- Nov 14, 2017
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- Thread starter Maleficent
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- Nov 15, 2022
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Unless there is a new gameplay mechanic that wasn't doable in Renpy, there is no justification for a mid-development "restart".
- Feb 24, 2021
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Although, in this case, the gameplay mechanic won't change, only the way he makes the 3D renders will.
Dev did mention engine change will allow new locations (non-Capitol: East, probably North) that have been mentioned in-game but weren't possible to render in DAZ3D.
- Nov 14, 2017
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mrdots, hachigames, kthulian, danielsk, talothral, ...........
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What a month it has been. The highest highs, and the lowest lows. The good news is that we are ending the last 30 days on a high note. For my regular patrons who watch the behind-the-scenes videos, a lot of this will be review. The rest of you, please strap in.
Clothing - What A Mess
Clothing nearly did me in. Days of testing and tweaking kept leading to dead ends and major issues. I was a bit worried we would need to convert TBaK to a nudist game. Thankfully improvements in the software I use to convert Daz models and clothing to UE, along with a few bold experiments paying off, led me to finding a way to make clothing functional. I even have some revealing options for some clothing, and that will open up some fun possibilities. I'll continue to refine the quality of the clothing, but I'm able to throw nearly any outfit through the process now and get a pleasant result.
Character Changes
Nothing is ever perfect with conversions, and as I did more close up shots, I noticed issues with several characters. The good news is that those were pretty easy fixes. I'll just be spending a little more time reconverting certain things on the characters to get improved results.
Massive Progress
Let's not talk about only the challenges. All that isn't behind us yet, as 3D rendering always provides strange obstacles, but there are some significant positive developments now. Let's start with the biggest: work on content for Chapter 11 (content that will actually show up when you play it) begins tomorrow. Getting back to some "normalcy" with new content you all can actually see previews of a relief after these last few months. Even better is that my theory that not only would Unreal Engine improve quality in some key areas, but that it would speed up my workflow is proving true.
I can already setup static renders more quickly in UE than I could in Daz (and, if you remember, I was no slouch in speed there). Even better is that renders are coming out much more quickly with matching quality to Daz. As an example, I did five lovely 4K special renders for patrons in July. These took a bit over 35 minutes to render out from UE, and that was with a lot of "buffer" renders to allow the physics simulation to properly start. In Daz, those renders would have taken me at least 5+ hours to render out at 4K. Obviously that is a massive difference. Since then, I've gotten render times down even further, with no loss in quality.
I continue to get more comfortable setting up animations and single frames in Unreal Engine, and that bodes well for the future. I've already got a small list of future improvements I want to experiment with, and those will get tested sometime after Chapter 11's release.
The Next Big Things
Custom lewd animations will be the next big thing to nail down. Creating realistic animations to go along with my realistic everything else is not something I'm taking lightly. Thankfully I've been studying some of the better animations out there for some time, and with everything else that needs to be prepared for Chapter 11 starting to wind down, I'll be able to really focus on this work.
Past that, I'll continue to squash the little problems I'm still encountering. There has been so much to learn during this process, and a lot of it are things I hoped I could put off. The upside is that I am pretty comfortable in UE now and continue to get more comfortable daily.
The Home Stretch
While this conversion has taken some time, it is nice to have validation that it will be worth the wait. My three big goals will be achieved: increased quality, beautiful animations, and improved setup of renders. I know you all are eagerly awaiting the next chapter, and you won't have to wait much longer. At the near seven-month mark since I started this transition, while I would love to have a finished release, the majority of the heavy work is now completed and tested. With rapid render times and quick setups in UE, things are looking very nice for Chapter 11 and beyond. This work was a lot more "trailblazing" than I imagined when I started, but seeing things come together is satisfying.
I'll be back in another month with what should be a significant progress update. There will definitely be previews coming steadily over the next few weeks.
Enjoy an
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I did about a week ago.
- Nov 14, 2017
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- Apr 24, 2020
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Remotely Upset? Did you create this account just so you could rant and complain?
- Nov 29, 2019
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New renderer, who dis?
I’ll just call her Turbolip One-Eyebrow in the meantimes.
I’ll just call her Turbolip One-Eyebrow in the meantimes.
- Oct 29, 2021
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I don't know if it's just me, but all the girls look weird, even more so in this test video, the lighting seems exaggerated, giving a negative effect on their faces.
- Nov 14, 2017
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Hmmm...everyone looks uglier and fatter?
- Nov 14, 2017
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- Oct 10, 2022
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She looks weird now, compared to her original model. At least the others seem okay.
The girls look weird and uglier now. Why do this? If it is for a change in mechanics or gameplay I'd say it was not worth it. The trade off is way too much in the negative for that.
Model characters are looking uglier .what made dev to shift from Daz to UE ?
Aww man..waiting all this time only for the girls become uglier & weird..Whats with the change?
Daz already fine.
Daz already fine.
- Nov 14, 2017
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- 33,663
Definitely not worth it if the girls look like this..