what the sneef

Substance Painter

My modelling pipeline is forever changing. With 2025 there were a lot of leaps with new software and add-ons, including Substance Painter, which I gave another shot with my Sona and multiple Dovabrodian skins.

Working with the Dova was a threat and a half. I refused to touch Substance for a while due to my sub-par experience trying to wrangle it last year with Sylver Lining.

He's still great for a first try! But oh my GOD! Controls that can kill a victorian child!! UN-INTUITIVE AIRPLANE CONTROLS!

What I painstakingly did instead was try and figure out Blender's primitive Texture Paint mode, which can be summed up as half-baked and not built for this.

Blender after doing one stroke in texture paint

Nevertheless, I spent (no hyperbole) 12 hours to convert a single Nomad brush pack from Artstation into Blender's brush engine. Figuring out the settings and stroke methods and such was actually pretty fun and mindless, anI JUST REMEMBERED HOW FUCKING SHIT THE LIBRARY SYSTEM IS NEVERMIND POST CANCELLED

Facetracking

TL;DR - addicting. Increases immersion quite a bit. My gay ass loves it

This was the fun one. I self-consciously dropped too much CAD thru Ebay on a Quest Pro with a billion stupid peripherals and research tabs to make this happen. I hate splurging that much money at once even if I work fulltime. I figured if I was going to, might as well get a tonne of stuff to ensure it still works comfy and endure the long haul, since it's the last headset with full, built-in Facetracking (And Discontinued 💞😻). My vigilant ass was shaking and making sure this thing was going to Last.

The fellas over at the VRCFT discord are a rowdy bunch but were super helpful in helping me troubleshoot some mechanical issues I was having and what peripherals to buy (globussy my beloved). Overnight before it would arrive, even, I had 20 tabs open at a time looking into how to set up avatars with the functionality, which blendshapes to add, etc. It looked intimidating as shit but I was eager to get it working.

Turns out it gets even more addicting to look at yourself, who knew

Turns out it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. The universally available tutorial at the time, Jerry's, is a bit of a drag but it thoroughly sets shit up so you're sure not to screw up. There's some unnecessary steps he takes in it but I understand *why* they're there, you'll see what I mean.

I kinda brag a LOT over how good Silver's facetracking looks. It's hands down the most expressive I've seen on any model, period, without it being too exaggerated or uncanny. Trying to emulate that for my Sona is a little more difficult since he isn't a teeth-stuck ventriloquist jaw puppet like he is.

my BOOBS ARE DOWN HERE

So now what. I've got fullbody tracking, face tracking, now what...

I ordered Batch 7 of Somatic's Orion trackers, so I can get the beta firmware of haptics going on it. That'd be pretty nifty!

World Creation

Very new to this, but I've wanted to tackle it for a while. I was shit donkey ass at 3D in college, which is why I went to college in the first place-- only to be met with Bs for doing the bare minimum. We used Maya. I struggled really hard with it. Prop making and character modelling was super ass.

So I wanted to give prop-making another shot. World-making was a perfect shot at redeeming my shitty grades and doing stuff without a time-limit and oh my god.

im having so much fun with it

NOBODY TOOOOLD ME HOW FUN THIS WOULD BE MAKIN SHIT FROM SCRATCH THAT'S INSANE

Wrapup

Not too many models this year but a lot of experimentation and focusing stuff elsewhere. My body takes a hit whenever I do Blender for extended periods, so that was probably the trigger for less content. My shoulder and back really do not like my current setup so I just gotta be careful.