, otherwise you can check the date the file was modified). There are two places that could be updated: /client/bin, and/or /client/OuterPackage. In the past /bin was for bigger updates (usually story updates) while /OuterPackage was for other updates, but they've been updating /bin more and more lately. /bin is ALL the game files (stored in vfiles), while /OuterPackage is just the latest update stuff (stored in /Bundles bundle files).

a. If I just need the /OuterPackage files, great! That's way easier and faster, both for decrypting and for sorting through, since it's just a small slice of the files (I think Version 2.3.2's OuterPackage bundles were about 6 GB). I use this tool, the original upload for which was deleted so I uploaded it to share, and just put it in the /OuterPackage/Bundles folder, then double click the file to run it. b. If I need the /bin files, ugh. That means wading through all the files in the game- and a longer decryption time. I use this tool for that, and end up with a huge pile of all the stuff in the game to sort through (right now the vfiles are about 41 GB).

Either way, once the files are decrypted, I can open them in AssetStudioMod to view them and export them into a usable format. For the sake of efficiency, rather than going through every single file manually, I have a list of a ton of file name keywords to search to quickly look for anything interesting and new. The files aren't really sorted, so I do still end up having to check all 200 folders (whether from /bin or /OuterPackage/Bundles) each time to find everything, even when I know what I'm looking for.

And now I have the image files, 3D models, and fonts! It's also possible to export other stuff, like rigging and animation, but I haven't figured out how to actually implement those, and it'd probably be more time-consuming than it's worth.

For audio files, it's way easier- I don't even need to decrypt them, I can just use foobar2000 to open them directly from the game files (/client/bin/Media and /client/OuterPackage/Media). They're compressed into groups that foobar2000 can split back into separate audio files, so it does still take a bit of digging to find anything new and interesting, but it's much faster than the bundles.

There's also the Lua files, in /client/OuterPackage/Lua, though I don't actually check them much since it tends to be the less interesting data about how the game works. You can use this tool to decrypt them, though!

The more interesting stuff (like mainline quest text) is hidden in the Config files (for instance, those in /client/OuterPackage/Config), but I don't know how to decrypt those, and the people that do are very protective of it since that's the kind of serious information that the developers would probably tighten security on if they knew people were getting into it at all.

I hope that's the answer you were looking for, heh! Possibly I went a bit more in-depth than you wanted, but oh well. I try to be open about how I do all this, since it was a bit of a pain figuring some of it out on my own for the first time, when I was only seeing others post tidbits of the process at most.

[callmearcturus]

im the patron saint of stoking petty fires so i'd love to hear your beef with TLOU and ND (which. idk what that is? my brain keeps trying to call it New Degas). feel free to rant

(hey this is a WHOLEASS RANT about how much i hate TLOU! if you even remotely like those games, maybe don't read this!)

my god. lottie. /drags hands over face. you need to understand that this is the beef of a person who has not played TLOU, will never play it, and haaaaaates it regardless. when TLOU2 won GOTY at the fucking game awards over more deserving titles with less fraught developers, i was incensed. i hate this games in the same was a child would hate broccoli. except instead of being good for you, broccoli is an emblem of everything wrong with the gaming industry, up there with Red Dead Redemption (which I fucking hate too).

Oh and ND is Naughty Dog, the developer of TLOU. Also there is some fucked up labor shit and sexual harassment shit at ND.

But what it comes down to is

I fucking hate prestige games as a genre. I hate what they have done to the industry. One of the markers of TLOU and ND's work is that they have codified what the Sony Studio Game has to be, and it's these incredibly cinematic, incredibly filmic, hyper-photorealistic dramas that want so fucking bad to be movies, I don't know how anyone talks shit about Kojima's movie boner while these fucking things are being made.

The cost that the rise of TLOU has wrought on the industry pisses me off to no end. Developers, especially the ones who work with Sony bc this is very much the House Brand of Playstation, fucking brag about "oh yeah we spent 6 months building the rig to animate this character's hair" and "we modeled these horses with such precision their balls get smaller in the cold" and "this lighting engine accounts for the dew point of the scene which we also coded an engine for"

all these things feel to me like feats of crunch, of throwing money at problems that don't exist, because it's a fucking blurb to tell IGN to hype your game, not anything the actual game benefits from or needs. making games is already such a fucking labor intensive artform and this shit feels like adding completely unnecessary complication in pursuit of a perfect simulacrum of reality.

i also hate the violence of them. i feel like ND thinks it's sooooo fucking ahead of everyone else. look at this, look at how BRUTAL it is, look at Ellie slit a human's throat in high definition, doesn't that make you feel something, GAMERS?

bitch, no. it doesn't. because that's one of the two verbs in these fucking games. you kill people or you watch a cutscene. and making players go "oh shit are we the baddies" has been an extremely common trope for years. Spec Ops The Line was 11 years ago, bruh, you need to learn a new trick than "making the player feel bad about violence, ooooooooo spooky". it's our ONLY. FUCKING. VERB.

they pour so much effort and money and time and labor into these games, these apex projects, and their verbs are the fucking same as the first goddamn Halo game. you kill things or you watch a cutscene. you just made the violence more visceral.

in the gaming industry, the people who really make shit that changes the landscape are people who try for something more worthwhile than "here, now you can play this gory movie." it's shit like new vegas asking me to make complex ethical decisions backed by hundreds of years of context and history. it's hades teaching players that failing is its own reward. it's toby fox using pixel art and a leitmotif to make me feel something. it's spiritfarer trying to teach people not to fear death and that kindness is important even at the end of everything.

i am philosophically opposed to the Sony Studio Model, to Naughty Dog, and to TLOU. I think they are holding the industry back. they're mediocre games because they're trying to be movies, and their mediocre movies because they're supposed to be games. I haaaaaaaate them.