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1. GPU status and the A6000 Quadro
2. Particle hair
1. GPU status and the A6000 Quadro
It's still impossible to acquire a 3090 at the moment.
Nvidia stopped selling their cards completely on their own website and many Third-Party shops keep unlisting the 3000 series.
The PC that is currently working on WiAB isn't able to render but I cannot wait that much longer.
I will try to acquire a 3090 by the 15th of November and if don't get one, I will 'waste' 500-600€ for a used 2080Ti so that I can at least render again.
I also shifted my attention away from the 3090 to the A6000 (Quadro)
Sadly, the 3090 is not capable of sharing the memory in a Dual GPU NvLink setup. Which means I would run into some serious Vram problems in Blender later on. (24GB for Daz are probably enough.)
That's why I will probably go for an A6000 Quadro which should hopefully release later this year.
This card features 48GB of Vram and you can run it in a dual GPU setup for 96GB Vram which would eliminate all Vram problems 'forever'.
The current goal is to acquire two A6000s for both PCs. This will probably cost around 16.000 - 20.000€ and it's an investment I am willing to take.
I hope I will be able to acquire these over the next 1 - 2 years.
But just because I am not capable of rendering full-sized scenes for WiAB at the moment. Things are not staying still.
2. Particle hair
For those who don't know, the number of male hairstyles for Daz is extremely limited. And many of them are very low in terms of quality. At least if you go for a photorealistic look.
It's the same for the female hairstyles, just that there are actually a few good hairstyles (OOT best) but still the number is limited and that's why you see the same hair in many different games.
This won't be a problem anymore.
The solution to this problem is "Particle Hair." from Blender.
Particle hair can be grown on any surface and as long as I can imagine the hairstyle, I can create it.
I started experimenting a few days ago and the first victim for this is going to the MC.
When I enter my focus-work mode I often forget to do screenshots.
It took me a while to get things working and a lot of bug fixing and understanding certain aspects was needed but I feel quite confident now.
In the MC's case, I started with 4 different hair zones. (Bangs, Top, Sides, Back)
Here for example you can see the weight map of the Back/Side
Red is the "heaviest" and that means there is a maximum of 100% hair grow and the hairs get smaller and less dense the further we move to the edge.
Which is extremely nice for pubic hair, eyebrows, and beards.
You can blur the weight map to have a smooth transition from dense hair to small little ones.
I ran into a really annoying problem which I managed to fix after around a day of frustration.
The hair wasn't dense. It looked like he the MC stayed on a steroid cycle for way too long.
I sadly do not have a screenshot of the "Steroid-cycle MC-hair" but you can see it here in one of the earlier screenshots.
I already got it a lot more dense here but it still had some problems.
Anyway, let's skip to the current state of my hairdressing career.
This is the current state and first test hair for the MC. I kinda did go for a surfer look but this is not the final product and I didn't polish it at all. So in the actual game, you will see a different hairstyle that looks more natural.
I plan on giving every single character particle hair and I will try to reproduce some memorable hairstyles like Katie's hair.
Okay, besides the unlimited possibilities and customization it offers. Does particle hair feature any other pros?
Oh yes! And this is the reason I decided to learn it.
It has
'hair physics'.
This means I will never have to animate hair manually again. I can use
external forces like
wind and
movements to influence the hair.
The hair will behave like real hair during animations which will save a lot of time and will look so much better.
Other pros:
- I can let the hair grow and cut it whenever I want.
- I don't need to create a complex hair shader for every character.
And be sure I spent a lot of time trying to find the best solution to make the imported hair move naturally.
Here is what I did some time ago but it just never looked natural because it kept stretching the mesh (hair).
All the energy and time I currently invest in all this stuff will save me so much development time later on. As soon as everything is running and I got the new GPU we're looking at a big improvement in terms of development speed.
But less talking, more working.
Until I get the new GPU or the used 2080Ti, I will proceed to create environments for past Chapter 1, hair, and other stuff like fluid simulations.
I can't find some older screenshots/videos I had that were about fluid simulations and animated cum shots, but well.
I just wanted to update you guys on the current stand and don't worry if I don't do a Patreon post every week. I am working on the game every single day and when I post, the post is usually filled with information even tho the current GPU situation is out of my control.
- Ocean
