VN Ren'Py A Thousand Rounds [Prologue] [NME Artworks]

[Zorro#34]

is this good?

Very good, but also very early.

 

[Old Man Al]

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Hey everyone, hope you had a great week. Going to do this early today, since I'll be spending most of it assembling my new PC and rearranging the room to accommodate the new setup. It's kind of a weird thing, to build an AMD system. Been building my own PC's for over 25 years now, and never owned one in my life. Either way, I've got a beast of a workstation which should radically smooth out operations, and also allow me to finally be able to get some test animations going. My gaming rig was lacking in too many areas that Blender needs juice to perform. Yeah I had a powerful GPU but the rest of the system wasn't optimized for it. After I set up the room and build the PC, I'll have to start migrating project files and organizing the ridiculous mass of assets I have scattered across like 5 different drives. It's probably the one thing I don't want to fucking do more than anything else. I know I'll feel a lot better though once it's done and I can actually find things I know I have, and want, instead of wasting 2 hours looking through drives and giving up because I can't remember what it was called/named/cataloged as. A blank slate is exactly what the doctor ordered.

Aside from that, I saw my son off this weekend back to California. Missing that kid already. Always love when I can get him out here. But, his whole life is in California, so that's where he stays. It was a great time though, as it always is. We played through the Curators edition of Man of Medan, and also powered through House of Ashes, which was amazing! We started The Devil in Me but both found it too boring and way too "video game mechanic" focused. We both wanted to go through the story because it did look really interesting, but just couldn't stay awake through the aggressive focus on free roam and newly added mechanics. We both agreed, they should have stuck with the original formula. Give me a movie with some choices, QTE's, and only let me explore every once in a while to see some cool shit. Hopefully their next season isn't going to be like The Devil in Me.

Back on track for development news. I picked up Marvelous Designer. I was poking around in that and also got into After Effects. MD was pretty easy to pick up. The tools are very intuitive, and the controls are very similar to Substance Painter. So getting used to the controls and UI is often half the battle when picking up a new program. AE on the other hand looks like an Alien shit out a galactic UI. No fucking clue what I'm doing in that one. Lol. I'll spend some time on it though while assets are migrating and see if I can at least get some common use practice in. Damn... I'm turning into a walking art studio at this point. Daz3D (rarely used anymore, but still pull clothes from for now), Zbrush, Substance Painter, Marmoset, Blender, Maya (mostly for modeling suite), 3DSMax (for some environment work), and now Marvelous Designer for clothes and After Effects for animation fx and editing. I still use Photoshop every once in a while for some things, but Blender pretty much takes care of a lot of the things I used to use it for, so it's been collecting dust. Can't say I'm sad about it either. Lol.
I think that about covers it for this week. Bit longer than usual, but was feeling chatty I guess. I hope you all have a great week. For our followers; we'll catch you on the next one. To our Patrons; you know where to find us.
Stay frosty,
NME

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Hey everyone, another week down. So this week was spent mostly trying to get my new rig up and running and I was hoping to have everything done this weekend; life happened. The rig is on, it's working. I have a lot of my programs on there already. Everything seems to be in good order. What I didn't get to. Transferring licenses for specific software I use behind the scenes. Some of the programs I use require me to log in and can only be recognized on 1 PC at a time, unless I want to get slammed with fees / copywright / breach of contract. Not many, but ones I use a lot. So, I have to wait to do that until everything else is buttoned up. Then the assets. Jesus I have so many fucking things. I mean, assets like clothes, environments, characters, vehicles, fucking props / tools, plugins, project files, custom brushes, etc. Terrabytes of shit spread out across multiple drives. It's... a fucking nightmare. To put it simply. I have duplicates of shit I never use, things I didn't remember getting that I definitely SHOULD have used. I mean seriously, what the fuck NME? Anyways, it's taking a lot more time and focus than I've had recently to really dial in, so that is where I am right now with things.
Cloon is making things complicated for himself in order to make things amazing for the rest of us. As he does. So he continues to chug along on his projects.
I just want this migration to be over and done with, but at the same time, I can't have another, this, situation. So, I need to take my time, and make sure I only bring over the things I need/want. I mean seriously, some of the shit I have on here. Like why? WHY did I even get that? What a waste of space. Alright, that's it for this one.
Have a great week everyone. Followers, we'll catch you on the next one. Patrons; you know where to find us.
Stay frosty,
NME

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Hey everyone. Doing this early since I have my brothers coming out this morning and we usually hit the 4th pretty hard. Sadly, I had this really great custom request and a fun idea but alas, the project file migration has been a grueling, indifferent, and without trying to sound like a pissy little bitch; fucking irritating. I'm getting corruption in the files left and right, and there is fuckery everywhere in the files. There are dependencies that seem to be missing all the time and trying to hunt them down has been the bane of my existence. FML.
On some good news, I did get my whole battle station put together. Got multiple monitors up, my Magnus PRO XL Jinx edition, and some other goodies. I'm going to break down the old PC today, and over the weekend I'm going to cut out some sandalwood and make a wall mounted test bench. That will sit right behind my current build, and feed my second monitor. I got a 5070ti earlier this week for it as well. I'm going to use my old PC as a legacy file system, as well as a secondary render PC. I can send low impact pinups and animations over to that system while I work on my main system. The big hangup for my old system, was the preview system. I couldn't preview a single animation or simulation. It would run at like 2fps or lower. One time I even got a 0.17fps. Like what the fuck? Lol. Anyways, this new workstation will handle all animation previews and sims. Then if the VRAM is lower than 16gb, I can just send the file over to other PC. Save big scenes or heavy animations for this PC which is currently rocking the 4090. Once it's all set up, this'll be fucking awesome.
Honestly, with all this shit going on, it would normally have been a time I'd pause Patreon but the last time I did it, just about everyone (that's subbed) said to stop doing that and not worry about it. So... begrudgingly, I didn't this time. Just know I'm busting my ass day in and day out to try and get all this shit sorted so I can get back to ATR. I miss my girls' asses. ATR is fun, and such a huge relief to work on for me. This shit I'm doing now? Nothing but stress. I'm so fucking over it, but I gotta keep going so I can get everything cleaned up, and tidy. Which will make productivity skyrocket.
Alright, I think that's it. So to final cap it; the next steps are - measure out spacing and placement on the wood I cut yesterday -> cut/drill holes -> final sanding -> gunmetal varnish -> mount old PC to sexy new sandalwood work bench with shiny new 5070ti -> hang on wall -> get parts for dedicated NAS -> link PC's -> migrate assets/dependencies to NAS -> get back to work. Doesn't seem like a lot when I'm looking at it like that. Lol. Wish me luck. For those celebrating it, Happy Independence Day. For those across the pond, or those who don't give a shit; have a great weekend. We'll catch y'all on the next one.
Stay frosty,
NME

(seems I am the only one posting updates here, sorry for missing some back then )

 

[Old Man Al]

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Hey everyone, hope y'all had a good week. Let's hop right in.
I got some environment work done for ATR this past week. I drilled to fast into the board I was making for the test bench, and splintered the wood. I've already gone back to the store, got more wood, cut to size, and stenciled the mapping. I'll take my time and do it right this next time. I WILL be back up and running this week with my models and story work. In the meantime, I haven't been sitting on my thumbs. I've been storyboarding, planning, and writing here and there. On top of that, I've been doing a lot of environment work, since I don't need my models for that. So production is still moving, it's just held at the scene level for the moment. I'm seriously so fucking excited to get back to it though. Trust me, I feel the length of this cycle 10x more than you do, I can promise you that. Cloon made some huge headway though, and continues to make strides. That's about all for the production side.
My baby girl got her spay, and also a benign mass removal on Thursday as well. So I've been spending a lot of my time cuddling, nursing, and loving on my little furry flashbang. Have to keep her ass drugged up pretty good, since it was literally day 1 I let her out of the room and she sprinted down the hallway, barrelled into the couch, and then jumped over the back of it; just to get to her flirt pole, like she didn't jsut get cut open less than 18 hours prior in two different places. Lol. Crazy little nugget. But I checked all her sutures and incisions this morning, and all is good. No swelling or tears despite her doing a bunch of shit the docs said for her not to. She's a tough girl; but too damn stubborn. Lol. Such is the nature of a pitty.
This week, starting tomorrow, I'm going to go back out to my woodshop and try to not fuck this board up this time. The components are all together, I just need to mounting and air flow cutouts to get it going. The NAS is here and ready to go. It'll probably take a day or so to transfer everything, but whatever, it's not like I don't have a 100 other things to do for ATR. You guys will know as soon as it's up and running and files have been migrated to the NAS; as I'll go a quick pinup with the girls to test the new system, and just because I miss them.
That's it. Hope you all have a great week. To our followers; we'll catch you on the next one. To our Patrons; you know where to find us.
Stay frosty,
NME

 

[Monetka_]

Here is one of the renders from the current scene that I used to test lighting and post. More previews will be added in the future as production begins to ramp back up.

 

[Manoftheworld]

The game has potential, the prologue had it's issues but it didn't fail to deliver, I absolutely love Haley, my only real issue with the game so far is her sister, her presence felt unnecessary, well, at least she was there to get her sister to the hospital, so thank her for that, but the game kept forcing her on you romantically. I'm both hoping and guessing there will not be a forced throuple route with the twins, the way I see it there will be a separate Haley route, Bailey route and throuple route, that would be the right way to go.

 

[Jhon27]

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Hey everyone, hope y'all had a great week. This week was productive for me. Despite the issues, I'm getting things moved and fixed at a decent rate, and posed about 30 frames for the current scene. Mostly, just been trying to find the time to get some work in. Career work right now has been pretty heavy due to some restructuring. Skip the next part if you don't care to know anything about me, and just want ATR news.
A little personal bit, I used to work as an offensive cybersecurity engineer, or as the public love to call them, Red Teaming or Red Teams, Pentesters, White hat, etc etc. The list goes on. But my company decided to move into a different field, since the cybersecurity pool began to get way too crowded, and the way it works behind the scenes, is that newer companies will get priority bids on contracts, especially from the government side, which is where the big money was. Not to mention there was also a rotation, so there would be times when we couldn't even bid on anything at all. So, we decided to take our expertise and apply it to a different field of work. Now, I'm a glorified hand-holder to the CEO, CFO and other C people in the ladder of Fortune "xxx" companies. Or rather, I'm a project manager, but I still also manage the advancement and testing of our internal tech/software. So, needless to say, when things are ramped up, I'm fucking busy. Currently, we're working on finding someone with at least half my skill to take over some of the mundane shit I do, so I can focus back up on security related issues within our company, our end-to-end customers, and our white label clientele. When we started up this new company we provided SaaS and IaaS, but as of summer last year we began offering full end-to-end services. I'm never bored. However, I'm way too overqualified for the work I do every day, and the company saw explosive growth, with little time to fill slots. So, we're trying, but it's taking time, since we had some issues with people when we were a "startup" still. My company takes extremely great care of me, so sucking it up for them, easiest thing I have to do. Now that we're actively scanning candidates, the end of my time suck is on the horizon, and I can't wait to get back to the security side of things, and spend less time with board members or companies who have no fucking clue what they're even buying. Another thing I don't miss about pentesting. The debrief, and the reporting. Not to mention it isn't as cool as it sounds. There is ALWAYS so much red tape, and zero wiggle room. You wiggle? You might find yourself in prison for 10-15 years. For real; it's no joke. Not to mention we did a lot of compliance testing which had a tiny scope and was only being done for certification standards and license renewals. So, boring as fuck. I digress. On to ATR news.
I'm still split across 6 or 7 things right now. So I'm doing a little bit of each at a time. Scene work, fixing migration issues, sculpting upcoming new models, painting/sculpting skin/normals, modeling, writing, storyboarding, preparing models for migration, etc, etc. So, a lot of moving parts right now. I haven't said it in a while, but for those of you sticking around, pledging and following, during this HUGE upgrade/advancement, my OCD, and the gigantic learning curve that came with it all; thank you and I appreciate you guys. The future won't always look like this, and we're almost to a stable build. I can see it in the distance, and I'm sprinting towards it, but trying to ensure I rest along the way so I don't miss a beat. This week, nothing really to change in the workflow I just mentioned above this. All of those things are still live, so I'll keep rotating through them to keep from getting burned out. Cloon thinks I need to take some time off, but like him, resting makes me feel uncomfortable. While I can get burned out, of course; It takes a lot, and I can usually see it coming. So as of right now, despite the fuckery, I'm still in good spirits about everything, and so far, it's mostly legwork, and less troubleshooting at this point. So, we're making progress, one way or another.
Thus concludes this week’s novela rosa. Tune in next week for more ATR dev shit. Lol.
Have a great week everyone.
Stay frosty,
NME

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Hey everyone, hope you all had a much better week than I did. Not a lot done, on any front. Been working 12 hours days all week. Yesterday and will also be pulling another all day grind today. My company is rolling out a huge update and we've been testing, debugging, and testing some more non-stop all week and weekend. We're going to roll the update out here soon, and then it'll be butt puckering and finger crossing that nothing explodes. While we've been good in the past, we changed a ton of shit in our software on the backend, like the way certain features behave, how they integrate with other functions, and removed a lot of bloat and legacy shit that wasn't needed anymore. So, here's to hoping. I'll try and at least do something today, but I might just end up sleeping until tomorrow once we know the release is stable in production. So, yeah, sorry. Not much to report on ATR this week. What I really want to get done at least today, is to finish vertex pinning Melody and her dermals, as well as clean up her shaders. That all seems like something I can handle even though my brain is fucking cooked. If nothing explodes, then tomorrow will be back to business as usual. Wish me luck.
Hope you all have a great week, and I'll catch you all on the next one.
Stay frosty,
NME

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Hey everyone, hope you all had a great week. Strap in, it's a bit of a long one. Another busy one for me. Been working on another required model for the story. She's coming along beautifully. Some issues here and there with facial bones, but I'll iron those out over time. I did also start working on my asset catalog for Blender.
See, in Daz, it's basically an asset browser that you can pose models in. Blender has an asset library but you mark your own stuff. It's a little clunky, and definitely due for an upgrade, but it's still very powerful. I've begun moving things like clothes and other assets out of Daz and saving them into Blender directly. What this means, is that instead of having to spend 20 - 30 minutes every time booting up daz and loading a model, applying the clothes, exporting, importing, deleting models and redundancies/modifiers, applying to Blender model, sculpting to fit, and then reapplying modifiers. I can now just drag and drop the clothes into the scene with a rig attached to it, adjust to scale, sculpt to fit, and apply the modifiers needed. We're talking about a 70%+ reduction in overall time and step count required to either add assets, or change clothing/hair styles. This is a HUGE win, and I'm only saddened because I didn't think to do this sooner. Just like everything else, it's a lot of legwork upfront, but will streamline a much simpler and more efficient workflow for the future. I've already added in well over 30GB of assets into my Blender's asset catalog. The powerful thing about it, is that it's not even that basic. I can save anything from custom node groups, shaders, whole environments, models, light setups; literally anything I want. Drag and droppable into any scene, at any time. No closing/reloading/importing/exporting fuckery. Just ready to go. As long as I'm diligent and make sure the asset is exactly how I want it before saving it, then it won't require any additional work the next time I pull it. Unless of course it's clothing and I want to change the look/color/design, but that takes me less than 5 minutes most of the time depending on whether it's a custom design or something I have saved already (which I do have quite a lot of from just fucking around).
I started setting up some scene work, but I didn't really get to any this week. I've also been revising some dialogue, which will adjust how the scene plays out at well. Good changes though. I like to think that with time my skills at writing and storytelling are getting better/maturing. I spend a lot of time passively watching things like cinematography, photography, writer's rooms, etc. What I haven't practiced, and is arguably one of the most important things, is animations. I keep having to fix issues with the models, and I don't want to waste time animating someone elses models with different rigs than my own, since the whole point is to become more efficient in my own workflow / models. However, I'll be getting on that soon, as I'm almost done with all the main models since the transition to the new PC. I have a few more things to clean up, and I have some issues with one of their materials, but I'll iron it out this week, and then we'll be all good on that front. Then I can get back to doing pinups, and practicing animations. I'm really looking forward to it.
Cloon is back from vacation and we're going to be setting up a shared scene tracker so we know exactly where we are, and with which scenes. So, that'll help me tremendously, since I have so many fucking things always looming over me. Like the Blender icon on my desktop might as well be a singularity. Once I double click it, it opens into a universal size to-do list. It can be disorienting at times, so getting better tracking/operational organization at this point can only help. Thankfully, Cloon loves all that organizational, easy-way, shit. Strong counter to my tunnel-vision, chaotic mess of operational goals, and minute-to-minute ADHD task swapping. Couldn't have asked for a better partner. Love you, boo.

Okay so, I think I'll close it up there. Below you'll find a headshot of the model I finished the other night. The glasses are a palceholder, since Cloon and I are sold on the glasses, just not that style. Only a headshot, since her body below the shoulder blades is still just a generic shape, and I haven't finished sculpting it all yet. I'll do a pinup with her once she's actually completed. Probably in a couple weeks or so. For all our followers, we'll catch you on the next one. For our Patrons, you know where to find us.

Stay frosty,
NME

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Hey everyone, hope you y'all had a great week. Let's dive right in, it's another long one. Which while my workflow is progressing, will probably be so for the foreseeable future. TLDR at the bottom.
So, I was stretched a bit thin on time this week, but I managed to recompile my script on the new PC and I've been hammering away at the story changes. I also finished the twins, I'll have a cute render for them later on, just to commemorate their completion into Blender. They look amazing, and I'm so happy how they came out. I'm also super happy about it because there was a lot of story I was worried I might need to cut out. Nothing that would have taken away from the primary story points, but a lot of content that I'm sure most of you would have enjoyed. Especially for my Maravilla twin enjoyers. So, now I gotta start weaving their story content back into the game. I also need to rethink how I plan to handle the opening sequence since I was originally thinking I was going to have to do it in Daz, which, honestly I just hate using for anything anymore. So big excite for that. In case it isn't apparent, I'm very excited to have the twins in Blender. The thousand plus hours spent learning shaders/materials and programs like Substance/Marmoset have finally paid off in kind. On the note of those programs, I've actually started creating micro roughness maps and I found an even better solution to the SSS (subsurface scattering) in Blender. There was this issue I've been having, that even as good as my SSS was, I was getting these sort of "oily" patches on the skin, like the light couldn't penetrate the skin and instead showed up as glossy sections, especially if the light source was strong. That's NOT how SSS is supposed to work. I was originally using SSS/Translucency maps, but I know now that I can use native shaders inside Blender to create a beautiful dispersion of light under the skin materials. They need to be dialed in for each model, but the template is pretty cut/paste. So I've already gotten the main models except for Nita and Melody done. I usually try and take Sundays off, but I'm riding the wave, so I'll have the whole rest of the cast done today as well. This also improves performance, because there are less 4k material maps that Blender has to calculate for. Instead it's just node based solutions, which are far less impactful on performance and VRAM calculations. So double win. What does this actually mean? It means the models are now healthier and more natural looking. Honestly, while I was working into each section, seeing the models skin as it was vs. what it is now, it almost looked like the old skin was necrotic. Pretty gross. Not the best lighting, but here, have some Chloe.

On top of that, I've been continuing to stock up my asset library with custom node groups I create and use across all or most of my models. I've also been working on some alternative hair styles for some models. For those of you who don't know, I love playing with hair. It's a thing for me. So I do that to de-stress and take my mind off the hard shit. On top of all that still, I've been creating the physics cages for the ass/thighs/breasts. If I get those dialed in, I might even see about making one for the belly, because why the fuck not? Big fucking thank you to Gifdoozer, who has been a huge inspiration and guiding hand for me. Especially when I run into Blender shenanigans that drive me up the fucking wall. If you guys don't know who he is, go check his content. He's amazing.

I paused the scene work until I finish the models, especially Nita. I need her for an important scene/animation for this chapter which I need to start setting up and working on as it's a cinematic, and will take longer to render than any of the others for this chapter. The sooner I get it done, the sooner I can send it to the other PC to start rendering. Honestly, it's hard for me to focus on story content when there are so many issues and unfinished things with the models themselves. I'm going to work solely on getting the models imported, updated, and saved on the new PC before I do literally anything else. Where am I with that right now? Well yesterday it took me from about 0600 to about 1900 to finish 4 models including gaps/breaks for my puppers and to feed myself. I have a total of... 8 more models to do. I think I can get them in today. Some of them just need updated SSS which I have the whole node group saved, so the swap over will just be plug, adjust, and play. A couple of these other models I haven't touched in a while and will probably be running on my legacy shader setup which will need a full update. But I'll start with those ones first. Either way, I'm going to be done with the models in the next two days. I haven't had any time this week to work on sculpting Alexis' body (the girl I previewed in last weeks dev log). But I'll have her done with week as well, since she has a part to play in this chapter as well.

TLDR; Scene work temp paused until models done, models finished in next two days, new girl sculpted this week, asset library great, twins are back on the menu, booby, ass, and thigh physics - yay, new SSS better. Scene work will continue sometime later this week / start of next week.

That covers just about everything this week. Hope y'all have a great week ahead. For our followers; we'll catch y'all on the next one. To our Patrons; you know where to find us.

Stay frosty,
NME

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Just a quick little side thing I did for Nita since she's finished now. I'll be doing one for the twins over the next week or so as well as promised in the last dev log (or was it the one before?)... Anyway it's coming. Lol. Enjoy.

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Hey everyone, hope y'all had a great week. Let's dive right in.
So, as I said last time, I finished the models this week and they are done and ready to go. No more fucking around with the main models. They're as good as they're going to be before I start going into unoptimized territory. I also redid some environments, because, well... they sucked. Straight up, no clue what I was thinking when I started those things. Anyways, it's all good to go. Now, I released that little side piece render I did with Nita, and I was going to have something with the twins today, but as I started to run some test renders Cloon pointed out that there were some funky proportion issues with our favorite sisters. I didn't see them before, but I couldn't unsee them once he pointed them out. So I've spent the afternoon fixing those issues. They're done now. I'm rendering out their final test just to be sure, but so far all looks good. I also adjusted the body dimensions differently for both. Just because they're twins, doesn't mean they have the same lifestyle, and therefore, shouldn't have identical body shapes either. Otherwise, nothing on them changed (except their hair but of course). So, I'm going to take a breather and I'll probably hop back on and start working on that render for them as well before the end of the night. Depending on how it comes out, and if I end up finishing it, I'll post it tonight. If not, I'll post it when I get around to finishing it.
Aside from that, I'm ready to hop back into the game content. I'm not going to worry about it today, as the last two weeks have been killer. I'm going to take it easy today, and enjoy some leisure/fucking around. Probably call it early tonight too, so I can get a movie in with the puppers. Everything is honing to a fine edge, and I'm really stoked about it. Been a long road to here, and there is an infinite road ahead. It's going to be glorious. I think I might also add some more inventory to my asset library. But we'll see, since that is more chore than enjoyment. Lol.
Cloon has been hunting down possible music licenses and songs, and we have 100's of ambient/game music we've gotten from a few different places. We're being very careful about our selection. Not just for mood, but for future proofing our eventual Steam push. Just like the copyright images/logo shit, we won't have the time or the energy to worry about chopping out huge chunks of our music later on down the road because XYZ company/label decided they wanted to change the terms/no longer support NSFW content. So, our goal is either perpetual licensing, or royalty free. If we don't own it, or it doesn't come with a grandfather clause in the contract, we aren't taking the chance. Does that mean there are some good songs we will have to pass on, of course. However, there is no shortage of amazing indie artists, pliable labels/managers, and tons of great royalty-free game music out there. We'll get it done.
I think that about covers everything. Shit's getting real, finally, and it feels good to have gotten to this point. Hope y'all have a great week to come. To our followers, we'll catch you on the next one (or the twins render drop). To our Patrons; you know where to find us.
Stay frosty,
NME

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Jesus, it's been 46 of these already? Hope you all had a great week. Mine has been... well, let's just dive in.
So quick personal recap of this week. I had my VP of corporate affairs (basically she's HR) try and fire me for reasons she couldn't backup and then my CEO called me 20 minutes later to un-fire me, saying he didn't know anything about it, and that wasn't going to fly. So, yeah, whiplash there. For those unaware, I don't have anyone above me but my VP's and execs at this company. Been with them since they were barely a startup, and still a cybersec company, which we sort of just folded into what we are now. Anyways, that was my week. Blindside firing, and whiplash re-hiring. Lol.
Now, on to what everyone is mostly here for. So I was going to get back to story work this week, but I ran into a major fucking flaw with, arguably one of the mainest, main girls materials. Let me show you...

You see all those splotches on her face? That was some issue I had, I'm guessing while the baking process for her texture sets, with her roughness, SSS, and spec maps. I couldn't honestly figure out which one, but it was one of those three, since it changed intensities based on light intensity. So... I redid them. And now she looks better than ever, and I've tested through and through. The maps baked properly, and no more weird artifacts. Here she is now.

Oh and another fucking thing this week with the MC. I can't show it, because these posts are public and his dick is out. But basically his rig was completely fucking blasted. Like when I would go to move his body down, the legs would separate at the thighs and the knee would stretch into oblivion. Then I tried to redo the rig, and his fucking arms, legs, and most of his midsection, except abs, chest, head, dick; disappeared. Like completely. All that was left was just those parts of his body and the bones from the rig. It was insane. Anyways, the good news is, I also fixed the rig, and tested all sorts of crazy ass poses with him, and he's also working fine. Oh, I also redid his hair and beard. They look amazing now, if I may say so myself. LOL. I thought I had a headshot, but I must have deleted it. You'll see it in a preview soon enough.

Alright, so all that fuckery took me all week to fix. I just finished Kyomi yesterday. Her custom tattoo sleeve took a long time as well. Another thing you'll see in the previews coming soon. So, I'm going to work on the content today. I've triple checked every model after this shit popped up just to make sure. Everything was good. As it stands right now, I have nothing else in the way of me getting back to story work. So that's exactly what I'm going to be doing now. So stay tuned, as pinups, WIP's, and story previews are coming back.

Think that about covers it this week. Hope y'all have a great one. To our followers, we'll catch you on the next one. To our Patrons; you know where to find us.

Stay frosty,
NME

Bi-Weekly Custom ft. Haley & Bailey
21 hours ago

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[Jhon27]

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Hey everyone, hope y'all had a great week. Mine was pretty good. It took almost all week before my company access was reinstated, so I had all the time in the world to work on ATR. It was nice. I got a taste of what full time dev's life looks like. Can't say I hated it. Lol. A lot less stressful than my job. But alas, all good things, and whatnot. Cloon and I convened on a matter that had us kind of chomping at the bit; rushing. It's easy, when you have people waiting on you for things, to forget the reason you started a passion project. It becomes more about invisible deadlines and release stress. In the act of doing so, you begin to start cutting story, not the main, but all the fleshing out or fun additional things. You start looking to cut corners on certain things to fit inside a false standardization of development sprints. In the end, it can start to make you lose the passion and drive to make the best thing that you (and in this case my brother, Cloon) wanted. I pass it off, but the stress does get to me sometimes, and it shuts down my creativity. Stress will do that to you, and when you compound it with my life's stressors, it begins to get harder to work. I also press on, because I don't have quit in me, but still. Thankfully, I always got Cloon right in my ear, whispering, "stop being a bitch, and go make that better." LOL. I love the guy, you know. He keeps me grounded when I have a mountain of shit to wade through every time I start working. Again, I'll say, that no matter what, we're finishing this project. I LOVE what I do, but those invisible stressors, can slow things down a lot. But then I remember that we are making something extraordinary. Not mundane, or acceptable; fucking extraordinary. Then the fire lights right back under my ass, and I make strides in no time at all. Do I need better stress management? Fuck yeah I do; and I'll work on that. The good news is, I got quite a lot of scene work done this week. However, the point from this was that, after talking about it, we're adding in some fun extra scenes. As it stood, we only had 8 planned for this update. That's A LOT of room to expand and have a little rendezvous with some side hoe, or spend some extra time with one of the main girls. The takeaway, is that if we want it in the update, we're adding it. Obviously within reason. We're not going to stretch an update out to like 20 full scenes or something crazy like that. But pushing from 8 to say 10 or 11? Yeah, I think we, and everyone else will be much happier that way. After all, aren't the girls and the story why we play these things in the first place? So without further or do, let's dive in.
So, the changes to the models, were so drastic, that some of them barely even look like what they used to. In that notion, I'm redoing scenes 1 - 3. I know, i know. I said I wouldn't backpedal, and normally, I wouldn't. But I'm serious, like every model, except maybe Hazel, look so different from the beginning of the year when I made those scenes. The shift between scene to scene would be so jarring, it'd give you whiplash. So, how to tackle this? Well, thankfully that's where the second PC comes in. I have the scene files from those, fully done on the timeline. What I did this week, was spend a little bit of time in each, loading the new models, setting up (ridiculously) better lighting, and I began copy/pasting keyframes from old models, to new models. So the bulk of the work is mostly copy/pasting and fixing little things here and there, rather than completely "redoing" everything. What this means? In 4 days I'm almost done with scene 1 and I also have quite a bit of scene 3 (what I did of it anyways) done as well. Scene 2 is quite large, so that one will get done in pieces while I progress scene 5 (since that one is almost half done anyways). So once each scene is done, I'll send it to the second PC to render while I continue on with the rest of the work. Scene 4 will be done after that, and the reason I put that off is because I haven't actually ported over any of the other male models (like Chris, Teddy, Jake) which I need them for that scene. So instead of spending more time doing character conversions, I'm focusing on story progress first. Thankfully, the male models are laughably easier to convert than the females. Since I don't plan to redo their materials or make custom sculpts / normals for them. I don't think most of you care if Chris has beautiful striations in his lips, or that his eyes sparkle in low light like gems glinting in a fire. LOL. For those of you that do, sorry, it just takes too much time to create custom maps to worry about it. They'll still look good, they just won't get the glam treatment the girls have gotten over the past few months. So that's where we are.
With the customs and patron exclusive pinups. I mentioned in my most recent post of one with the twins, that from now on, I'll be using those to practice speed drills. Giving myself only one hour from start to finish. That's - building the scene, posing the models, sculpting/fitting the clothes, brushing the hair, setting up the lighting, compositing, and postwork. Within this hour, also any troubleshooting, like on the twins, Bailey's glasses were doing something weird with her eyelashes. Didn't have time to figure it out, so I removed them for that render. The point here is that I tend to take an inordinate amount of time doing these things, and all that has done for me is breed indecisiveness and slow me way down in both pinups and development work. Gif, my mentor, can pump out peak content in an afternoon. My goal is to get to that point. I have the technical aptitude for it, I just need to get faster, and stop letting indecisiveness destroy my workflow. I'll allow one custom a month (not including Patron customs) where I can just work on it, without time limits/restrictions, IF time permits. Otherwise, I'll use the Patron custom(s) to focus my technical progression.

I think that's about it. I'll have some story previews probably by next week? I haven't rendered on the second PC yet, which is rocking a 5070ti, so I have no clue how long it'll take to render out the scenes yet. Either way, I'll keep everyone posted as usual next week or in Discord for those that are members. Hope y'all have a great week. To our followers, we'll catch you on the next one, and to our Patrons; you know where to find us.

Stay frosty,
NME

 

[Bruce F. Lee]

This place is not very active. Lot's of dev updates but doesn't appear to be any info regarding when the next update is likely to be released.

 

[xizaaR]

This place is not very active. Lot's of dev updates but doesn't appear to be any info regarding when the next update is likely to be released.

Doubt there will be a next one.

 

[MiltonPowers]

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Hey everyone, sorry, I know I'm late again with this one. It's been a pretty crazy couple of weeks.

Blender, and all of the other programs I've learned to use this past year, have these sort of... learning gates. Every gate has a flood of knowledge behind them that can change the way you both understand, and how you utilize the tools. I was beginning to stagnate for a bit, like I thought I had reached the limit of one area (for my personal use case) and then out of nowhere a couple weeks ago, boom. The flood gates opened. I've been drowning in new understanding and work for Blender, Substance, and Marmoset. I've made ridiculous discoveries and crazy skill breakthroughs that I've gotten so lost in it, I've been forgetting to you know... talk to people. LOL. The last couple weeks I've learned more about modeling/texturing/procedural shading/lighting/ and even animation than I did almost cumulatively over the course of a year. I know a couple really famous/popular R34 artists who have said this sort of thing happens. Where out of nowhere you'll just, "get" something that throws you off a cliff into a pool of new knowledge with these things. Well... I got thrown off that cliff a couple weeks back and I've been swimming in it.

Okay enough with the analogy shit. The last couple weeks have propelled me into a revamp of sorts. I could fill up your whole computer screen a couple times over if I tried going over everything I've been doing the last couple weeks. So, I'll save your eyes, and my fingers, and try and keep it concise and relevant to my audience; you guys.

Where the time suck has gone the most? I redid almost every models textures, and the ones I haven't done, I'm currently working on this week. I've figured out that, there are places for 4k image maps (normals/displacements) and places where they don't need to be (AO, thickness, and other mesh maps). So, by doing all of the texturing and painting myself, I've been able to get my models down to an operational standard very close to Rigid3D's models. Highly detailed, but animation ready with a very low VRAM consideration for how detailed they look. I've also broken through new barriers in my understanding of how SSS (subsurface scattering) works, and how it should look. At first I did it using the Principled Shader. It was ass. Then I moved on to AO node / Color ramp combo. It was decent. Then I went to map driven SSS. That was a little better, but caused some edge bleeding in the textures under certain lighting conditions. Not to mention adding another image map increased VRAM load for the model. Quadruple that across the main material zones, and it added quite a bit to the models final VRAM load. Now, I use 2k/16 bit maps, hand painted in Substance, to drive a procedural setup for SSS and it's magnificent. I'm talking model fidelity and proper normal / displacement detail even at distance. No more weird shiny, plastic looking skin, especially the farther away from the camera the model is. I'm really fucking proud of what I've done there. On that same topic. I spoke about my specular shader last week I think? Well, now it's even better. I also took what I learned there, and just fucking around one day, discovered an amazing application for that specific knowledge. My hair shader...

So, I've been using geometry-based hair curves for some time now. I think... Kyomi really is the only one still using a hair card at this point. Now, the way I handled the hair curve material was very similar to how people handle particle hair systems. The thing is, there are quite a bit less overt, or obvious, controls for the hair strands when using curves to make them look truly great. Don't get me wrong, particle hair takes a lot of effort to look amazing as well, but I just mean the controls are little more in your face. Now I got decent results utilizing the Blenders native Principled Hair shader and some color ramp / noise combos. But it was super basic. Now, with my new hair shader, it looks more realistic than ever, runs way lighter, and behaves like real hair. I'm talking proper specular strand variability, shifts in color and roughness based on light diffusion/placement, camera position, everything. The strands are properly randomized with noise and color driven through geometry and vector data rather than direct, flat coloring. This gives the hair life and makes it feel less "3D", if that makes sense.

Let's talk animation / rigging / posing. Admittedly, these topics fell to the side for some time while I was flooding my brain and my days with material/shader knowledge. My focus has been trying to get the absolute best looking models, while also maintaining some semblance of optimization so I CAN pose and animate them without my PC exploding. Well, I've finally figured out how to do that, as you can tell from above. I'm talking high fidelity models, under 4GB of operational load under render. So, it was time to start shifting primary focus to arguably the next most important part of any AVN on the art side. Animation and physics. Ah yes, physics, my nemesis, as it was. Gifdoozer has all but squashed my concerns about that. Titty jiggles? Got em. Thigh jiggles? Got those too. Ass rippling? Dude, of course. Wait... is that tummy jiggles too? You fucking bet. Big thanks to the man for always taking the time out of his ridiculously busy schedule to hold my hand through topics that otherwise would have taken forver to learn or figure out. He takes the scary shit, and makes it fluffy. Now, do I have physics on all the models already? No... but I know how to now, and that's 70% of the battle. Now it'll just be about getting it done, but I'll probably just wait to do each models physics when I actually need them. I'm going to start really diving in hard this week on the animation front. The timeline, I get. But Blender has a graph editor, and action editor and animation layers. It's all very overwhelming, but again, Gif has shown me that you can create simple animation loops very quickly with some practice. So... that's what I'll be doing.

"NME, that's all good and whatever, but what about the game?" I know, trust me, it's been gnawing at my brain juice too. The game has been constantly shifted off because there are huge valleys of time where I'm in this learning hole. I assure you though, the next couple weeks, I'll be finishing up the final changes to the models, getting all my assets in order, and full sending on production. While I know there is still more I could learn about texturing/shaders/etc. I've gotten the models exactly where I want now. Amazing looking, with highly optimized shaders/materials. They're ready, and they won't be more ready than they are now (or will be after this week). I know anything I do to them now will only start to push them back into UN-optimizaed territory, which is counter what I've been striving so hard far this past year. So I'm confident where I am now with them, and comfortable in saying, that once I finish the last of them this week, it's time to move on. And reading that back just now, I can't tell you what a big sigh of relief that is. It's a sense of accomplishment, and excitement, that I finally feel ready to migrate into my next big journey with Blender/Substance/Marmoset/Zbrush/AfterEffects/ blah blah blah. LOL.

As always, we appreciate your patience, and of course your continued support and confidence in us. That's all for this week. To our followers; we'll catch you on the next one. To our Patrons; you know where to find us.

Stay frosty,
NME

 

[MiltonPowers]

Tarakis October Custom

 

[WaltS]

When ATR came out I was impressed. Not only by the graphics but even more so by the MC and his experience and troubles. Felt familiar.

Now, not so much anymore - the dev is starting to sound like Ocean (if you know, you know…)

Quite frankly those self-praising posts of how he's getting better at everything all by himself and how great an artist he's becoming? And that because of that he is / will rework everything again and again? Tiring, when it's all you hear for almost a year.

Sheesh, NOT interested anymore. If I wanted to read tech drivel instead of the game I originally subbed to (cancelled some time ago) I can get on GitHub and Reddit!

I wonder when we will start hearing stories of the new workstation he's gonna build or his tax-troubles :/

/soapbox

 

[Garvelt]

More than a year without an update and it doesn't look like it's any closer than it was months ago. The story was interesting, the renders looked great, but it's all pointless if there's no progress. Sacrificing development time to get 5-10% better image quality is insanity, especially since the wait time was already too long between updates.

 

[MiltonPowers]

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Hey everyone, hope y'all had a great week. It was really good for me. I learned a lot on top of finishing all the material and upgrades for the models. While I have no doubt there will be many more, for now, it's the first time in the last year of this that I don't have any pending issues, and that's a huge and wonderful feeling. So let's dive in, it should be a relatively short one.

I finished the updates/upgrades pretty much right at the end of day on Friday. Then I though, okay I need to take the weekend off and decompress. Shader work, and I've said in several posts before this one, is tedious ass work. Brain burnout is super easy. Seriously, look up Blender procedural shader tree and you'll see what I mean. I also created some makeup procedural groups for some of the girls. They have sliders so I can mix and match looks, or go full one whole setup without having to dig up textures or texture paint directly onto the model. I'm not a makeup artist, that shit takes a lot of time for me to make look right and every model is different. So, having something painted over the UV's, since all my models use the same UDIM style UV layout, it takes very little tweaking with a mapping node to get the look to fit each model. So big win there. I'll probably continuously add to it over time, but for now, I have enough to pass as general "daily" makeup for most women. Despite wanting to take the weekend off, I did finish the outfits for a custom, and then inspiration struck and I took the whole thing in a totally different direction than I had originally intended and then I got lost in it. Ended up finishing it. I'll put it in a post after this.

Aside from that, it was mostly just learning. Wrap3D is a new software (yes... another one) that I picked up and started using. While I don't "need" this one, it'll come in handy down the road. It's a passive learning tool though. I'm not dedicating any amount of noticeable time to it. I really am going to try and take today off though, and just enjoy some games or something. Starting tomorrow it's full steam ahead. I've already started setting up the first lewd scene of this update, and I'll begin working on that animation in pieces so I don't rush it. I couldn't use any of the original scene since... well, everything was changed. Lol.

Pinups will come back starting this week as well. I really did like those "1 hour cap" exercises I was doing. Despite the fact that I hated everything that came out of them, it's still good practice, and now that I'm (actually) done fucking with the models, it'll be easier to manage since there won't be any more surprise "what the fuck is that doing" moments. At least for the models themselves. Although, now that I just said that, I did forget I had some issues with Jade's septum piercing squishing with her face I need to fix. But that's a problem for the NME of tomorrow, since I already know what I need to do to fix it anyway.

Here is a headshot I rendered when testing the makeup node group I mentioned earlier on the new Melody model.



That's about it for this week. Hope y'all have a great week to come. To our followers; we'll catch you on the next one. To our Patrons; you know where to find us.

Stay frosty,
NME

 

[shamtiiomi]

this shoyld be categorize to development threas no in the game cat....by now this guy is expert on praising himself and baost about it....and btw if u take the time he did a sex scene in consoderation u should know that slow burn isnt the word for the game anymore,...is i would never reach that stage...like in never...