Color of My Sound
-Working Title-
Development Journal Entry #1
Color of My Sound is a Sci-Fi, Espionage, Drama, Erotic visual novel centre around a cast of characters each confronting their own problems while keeping their desires in check.
-Working Title-
Development Journal Entry #1
Color of My Sound is a Sci-Fi, Espionage, Drama, Erotic visual novel centre around a cast of characters each confronting their own problems while keeping their desires in check.
Color is set in an original sci-fi setting written by me after a dream I have had one night. It is a setting chock full of potential for character drama, conspiracies, espionage, intrigue and action, all in front of a sci-fi backdrop to give it better believability but also flair. In Color, humanity has unified under the rule of the Empire after a turbulent war across the stars that nearly irreversibly fractured humankind forever. Although an empire built to last, nothing ever will. The political dynamic between the Emperor, the Three Houses, and the Imperial Court has managed to keep the Empire in a fragile balance for a millennium. One small but precise spark could ignite and engulf humanity in the firestorm of war once again.
The story began when a rebellion on an unprecedented scale erupted across the Empire's worlds and humanity faces an uncertain future for the first time since the Empire's inception. The infamous day has abruptly altered the lives of many, including our protagonist. The Protagonist was an aspiring musician, working job to job making ends meet. The chaotic war has ripped his financial stability and forced him into a life of military service.
An ill-fated mission during his service has seemingly irreparably taken the Protagonist's spark for music, worst, he could no longer hear it; nothing but ruin awaits him as the nobles of the Empire have taken interest in him for all the wrong reasons. Would he ever rediscover his love for music and the joy of life? Or would he numb himself in sorrow until impending doom inevitably reaches him?
About Me
Hello everyone! I am on the journey of making my first visual novel. This journal will act as a schedule for me to follow, just to help keep the development organized and on pace, but also to see if I could get any feedback during pre-production, so I can make the right adjustments before I crank up production on the renders. For this first entry, I think an introduction of myself is pertinent. I am Gallant, I have been playing games found on this site for about two years now. However, even before then, I have written several stories on my own time as a hobby but never found the right medium to release them in. Despite the enjoyment I get out of writing, I do not like writing novels at all. I have a huge disdain for writing and reading prose, especially the purple kind. Instead, I want to tell my stories and my worlds through striking visuals and dialogue. Visual novels just seem like the natural answer to my quandary.
Also, I like porn, so why the fuck not?
This is the first time I've delved into the world of 3D rendering. I have previously worked in a 3D animation studio managing render farms and such, but that was just a random job I landed after school. I do also have some experience working with games in general, I do a lot of modding for games that I play, and I have worked on games with others before. But to sum up my strengths, it is definitely in the story structure, and game design category. Rendering is very much uncharted territory for me. As of writing this journal entry, I am exactly 5 "days" into Daz Studio, and today, I'm going to record the progress I've made so far here.
One last thing before I move on. I won't be revealing much more of the story just yet. After all, it is my first time doing this, I don't know if I can produce the renders I need to tell the story as is. Trying to make a sci-fi visual novel as my first one is quite the challenge, I'm well aware of it. I am determined to at least get the feel of sci-fi right, but the plot and structure are not set in stone at this time. Fortunately, I have written the story with adaptability to game development in mind, so this isn't an issue. I already have a few different plot and structures planned out, I just need to pick the right one. I will make up my mind once I know where the limits of reality are. For now, all my focus is on getting the renders right.
Day 1
I did the obvious and start messing with Daz Studio to get used to working with it. So far it has been fairly intuitive. This is probably a "famous last words" moment, but so far it's pretty easy to use. I managed to render a shot of a "scene" after eight iterations by the end of the day, however, I am utterly embarrassed by it.
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Although it was a quick, hastily taken render, it felt wrong and not at all what I want the game to have. But we all make mistakes so we can learn from them, tomorrow should hopefully be better. In this particular render, the biggest issue I have with it is the lack of flavour and character. It felt soulless, but now I know what my objective for tomorrow would be.
Day 2
Day 2 is all about getting the basics of rendering characters right. Finding the right shaders, lighting and render settings is the goal. So, I started to build my proto-character who is based on one of the main love interest of the game. I used this opportunity to play with morphs and shaping a bit to get the look I wanted. This time I also tweaked the pose to better fit the shot, unlike day 1's. The result is these two shots of her.
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I'm much happier with these. It's not there yet, particularly I find the skin to be a bit boring to look at, and the eyes were kind of dead. Much of the positives of the shots are carried by the quality of the assets themselves, and I didn't feel I did enough to really feel attached to it like it's my own work. The lighting is also lacking character and flair, it was mostly lit by the environment. So day 3's goal is "personal touch".
Day 3
To achieve the goal I set out for myself, I decided to do something like a profile shot or a portrait. Lighting was also a big issue I want to tackle. This time, I used a spotlight and emissive plane to mimic reflectors. I also played around with different emissives to add some detail to these more close up shots. The backdrop was changed quite a bit so she's not standing in the middle of a sky or something.
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This one was almost perfect, my only complaint was I didn't get the catch light I really wanted out of it. Trying to do it also took a lot of time to render, and unless I could find a more efficient way, it's not worth it. So this second render tried to remedy some of that.
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This was rendered in 4320x4320 overnight. It didn't actually take the whole night, and it looked clean and clear in my eyes. But I had to sacrifice a few other lights to render it within a reasonable time frame. Overall Day 3 I felt was very productive, I achieved everything I wanted, so on the next day, I can move on to something really important.
Day 4
Today is all about sex. I'm not ready to do full sex scenes yet, but I need to start somewhere. So obviously the very first thing I did was I gave her her sex. Then its a matter of posing and getting the lighting right. Using the lessons I learned the last day, this shouldn't be too hard right? Or maybe it should...ANY way...
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This is also the first render I ever did some postprocessing on. The render took far too long, and I honestly don't know why. So I had to downscale and touch it up a bit in Photoshop. Frankly, Photoshop is so powerful at what it does, this method is just much more time-efficient than trying to render a shot for 2 hours, only to still have noises. I would likely do the same for most renders in the future I think. This next shot was where the "famous last word" comes back into play, I was tearing my hair out trying to get it right...
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I hate the Timeline so much. I have a little bit of experience with Flash before, so I'm not completely uninitiated in the world of animation tools, but this was a nightmare to get right. Why is it so difficult to just delete some frames, or copy their states around? I mean it took a while of experimentation to learn how to get the cum shot to land in the places I wanted it to, but trying to do two spurts was far more immensely aggravating to do. All I wanted to do was simulate the first shot, save and freeze it in place, then simulate the second. I really didn't think it would be that difficult. I've got to figure out how to do this the "right" way, there has to be one right?
Day 5
This is probably the most important day so far. In order to tell the story I want to tell, I need to get the scenes right. There's plenty of assets in the store for characters and morphs and poses, this really was the easy part. However, finding the right props and getting the right look for a sci-fi story has been very difficult for me so far. It's too expensive to buy all the assets out there, and with only a limited amount of sets, it would mean the story has to take place within very few locations. Fortunately, I foresaw this issue, and it's not like a sci-fi setting has to have a very robotic, futuristic, metallic look to all its scenery. I would need enough spaceship interiors and exteriors, some planet or space station scenes, anywhere else I could probably make do with contemporary or even fantasy sets. The look of them, however, is far more important, so this is the goal of the day - Turning a contemporary cafe, into a sci-fi one. This is not going to be achievable in a day, so for now, let's get the lighting right. Set dressing will be for another time. The follow render will serve as an example of what a conversation scene in the VN would look like.
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This is the first attempt at making the look and atmosphere of the scene. I chose a colour palette of blue and purple, I think they're fitting for a futuristic look, but also fit the thematic tone of the story. THE major theme of the story is "Balance". How do we balance all things we do and have in life. This goes from the very top of this world - The Empire as a whole, to each individual person at the bottom of any societal structure. In the story, the Protagonist can develop personal relationships with the supporting characters, but no one starts off as a friend, most are enemies, whether they want to be or not. This scene is done in the PoV of the Protagonist, where he would be having a casual, potentially intimate conversation with a love interest. The Purple represent the futuristic version of warmth and personal haven, with a tad bit of intimacy and romance (red), and the ever seeping Blue from the outside world represent the cold, ruthless, unrelenting reality of their situation. For now, within this little cafe, they can find warmth and comfort with each other, but once they leave, it is a completely different story.
The bokeh is my way of filling the outside with something, mainly to mask what the background really is. It's a pretty rough implementation of it, but for now, I think it does the job fairly well. I would be amazed if anyone can recognize it.
Overall, this has been a milestone worthy day. I feel like I could actually make something out of the assets I have. And with some set dressing, it is very possible to do the setting justice. For now, I'm taking a break from sets, and next time I want to work on posing multiple characters and maybe render a couple more sexy shots
That's it for now. Thank you to anyone that reads this. I will be doing more entries in a few days when I got something new to share. I know the love interests are a big deal, so once I figure them out, I'll introduce them one by one to you all. Cheers!
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