Chapter 4 - Dev Log #13

Hello,

As always, 4k Res attached. 

So, I'm around 2150 renders in... and pretty much almost done with the Tabletop session ~ 250 lines.  

I started and finished one of the cinematics last week and also canceled one that I had planned in the TBT session (~30sec)  

Same reason why I canceled a cinematic back in Chapter 3.5. As soon as too many characters are in the scene, it has to load in the materials, etc. for every single frame. 

Under these circumstances, even a simple test render takes 3-4h. And it was a very complex cinematic. This would've taken way too long. 

There's still a small part of another TBT cinematic left... and then an end cinematic. Certainly doable.  

But the worst part is yet to come... Doing brain-melting postwork on 2200+ renders.  I'm so not looking forward to that. 

Another problem I'm currently facing, one of the music artists I've been working with hasn't responded in like a month. Haven't heard anything from him. 

That's a problem for the Steam release with Chapter 5... As I have to give proof of license and I contacted the artist back in 2019 over Social Media, which I deleted back in 2020. 

I've also contacted ArtList and they told me the minimum price for their subscription would be 10000$, which I would've paid for full access and covering... But even though I told them many times that the games will contain pornographic content, they kept pushing it down to "Simple nudity" is okay... 

I didn't answer them any more.  

Turns out all this music stuff is going to be a huge pain in the ass... But without the music, there's no cinematics. 

2. Surface Animation 

I bought a nice plugin that enables Daz Surface animations... That's a nice thingy.
I'll point it out when I use it in an animation.

 3. Previews 

There are two more previews.

Conflicted.  

Alright. 

Stills will be done before the next Dev Log... Then three cinematics are left + Postwork. 

I will start with Postwork when the animations for the cinematics are rendering. 

Then I'll do some final polishing and the Beta will be released.  

If it wasn't for the extensive TBT session, the update would've been out in Feb. But it was pretty fun working in a futuristic and eerie environment for a change.  

I will soon start seriously learning new software... Which are Adobe After Effects and Premiere. 

Daz is a big limit on what I can do with cinematics and animations in general... Being able to make up for that in AE and PR can elevate them to a new level. 

As I also really want to implement real-life "Photo/Cinematography" into the games. (Cinematics, etc.) 

I'm really looking forward to working on Chapter 4x5 and Chapter 5.

I'll see you in the next Dev Log and most likely the last one for Chapter 4.

- Ocean