Eskoz
patreon
Yet another status report. VR version of Devil's cookie scrapped.
🕑 Added 2023-09-05 13:20:05 +0000 UTCStill here, still rendering. I've hit yet another unexpected bump, and need to re-render over half of the frames that came out in the last week. I'm still hopeful that I can make the 17th September release estimate, but it's going to be very tight, so don't be too surprised if I miss that by a few days. Depends how long the internals take to render I guess. So far they've been the fastest frames to render during this project.
For those interested in the technical side, the bump in question was about Lila's texture reference object getting disconnected, when I added some deformers and corrective blendshapes for Lila during my last prepping session for last weeks renders. This causes procedural textures (I use procedurals for some extra detail on top of the painted textures) to not stick to the model, and instead the model kind of moves through them, making it seem like her skin is moving, while she's moving. I'm honestly not sure how it took me so long to notice the issue, maybe I was focusing on Mio too much, while doing my routine checking on the renders, since all the prior issues had been with her so far, while Lila had been working just fine. Well, no use further worrying about it now I suppose.
Since I'm getting close to release, I'll likely refrain from posting more preview clips. Unless, if for some reason it starts to seem like I can't get it out before the 21st, but I highly doubt it would come to that.
As mentioned in the title, I've decided to scrap the VR version of Devil's cookie. After all the trouble I've had with the regular one so far, I'm realizing it would put future projects on hold for too long, as I'm sure the prep work would end up taking months. Even if it's just a semi-VR version, similar to the fun with teach one, it still requires a ton of camera adjustments and thus test rendering. Not to mention the renders themselves taking at least 3 times as long as they are taking now. And since I'd obviously need to work on other projects at that point, the renders could only happen at night, which would at the minimum halve the amount of time I could use for rendering per day. Meaning it would take over a year to render.
With that said, I'll be doing at least one (likely more) VR Mini-animations after DC, which hopefully will make up for the above a bit. There will be a poll to decide the character involved, but the theme for the first one will be anal related, since I've yet to do that in VR. I'm currently without a working VR headset, and I'm waiting for the release of the quest 3, which should be coming out within in a few months from what I understand. But I'm assuming it'll be out by the time I need it.
That's all for now. I'd like to think that nothing further can go wrong anymore, but then again I've thought that before. Rendering this final ending has turned out to be a massive pain in the butt.
Comments
Nope Nope
I found the tracking to be similar between the cardboard with Kinect and the index as long as your hands are in front of you and you face the Kinect. It is a bad solution though, which is why I said I only recommend it as a temporary solution. It's quick and cheap to set up. It would work well for viewing renders, since those don't even require controllers, just a headset.
Ponlets
the problem is implementation HTC and Valve index use different systems compared to those other ones you mention... also the accuracy of tracking with those solutions is worse than htc or valve index
Nope Nope
If it takes longer to get the headset than you're expecting, a cheap alternative would be Google cardboard and iVRy. My first vr setup was with Google cardboard, an iPhone SE, a Kinect and a laptop. The phone heats up to a pretty good temperature and the cardboard (I did this before better headsets were released) cut into my face, but I had full body tracking and the headset was usable. I would only recommend this as a temporary replacement though. It's really not a good setup. It is fairly simple though and only costs about $15 without the Kinect. If you wanted to do the VR animation right away, this could be viable. Thank you for this project, what you've shared so far has been incredible!
