VN Ren'Py Captain's Log - A VN Dev Log

[Morgan42]

Captain's Log is a sci-fi, episodic virtual novel I'm currently developing.

Format
My original plan was to do a comic, but I didn't like the idea of having to plan where I was going to put the text bubbles and panel formatting so I'm doing a virtual novel instead.

My goal is to start small, hence why I wanted to go the comic route originally, but I think I know how to find a happy medium. The idea is that instead of chapters, the story is told in "Issues" similar to how a comic is. I think this is doable because most comics I've seen are between 20-25 pages and consist of 60-90 renders (even the ones that do 1 full image as a "page" average around 60-90 renders). Story arcs wil be 2-6 "issues" with a larger continuity being expanded upon and little, in-continuity one-shots.

You'd like this if:
You wondered what a Flash Gordon / Star Trek Voyager mash up would look like... with sex...

What's the premise:
The MC (who you can name) is the newly elected Captain of a colony ship that has been lost in space for 15 years (you boarded said ship when you were 5). The ship has had no contact with anyone, surviving on the food supply you were transporting to the colony. And the prior Captain and his officers were murdered. Oh, and you're the last male on the ship. Now, with food supply running low... and a murderer loose on the ship, it's up to the MC to guide his crew to survival and unravel the mystery of the strangeness going on with the ship, particularly, what the former Captain was up to and why he was murdered.

What is the setting like?
It's mainly on their ship although, future arcs might take them elsewhere. I have a few "world premises" I stole from a D&D DM's Guide for initial plot assumptions:
1. Faster than light travel is relatively new. Humanity just started colonizing a planet called New Hope which is 300 light years away from Earth within the last 20 years. Due to navigation difficulty, many colony ships never arrived at their destination, similar to your fate.
2. Aliens have not made contact with humanity. Humanity has no idea whether they are or aren't alone in the universe.
3. The universe is old. If you ever read any DM guide, you know what this means.

Tags:
Most of the normal ones. The more niche, definite ones are: Incest and Xeno. The beauty of it is that because I'm doing an issue format, I could experiment with these. I could do Forced, mind control, feet stuff, whatever. I can also make them skippable if people aren't into that, although it'll probably be half the issue.

How far along am I?
The first issue is 1/3 rendered and 1/3 written and coded. The first story arc is plotted and outlined for 2 "issues", my goal is to release it initially as a "double issue" so, if nothing else, at least one story is told. The second story arc is plotted and I have an "Interlude Issue" (self contained story) outlined.

Are there going to be player choices?
No, not in this project at least. Since this is my first one, I didn't want to go crazy with the branching storylines. It's really a comic that utilizes renpy. I am going to have a thing where in each issue you answer a question about the "lore" of the story and if you get it right you're awarded a bonus image in a gallery, but the questions are going to be really simple and even if you're just casually skimming, you'll probably get it correct.

I also really want to focus on becoming better with Daz instead of worrying about coding, triggers and variables.

How sustainable is this?
It's definitely sustainable for updates every two months, but I'd like to treat it like an actual comic and do one a month. My rendering times seem to hover around 30 minutes for most scenes, even the ones with more than one person in them and I'm shooting for the standard comic range of 60-90 renders per update.

What genre is this going to be?
Other than Sci-Fi? The first arc is definitely mystery. The one shot I have planned is more of a wacky, slice of life comedy. The second arc is slightly more action oriented, at least as planned. Remember old Spiderman comics, where some were issues were serious, some were zany and some were emotional? That's kind of what I'm trying to encapsulate.

What about the girls?
This could easily get out of control but I have 8 planned, with 5 of them designed already but I'm unhappy with 2 of their designs. Ideally, the community would have an input later for which ones get featured.

In my next post I'll start the actual log and talking about the girls designs. And pictures. Don't worry. There are pictures.

 

[Morgan42]

So first I'd like to highlight the MC and 2 of the MC's sisters:

The MC

Spoiler: MC Photo Inside

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Name: You name him.
Age: 20
Occupation: Ship Captain. Former porter

The main thing with the MC was that I wanted to avoid having him look like he was 12. I wanted someone who can concievably be seen and taken seriously as an officer but who is simple enough to look like an "everyman."

His design is actually a mix of Daz G8M Jorge, Alexander and Darius. I think I used the skin from one of the asian characters to give him a fairer complexion. I think he exudes confidence and yet has a tinge of fragility, which I think is important. He's not arrogant or cocksure, but he trusts in his crew and more importantly, trusts in himself to do what he thinks is best, even if it's not the "correct" answer.

His original design utilized the Yuzuki skin and body, but he looked way too young and entirely too much like an anime character, something I wanted to avoid. The MC is someone who is thrust into a very adult situation with very adult responsibilities before he was entirely prepared for it.

The outfit may be changed. I found one that I think looks cooler for a Captain.

I think it's important to note, that none of the characters have had sex with each other. There are plot reasons for it and it's one of the mysteries of the ship.

Rebecca - Your Twin Sister

Spoiler: Rebecca - Sister Picture Inside

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I put her in street clothes to show her figure.

Name: Rebecca
Age: 20
Relationship to MC: Twin Sister
Occupation: Support Scout Pilot

Rebecca is the MC's fraternal twin. I actually based her design on an idealized version of Rebecca Chambers. She's the main source of familial support for the MC and they have a very loving and supportive relationship. If there's one person the MC can rely on no matter what, it's Rebecca.

On the ship she's pilots one of the two one-seater scout ships. She's the lesser pilot so she usually flies in a support role.

Design Choices:
I wanted to make her slight and give her a nice juxtaposition with her older sister (you'll see). I think her face adequately conveys a sweet innocence that is important for the MC to have around him during such a turbulent time. She's a mix of two SASE character models, her skin is from a third, Irish based character, and I scaled down the body proportions. One thing you'll notice is that I'm big on body and phenotype diversity, especially in an ensemble story, I think it's important to mix up the body and face types. I kept her make-up minimal to highlight her tomboyish nature.

She's actually one of my favorite designs.

Sabrina - Your Older Sister

Spoiler: Sabrina Picture Inside

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Name: Sabrina
Age: 24
Relationship to the MC: Older Sister
Occupation: Chief Security Officer

Tough as nails and jacked as hell, Sabrina loves her younger brother but still treats him like... well, a younger brother. Interestingly, she's the only one in the family who has a somewhat positive relationship with their mother.

Design Choices:
I actually have a few "making of" initial design pictures that I'll post below. I wanted a "muscle character" especially since the MC is the only male on the ship. I think I did a fairly good job of trying to balance muscle with femininity and I think the body works really well with her face. Her personality isn't going to be overly masculine, she see's herself as the MC's surrogate mother since their actual mother is... kind of a bitch.

Sabrina was the first character I designed. She was originally supposed to be the MC's mother, as illustrated in this below image. She had a much softer body, different hair and bigger breasts. I thought she still looked too young so I retconed her into being the MC's older sister.

Spoiler: Sabrina Initial Design

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When I retconed her, I already had the other characters planned, so I decided to go with a more muscled physique. Something with the sliders made her face too puffy which is illustrated below:

Spoiler: Sabrina Second Iteration

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I fixed the face and sharpened some of her features to give her a cleaner, leaner look. The last test is fairly close to what I ended up with:

Spoiler: Sabrina Third Iteration

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I fixed her butt too from the above photo. I'm very happy with her final design choice, and while I know muscle girls aren't everyone's cup of tea, I think she makes a good addition to the ship, especially when compared to Rebecca.

Here's a preview screen from the VN itself. It's when you first run into Sabrina. I think it shows the balance between femininity and muscle very well:

Spoiler: Sabrina Bridge Render

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Next post is going to be the mother and the former design and subsequent redesign of one of the chracters who I'm not happy with, the ship's doctor/medical examiner.

Also to come is the youngest sister.

 

[Morgan42]

In this update we're going to talk about two characters, the MC's mother, and the doctor whose design I want to redo. Then an update on progress.

MC's Mother

Spoiler: Mom Picture Inside

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Name: Mom (Carla)
Age: 54
Relationship to the MC: Mother
Occupation: Member of the Ship's governing body

Stern and old-fashioned, the MC has no fond memories of his mother. Her loyalty to her family is unwavering but she see's strict obedience as the means to the end. She has effectively pushed her children away, with the exception of Sabrina, but has solidified her spot on the Ship's governing body, The Triumvirate, along with two other of the older ladies of the colony ship; which means, like it or not, the MC is going to have to deal with her on a more frequent basis.

Design Choices:
I wanted an actual older female to portray the mother as, too often, stories frequently have a mother character who looks 35 and still has a slamming body. In another post, I want to delve into certain tropes or triggers that denote certain character archtypes, but for now I've given her a larger, heavier bust than most of her daughters and made her body a bit softer and curvier to represent age. I used an aging morph for her body and face, but I had to heavily fiddle with morphs as just using agers seems to jump characters from early 40's immediately to their 70s. I added subtle wrinkles around her eyes, mouth and neck and decided for a blended white and black for her hair.

One note, with the exception of the MC, I tried to make the daughters and mother look similar enough where they can concievably be family members, but different enough that they weren't clones. I did tests where I basically used de-aging morphs on one model and changed the hair skin and some morphs, but my results were entirely too similar. All three women share around 35% of the same head morph, and I think that was sufficient to give them a similar, yet distinct look and give me the body and face diversity I was looking for.

The Doctor, Hange (Scrapped Version)

Spoiler: Hange Original Render

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Obviously the name is a homage to Attack on Titan. Unlike the other models I used, this Hange model never really clicked for me. When I was making the mother and sisters, even in early iterations I felt like I was on "the right track" and my designs for them ended up extremely close to what I imagined. This one, on the other hand, never really vibed with me and although I think it's gorgeous, I think a full redesign is in order.

Design Choices:
This was an example where I think I tried to force something. I really wanted an asian character (there will definitely be at least one) and so I started the design for Hange with that concept. The initial idea was to either have this character be asian or have a set of asian twins (both ideas have been currently scrapped) and I knew I wanted the doctor to have a petite figure. Rebecca is petite but she's still curvy, and I wanted a flatter character. I think whatever asian character I'm do is going to be bustier but this is just one that didn't work out. If I kept the character, I also would have changed the eye color. That rusty color is just not working.

I'm placing two pictures in the spoiler below. The first was going to be a scene where the MC is talking to her and the second was a test scene I ran with her (I was originally going to relight it and use it as a bonus scene you can unlock). The results of the test scene are actually what drove me to decide to cut her, but who knows, maybe in a few days, I'll revist this and say "In the end, I decided to keep her."

Spoiler: Two Pictures of Hange

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The Youngest Sister (Scrapped Version)

I posted this picture in the Daz3D thread here after I decided not to use this design.

Spoiler: Youngest Sister Picture Inside

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Design Choices:
The plan was that I wanted the youngest sister to have a completely different style than the other family members, so I opted here for a gothy look. I ended up being really, severely, unhappy with it because I think it adds entirely too much of an edge to her and I still want her to be one of the more innocent characters. I also didn't think the base model I used for her fit. I have an idea for a redesign and I'll probably be working on that in the next few days.

Most games have the youngest sister being the most petite member of the family. My current redesign it her as the bustiest one of the sisters.

What was worked on today?

Today was a whole bunch of testing. I think I figured out a general lighting system that I can set up and adjust easily for most scenes. I also practiced rendering a bunch of action and sex scenes and practiced different camera angles. So that was fun. A bunch of them were threesome scenes so I can practice actually posing character instead of relying totally on pose packs. That was to varying degrees of success but I'm still trying to figure out how to make a good double blowjob scene.

I also am well into creating another milf character. I'm actually really satisfied with how she came out (Ideally, she'll be a member of the Triumvirate) and want to try setting up making her a daughter that looks similar to her.

What's on the short term to-do list?

In order:
1. Redesign Hange
2. Render Hange scenes
3. Design other important (surprise) character
4. Render rest of Issue 1 (About 2/3 left)
5. Write and code rest of issue 1 (About 2/3 left)

Other work includes:
1. Redesign youngest sister
2. Design other characters
3. Bonus renders for issue 1
4. Cover design for issue 1 (I haven't even thought about this)

And that's it. My next post will probably be the Hange redesign.

 

[osanaiko]

Good luck, keep going, release early (even to closed beta), get feedback but do what YOU want to do!

 

[Morgan42]

Today's post is going to talk about 3 things; if I make multi-point posts like this in the future, I'll put a little index at the top so you can either ctrl-f or skip your way to what interests you:

1. The difficulty in creating the doctor
2. How to start the story (and where the first H scene come in)
3. Character Design of Kelly, the other scout pilot


Then an update on progress.

1. The difficulty in creating the doctor

I have no idea why but this has become an exercise in frustration. Every design I come up with I throw out for being to similar to another character or just not feeling it. The one good thing about this is that one of the tests was eventually repurposed as Kelly, who will be previewed below, and she has a fairly important part to play in the story. I was considering rewriting this part of the issue, but I think her contribution as the actually smart character is important, especially in the early issues where the MC is still learning everything. I still have a few ideas but I had to take a break from her creation since, after a while, everyone starts looking the same.

2. How to start the story (and where the first H scene come in)

Let's be real for a moment. In the end, this is a lewd genre project. Although there are elements of mystery, adventure and sci-fi, the reason people will read and follow Captain's Log instead of watching Star Trek or Battlestar is for the lewd content.

That being said, where do you put your first scene? Actually, where do you put each scene in each issue? 60-90 renders might sound like a lot, but I'm noticing that I'm 1/3 into the first issue and at this rate, the lewd scene wont show up until early Issue 2 (hence why my first release will be a DOUBLE issue).

Neil Gaiman, author of Sandman, wrote a very good article concerning how comic issues utilize the three act system. It's something that modern comics don't do anymore since most comics on shelves are written specifically for collected editions of 6 issues, so that 3 act structure is spread among 6 issues. That's not what I want to do. I want to do the classic structure where you can jump in at anytime and not be completely lost, but you're rewarded for sticking with it.

What does this have to do with the placement of the first lewd scene? In my current outline, I have each issue seperated into these parts:

Issue 1:
Act 1: Initial Task
Act 2: Investigation
Act 3: Revelation

Issue 2:
Act 1: Immediate Fallout of Revelation
Act 2: Dealing with and learning the consequences
Act 3: Resolution

I obviously kept it very vague and used language that may or may not be involved in the actual story, but where do you put a lewd scene? Currently I have the first lewd scene occurring in Issue 2, Act 2, but my very first draft had it in Issue 1, Act 3. I also don't like the idea of going a single issue, even the first one, without some sort of lewd scene in it and I can even see a good storyline reason to have one in Issue 1 Act 2.

What I notice is that a lot of games do this thing where each "relationship" follows a track. First, there's either peeping or accidental viewing, then there's seeing them masturbate, then handjob, blowjob, sex. There's nothing inherently wrong with this, it's the natural course of events, but for the first few chapters, the MC is either peeping on everyone or clumsily running into everyone.

A lot of developers solve this by giving the MC a pre-existing girlfriend who gives a sex scene in the first release, or by making one of the character a slut. Neither of these are a "wrong answer" but it wouldn't really fit this project.

Another thing I've seen and actually considered doing is to start it completely with a dream sequence where the MC is having or about to have sex with one of the main characters. It's a good tease tactic.

OR I could just bite the bullet and explain it by saying, "well, it's a double issue on purpose so at least I didn't release one non-lewd issue without giving you a lewd one." I haven't fully come to terms with a resolution, but it's something to think about.

3. Kelly, the other scout pilot

Spoiler: Kelly Design

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Name: Kelly
Age: 18
Relationship to the MC: Acquaintances, though she is best friends with Rebecca
Occupation: Lead Scout Pilot

Kelly is the lead Scout pilot, flying one of the two scout ships aboard the colony ship. Her wingmate is Rebecca and they're basically best friends who enjoy a bit of a friendly rivalry. She's acquaintances with the MC, mostly through Rebecca.

Character Design:

Kelly is probably the more stereotypical character I made. I wanted a cute character who oozed sexiness. Hence the big eyes, small face and blonde pigtails. I added the tinge of red to give her a bit extra "oomph." Since this is an incest story, the family is the ultimate goal, but I wanted to give a very obvious secondary goal I know people would like to see. Having her primary friendship be with the MC's closest sister also makes her attainable in the eyes of the audience, which is always a bonus. I think there's a lot of room for Kelly in the story and she's really nice to look at.

Progress Update

I rendered an alternate beginning which I ended up not liking and also practiced lewd scenes, particularly lighting which has been a massive pain in the ass, but I think I'm starting to understand iray as long as I don't fiddle too much with hdri. I already spoke about the failures of Hange, and that ate up a bunch of hours. If I don't make progress on Hange, there's another scene in the middle of Issue 1 Act 2 I can do that doesn't involve her, so that's my plan for the next 2 days. Ideally, up to and including Issue 1: Act 2 will be complete by the weekend, although I'm expecting more.

Good luck, keep going, release early (even to closed beta), get feedback but do what YOU want to do!

When I'm done with Issue #1 I'll definitely be asking for beta readers.

 

[osanaiko]

obviously kept it very vague and used language that may or may not be involved in the actual story, but where do you put a lewd scene? Currently I have the first lewd scene occurring in Issue 2, Act 2, but my very first draft had it in Issue 1, Act 3. I also don't like the idea of going a single issue, even the first one, without some sort of lewd scene in it and I can even see a good storyline reason to have one in Issue 1 Act 2.

What I notice is that a lot of games do this thing where each "relationship" follows a track. First, there's either peeping or accidental viewing, then there's seeing them masturbate, then handjob, blowjob, sex. There's nothing inherently wrong with this, it's the natural course of events, but for the first few chapters, the MC is either peeping on everyone or clumsily running into everyone.

A lot of developers solve this by giving the MC a pre-existing girlfriend who gives a sex scene in the first release, or by making one of the character a slut. Neither of these are a "wrong answer" but it wouldn't really fit this project.

Another thing I've seen and actually considered doing is to start it completely with a dream sequence where the MC is having or about to have sex with one of the main characters. It's a good tease tactic.

OR I could just bite the bullet and explain it by saying, "well, it's a double issue on purpose so at least I didn't release one non-lewd issue without giving you a lewd one." I haven't fully come to terms with a resolution, but it's something to think about.

As the scenario is sci-fi future anyway, you could riff on the dream sequence and have some sort of virtual sex scene, holodeck style or vr goggles or whatever. perhaps tie the MC's "stress relief" into the plot somehow.

 

[Morgan42]

I have a few updates:

1. Rendering Dynamic Scenes
2. Text to Render Ratio
3. Rerendering Scenes
4. Problems with Mom's bodytype

Rendering Dynamic Scenes

If anything can kill a comic more, it's people standing around talking. Moreso, people are less likely to read the text if the screen only shows talking heads. Part of the struggle is my instinct to want to show everything happening in a scene at all times, especially with lewd scenes. This usually leads to "pin-up" camera angles being used which are cool for a portfolio, but don't really translate well for a VN.

A gimmick I'm using is combining both first person and third person views. The first person view gives me great visuals of the girls' faces and bodies with awesome eye contact and the wider third person views give a good view of the action. I've seen this strategy used in past games and VNs and it works surprisingly well. You have get the benefits of the striking visuals of first person view and the versatileness of third person view. Plus, while in first person view, you don't have to render the MC, which is nice.

Another camera angle I really like is "over the shoulder." I've been using it especially when I want to show the MC performing an action while seeing from his viewpoint.

Text to Render Ratio

One of the things I've been keeping in mind is dynamic camera angles and text to image ratio. In ren'py, where the user clicks to get to the next piece of dialogue, I'm trying to keep the amount of clicks to a maximum of 6 clicks per image. I want to have enough text and dialogue to tell a story but at the same time I can't render every single line of dialogue. Comics usually do this with multiple balloons of back and forth text on a single panel and this is my way of emulating that.

Further, every render should be doing something. Either showing an action, conveying an emotion or at a bare minimum, showing off the sexiness of the characters. I think Sunshine Love by Mr Dots Games does a great job of this. Every single render in his project shows off how attractive the girls are. There are no wasted renders, at least with the women. I want to avoid rendering just to render.

Rerendering Scenes

I finally understand why people go back and rerender old scenes instead of working on updates.

Let's use this preview scene for example.

Spoiler: Preview Scene

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This is objectively a bad render, but in my defense, this was one of the first batch of scenes I rendered.

First, there is entirely too much empty space to the right.

Second, the composition for this was doomed from the start. The draw, or the focus of this image is the window to the back. It's where your eyes drift while looking at it. Also, the mom character is too small, especially for this scene where she's interacting in a power play with the MC. She should appear more imposing and larger. She's also flatly lit and I just noticed a clipping issue, but I can fix that in post...

Everything in my system is telling me to rerender this image and then, while I'm at it just rerender the whole scene. But I remember how frustrated I would get when devs would put new updates on hold to rerender past chapters. Further, I'm noticing that I'm hyper critical of my rendering. I've been showing some of the previews to people and the feedback has been very favorable and my non-project renders that I post around the web have been well received as well.

I have a goal release date in mind and as I get closer, depending on how far I am, I may rerender certain images, like the one above but I don't want to put work on an update on pause due to rerender the wholly rendered scene.

Problems with Mom's Bodytype

As you can see in the second preview post, the mom character is definitely on the curvier side. This is unfortunately causing problems with clothing that I can successfully fit on her. Most of the clothes are having significant clipping issues and many of the clothes do not have enough morphs that I can play with to try and get them to fit. It's a little frustrating because I think I nailed her body pretty well for a 54 year old women with 3 (or 4 depending on how this goes) kids. My current workaround utilizes clever posing, but that can only get me so far.

Progress

1. Hange the doctor is made. Went in a completely different direction with her but I'm really happy with it. I'll save her preview for a later update.

2. In my last post I spoke about an opening sequence that I partially rendered and scrapped. I've since retooled the idea and have rendered about a "page and a half" of it. I expect the scene in a standard comic would have been 2 pages + a double page spread, so I'm looking at about 8 renders and am up to render 7 on it.

3. Since Hange, the doctor, is complete I've begun rendering her "intro" scenes. I'm satisfied with them, but only got 2 renders deep and then got distracted with the intro since it was more interesting and dynamic to me.

4. I've been rendering a lot of test sex scenes using the characters for bonus images, but those bonuses probably wont see the light of day until much later. I want the "progress" of the scenes to match the progress being made with the girls in the VN. For instance, a bonus image that depicts her having sex with the MC wont be included before the first time you have sex with Kelly.

I'm also using the bonus images to play around with different costumes and settings. Since the bonus images aren't in cannon, we can have the girls at the beach in bikinis or dancing at a saloon in the wild west. I like it when bonus images depict the characters non-cannon, I think it was one of the best parts of Milfy City, so I'll be incorporating those.

Solid progress being made. It looks like 3-6 renders a day is completely doable, but that means that an issue every two months might be the update schedule I need to do. I would still have to code and write the thing, then proofreads, edits, maybe a few render additions, etc. I'm currently not using a render queue though, I'm just sitting, posing rendering, reposing when I realize I made a mistake and then going on my other computer while it renders, so maybe a queue would speed stuff up and I would just have to sit, pose and low res test render a bunch of scenes at once and queue them.

As the scenario is sci-fi future anyway, you could riff on the dream sequence and have some sort of virtual sex scene, holodeck style or vr goggles or whatever. perhaps tie the MC's "stress relief" into the plot somehow.

That's a great idea. I figured out how to incorporate the opening sequence into the story in a way that moves the plot and introduces some elements and hopefully wont feel cheap.

 

[Morgan42]

An interesting development.

My gpu has 8 gigs of VRAM which I was hoping would be enough. Unfortunately, It appears that I cannot fit 5 people into one scene in one render without it dropping to cpu. Now, I have a very good workaround for this, but it involves me rendering the same scene multiple times. Very unfortunate, but I tested my workaround and as long as I don't move the camera, it works very well, you wont even notice it. The good news is that, the first time I experienced this drop off was while I was explicitly trying to see how many people I could fit, so I've never had a render drop to cpu while working on this or any other of my figure and prop heavy renders, including foursomes. I think it's a texture issue ass well as HD skins, as that seems to be what triggers the cpu to take over, so I'll have to very carefully watch my assets.

I am also still oversampling at 4k and then reducing to 1280, so I can also use something like scene optimizer and I've been told the reduction wont be noticeable if I really want to do a scene involving more than 4 figures.

Progress:

We're at 36 renders total + extras, so we're into the second third of the first issue (remember, the first release is planned for a 2 issue release). The rest of the issue is completely plotted so I know exactly what scenes will look like and what renders I need so it's just a matter of rendering those images and not getting distracted with rendering Sage from "Being a DIK" getting spitroasted by my MC and a black guy. While Jill watches. No promises though.

When I complete issue 1, I'll send it for proofreading while I work on the second issue of the initial double issue release. Then proofreading for that while I start the third issue, make any edits, and then release.

I rendered and wrote the intro so now we're just making our way through the story.

I've included a preview render of the intro below. Enjoy.

 

[osanaiko]

My gpu has 8 gigs of VRAM which I was hoping would be enough. Unfortunately, It appears that I cannot fit 5 people into one scene in one render without it dropping to cpu. Now, I have a very good workaround for this, but it involves me rendering the same scene multiple times.

Another way is to use something like the Scene Optimiser scripts to selectively reduce some of the extreme high resolution texture maps, or additional maps such as translucency or bump, on either the background objects or the characters further away from the camera, to allow the scene to fit into your available GPU Ram.

 

[Morgan42]

Today's update will be 3 things:

1. Progress
2. First or Third Person?
3. Hange Reveal

Progress

Real life stuff popped up today and so I was only able to render 2 scenes (I'm actually rendering one as I write this). This will be normal, real life happens, hence why I think the two month update schedule I have planned is effectively guaranteed to work. I'm lucky that most of my scenes render well (resized at least) after 20-30 minutes. Like I said in a previous update, I actually got clearer details from oversampling for 20 minutes than running the native resolution render for the full amount of time. The two scenes were the final panel of the initial meeting with Hange and the first panel of the next scene, which is a small interlude in the story and then it hits the crux of the final half of the issue. I also started writing the dialogue for the Hange scene. I need to rework some of the dialogue with the initial mother scene, I already noticed an inconsistency, but that should be relatively quick.

By the way, the secret is ghost lights. I know that spotlights give you better and more realistic shadows, but they're such a pain to render with. Most of my scenes are one spotlight and then using the ghostlights as the fill lights. Just don't render with the particle or godray lights. That led to one of my overnight test renders running for 7 hours, and I haven't had anything run past 4 hours.

First or Third Person?

Comics break this rule a lot. One issue will be told in the first person of the main character, another issue will be told in the first person of a side character, another will be told in the third person. I've been reading some old Batman issues and frequently, they'll have first person narratives and in the same book you'll see a page or two of what the villain is doing across town in their secret lair.

The reason I bring this up is simple:

Lesbian content.

How the hell do you have a ship full of women and not have lesbian content in it? Obviously, if you're playing a first person game or reading a first person story, you shouldn't be able to because the MC is not actually viewing it take place. But obviously, I would want that to happen.

In the story, the MC "talks" to the reader. Not in a breaking the fourth wall sense, he basically talks through his thoughts as he's working them out. If this was a comic, this would be illustrated with thought bubbles. The problem arises with "POV switching." The MC is the main focal point of the VN, we frequently see other characters interacting with him with a first person camera view of them (though not always) and the MC's thoughts are generally known to the reader. If I have the MC walk out of a room and then I switch to one of the sisters, it could be jarring and cause confusion on the part of the reader. They may assume we are seeing the scene through the eyes of the MC, when in fact the MC isn't even there! However, not being able to do that really puts a hold on the lesbian scenes that are possible unless the MC is perving on every single woman on the ship.

I've considered a few options.

The first is to have basically a title card indicating the character we are jumping to. Yes, I totally stole that from the Game of Thrones books. I think it's good because it's a clear indication that we are now following a different character. So a "title card" with an image and render of the character will be shown and then jump into the character's scene.

The second idea is how they do it in the comics where they'll have a text box that say "Meanwhile at Bludhaven..." This is fine also but I think it lacks the versatility of the title cards. Plus, it kind of puts your scenes on a timeline so there's less wiggle room with that.

The third is, "fuck it, who cares," and just jump into the scene. I've seen some games and VNs do this and if I remember correctly, I've never particularly been confused by it.

I currently leaning towards the first option. It's simple and I think it's the cleanest way to do it and it can set up a lot of different scenarios. In fact, one of the "one-shot" updates I have planned completely follows one of the girls.

Hange, The Doctor

I bring you, the last of the preview characters (there's one surprise who will not be previewed), the doctor of the ship, Hange!

Spoiler: Hange, The Doctor Preview

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Name: Hange
Age: 28
Relationship to the MC: Doctor
Occupation: On ship doctor / medical examiner

I'm previewing her in one of her in game outfits because I like it so much. Like I said, I went in a completely different direction with her and I was so thrilled with it that I threw out my other plans. Hange is the thicc with two c's mocha skinned doctor of the colony ship. She's probably the most intelligent of all the ladies on the ship and she's noticed some weird medical reading recently coming from everyone...

Character Design:
I knew I needed a more exotic look and none of the Asian models I was playing with really gave me what I wanted. Originally I wanted a flatter body type but since I already had skinny busty, petite, mom-sized and muscle, I just went with the next logical choice, THICC (I tried to keep it reasonably realistic). I added the future glasses because I thought it'd be a nice touch and I think the green streaks both push the sci-fi setting and look great on her. She's quickly becoming one of my favorite characters to play around with and I don't seem to have clothes morphing issues with her like I have with the mom character.

That's it for the character previews. Next update will probably just be updates on the scene renderings and little things that pop up.

Another way is to use something like the Scene Optimiser scripts to selectively reduce some of the extreme high resolution texture maps, or additional maps such as translucency or bump, on either the background objects or the characters further away from the camera, to allow the scene to fit into your available GPU Ram.

I have it but I haven't started using it yet. Gotta do some tests with it this weekend. I heard it could cut textures by half.

 

[Morgan42]

Quick update today:

- We're up to 53 total renders for the first "issue". As I stated before, I noticed that the average comic was between 60 and 90 renders. We're definitely up to the rising action of the issue which will end in a cliff hanger, so my pacing is on point. I was taking a look at updates people do for their VNs and it looks like 100-150 renders per update with an average of about 3 months in between updates. This is all anecdotal, but it looks like my plan is in the ballpark.

- Another anecdotal thing I noticed is that it seems that VNs and games with "scenes" average around 5-10 renders per scene and around 6 "clicks" of speech. Once again, it looks like I'm in the ballpark.

- I really want to see if I can shorten my 2 month issue release to 6 weeks, but we'll see how long it takes me to do these.

- I already have ideas to do "crossover issues" with characters from other games and VNs but let's shake out a good amount of actual content first.

- Working with only one male character is actually more difficult than you think.

- Rebecca is by far my favorite character to work with in general, but Hange is my favorite to come up with unique camera angles.

- I have no idea what the cover art is going to be yet but it's probably going to either be in the vein of No Limit Taboo's covers or I'm going completely old school and recreating old comic book covers.

- The sex scenes are going to be very heavily influenced by hentai.

- I realized that if I ever do a patreon I'd have to rewrite a large part of the story... so there goes that.

- I'm starting to regret doing the story in 1280 and am wishing I just did it in 1920 to begin with. The thing was that my strategy was to use compression so I could cut the renders off at 20 minutes and hide the flaws, which it did very well, but I think 1920 is the "new standard." The other problem is, that I only started keeping the original 4K renders with render number 29 so all the others are resized already at 1280. I have no idea how to fix this. I'm also kind of convinced that resizing from 4K to 1920 still hides all the flaws. Based on my previous test renders, the difference is negligible and you can only barely see it if you overlay and flash the to two images quickly, multiple times.

Here's an example. I invite you to download both images and open them in "photos" next to each other and flash through them quickly. Both were rendered in 4K. The first was rendered for the full 50 minutes. The second was stopped at 25 minutes. The only thing that moves is the head. Do you notice a quality difference? I do at 3 spots but it took me about 15 minutes of staring to find it and they're really small.

I also now realize I probably should have done depth of field....

Spoiler: Render Previews

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- I seem to "burn out" at about the 4th render each day. Also, "establishing shots" are really dumb.

 

[Morgan42]

So, I've been having an issue, mainly, lighting.

The problem I'm having is one particular scene where we need very low lighting. The issue is, that this set with the low lighting originally took up the last third of the first issue and the first quarter of the second issue.

I'm using iray, so using spotlights slow my renders to a crawl, even with my GPU. I'm trying to fiddle around with ghost lights and use those (they tend to give less realistic lighting and sheen/reflections but render much faster and do a solid job for a multi-render project) but everything still comes out too dark.

To set it up, they're in a dark room. The room itself isn't very large and I placed 3 "bulbs" emitting yellowed light at 100 kelvin. I think the plan is to strategically move the bulbs around per render to give me the best lighting possible while still keeping the renders dark.

Progress

- I took Wednesday off because I needed a break and Thursday I spent trying to come up with a solution to the above problem which I think I discovered. We're up to 59 renders but I still need 2 "establishing shots" for earlier scenes, so story-wise I'm up to the 62nd render.

- I've been letting the renders cook for an hour lately as opposed to 20 minutes, all in 4K. I'm unsure if there will be a noticeable difference but I like the idea of saving the 4K renders and they need at least 40 minutes to look good at 4K.

- I'm actually nearing the part where the first issue "cliffhanger" is going to be. I predict I'll get there by the 75th render, but there's a scene I want to add in the "second act", so that'll probably bring our final "first issue" render count to 85-90.

- Writing wise, I've made no progress, but the beats and the outline are completely written so it's just a matter of writing the dialogue. I usually go through 3 rewrites for dialogue over the course of a week. I'm going to work on that tomorrow while renders are cooking.

- Still no clue what the cover is going to be, but I have a few concepts in mind inspired by old Sci-Fi comics.

Have a 4K preview. The general context is exploration:

This was actual lighting. No ghost lights.

 

[osanaiko]

Sickleyield (of course ) has a useful video on dealing with darker scenes.

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Separate to that, my understanding of the problem with slow converging when using spotlights rather than an environment HDRI is a lack of light
- the way the render engine works is that it uses different sources of light in the scene to calculate the color of each pixel in the eventual output. when the different light ray bounces end up with significant differences in the calculated color, then that is called "unconverged". The idea being that as more and more light bounces are calculated eventually the color "converges" to the a single value. the target "convergence rate" which is one of the ways the render engine can be setup to judge completeness. mor direct light falling onto the problem surfaces can help reach a converged color for the pixels faster.
- anyway, to deal with the underlit shadow areas that end up being so grainy, try adding more spot lights pointing directly into the shadow areas. Just dial down the intensity and/or use a color that matches the expected color of the eventual shadow (dark blues/purples at night work well) so that they don't overwhelm your primary brighter focus areas of the image.

- another technique that may work better for you is to *overlight* the scene, perhaps with several ghost lights, then very bright 2 point lights on the focus characters, and dial up the intensity on those so the focus figures are almost whited out in iray preview. then go into the render settings and change the exposure setting down so you get a much darker result.

 

[Morgan42]

Sickleyield (of course ) has a useful video on dealing with darker scenes.

You must be registered to see the links

Separate to that, my understanding of the problem with slow converging when using spotlights rather than an environment HDRI is a lack of light
- the way the render engine works is that it uses different sources of light in the scene to calculate the color of each pixel in the eventual output. when the different light ray bounces end up with significant differences in the calculated color, then that is called "unconverged". The idea being that as more and more light bounces are calculated eventually the color "converges" to the a single value. the target "convergence rate" which is one of the ways the render engine can be setup to judge completeness. mor direct light falling onto the problem surfaces can help reach a converged color for the pixels faster.
- anyway, to deal with the underlit shadow areas that end up being so grainy, try adding more spot lights pointing directly into the shadow areas. Just dial down the intensity and/or use a color that matches the expected color of the eventual shadow (dark blues/purples at night work well) so that they don't overwhelm your primary brighter focus areas of the image.

- another technique that may work better for you is to *overlight* the scene, perhaps with several ghost lights, then very bright 2 point lights on the focus characters, and dial up the intensity on those so the focus figures are almost whited out in iray preview. then go into the render settings and change the exposure setting down so you get a much darker result.

Wonderful, I'll take a look at that.

Here is an example of the "dark scene" set up I have. No post work:



Obviously, the lights on her clothes are adding to the render time but I quite like that. I think I struck a good balance of keeping the subjects lit but making it clear this is a low light environment.

These renders take me about an hour to cook at 4K.

 

[Morgan42]

Progress

- We're at 68 completed renders and I just hit the end of the issue. We still need 2 establishing shots that I'm absolutely procrastinating so we're at 70 planned renders. I'm expecting to do a few days of writing, rendering a scene I need for the middle (at least 6 - 12 renders), then filling in needed additional renders where necessary. All in all, I predict the first "issue" to be approximately 80-90 renders.

- Beta reading will begin as soon as I'm satisfied with issue 1. I'll be looking for people to give feedback mainly on story cohesion and render suitability per dialogue. While that is being done, I'll be working on the "second issue".

- Don't forget, issues 1 and 2 will be released as a special "Double issue."

- The predicted full release will be in October. This is mainly due to ren'py screens. I want to have a gallery, "Issue selection" and bonus image screens and I have to program them. As of now, the only one I kind of know how to do is the bonus image screens. I think this is the really ambitious part because I particularly want the "Issue Selection" screen to look like a store shelf and having images of the issue covers that you can click and take you straight to the issue. We'll see.

- The "surprise character" has been designed and I'm actually fairly satisfied with the result.

- Transitions are giving me problems so this will definitely be a trial by fire. Most games handle transitions by having a world map, but in comics it's a little different. I'm hoping my transitions aren't too jarring or confusing.

- I'm still on the fence about the youngest sister, but I'm leaning towards scrapping the idea. All my current and future characters have very defined roles and the youngest sister would really just be there.... to be the youngest sister.

No previews today because all the renders I did would give too much plot points away.

 

[Morgan42]

Progress

- I'm making very good progress. I've written half the dialogue and am just working on the final 3 renders. If there are no other add-ons the first issue will be 80 story renders in total, not including the cover or bonus images.

- I lost the first bonus image I made for this issue. I straight up have no idea where I saved it.

- The first issue is definitely mystery/investigation based. I introduce a lot of the characters organically.

- I don't like the way I wrote Kelly. I may rewrite it. She seems too smart and too serious. I want her to be more playful.

- I particularly like the characterization of all the other characters. I think it's different than the usual "horny son wants to bang his family." In fact, the MC does not want to actively bang his family. He's too worried about trying to be a good leader.

- I should be looking for beta readers for issue 1 this weekend, depending on how writing goes.

 

[Morgan42]

I have the first draft of my cover.

I went with the simplified, recent DC style trade dress.

I'm mixed on the actual text of "Captain's Log". I originally wanted something like the newish Batman comics where it's the text overlayed on a logo.

I don't think it looks too bushleague, but you never know. I haven't really used PS since the days of graphic forums (remember those?)



Here's a slightly alternate text logo:

Simple signature.

 

[Morgan42]

So, I got caught in a rabbit hole of epic proportions.

I downloaded a bunch of lighting tutorials from... a site... and studied them and at the end got upset because all the info in them was stuff I either already knew or was super basic ("turn off the visible dome") stuff.

The crux of this is that I want more dynamic lighting without having 40 spotlights clogging the render.

I know that part of this is that I'm dealing with mostly indoor scenes and can't really maximize HDRI maps the way you can in a pool scene.

It's a little frustrating because my goal is to make sure my renders aren't flat, but for the most part, indoor lighting is generally flat lighting.

So that's what I've been doing for the past week. I've been messing around with different lightings, surfaces, etc. I still haven't found a solution I'm happy with but I have my standard set up which works OK. I just want it to be better.

I also started playing Ghosts of Tsushima, so enjoy a photo of Sabrina dressed as a Ronin:

 

[osanaiko]

Do you already know about the "Iray Interior Camera" (

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) ?

It uses a pre-setup combo of a camera and 4 Iray Section Planes that cutoff all the scenery that is out of sight of the camera field-of-view. The result is that a HDRI environment map can flood into your indoor scene, which really lets you brighten things up and can seriously reduce the render time. Then, assuming your hdri has a couple of strong light sources, you just rotate the hdri environment map until you get the directional light you want.
You can even use "interior HDRis" which are basically images of the inside of a room.

 

[Morgan42]

We're talking about what I've been working on lately which basically amounted to "Post-Work".

After my last post, I was really upset because it seemed like no matter how I tweaked my lighting, results varied wildly from set to set, even when using the same settings, and my renders weren't coming out the way I was envisioning them.

After studying some people whose renders and compositions I really respect and looking at some tutorials, I realized that great artists weren't getting the results I was looking for from rendering. A render straight from Daz and plugged into ren'py isn't going to cut it. Everyone, whether they admit it or not, is using post editor software to clean up their images.

That being in my head, I dusted off photoshop and started trying to learn how to really make my renders pop. The results ranged from "yeah, that looks a bit better," to "Wow, that saved the image," to "stop adding filters, you're making it worse."

We'll use two examples. One from a side thing I do to decompress, and one from the comic itself.

First, take a look at this image.



It looks fine. It's pure HDRI lighting. I was fine with it but I wasn't happy with it. It still looked flat to me, particular around the thighs and body. (I positioned the hdri to illuminate the face optimally).

I pulled it up in photoshop and fooled around with it and got this:


I like this way more. There's an argument that under her eyes are too bright and blown out, but look at the body and the thighs of both the male and female. Way better lighting on them. I also obviously added a depth of field blur to the background which you can see on the top right. This is supremely closer to what I envisioned for the scene.

Now let's take what we learned and use it towards the comic. The results are a little less dynamic but still very noticeable:


This is the original image. I think I did well with a slightly dim hallway. The main lights are coming in from the front off to the side giving them decent shadows on their profiles facing towards the background.

Now this is after postwork:


There is obvious sharpening done also but look particularly at the shadow and colors. I think you see it best on the floor on the bottom right, the blue trim. The image is way less flat and more dynamic just from a very brief post-work session.

As I play around with this more and discover more settings and tools, I'm confident that my view of lighting in Daz will change from "finished product" to "just get the fucking shadow right so I have something to work with in post."

Here's a new image of Rebecca. This one is "Alternate Universe Fantasy World:
: