Warlocks Never Forgive (Patreon)

Greetings! I'm sorry for the delay in posting... as happens with me a lot, I said: "I'll post the update as soon as I'm done with this thing" - usually something specific I want to share with you - and then that thing ends up being more complicated or problem-laden than I'd anticipated. I'll share what those things were a little later, but first let's talk about progress on the next update.

Progress on 0.10

I'm now about halfway through the long quest. To recap, 0.10 will have 3 quests, one of which is sorta long, 1 H-scene, and some more dialogues in the nightclub. I've finished the first quest already (except for some minor things) and the long quest is the one I'm currently working on. I've also finished the concept and narrative for the H-scene and have started making images for it. The lead image isn't actually from the scene, but it may be... uh... related. 

There was a poll a while back on the next H-scene, and another Alex-Val-Ana encounter won. I was initially a little unenthused about it, but came up with an idea that I think will be a lot of fun. It should help provide some much-needed closure, since the 0.8 scene left so many things up in the air. Hopefully you like it as much as I do!

Incidentally, there's a good chance 0.11's scene is going to be the one that narrowly lost in that poll (by only like 2 votes) - the "Alex plays dress-up with Val (and maybe Sami)" scene. The commercial district will open up in 0.11, and I thought of a good way to work it in :)

Yet More Blender Stuff

In addition to writing stuff for the quest and H-scene, I also did a lot of work trying to make Mystery Girl's hair in Blender, and this is the thing I was trying to finish up to show you. To recap, I'm trying to move to Blender in order to expand the possibilities for what I'm able to create. In Blender, unlike in Daz (what I currently use), you can do physics simulations, so that bodies can deform properly when they're in contact with each other or when they sit down, etc. You can do real fluid simulations for water scenes or scenes involving (ahem) other fluids. You can have real strand-based hair (that can also have physics simulations to move more naturally) instead of sorta fake-looking Daz hair. This last one may not be obvious, since the hair I use now mostly looks fine, but it's because I'm using heavily stylized hair models. Most Daz hair looks pretty bad. Oh, and you can make animations in Blender! These are some of the reasons I'm trying to make the transition.

Anyway, having completed Emily's hair, I wanted to make a hairstyle for Mystery Girl so I could use those portraits for her in 0.10. Well, after a lot of work I completed it; here's what it looks like:

Now, I think it looks... good, but just for comparison, here's the Daz style I was basically trying to recreate:

The Daz one, even with the fakeness of its hair, looks better, and so I've decided to use Daz portraits for Mystery Girl in 0.10. I haven't given up on making hair for her in Blender, though! It's just that I spent a lot of time working on it, and I realized that in order to make it something I'd be happy with I'd need to start over. I concluded that would be a bad use of time when I'm trying to get the release finished.

I don't think it was a waste of time; I learned a lot from this little project. This hairstyle was much more complicated than Emily's. It's probably obvious from looking at it, but I didn't appreciate how much more complex it was until I was about halfway into it. I had to learn all sorts of tricks to deal with problems that came up, and I definitely improved my Blender skills in the process, which will help when it's time to make the jump. And I do think it looks pretty good, just not good enough. 

There was actually another problem - you'll notice that Mystery Girl's lips look like they have glitter on them in the Daz pics, but they don't in the Blender ones. I really like that effect, but I'm having a hard time recreating it in Blender. I realized it would probably take a while to figure this out, which is another reason I decided to deal with Mystery Girl later. 

The last problem has to do with shaders in Blender, which is something I need to expand my knowledge of. This little project also brought home to me that the Daz skin just seems to look better. There's a... sheen? that's missing in Blender. I'm sure I can figure this out, but as with the last problem, it's something that'll take time. But that time will be later, after the release is out. This stuff is important to the look of the character, but it's not something that makes sense to spend a lot of time on now. 

Conclusion

Well, I'm going to get back to the quest and H-scene stuff. I'll be avoiding any more major Blender projects until the release is out. I bad-mouth Daz a lot, but you can actually make some pretty nice stuff with it. I had a lot of fun making this image, and I expect to have more finishing out the H-scene :) Thank you for your support!