You must be registered to see the links
Ello Otters!
There's one more playtest for the Playtest Otters, and we are good to go! Initial reviews have been great, aside from a few critiques about how to fix a few renders. Most of those are rookie mistakes we can fix easily. That's what we are doing with our paws right now while the Playtesters play this section of the game and we continue to wait for the animators.
With early access coming, we are going to give you the blog we have been planning for a year! Why was there such a big gap between Chapter 2 and Chapter 3?
Let's talk about the magical formula!
+Back in March of last year, our previous artist, as you know, quit. It then took him about a month to get our Main Otter the assets for the game, and it was never every asset at once. Getting them was a ripe ole ache. That was about a month of no work being completed.
+I then needed a work computer (waterproof, of course). It had to be custom built and took about another month to get the rig. The graphics card was not powerful enough to render at that time, but was good enough to run Daz and beginning learning.
+Learning Daz Studio. It took about 6-7 months for an Otter with no previous 3d art experience to become proficient in Daz! It wasn't until about November that I was good enough to pretty much do everything on my own. In that same month, a better Nvidia graphics card was acquired. While it isn't the big boys of the pond, it can hold its own.
+In this time, with the help of the awesome Otters who had been working with us, we had been fixing the assets we were given for the game. And we. Mean. Fix! Every single time we opened something new it was another problem. Face assets weren't right. Hair was unruly. Rylee's face and Chrysta's face had to be completely revamped, with Gemma's, Rylee's, Xia's hair needing brand new assets all together. Layla's hair is still a mess, but we made it work for this Chapter. Environments had to be completely revamped too. Layla's House had a makeover, her beach is an entirely new asset, Coconut Academy is a new school... these things take way too much time to fix, but we swam through that maelstrom and have much better characters and environments!
+We had been working off of the duf from the finale of Chapter 2 and into Chapter 3. That first part is over 200 renders, so we didn't know that because the characters had been positioned so far from the center that any sort of render decorates the characters with artifacts. We had to completely redo this scene. This was, of course, a rookie mistake. Rookie mistakes are gonna happen, and ever since I, the Main Otter, began rendering as well, I have been learning and adapting and mastering Daz. I am happy to tell you all that I am now quite comfortable with Daz and can pose and render much, much faster and better.
+Between all these thing and little things between, that is why it has been a year between any major release! Like, pretty much exactly a year between that release and this one. We promise this won't happen again! Now that I am the Otter for everything in the game, aside from animations, things are going at a much better pace. This year, you are guaranteed Chapters 3 and 4. I cam actually pose a whole chapter now in a few months. Is there much to learn and master? Yeah, eh. Lighting and camera work is always a nuance that requires the most attentive of whiskers. It's going to look better with every new chapter!
We want to thank all our Otters for their patience, understanding, and above all, the faith in our paws to make the best game possible. It's because of you and the belief we have in Matrix Hearts that we have made it this far. And we are going to swim much further in this big ole ocean!
You're about to play Chapter 3 Part 1, and we can't wait for you to enjoy!
-The Otter Team
