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TLDR; Big shit coming. Should release before mid-August. ATR will be a full Blender game. Closing enrollment 1 week after release until the next dev cycle starts.
Hey everyone, we are hitting it early again this week. There wasn't a lot done on the prologue this week. Driving back and forth to California in one go sucked shit. I lost an extra day on top of that because I was so fucking tired I couldn't find the drive to work on anything except sleeping. The environment and the characters are ready to go, but I didn't get to posing them yet. I'll get it done next week.
Big news on the Blender front, is that I'm now confidently announcing that ATR will in fact take place entirely in Blender. I managed to get quite a lot of my models already converted. I'm running into some issues with others, especially the few Genesis 8.1 models I have, but I'm working out the fix for that as we speak. Now, the character conversion process was a hurdle that feels good to have made it over, but that doesn't mean this will be a quick process. There is a huge learning curve with Blender. I'm confident I can learn it, but it's not anywhere near as "easy" as Daz was. However, I am making huge strides in my learning. Once I have all the main / side cast ported over, I will be working on re-rigging (the thing that makes the characters move / show expressions) all of them. The Daz rig is shit outside of Daz (and even inside of Daz but I just got used to it), then there are two other types that come as a one-click auto conversion which is MHX and Rigify. MHX I'm not a fan of personally, and sadly, Rigify has no bones for the face for the Genesis 9 models. So, I'll be using a different auto-rigger, which will also come with it's own learning curve. Albeit, should be a smaller one, considering the video makes it look like the rig will be more intuitive and more comfortable for my personal preference of control. Also, has a ton of facial bones, which is good for me, since I've always manually posed my expression (or even created them using Zbrush). For me, the more bones in the face, the easier it'll be for me to make the expressions I want and spend less time fucking with trying to get the same results using only a handful of points on the face. I already started converting some of the environments with new materials (and it looks sexy as hell). I'll also be modeling some of my own, which so far has been a bit lackluster, but like anything, I'll get the hang of it in time. However, that stuff is at the low end of my list given the huge library of environments I can just get on the Blender market and kitbash the rest. Anyways, for my Patrons who are here and stick around through the Blender preparations, I'll be posting previews/insight into the work/progress as well as special renders I'll be doing while testing both the rigs and learning the lighting for it as well (I'm still going to pause all membership until I am actively working on Chapter 1). So, if you're interested in following that journey stick around, or if you're not a Patron, I plan to leave enrollment open for 1 week after release before I lock it down for good until the dev cycle starts.
Anyways, the end goal is still to have this prologue out before the end of the month, but Cloon is on vacation for the next week, so we won't release until we've had time to compile each others work and test one last time to ensure the changes and the new artwork/timing works. So end of July - Mid August if shit really doesn't work. I really don't see it taking any longer than that. I do apologize though for the lengthy cycle. There has been so much extra shit involved this time around. But HUGE fucking things are coming, and I'm so fucking excited.
I hope you all have a great rest of the weekend, and an awesome week to follow. To my followers, I'll catch you next Sunday. To my Patrons; you know where to find me.
Stay frosty,
NME
