What I mean about blender: Ocean says experiment, but he's been experimenting at least a year, with results. His early blender versions of Sasha were not great, but they weren't far off, the one of Zara was fantastic. Sure it's a still, but again I don't think he's been sitting still on it. I don't think he's going to risk worse animations than he has already in Ch1 (which are still better than a lot of AVN's). I believe he is understating the situation, to give himslef an out if he doesn't meet his own standards with Blender. He only has to do one to find that out. If the first animation doesn't get him excited, he'll probably switch back from then.
But as some point in the dev cycle, he'll have to take time to do it in blender, because he wants the extra features it offers. There is never a good time to take away dev time to experiment, at least this way he's being productive while experimenting rather than doing throw away exercises, fingers crossed.
For progress, what I meant is that outcome can arrive in any form. If it's continually delayed, it's not an outcome, yet, or yet. SO it needs to eventuate. The longer he leaves a product to eventuate, the further it slips from people's minds (until you show them another Katie render

). So in this sense, the tools and metrics are less important to me than the sense of development goals (releases). For a patreon, the process is more important, as they are supporting the process. I'm intruigued but I'm also a sucker for Katie renders, and suddenly I can wait another two weeks. Ocean doesn't get my money until delivery though, so outcome in WiaB's dev time is far more critical than for SG right now, and make WiaB much less of a side project.
Regards the bifurcation of renders to all permutations, to some extent, the optional sex scenes worry me less than the clothing. Clothing means the whole game needs optional renders whenever Dana or Mila are present, in classrooms etc. And extra 50 renders and different animations for sex scenes are less work than every animation with say Dana will have 4 variations, two for clothes and two for body sizes in every render she's present. Then two different options for each of those options if Katie has clothing options. I don't want dressup doll simulator 2024 to arrive in 2040 and all my meaningful choices boil down to which colour teal sets off Katie's eyes...