¡MEGA NEWS DROP!

Hi everyone! I have a lot of things to cover so let's do it:

1: Rendering has started.

I ultimately decided to go with image-based lighting because the jump in image quality is so great.  It is slower, however.  I did my best to optimize the scene and it did speed things up somewhat.  The render times are ranging from 2 minutes per frame to over 15 minutes per frame based on how close the camera gets to the subject.  I would estimate an overall average will be 9.5 minutes a frame.  In recent animations I managed to keep the upper-range of rendering time to around 8 or 9 minutes a frame, so this is nearly double.  But there are two saving graces to our current situation:  The first is that since I now have double the memory, I can easily begin working on the next Talia animation while Talia's first animation renders away.  I'm going to chillax for a couple of days, however.  The second saving grace will be covered in the next section...

2: Lightwave 2020 is expected to be released within one week.

NewTek (now owned by VizRT) never drops details of what will be in the next update, but I have heard rumors..  If the rumors are true, the global illumination engine has been optimized in LW2020 so rendering will get a bit faster.  I am expecting to be able to afford to get this LW2020 upgrade; just in time to give Talia's rendering a bit of a speed boost.  How much of a boost remains to be seen.

I probably won't be able to afford to rehire Talia's voice actor for her 2nd animation in addition to spending $400 on the Lightwave upgrade.  It might be a moot issue anyway as she seems to have disappeared; no longer responding to my emails. :/

3: Storm Functionality Unlocked (maybe)

If you already know what Storm is, skip to the next paragraph.  Storm is a particle-based stand-alone physics program.  It's abilities far outshine what I have been able to do inside of Lightwave.  Liquids, true volume-based soft body simulations, and granular (sand-like) particle sims with millions of particles.  I purchased it with your donations and the results are amazing.  The problem is it is not complete.  It's under development and I am using a beta version here.

At present, the only thing I am able to export from Storm to Lightwave are liquids.  The "Point Deformer" feature to make soft bodies work is not done yet.  This is the big feature I have been waiting for.  A friend of mine who is a fellow Storm beta-tester told me how he was able to get Storm data to Lightwave by loading it into Houdini Apprentice (free) and then export that into a file format that Lightwave can work with.  I just downloaded Houdini Apprentice.  Haven't installed it yet but I'll see if I can pull this off.  If this works I plan on adapting Talia to work with this workflow.  This will allow muscle self-collisions.  Something I've never been able to do before...  This means when Talia lowers her arms to her sides, her triceps and lats will have to press up against eachother and bulge, preserving their volume as they can no longer penetrate.

This should also greatly speed up development time for new characters as I don't have to create all kinds of joint rotation deformation morphs.  It will all be done naturally because it's truly preserving volumes and self-colliding.  This approach will also make muscle growth easier.  There are other possible uses for Storm like shrink-wrapped skin simulation, but that has yet to be tested enough to see if it will work.

4: Posting a paid creation tomorrow.

I'll be posting a paid creation tomorrow..  Once again keeping me training behind.  Once Talia is delivered I will be exactly two paid creations behind..  Pretty much where I've been for a while now.  But Talia's next animation won't take as long as her first one did.  So hopefully I will get more ahead for the next one.  I also wanted to thank all of you for supporting me.  I'm trying my best to push the envelope everywhere I can so I can brink you levels of realism you never thought possible.  And with your help over the years I've come a long way to realizing that dream.  It's really close now and I just wanted to thank all of you so much for making this possible!  Talia's 1st animation is a tremendous step forward.  And if this Storm trick works out her next animation will be even better!  Amazing!  Thank you all so much and I hope you all have a great New Decade!  If I can get Storm chugging I know I sure will! :D