Ideas, Plans and Updates (Patreon)

Hello all! I hope you're all having a good weekend, I thought I'd do a little write up on what's happening and what's planned.

Production hurdles

Let's start with the big one, I'm noticing more and more that I lose a lot of time when working on projects due to a number of factors, these range from having to export animation previews (which can take several minutes to an hour depending on the animation) to make sure something looks correct when played back in full speed (which I can't do in Blender's viewport, it runs at maybe 10fps or slower for a heavy scene).

When rendering an animation with Eevee for faster renders I'm losing about twice the time to the compositor, which for those that don't know is basically the post-processing part, things like colour correction, bloom, vignettes, etc.

Example: a 1 minute animation at 30fps = 1800 frames. With some strict render settings I can get between 30-40 seconds render time per frame (without compositing). So that's 15 hours to render the 1 minute animation. However when we include the compositor, that can add up to an additional 1 minute per frame. Now taking the render time to 45 hours for 1 minute of animation. Then multiply that by the number of variants I'd like to make for a scene, it becomes a lot of overnight rendering and takes a long time to deliver the results to you guys.

All of these things rely almost purely on the CPU, which for me is now proving to be a little too old. My current CPU is an Intel 7900x from 2017, still a great CPU for all kinds of work and gaming, but is slowing down productivity for Blender (playback speed, simulations, post-processing, compiling the scene before rendering on the GPU).

So I think what I need to do now is save towards some much needed upgrades so that I can really create the content for all of you that I want to produce, without losing so much time to previewing and processing.

The big issue is that sadly it's not just a CPU upgrade, it will require an entirely new motherboard, cooler and RAM, which bumps up the cost and means it's going to take longer to reach that goal.

Non of this means I'm going to be stopping anything I'm doing, it's just going to take some time to deliver the animations I really want to make for you all.

Projects

I'm currently rendering out the Miranda's Walk images, including the requested "no body writing" versions and I'm experimenting with an ultrawide shot too. Which brings me onto something I wanted to ask you all. Are there any of my past projects that you'd like to see desktop or mobile wallpaper versions made?

I'm also working on my first Horizon Zero Dawn scene with Aloy and Talanah, took a bit of work to extract the needed character models from the games files but it's coming together nicely.

The next part of Bimbate Vol 3 will be coming out soon.

I have a Lara animation in the works, but it's not Patreon friendly so I can't preview it here for you.

I've also had a fun idea for a Jinx photoset and I have an idea for Vi as well.

Progress is being made on the first part of the FF7 Scarlet, Madam M and Jessie animation (currently awaiting feedback from the commissioner).

I have next part of the Lara/Doppie poolside set planned out, the next part will be moving to the swimming pool.

Discord

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TLDR

Old CPU desperately needs an upgrade, are there any past works you'd like to see desktop or mobile wallpaper from?