Ariaspoaa
patreon
Dev Log #26 - Experimentation and Rendering!
🕑 Added 2023-03-17 23:00:01 +0000 UTCHey all! Here's your weekly dose of what I have been up to!
Blender Experimentation
It has been quite a fruitful week as I have been picking up Blender for a good chunk of the week. You can see the results of my week-long venture into reading multiple pieces of documentation and troubleshooting past 3 am on some nights below.
Cara rendered in Blender Cycles</figure><figure>
Cara rendered in Eevee</figure>Admittedly, I have to brush up on my lighting in Blender, as their camera and lighting systems are wholly different from what I'm used to. However, the main difference between the two (other than the renderer API used) is that Eevee captures much more skin detail than Cycles, which seems to slather Cara in some sort of skin-covering baby oil. Of course, this "shine" on Cara is on purpose, as I'll be looking to use her in "those" types of scenes. *wink*
Of course, this is just the beginning: with Cara inside Blender and with expressions and poses working as I expect, the next logical step would be to try my hand at doing my first attempts at animation. However, my full attention from here on would be to resume my work on posing/rendering on DAZ, as I do not intend to add full 60 FPS animations for E1P2, as that is completely out of scope. In short, I'll be using the time now to practice my lighting and animation skills should I want a break from posing/rendering which will help to hone my skills to be used in preparation for Episode 2 and beyond.
Dev Log Proper!
Blender experimentation aside, the current state of E1P2 is progressing as expected, with about 30 scene files (about 50+ renders) in the queue for rendering which pretty much covers a big chunk of the remainder of Day 3. For the coming week, I'll be focusing on posing and rendering the render requests that have been backed up before coming back to finalize the scenes of Day 4 before posing/rendering begins again.
Dialogue-wise, I'm trying out a new workflow where I will write the dialogue as I'm stitching the game together (i.e. render + dialogue). This revised workflow will prioritize posing/rendering while allowing me to progress concurrently on game progress as well as dialogue. I'm very much a "visual" person, so seeing my own renders and writing dialogue come hand-in-hand, unlike staring at a plain Google Docs sheet with just black and white light shining back at me, which is a less than ideal way of writing any productive dialogue on an average day.
Moving on, the game (and dialogue) is currently up to about half of the initial opening scene of Day 3, which is two scenes behind what I have in my render queue. The renders, dialogue, and audio up to the point that I have stopped at are pretty much refined to a point where I'm satisfied, and I'll be looking to keep up this progress over the weeks and finish stitching Day 3 together by next week.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In summary, here's a quick breakdown of progress so far:
Story: 50% done. Events to occur are finalized but the general flow and sequence are currently being arranged.
Dialogue: 5% done, dialogue is currently at the halfway point of the initial opening scene.
Rendering: 10% done, most of Day 3 finishing posing, with just a few in-betweens left. Day 4 posing/rendering to kick off in about 1 week from now.
Gameplay: 5% done, same as Dialogue above.
Alright! That's about it for the dev log this week. A lot of exciting things are being prepared and I would like to say I'm somewhat getting the hang of Blender in terms of importing and armature work, so there's that! E1P2 development is also steady as I focus on rendering more (since it takes the biggest chunk of time and is the easiest to "mess up" in terms of details).
To end with, there's also one other character that I thought to bring over to Blender, although I'd consider his look more of an upgrade over his current self in more ways than one.
</figure>Thank you and have a great day!
