Hope and disappointment
Any foray into a new endeavor is always going to come with expected and unexpected challenges. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve not only come to accept this and an eventuality, but I have learned to accept it and come up with alternative methods to achieve what I want. As this channel is in it’s infancy, I’ve not really worried about it since no one else if affected.
The first challenge I want to talk about is the models I had created through Fiverr. Having the 2D art done by someone through the same service left me hopeful because he (princehalem26) far exceeded my expectations and delivered something that was better than what was in my head. If I could get workable models that were just par, I would’ve been happy.
What I got was not what I expected, and not in a good way. It started off good, with frequent communication and a promise to deliver in three weeks. I was shown some progress through small images and gave the go ahead to continue with minor changes. As the three week mark passed, the communication fell off and it became increasingly difficult to get results. When I did get something I could see, it was not on the level of what was advertised as to what they advertised. Not only was the quality poor, but I made clear the intentions of their use and how I needed them. I’d sent articles about how they were to be used (in UE5) and how they needed to be delivered. Needless to say, I didn’t get that. The model for Carl I do not want to use at all, but I think I might get Satan to work. to me, this was definitely not worth the $800 I paid.
It’s not all doom and gloom (unfortunately) as during that time my mind started thinking of alternate ways to move forward. Years ago I would’ve thrown my hands up in frustration and probably called it quits. Being older and wiser, I saw opportunity. What if I could still do what I want but present it in a different way? I saw that and ran with it.
As no one is going to be reading this right now, I don’t have to worry about spoiling anything. I purchased existing models that I know work, and came up with a plan of how to use them. I’d always imagined Satan and Carl finding a way to go to our realm. Through whatever incompetency, they achieve that but not with the intended result. As such, they materialize in another dimension in different forms. Satan comes as a futuristic looking hulking cyborg. It is not too off character, and has the added benefit of not having to worry about facial motion capture. This lets me focus in on just one character, Carl. Because this is still going to be comedic, I wanted to find something so ridiculous and far out in left field. I found some intriguing models, but I needed something that was rigged for facial mo-cap. I found it in another model on the UE store by Ida Fidal. What sells this for me is not only how ridiculous it is in the context of what I want, but how incredibly well done her models are. I reached out to her with some concerns and questions, and she graciously gave me what I needed.
The next challenge was getting the facial mo-cap to work in UE5. It took a while, but I finally got it to work. While the lips and expressions were working, all the axes of the head movement were off. I thought the model might be messed up until I applied the blueprint to another model I knew did work… the problem had to be the blueprint. I kept trying to play with the blueprint to get it working but couldn’t get it to work until I watched the tutorial I followed over and over again to retrace my steps. Turned out I had mislabeled two things and tied stuff to them in reverse order. Sorted out, it worked. This proved to me I could get it working, and is a backup if I can’t get this working in iClone. That is yet another challenge…
Hopefully tomorrow I can try to get this working in iClone since it has better tools and workflow to make this happen. It’s yet another challenge, but I know that I am closer to achieving what I want.
