VN Ren'Py Game Dev Journal: Inner Demons (Ch 4 progress)

GrayTShirt

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Nov 27, 2019
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I was able to squeeze in a couple more images today. Here's one of them.
 

GrayTShirt

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I've hit a sticking point... Nooooooooooooooooo!
Working on this flashback, I'm trying to make a timber house on fire, with a fight scene and rescue scene inside. It's a bit more than I know right now. It's taking a while to figure out how to construct this scene.
EDIT: A new problem crept up just after I posted this... the idea for a new story. Nooooooooooooo! I still need to finish this one, which I think will take up to a year. Wonder if I could work on it as a comic or something to break up the work...
 
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GrayTShirt

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Working on the final scene for the update. Problem is... it's big. Like real big. A camp site with an army, tents, horses, fires, prisoners... Yes, those are full size horses in the upper right corner.
Why do I do this to myself...
 

osanaiko

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Working on the final scene for the update. Problem is... it's big. Like real big. A camp site with an army, tents, horses, fires, prisoners... Yes, those are full size horses in the upper right corner.
Why do I do this to myself...
That *is* a large number of objects. Do you hide some of them at render time? or use the iray section-plane camera rig? I'm impressed you're able to render at all with that many objects and figures.
 
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GrayTShirt

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I hide whatever isn't in the viewport. Rendering a scene this big only takes about 30 minutes @ 2560x1440, 2800 samples. I'll do about 30 images and let them render overnight and while I'm work. The problem is actually rendering though, it's the work.

5950x, 64gb 3600mhz RAM, RTX 3090, M.2 SDD. Even with all this hardware, it takes a long time to open big files or manipulate high-detail assets in the viewport. Could be because I'm rocking a huge 4k monitor though. If I dropped back to an HD 1920x1080 monitor everything could move faster since the video would be easier to render.

Or something, I don't know how this shit works.
 

osanaiko

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I hide whatever isn't in the viewport. Rendering a scene this big only takes about 30 minutes @ 2560x1440, 2800 samples. I'll do about 30 images and let them render overnight and while I'm work. The problem is actually rendering though, it's the work.

5950x, 64gb 3600mhz RAM, RTX 3090, M.2 SDD. Even with all this hardware, it takes a long time to open big files or manipulate high-detail assets in the viewport. Could be because I'm rocking a huge 4k monitor though. If I dropped back to an HD 1920x1080 monitor everything could move faster since the video would be easier to render.

Or something, I don't know how this shit works.
I feel ya!

The most frustrating thing for me about Daz is not the render times (as you say, it's possible to run those as a batch during downtime). It's the clunky-ness of the user interface and the slooooow load times for assets.
I don't think monitor size makes a big difference (unless you're working in Iray preview mode, in which case yeah it would have some speed effect).

If you haven't already done it, there's a setting in Daz config that makes the UI much snappier than the default install - apparently they have it OFF by default (and sometimes it goes back to OFF in a version upgrade) because there is risk of incompatibility with some video drivers meaning the software won't even start up.
Anyway, try changing "Edit -> Preferences -> Interface -> Display optimization" to "Best" and see if it helps.

Second big speedup is reducing the numbder of installed morphs. Apparently having lots of morphs installed is also a big killer in the load time of assets - the app has to go through and pre-load up every single morph slider, just in case the figure needs it.

There's a fantastic free tool by F95 user NSware (https://f95zone.to/threads/daz3d-manager-tool-0-6-09-08-2020.33888/) that allows you to uninstall/re-install morph assets from your Daz folder, which can make a big difference on figure and scene load times.
 

GrayTShirt

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Renders done!
327 of these fucking things. Tomorrow I'll do the post-work, then start working on the script. Then the coding. I need to learn how to do those "If this is selected, then go to this image" blah blah blah...
What does this take so long!
 

GrayTShirt

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Procrastination has now set in... or rather, set in over the weekend.
Got half a page for the script done.
How do you guys get over it?
 
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osanaiko

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Procrastination has now set in... or rather, set in over the weekend.
Got half a page for the script done.
How do you guys get over it?
The classic methods that i use for beating procrastination on creative projects are "Just 5 minutes" and "don't skip":

"Just 5 minutes"
- even if you don't feel interested, force yourself to spend 5 minutes and make a single minor change before you go to do whatever else is distracting you. Write one paragraph, setup one part of an image, re-read and edit one section, convert one section of dialogue into code. You'll often find that once you get started, you end up spending more than 5 mins. But if you really don't want to, just save your stuff after 5m and go do something else.

"don't skip"
- never skip a single day. always make at least one step forward. Make it a challenge to see how many days you can go without a break. Get a paper calendar and mark a red X on each do you succeed. Target 7 days, then 14, then 1 month of continuous X streaks.