I need your opinions! - Streamer Food update (Patreon)

Rendering is nearly done for Streamer Food! Because of the chaotic way plan out my animations, the scope of the project just grows and grows as I get ideas for scenes. I'm actually in the process or re-rendering some of the opening scenes because after a few months of working on this, I've just gotten better at animating and the scenes look better, and there is a distinct difference in quality. That difference, however, is not what the image above are in relation to, however!

Streamer Food started out as a tiny practice animation that I made into a full project in Daz, and in the middle of making what I thought was going to be a short animation, and now rivals in size to Mayhem at Micro Beach. The focus of this project for me has been on Katie, our antagonist...? (This is a fully unaware project, so Katie isn't even... an antagonist? Is the cereal the antagonist? She's definitely not a protagonist. She's more like...a force of nature I guess. Who knows.) I really wanted to deliver a character that felt and like a real person, not just a pretty face with generic clueless expressions, so a TON of time has been spent her facial animations, characterization, and as I've mentioned, hiring a voice actor to perform her spoken lines.

However, the spoken lines had to be done in iClone, and Daz and iClone don't play extremely well together. I can send stuff from Daz to iClone with a little work on my end, but not really the other way around, which is why I have a beautiful (yes, I'm super proud of how Katie looks) Katie character in Daz (top image), and a mediocre looking Katie-like character iClone (below). The problem you might see is that the iClone version of Katie has lip-sync to the voice lines, and the Daz version of Katie does not, meaning anytime Katie talks, there is a distinct change in texture, quality...it's distracting.

I've seen what iClone can do as far as photorealism and I know the results can be nearly as good as Daz (Daz is built for super-high resolution textures, but is terrible for animating, seriously, it's a nightmare) but it's going to take some time for me to be able to get a less distracting shift. I really want to deliver the best I can for you guys, and the plan is to deliver that this month, so I'm considering my options. I've already signed a contract with the voice actress, so she's going to be paid and I'd rather not completely cut her voice lines. Here's what I'm thinking as far as options.

1. Leave it as is. I would do some updates to the lighting and re-render the iClone Katie scenes, and release the project with both versions.

2. Cut Katie's iClone scenes. With this plan, I would probably use some artistic license to imply that Katie is talking, but her face is off camera during the voice lines.

3. Combine options 1 & 2. I would make two versions, one with the iClone scenes cut, and the other with the left in, and likely only available at higher Patreon tiers. This would obviously take the longest, require the most work, and would push out the release of the project. No guarantees this would still happen in October.

4. Rework the iClone scenes. As I said, this isn't an issue with iClone, it's an issue with me still learning that software. I've been using Daz for a little over 3 years I think, and iClone for closer to 3 months. I've seen really incredible results in iClone, but I need time to get there. With this option, I would delay the entire project to rework the iClone scenes. This would obviously mean a lot of work, but this would also allow for some other additions, some of you have asked about getting to record voice lines for this project...we could make that happen! I would also drop a maybe a 30 - 60 second cut from the project as a teaser, and simultaneously prepare for some other content to drop for this month.

I'm really torn here, so I'm looking for opinions. Im not making it a poll because I don't want to set an expectation that whatever people vote for is what I'm going to do, but I do genuinely consider everyone's feedback.

Excited to hear your thoughts! Can't wait to share this with you regardless of what I decide! Oh, and I've also added a slightly longer foot interaction scene for those of you who would appreciate it, but the vast, vast majority of this is still about a couple of tiny people trying not to get eaten by a cute girl streaming online and not paying attention to her breakfast. :)

Talk soon!