Chapter 4 - Dev Log #10

*Edit: Added High res of all images attached for download.

Hello, 

Sorry for the slight delay of this Dev Log but I had to spontaneously fly across the country and had to take care of some personal concerns. (4 days trip) 

Took me a day to fully regulate my dopamine and stress levels. 

1. Tabletop cut

2. Current state 

3. Improvements.

1. Tabletop cut

Well, so... There's something I will address today regarding the tabletop session. 

I will be cutting it in half... Let me explain why. 

So, at the moment I'm around 800 lines into the Tabletop session. For comparison, a normal update of mine with 1400-1600 renders is around 2000-2500 lines long.

The current Tabletop story is already 1700 lines long and I'm not even close to finishing the writing. Means... I'm going to cut it there and the group will just "stop" playing for the day and continue at a later point. 

Another very big reason is that Daz isn't enough to visualize my vision. Daz can't destroy buildings, make epic action sequences, use particle systems to simulate a huge explosion + shockwave. 

So yeah, I'll be cutting the Tabletop session at its current writing state. It will feel natural and won't be abrupt.

That means around 800-900 lines are left for the tabletop session. 

And I'll might actually wait until Blender to continue it so that my vision can actually be visualized. 

2. Current State of Chapter 4. 

The current state is that around 97% of the normal timeline is done. I'm currently creating some solo animations, etc. 

Then I'll need to finish a smaller cinematic (35-40 seconds) 

And then all that is left is the rest of the Tabletop session. Which are mostly stills. 

I think I have around 1600 stills atm + tons of animation renders. 

3. Improvements

As teased a few times before, I'm now going to elaborate a little on my personal improvements and give some numbers. 

Back in 2021, I used to create 7-15 renders a day and it often took forever to finish them. While I started working on myself after Chapter 3, it was still a long way to go. 

A little backstory, I read a lot and I was reading a book called "The Comfort crisis." by Michael Easters 

There was a point in the book that said something along the lines of: "You're just as good as your biggest limiter."

It got me thinking and I tried to localize my biggest limiter in terms of development. 

After I found it and started to tackle it... The improvements were incredible.
I'll not say what the limiter was as it's private but damn. 

Let me just give a number that blew my mind, even now... Looking back. 

There was a day in February when I created 112 renders. On a single fucking day. (Took 3-4 days to render out.)

Those weren't easy to pose renders where just the head or an arm moves a little. It was at the Tennis scene with Nami, etc. A lot of Movement, adjustments to the light, and volumetrics. 

During Chapter 3, I worked around 12-14 hours a day on the game and came out with 7-15 renders on average. 

Now I work 6! hours a day and come out with 40-60 on average. (Quality increasing.) 

I first did 3h of SG and 3h of WiAB a day but I didn't like the sudden switch. I now do 6h SG, the next day 6h WiAB, repeat. 

I don't count "writing" as work time, as I find it very relaxing and often do it after the 6h of creating renders.

The changes I've applied over the past two months are incredible. And those 40-60 renders a day isn't made under pressure. It's actually relatively easy. (Except I have to build an environment.)  

I keep telling it to other devs that I sometimes speak with.. The mindset you apply is so important. And the longer a dev works, the harder it is to keep it up as we humans like to cling to negative emotions.

Until you can actually detach from external dopamine releases, etc., and just flow through the work with a smile.  

I, of course, won't make any promises ever again but I'll expect Chapter 4.5 to be a new record in development time. 

TL:DR: I work much less but produce much more and my mind is as healthy as it can be. 

I'm thinking about posting an average render/day at the end of each month to see how I'm doing. Animations still kinda ruin my productivity due to their test rendering phases, etc. But that's a Daz problem since they removed the "Save materials function" with the Iray Preview.

Well, I think this was all I wanted to say. 

Oh right, I also got the Custom Environment from Wibble. I'll showcase it in the next Dev Log. 

And because you guys are the supporters and made this possible, the Environment will cost me 2000$. I think you should know about that. 

But damn it's such a gigantic, unique, and great environment. An investment into the future of SG. 

- Ocean