Progress 30.09.2022

 

Woohoo, it's Friday! So how are we doing this Friday?

Well. I'm going to be honest here. Update 16 is in a weird place. It isn't going to have a huge amount of renders simply because there aren't that many image sequences that require multiple renders. However, the text is the same length as every other update. And another way why it's weird is that I have only two scenes left to render after a week of rendering.

Then we go to writing as usual. About five pages left of update 19's writing, which is good considering I want to keep the buffer at least the same.

So overall good stuff. Although, if the speed keeps up, I need to rethink how I work. If I'm rendering faster than I can write, it just leads to problems.

And then we are catching up on what these two are up to.  Now, this has a slight variation depending on what you chose earlier, resulting bit shorter scene overall.

And then we come to the extra render, might need to take a pause with these at some point, but then again, they are just for fun mostly.  Anyhow, lighting is one of the hardest aspects of making renders. It's easy to flood the scene with "neutral" light to see all the details, but that isn't necessarily right. There are several problems with lighting. Namely, the shadows are too sharp. Well, I'd like them to be softer. And maybe a bit too much light. Now that the last one is subjective, realistically speaking, the light value should be half of what it is, but then it would be too dark to see. There are already difficulties in seeing some things in the image as is. 

The light issues get a bit more difficult more "primitive" tech is used. TRS2 is easy to light. It needs to look artificial because it is fully artificial light on a space station. Modern settings can be a bit pain simply because most rooms have just a singular light source in the middle of a room. Everything else comes from windows, some screens, and other minor sources. And our eyes automatically adjust to the lighting of the room. But the time before electricity? Oh boy. I'm... a fan of a certain degree of realism, so neutral "white" light with that render just causes my brain to scream. This is why the temperature of the ambient light is the same as the torches, giving an orangeish look. But thankfully, my settings have magic, so in those scenes where I need details showing, I can add light fairly easily and not cause my brain to nag: "nooo, that tone of light is unrealistic. Spend the next 15 hours tweaking it until it is in perfect harmony with the rest of the lights."

Progress 26/09/2022

 

So, I will most likely release update 15 without proofreading. Normally, I'd wait for Adry to finish up, but when life is being a dick, it will be a dick in almost every possible way. And we've worked well together for two years now, give or take, so I'll have his back and let him sort the stuff out without the extra pressure from me because my brain being panicky because it's close to the end of the month, and I've had only one release this month... and panic intensifies. Well, not really. I'm relaxed at the moment, so no worries.

Anyway, I'll issue a proofreading patch later on. It isn't something I haven't done before. The text has been run through Grammarly, so outside of weird phrasing that totally makes sense to me and my brain, it should be readable. And it will take a day or two to upload anyway cause the net is being a pain in the backside.

But moving on. Update 16, which I'm doing right now, is going well. Rendering is smooth. Technically speaking, I've done 1/3 of it script-wise. That isn't accurate since it is missing the image placements and doesn't account for the image sequences since those are harder to estimate, as it might take five or fifty until I'm satisfied with how it looks.

And moving on to the writing side of things. I had a moment of clarity last night, or is it inspiration? Either way, the puzzle pieces managed to fall into place, and it's going nicely. I like those moments. I know how the story ends, and I know how it starts. It's just filling the gap between the beginning and the end in "logical order" that is the hard part. Does this bit need to go here? Is this long enough? Should I add x to y? Or do this that way or the other. Adding more days is always a possibility, but that isn't something you want to do just for the sake of it since, at some point, it will start working against you.

Anyway, I'm in a writing mood, so I could ramble for hours, and while I've been rambling, I've hit half of today's render goal. Yay, go me!

One-on-one talks with the green giant. I'm not sure what to write here outside of that. There are things I want to write, but it would spoil things, so it might be better to keep quiet about them in that case. 

As for the extra render? I just wanted to render some orcs to see if the idea I have is viable.

Progress 23.09.2022

 

Progress 27.09.2022

So, I'm in a bit interesting situation at the moment. Well, that was an ominous start, but have no fear. It isn't bad.

Update 15 was sent to tested and proofread, so there is that. And, in turn, it means I'm starting rendering on update 16 soon. Relatively, backups and other things are a thing that needs to be done, so that takes a bit before I can start. But by the time this post goes live, I've already started it. Although a bit slower pace than normal, but I should be back to normal "production speed" tomorrow.

And as for writing? I'm moving on to update 19 with that, so I'm happy for once with writing.

So, the renders. Today is one of those special cases when I'm not showing previews. Simply because a) practically everything outside the single render on Monday is a bit larger spoiler than I want to show, and b) start of update 16. Well, all I need to say is Chiel, and most likely, you get the idea. So I decided to dig into my motivational render archive. Granted, they were rendered today as I just made the scenes some time ago, namely because I didn't have a way to render them. The render below just ate 22 GB of VRAM, okay, realistically, probably 18 GB since, if I'm not wrong, there was 4GB of stuff in the memory already.

It looks great. It doesn't take much to make a good-looking render if you have the hardware. However, I wouldn't use that in a game as is. Okay, it took just 7 or 9 minutes to render. Honestly forgot which, but there are unnecessary things in there. Things that aren't seen on the camera, like the rest of the castle. And some of the textures are too large for the distance they appear. You don't need to see the skin details on the guy in the back because you can't make them out anyway.

 A lot of fantasy stuff. I said it previously, fantasy is easy to make something flashy and spectacular. And as much as I like it, sci-fi tends to be a bit less spectacular a lot of time. Unless you pull out lightsabers and space fights with lasers, but I haven't really been in the mood for sci-fi renders, mostly because I currently work with sci-fi renders daily. And when I work in fantasy I mostly due sci-fi renders. Go figure.

But, there is method to this madness. Paintings, tv screens, computer screens, etc. I don't like looking and taking random images from the internet and use them as paintings for example. There are several reasons for it, but most importantly, when I create my own I'm adding those little touches that makes it truly unique and mine.

Public Release: TRS2 Update 14

And since I can't apparently type dates correctly. A week early. Enjoy.

Uncompressed:

• PC (3.01 GB): https://mega.nz/file/72IXkYwI#xFfjsLznz6EvEOtrgNuZWSlkq6f8tFg1EHj7lLd2Co4
• PC Alternative: https://www.mediafire.com/file/g70fzy88z7xkuwj/TRS2-pc-Update14.zip/file
• MAC (2.99 GB): https://mega.nz/file/TygVmDIC#KnWLjvBGx6Yer9Bh9W5nnpJSJjF1qBwgK71bPmvu9Dgo

Uncompressed update only:

• From Update 13 to Update 14 (275.5 MB): https://mega.nz/file/bmJ1hCBJ#wCNEvp9Rx-nvca4V-cDsXEF3wakhrF234PDIlqNhAsQ

Compressed:

• PC (1.33  GB): https://mega.nz/file/3q5gFSZA#HTB-QWg9U4EJZpYEjzDKvoXTyE0DvSs_NfH51VFWbAk
• MAC (1.32 GB): https://mega.nz/file/3uwBhYiC#_OpZ3qg4ED6x3A3bS7Xfq3la55NuS81e22H79-G79-o

Compressed update only:

• From Update 13 to Update 14 (151.8 MB): https://mega.nz/file/OngDRZJK#d5ENiu992k_r7XYN7iPC8_yJ2_vNXrsHiiXPP84O0Tc

Android:

• Android (537.7 MB): https://mega.nz/file/fixTXT4Q#gDYpSHsdEl89nthhUwzmBkIQ-JjSczJtmWwOHN9dmPQ

Progress 19.09.2022

 

Hello on this... Monday. Yeah, let's go with that. So how are things going? Fairly well now that update 14 is available to people, gradually anyway.

Rendering of update 15? I'm around halfway, maybe a bit over, as an estimate. So that is going well overall.

As for writing? I'm where I want to be with it as well.

Well, this is a short one especially compared to the last one. But there isn't much to tell when things are going relatively well. It could always be better, but it could be so much worse.

So the next question is what to show...

Alright, you have seen her before, but I wasn't happy with her. And after some random discussion about things, I pulled her file up and started trying different skins and a few other things. And in the end, this is better than the original blue version. So now I'm happy.

Changelog: TRS2 Update 14

 

Changelog: Update 14

• Day 14 implemented
• 364 renders
• Added a sound effect
• Grammar, spelling, and other fixes (Thanks to Adry Lemon, Shaddy, BryonSmothers3DX, Bread_, To Begin With,Psykotik, Ravendarklocks)

Well, not much to say about this really so I guess time to skip the babbling and to the release schedule, which is the old usual one.

Release schedule:

• $15 Tier: As soon as the links are verified (mediafire comes a bit later as it's uploading slooooooooooooooowly.)
• $10 Tier: 19th of September
• $5 Tier: 20th of September
• $3 Tier: 21st of September
• Public: 21th of September

Progress 16.09.2022

 

Progress 16.09.2022

Work hasn't been kind to my proofreader. However, he told me he should have Friday off, so hopefully, he will get that damn thing done so I can push the update out as soon as possible. Granted, I'm in a mindset that I'm about to push it out regardless of the status of proofreading. 

So what does this actually mean? Relatively little, as said previously, at least I think I said it, that at worst,  it means that updates 14 and 15 will be released close to each other.

So how is update 15 going? Pretty decently if I'm allowed to say so. I'm about where I should be in the script-to-render ratio, should be around halfway by Monday if the pace keeps the same.

And now, I'm going to break a "rule" of mine: no spoilers from the following update until people have played it. Not that it actually spoils anything. Well, unless we count the color blue and explosion as spoilers. But the latter is kind of given when we talk about my work.

So I said that people would get out of the Sentinel station during TRS2, and there are some more alien-looking areas. My only issue is that most of the sets aren't made for what I do as is, so I have to improvise a lot at times. But it works well most of the time.

Although I like the render below better, I didn't find suitable props from my library to have external lights to make it clearly visible. Thus I'm afraid that it's just a pretty test render.

Anyway, writing update 18 is on schedule, and I should be close to the halfway point today. The set building always eats some time simply because they haven't managed to make a decent brain-to-computer interface yet.

Bloom is one of those render settings I have little knowledge of despite reading a ton about it. I know it can do some nice effects, but most of the time, when I try to do things with it just doesn't come out right. In this render, I'm using the set's default render settings for most parts. Now, if I try to replicate it on some other, it will fail miserably. Well, maybe one day.

Progress 12.09.2022

 

And onwards to update 15! Woohoo!

And now you are like: "Wait, what? Where is update 14?" Well, I can tell you that it was sent to be proofread and tested. And me being me, it doesn't sit well with me to sit idle for too long. Thus, rendering update 15, but unfortunately, it also means there won't be a preview render because of massive spoilers. But not to worry, I'll make something up. Ranting most likely.

Also, writing is moving forward towards 18. I almost wrote 19 there, but that's wishful thinking at this stage. Overall, I'm happy with how things are progressing.

Since there is no preview this time, it's just an extra render(s). As said earlier, I'm not a big fan of using spell circles as casting effects, but as you can see in this, there aren't many alternatives.

The problem in that render? The hand sparks. They would work if this were a nighttime render, but it would limit too much on the storytelling side. Well, unless I would be planning on making a story about vampires.

And then this, same render, different effects. You saw this a few times in Sorcerer, they work okay, but they aren't what I'm looking for as a casting effect. And it has a similar visibility issue.

And then the third time is the charm, spell circles. Ultimately, even though the lady's spell circle is a bit hazy to see, that's due to the color. It gives the "best" indication overall that they are doing something.

 

Then, have a horse and a rider just because I wanted to do it. Okay, it was mostly to try out the horse. I like the horse. I isn't resource heavy and looks better than Daz Horse 2 in most cases as general purpose horse. Special ones like unicorn or the nightmare still be on Daz Horse 2, simply because they were made for it and look better than the default textures.

Progress 09.09.2022

 

Man, progress has been slow. Well, at least to my liking. It is what it is when you have to build all but one set from scratch. And that one set I made earlier because it was the MC's office. Nevertheless, about one and a half scenes are left to render. Not that it is saying much since I suspect I need 100 renders.

Writing is in an interesting phase, and I always stress about it because I want to have a certain amount of days as a buffer. If things go wrong, I can take a step back. I still have the two update buffer, essentially three, since I ensure I have the update finished before I start rendering the next update or shortly after. But if everything goes to plan, it will be done by Monday. Yay jinxed it.

There was one image I wanted to show. While it wouldn't be a huge spoiler story-wise, I don't want to spoil your reaction to it. So you have to wait for a bit still for that. Instead, something is happening back at the station.

And then the little extra render. I'm not a massive fan of spell circles as casting effects. But at the same time, they are one of the more straightforward ways to show it. I would love tiny sparkles around the hand. Then the circle indicates at the target location that things are happening there. There are a couple of assets like that, but I don't particularly like their effects. They are not subtle enough for my taste.  

And what I don't like about this render is that it's heavy. Sure, it's done on the graphics card running the screens, so there are about 2 or 3 GB of programs using the VRAM before this, but still, it's taking 11 GB of VRAM. The increase in VRAM usage between Genesis 8 vs. 8.1 is one of the reasons I'm not fond of 8.1 that much. But being fair, I would need to test the scene on the "proper" rendering card to see what is going on with it.

It might be the other programs eating the VRAM. But as is, there couldn't be that many characters on the screen. And granted, it is an unoptimized scene as well. The Ent that is on fire doesn't need 8k textures it probably has. Hell, even 2k textures aren't required at this distance. The same goes for the trees in the background. And a few other things. Well, I'll have to save it and try it on another day. So why did I do this? Honestly, it's testing, the clothes on Tomas, the effects, the Ent or Tree Giant as it is called. I need to know what I can use beforehand to plan future scenes. If it is this heavy, I can only add one or two extra figures to this scene with my current hardware.

Progress 05.09.2022

Whee... this came up a bit late, relatively.

Writing of update 17, it's going, I'm mostly happy with it, and I'm on target to finish it up alongside this update. So I can't complain about that.

Rendering. I'm about halfway to the script. Honestly, that's not where I expected it to be, considering some of the renders took longer than expected. So all is good. Fairly normal Monday update. Yay?

Although. Some things didn't go as planned, mostly because I forgot that I altered some of the stuff in the previous update and forgot to update the following script. But luckily, there are ways around it. So what does that has to do with the image? Absolutely nothing. I just liked it.

And this? I previously mentioned that I do "daily motivational renders." More often than not, they are just something random that comes to my head. Maybe I get an idea from talking to someone, or just it's something I dreamed of. Or just something I just wanted to do because why not? This particular render resulted from a chat I had with a friend, then I decided to expand with something. I did some post-work on it just to keep some skills up. Probably going to forget it until I do it again next time.

Public Release: TRS2 Update 13

 

Tested and played through a few times, all the saves worked. But that  doesn't mean things didn't slip by. So as always, if there are any issues please report them on discord (https://discord.gg/GJK5kfKypg).

NOTE: The android has the same version as the previous, but it is correct now and it is for update 13.

Uncompressed:

• PC (2.77 GB): https://mega.nz/file/7nowiLyC#l1vg3IoGruH74ea8i-FELgGFN3NzUWlu7D_iQPV52Uk 
• PC Alternative: https://www.mediafire.com/file/dd06yehyxlwgymr/TRS2-pc-Update13.zip/file 
• MAC (2.75 GB): https://mega.nz/file/CuxgyYpa#kJEN9z1XB-otO9unQAcsLz_1s01kxFIoqagyMeHDoIo 

Uncompressed update only:

• From Update 12 to Update 13 (227.7 MB): https://mega.nz/file/uqwUEQLY#T9bqGgqmMgRcWTzt8aX_59xde3EyEzm0jHAXvXs6cpc 

Compressed:

• PC (1.22  GB): https://mega.nz/file/LjRjiBpK#TD9jKngKob70VFGHWjPP4PhiGygI_OSOxWr9Tj2FZkk 
• MAC (1.20 GB): https://mega.nz/file/D7wSEZAI#Se3Hjx2575VbCopkcGdZwdqadcC0PF9UtsPza6Inz6Q 

Compressed update only:

• From Update 12 to Update 13 (123.7 MB): https://mega.nz/file/GmYjyYBb#645BNCv82NBZFs23Vd2LzB5R6MF4blzHQvq21XzL6U4 

Android:

• Android (499.8 MB): https://mega.nz/file/TrRiWSKA#98m4QK5jl0Biw369Ng78YwXK1YbUpKfnozxnbohmJAo
  

Progress 02.09.2022

 

Alright, it is time for some sort of progress post. Yes, feel the enthusiasm! Joking by the way, just building a set and running test renders can be a bit... annoying.

Okay, so writing is still going. I will not estimate when it will be done since I will miss it anyway. But suffice to say, it's on schedule to finish when I want, for now. The biggest issue, which I'm certain that I've said before, is deciding what event to put where... and there are so many things I need to put in the right places.

As for rendering? Man... the stuff looks good, but damn, it takes time, around 10 minutes per render at the moment. It would be 30 if I wouldn't use both of my cards.

Yeah, it looks nice and all but the shadows... the shadows. It's iray, mimicking how real light works, and shadows are a pain for it. But without shadows, things would look unnatural and artificial, and we obviously are outdoors, so...

Anyway, it's going. I'm on schedule with it, more or less. Multiple figures, set building, the things like that slow stuff down, the usual, but bit brute force by two GPU's and things are smoother. And if it comes to that, it will take 30 minutes per render. Nothing much can be done about it.

At times it doesn't take much to alter characters' appearance. Sabrina and her demonic version. And I mean quite literally, I just changed the horns, skin, eyes, and tail... and obviously, the clothes are different. Now the question is, would this be a significant change in the model, so I would use the changed model in an important role in something other than Sorcerer? Maybe. To my eyes, they don't look the same. Even though I know they have identical mesh, they aren't the same character. But, the better question is, is there a role for that character? If the character can't be introduced naturally or fits the story, there are very few reasons to include any character.

So why did I render her? Mostly for fun. I'm building a set, so the graphics card is running idle anyway.