Quick Update and new Marvelous Designer Series (Patreon)

Hello Supporters!

I’ve had a busy few weeks and wanted to give you a quick update on what’s been happening, what I’m currently working on and what’s about to be released in December. 

First of all, I did something I’ve not done for several years: I took a few days OFF for Thanksgiving. I usually work all the time, because playing with 3D software almost doesn’t feel like work, but I’ve been doing a bit too much of that lately, and my brain was getting frazzled, which is a good indication that I should leave that I screen switched off for a bit. It was great to watch old TV shows, play video games and try not to think about how to get complex stuff done in Unreal Engine or Blender. It felt like a breath of fresh air, and I must make an effort to stop for breaks more regularly.

Most of November was spent with IT maintenance. I’ve invested into three new computers, two for myself and one for Julia, to take over responsibilities of our older workstations. Julia’s old Z600 really needed an upgrade, and my Z840 was also due for a boost, as was my Mac mini from 2012, so now we have two HP Z8 G4 workstations and a Mac Studio Ultra in our office (slash living room). They’re faster and quieter and will see us through the next 3+ years of 3D adventures. 

Buying new (used) hardware means installing Windows/macOS/Linux, dealing with its intricacies, re-installing productivity and creative software, network stuff, testing, moving files, and of course re-purposing older hardware to take on other duties. My Z840 for example is now a dual-boot Linux/Windows workstation that I’ve equipped with 21TB of RAID storage that is now available for anything I want to store onsite with redundancy. It can also help out as a render node if I need it. I may sell off the Z600 and the Z800 systems, or turn the Z800 into an updated streaming computer. In short: although exciting, it was hard work to get these puppies operational without downtime.

In my day job for St. Luke Productions, I’ve just finished turning a whole outdoor scene from summer into winter in Unreal Engine, and I’ll start sharing screen shots as soon as director is happy with it. I’ve also been able to render an opening book animation in Blender as part of the opening scene for the movie, and I’ve animated 20 creepy wolves that appear alongside Satan’s companions. It’s been an exciting challenge, and we have so much more to work through. Thanks to the Black Friday sale, I was able to pick up Fluid Flux, a rather expensive water simulation product for Unreal Engine, and it ROCKS! I can’t wait to share some of the footage with you and talk you through how we’ve done it. 

For my YouTube channel, I’ve just finished recording a new Daz Studio video in both English and German and I’ll share it with you in a separate post once I’ve had a chance to edit it. And finally, I’ve been working on a concept for a Marvelous Designer mini series. I’ve been meaning to make more MD videos for a while, as it continues to be a popular topic on my channel that attracts many questions, but many of those videos are older and could do with an update. Can you believe the fitting Daz clothing video is from 2017 and has had over 100k views? That’s huge for my channel. If anything, it shows that many users are interested in the Daz to MD workflow, and that’s where my new mini series will hopefully help.

Here’s what I’m planning to cover:

• Making clothing with the Modular Configurator
• Auto fitting clothing to other avatars
• MD’s new Automatic UV Packing option (finally!)
• Exporting and rigging a outfit from MD to Daz Studio
• Fixing JCMs in Daz Studio 
• Fitting posed clothing to Genesis 9 A-Pose
• Re-draping Daz clothing with MD (an updated version)

There’s more I will add in the future, such as rigid follow nodes and dForce, or a new experimental Alembic animation exchange workflow, but I’ll focus on the above for now and get it rolling. My plan is to record these in both English and German as I go along, and with a bit of luck I’ll have most of these done before Christmas. 

That’s it for now. I hope you’re having a great December, and thank you so much for your continued support! 💝