Developer's Journal 3:7

Hey everybody.

The chapel portion of the wedding scene is almost done but I will still need to do the reception.  That is going to be a ton of work all over again and I'm going to switch gears and move back to the Malena park/training scene tomorrow to give myself a break.

If you've ever worked with Daz, try to imagine what went into creating the attached preview image you see with all of those characters.  Just loading the scene takes twenty minutes, closing it without crashing the program takes an hour.  Trying to select a new bone or surface can take 30 to 60 seconds as can switching tools.  Imagine trying to pose all of these characters like that.  A small one inch spot render might take twenty minutes just to start rendering, ten to render, and ten more to stop the render process so I can save the file.  The render you're looking at here is a composite, but the ones I'm currently working on have about two dozen models visible at once and have six hour render times.

The render with just Emmeline is from her apartment, and I previously journaled about the troubles from this scene during Episode Two's production.  The way the lights/surfaces are set up, that scene had featured the longest render times to date, and I'm experiencing the same problems again: this preview was a six-hour render in 2K.

In the year and a half I've been working on Leaving DNA, my current pace is by far, far the slowest progress has ever been.  Working on these scenes it feels like I'm trying to push a boulder uphill in the mud.

This pace is not sustainable--in the last two weeks I've created less than two dozen renders.  So in the future a couple of things will have to happen.  First, starting in Episode Four, if there are any other scenes in the game that are supposed to have large crowds of people, those scenes will be rewritten.  I don't mind doing the work, but production slowing down to a crawl like this is unacceptable.  Second, while I loathe downsizing to 1920 x 1080 and/or denoising to finish renders, both options can massively speed up production on renders like these.  So, as soon as I finish this chapel scene, speed will be the priority and all options will be on the table for any future renders that take unreasonably long.

Sorry if this post seems a bit of a downer, but don't worry--while I am a bit frustrated, I'm in good spirits and still excited to be working on this update.  I just always want to be honest with you guys about what's going on with my progress.

Have a good week everybody and thank you for your support!

--Monk