proxxie
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Poll: Render Volume
🕑 Added 2018-02-18 14:48:30 +0000 UTC Greetings!I'm currently doing brainstorming and planning for 0.5, and as I said in my last update, my PC is rendering away on the high-resolution pictures for the picture pack. There don't seem to be many bugs to bother with (other than the first one!), so I'm getting right to work on 0.5. Related to that, I'd like to know how important the volume (i.e., the total number) of renders is to you guys.
First, a bit about 0.4's development: It took quite a while to get out. Part of that was because I was distracted by the holidays and some minor health issues (resolved now, thankfully), but part of it was also because I spent quite a bit of time making the renders. I did something different that time; when I planned out the renders, I thought of them basically like you might think of shots in cinematography. At each part of the H-scene, I tried to have a shot that captured the essence of that moment. As you can imagine, by doing that I ended up creating a lot of shots.
To illustrate how it might have been done differently, I might simply have chosen a few special moments in the story and emphasized those with pictures. There probably would have been far fewer reaction shots - shots intended to show the characters' state of mind or the dynamic between them - and there might have been, say, 7 or 8 images instead of 22 or 24.
I thought the larger volume of shots made it more "movie-like" and emotionally engaging. I'm not sure what you guys think about it, though.
I'm not going to ask if you want more images, because obviously the answer would be yes. What I'd like to know is if you'd want more renders if it would also mean more time between releases. To make it more concrete, which scenario would you choose?
1. A release with 2-3 H-scenes, 7 renders each, that took a month to develop.
2. A release with 2-3 H-scenes, 23 renders each, that took a month and a half to develop.
So which would you choose?
By the way, these choices aren't a formula I plan to rigidly follow or anything. I'm just trying to gauge how important more renders are to you guys, given that they take more time to produce.
As always, thank you for your support!
Comments
DarkmanBNM
I liked the increased number of renders of course, but I have to say I'm eager to see some scenes with Alex that don't feature futa. I hope there will be options for going more of that route in the future.
Proxxie
To be clear, you can do a lot with 4GB. Many of my scenes occupy less than that. But you will run into problems at some point.
OhioOkie
Ok. Thank you.
Proxxie
The GPU in the 980 is plenty powerful. The problem you'll run into is its lack of VRAM. This will limit how many objects/the complexity of objects you can have in your scene. If memory fills up, iray switches over to CPU rendering, which is much slower. There are a lot of tricks you can use - like deleting objects that aren't in the shot (hiding them isn't enough), but it will remain a problem.
OhioOkie
The reason I asked about the graphics card I am thing of trying my hand at rendering 3D and trying to gauge if my old fisrt gen I7 and GTX 980 was good enough. It has been years since I upgraded.
OhioOkie
Yes. On the large map one can come from the north along the mountains the how west to enter the cave. Or one can go south fr om the city then up to the lake and enter the lake area. I am on my phone so I can't describe it well. One the then get the lake small map and I think there is a path to the cave entrance map. That is why I missed seeing the fire pit for the camp. Also maybe a,statement that they should camp before going to the cave. ... But on exiting the cave dungeon one ends up south on the big map near the lake and not where on enters if one enters from the north. It is not big. Just an inconsistency.
Proxxie
I have a GTX 1080 ti FE. Generally, I do render with the background. I'm aware you can render them separately, but the advantages of that aren't so great if you change camera angles a lot, and you also miss out on interaction effects that can provide subtle lighting. Could you explain the "can enter cave without going by lake" bug? Thanks for the reports, by the way.
Proxxie
Yeah, I've been thinking about the music thing. I need to make better use of it, generally speaking. “Less is more” is one of the ways I’m thinking about the pictures. The idea of making a small number of visually interesting and well-crafted images does appeal to me. But there’s also storytelling value in being able to rely on the images to communicate things rather than prose. There’s only so much I’m going to be able to write about “and his throbbing rod battered down the gates of her glistening pleasure.” But yeah, I’m still a bit undecided, which is why I put a poll up about it.
OhioOkie
I am curious about the videro card you have? Also, are you rendering each picture with the background?... the next one is a tiny bug that haven't mentioned. It is that you can enter the cave without going by the lake. Also when one exits the cave you are placed on the big map by the lake to the South.
Buster4MC
Which do you enjoy doing more? Renders or writing and coding? Do that. It leads to less burnout and more product.
I know some people like more, but I say that, "less is more." A lot of the renders I didn't even pay close attention to, which made them feel "wasted", so to speak. I personally think if you want to make it more emotionally-engaging, then you have to control the music so that it fits with what the person is saying, rather than the renders. I think less renders (but not too few) strikes a fine balance between telling a story and give people a "chance to fap", so to speak. :P
Proxxie
The problem isn't so much that the renderer takes a long time to run; they only take a long time if I'm making them with sufficient detail to look good at high resolutions (like the picture packs). The problem is more that it takes me a fair bit of time to make the scenes - the posing, composition, lighting (I usually spend a lot of time on lighting), sometimes messing with shaders, etc. Having someone else help with rendering would also require that they have all the assets I have, which would be problematic. Thank you for the offer, though. Edit: there’s also the postwork, which can take a fair bit of time, depending on the picture. This also can’t really be outsourced.
Koomsy
is there someway to outsource renders? Ive a pretty decent computer, I could help if it was possible.
HarveyD
Personally I think it depends on your approach to development. Like most devs on here it seems you're creating each update to be almost absolute and final, in which case it's better to do all the renders you intend to, regardless of development time.
In my opinion i liked more the work you've done in 4.0 than in 3.0 (and from the start) with the renders, i feel the scene were more complete, the character got more expressive and this added quality to them.
