WiAB Chapter 4 - Dev Log #26
Yo,
Left to do:
Lewd animations (Currently worked on and almost done.)
Main cinematic (Currently worked on.)
Postwork (Currently worked on and almost done.)
Testing (Currently worked on.)
About 1200 render need postwork and that part is done.
Polishing is going to be a very important part from now on.
I've thought about extending this period in the past as I usually get a lot of neat ideas during the testing and polishing phase.
And I'll do that from now on.
As soon as the game goes to the testers, I'll start the polishing process in combination with their findings. (Currenlty I'm only testing it myself.)
Mental health and what Blender has to do with it.
If you don’t care about an in-depth view into my retard-mind, you can skip this part. Take a stop at the Blender previews, enjoy a cig and a soda.
Over the past two to three months, I had an unprecedented mental health decline. A week ago, I would’ve said it came out of nowhere, but I figured out what caused it.
Me creating two giant updates at the same time did play a role and it put a lot of pressure on me, but the main culprit was something I did in December/November…
I put Blender on ice.
See, I could do this kind of work until I die. All the rendering... The writing... I love it.
However, maybe it’s my ADHD but I need some novelty here and there… I need problems slash challenges or I start changing bodies. (My theory is that this is a result of it. Lol.)
About two years ago I stopped having big accomplishments in Daz.
I’d say I know what I’m doing and there’s not a lot of growth left. (In the areas I care about.)
I still experiment in Daz, but it almost never goes anywhere because my experiments have become… insane.
I have created abominations in Blender… Lighting setups that I port over to Daz that look like entities from another realm… Cosmic horrors straight out of a Lovecraft book.
Huh... Now I wonder... Who would win... Halo's flood or the WH40K's Tyranids?
... Back to the topic.
Years ago, I talked about hitting the ceiling in Daz, and now it's more prevalent than ever.
I need input to increase output. I need to learn. I need to get frustrated with issues.
Last week I fried my brain with hours of postwork and thought… You know what, let’s start up Blender and port Sasha from scratch on the new Workstation.
And I was greeted by a fucked-up rig, eyes bulging out, wrong/weird modifiers. The whole deal.
I was intrigued… and I went down that hole.
Some of you might remember this Blender render:
View attachment 4730454
My plan was to make a whole little treat set of it but I encountered a bug that I call ‘The Blue Horror’… A bug that would never be fixed.
One way to fix this issue was to use a custom built Blender version, however it took almost 2 years for one to come out that changed certain values in Blender’s source code.
So I was stuck on Blender 4.2 until someone modifies a new version and uploads it. Doing it myself was… yeaaah… That required some knowledge I didn’t have. You have to install Nvidia Cuda and Optix, otherwise your GPUs won’t work. On top of that, you can only use certain versions.
Long story short: I woke up. 17 hours of frustration. Pure flow state. Food optional.
I did it. I learned how to build my own Blender versions, modify its source code and implement all the stuff that is needed for a fully functional experience.
Then… Sasha.
No more pre-build rigs for easy access… I wanted to suffer and learn.
So, time for ARP (Auto-Rig-Pro) and I have no idea how many hours I spent on it, but by the end I had a fully functional rig.
I rigged the eyes from scratch. The whole deal. Result? Sasha is now crosseyed. Back to the drawing board. A natural gaze was needed.
I started from the beginning 15 more times until it worked. A natural gaze. On top of that, I used drivers to create a harmonous dance between the eyes and the eyelids.
In Daz, Genesis 8.1 and upwards got this functionality. But 95% of my characters in Daz don’t have that. Their eyelids don’t react to eye movement.
0.5 eye_rot on Y and that stuff worked.
It gave me a lot of ideas for the use of drivers…
A person bends over and shape keys with a custom sculpt that I would do in Blender would gently activate and form a tiny bit of a belly to mimic real life… Penises who’d react in a certain and precise way.
Soft body simulation is also a way to do this, but I want to see what I can create with some precise Zbrush sculpts, shape keys, drivers, and some coke light.
So many ideas...
Then I jumped into some animations… Boobs first. Jiggly wiggly. Works. Looked pretty good.
I do have two mini goals… Both are technically cinematics… The first one is much shorter than the second and it will combine a few different aspects that are essential for my cinematic approach... and what I want to become.
But I still need to find a solution for one slight problem… Wait… While writing this I got an idea.
Animation layers that ease in like offset stairs while keeping a linear key mode… I have to try this over the next days.
Mental health and motivation are back on 100%.
I’ve come to the conclusion that to a degree I need challenge and novelty. I need complex problems that elevate my daily work. I need the accomplishment.
And with Blender it’s like… I always leave a session with more knowledge than before. I can ride this high for days and my creative output is so much higher.
I don’t think I would’ve “actively” noticed how heavily I drive on this without the two behemoth updates.
Usually, a release gives me that feeling of novelty and accomplishment. Or coming up with a new cinematic and getting the music for it… That feeling is amazing.
Maybe I talked a little too much about Blender and my ‘experiences’ with it and I should’ve saved it for an actual Blender log… On the other hand, these are my dev logs and I write whatever I want. People can skip what they don’t want to read.
However, I gathered that most like the more in-depth dev logs. (The Blender logs will be your nemesis.)
I do have screenshots of the whole Sasha procedure that I'm saving for the Blender log… I swear it comes out eventually, but not before the release.
Right… I created two renders of Blender Sasha right after finishing the eye rig.
View attachment 4730453
View attachment 4730451
Preview
Why not... Why not show a preview of Miru... Maybe I'll throw in a Katie one too.
Worry not my sweet darling.
View attachment 4730455
Katie
View attachment 4730456
The cinematic takes a little bit of work, I do have to do a ton of test-rendering, as there is some rather complex movement going on in some animations.
You'll see what I mean when I release the announcement trailer with the release date.
I'll go back to work now, as I think the other PC has finished test-rendering
I'll see you soon.
