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Hello,
So let's get right in.
I had to take two days off last week because I canceled the lease for my apartment in March and welp, there were days where people came to look at it.
I had to make it presentable and guide people around.
The last two weeks were spent mostly like the previous ones. I did daily postwork, made animations, did Blender, and wrote a bit.
I mentioned the restructuring for S2-CH2 in the last Dev Log and I probably cut the update in half... Not probably, if I think about that it has 6 different endings, I have to cut it in half.
I don't want another 7000 render update.
This means that Season 2 will have 11 chapters instead of 10.
From now on I will stop writing S2 - CH1. Everyone should know it's about Season 2 now.
I finished postwork for all the renders I already created for CH1. (5100) I'm absolutely burned out on postwork but knowing that 2/3 is already done is nice.
I finished animations for an early scene. (9 animations - about 1480 frames).
Most of my time is still spent preparing the release for a different project. I'm doing my best to finish it as fast as possible, but all updates deserve a good polishing.
Special choices
I came up with two ideas for Season 2, after some initial testing and talking to people I decided to scrap one because it would disrupt the flow and make it feel more like a game.
I don't want the game to feel like a "game", if you catch my drift. It's a story that should flow seamlessly. That's why you'll never find freeroam or sandbox in the game.
Instead, I added something else:
View attachment 4771839
Sometimes you'll come across colored choices. (I'm still looking into animating them, but it has no priority.)
Forget about the text in the choices. Here's what they really mean.
- Purple choices advance or start optional lewd paths. This is how you access optional kinks.
- Red choices will be used rarely because I want you to rely on common sense. A red choice only appears when you enter a route that can potentially fuck up your playthrough.
They're super fun, though. But you gotta be a little careful when you pick them. You only get the Red warning once. After that it's back to common sense.
An example where such choices may appear are routes where you aren't exactly faithful. If there was a choice in Season 1 that would've deserved this "warning", it would've been the one where you date Vic and Mila at the same time.
For now they will appear when someone owes you a favor. You can collect quite a few of them in Season 1, and they can give you extra choices that can solve a situation.
But that doesn't mean getting a favor is necessarily the right choice. Sometimes, not asking for one might be better, but it depends heavily on what you're going for.
However, having one can give you additional choices. (Bella having to give you her cheese fries.)
9 hours of Jiggly
I almost forgot.
Shortly after the last dev log, I found my new nemesis.
I was deep inside some animations when I encountered an issue.
Let's say you have a boob that jiggles from kinetic force. The boob is on layer 2. The first layer is the upper body, it moves before the energy transfers to the boob, duh.
Let's take this up a notch and add ring nipple piercing. Said piercing is on layer 3.
Let's go even further and do it for the head too.
- Layer 1: Upper body
- Layer 2: Lower Neck
- Layer 3: Head
- Layer 4: Hair/Ear Rings
I don't do one-way loops. If I loop an animation, it needs to have at least three consecutive yet unique parts.
Finding the right timings and looping it correctly was a nightmare, as the first few frames not only had to start the animation but also catch the manually dialed-in kinetic force at the end.
It can never stay still and each layer has to be in perpetual motion. Meanwhile, I had to keep in mind that the character was rotated about 35° to the right, means the right side of the body behaves different.
My giant whiteboard and I were pacing through my apartment for an hour trying to figure out the correct timings...
One thing was clear... by the end of the night one of us would be jiggling. Me from the ceiling or the character in Daz.
Each test render took about 35 minutes and after 9 hours of tinkering I can proudly say...
This is by far the best and most realistic kinetic force adaptation I have ever created in Daz. It requires math and pre-calculating each layer but... I think it's worth it.
I won't do it for most of the animations in Chapter 1, simply because of the time pressure. But from Chapter 2 onwards, I will give every animation the full service.
Saaaaasha Blender
Under last the Dev Log someone wrote that the Blender Sasha looked different.
And I said that it's the "exact" same Sasha as in Daz... Let me explain.
A friend wrote me on Discord and also asked me about it and we got into talking. I opened up Blender and rendered her again without the expression, and I also adjusted the Color space and voila:
... Wait a minute. The color space didn't change. The preview in Blender showed the changes, however, the final render didn't.
That's when I found out there was a second colorspace tab that was set to Override.
It must have been added in recently? I wasn't aware of it.
But first something important:
I'm NOT aiming to create Blender images that are better than what I can create in Daz. The current goal is to get as close as possible to my Daz quality.
It was never supposed to be better at this point in time. I'm a Blender-bibi. I'm still learning.
For now, I just want to reach my Daz quality, which I will eventually surpass with time. It's expected for my first Blender renders to look worse.
It's a whole new work environment, and way too much time passed between my Blender shenanigans for me to call myself anything but a Bibi.
So... Let's play a game...
Does Blender Sasha look like Daz Sasha?
Who's the Blender Sasha?
View attachment 4771837
....
....
You made your pick?
....
Left is Daz. Right is Blender.
Did you pick the correct one?
...
I lied.
Left is Blender and Right is Daz.
I tried to create the exact same render with the same light, the same camera and HDRI environment.
But the cameras do look different (they have the same focal length and lens), and I couldn't match the HDRI environment either.
It's just a different 3D world.
This is not about what looks better out of the box. It's about the bone structure, etc., and I can barely distinguish them.
I will post a Blender render more or less every Dev Log now and we'll see how they evolve over time.
In this render I ported Bella's bedroom over and added animated waterdrops to the window. I imagine Bella and MC having a cute moment where they both cuddle in front of the window and watch the rain.
That would be a neat, little cinematic.
View attachment 4771836
Preview - 4K attached.
Sunday Afternoon Blues
View attachment 4771838
There are two types of people... Those that lie in the sun and relax, and those who are doing whatever in the back.
Having done postwork for over 5000 renders already feels really nice. I've gotta create and postwork another 2000-2500 renders and a shit ton of animations and the 3D art creation aspect is mostly done.
Ugh, I have to render a ton of images for the gallery again...
Better get back to work.
