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Description
Once more into the breech. This is my 4th attempt to upload an animation; it seems that any format other than .gif is not permitted, at least here (or at the least without a premium account), so I'm stuck with either a single-run short clip or on on repeat. I uploaded a .gif with an extended ending frame so that it doesn't auto restart immediately, but as this is a new format for me I don't know how well it works as a method.

I think I broke a few cardinal rules when building this, as I moved the hip node to position the character rather than the root node. It felt more natural to do so (and I used a torus to try and roughly determine a 'falling' arc, centered on that node), but from what I've read its generally better to move the root node at the feet. It was an enjoyable, if lengthy, endeavour. 10-12 hours of posing, animating and simulating/testing plus 13 hours of rendering all for a little more than 2 seconds of animation. I don't expect to make a habit of this type of artwork, but as dforce simulation depends on reasonable animation, and I can see an edge case for short animations like this in my planned VN, it was a worthwhile project.

It still is a little rough around the edges, but overall I'm happy with it. I need to step away and work on some static artwork I think, before I add to this. I definitely want to replace the firing animation, and add a shell ejection animation. As far as I could tell, visibility is not a property that can be added to a keyframe which limited me to using a scale modifier to handle the flashing. I plan to hide the root of the bullet and casing in the gun and then scale to 100% the frame before use. It seems janky but unless I find another way to do this, I may be stuck with it.

Description
Once more into the breech. This is my 4th attempt to upload an animation; it seems that any format other than .gif is not permitted, at least here (or at the least without a premium account), so I'm stuck with either a single-run short clip or on on repeat. I uploaded a .gif with an extended ending frame so that it doesn't auto restart immediately, but as this is a new format for me I don't know how well it works as a method.

I think I broke a few cardinal rules when building this, as I moved the hip node to position the character rather than the root node. It felt more natural to do so (and I used a torus to try and roughly determine a 'falling' arc, centered on that node), but from what I've read its generally better to move the root node at the feet. It was an enjoyable, if lengthy, endeavour. 10-12 hours of posing, animating and simulating/testing plus 13 hours of rendering all for a little more than 2 seconds of animation. I don't expect to make a habit of this type of artwork, but as dforce simulation depends on reasonable animation, and I can see an edge case for short animations like this in my planned VN, it was a worthwhile project.

It still is a little rough around the edges, but overall I'm happy with it. I need to step away and work on some static artwork I think, before I add to this. I definitely want to replace the firing animation, and add a shell ejection animation. As far as I could tell, visibility is not a property that can be added to a keyframe which limited me to using a scale modifier to handle the flashing. I plan to hide the root of the bullet and casing in the gun and then scale to 100% the frame before use. It seems janky but unless I find another way to do this, I may be stuck with it.