Episode 6 - Progress Report #24

Hey everyone

I've spent this week working on more renders and some background characters as well 😊. Part 1 is finally finished and I'm currently working on a scene with a lot of background characters. I had to change some things in my workflow again, with how I deal with these background characters. It's been quite a technical challenge to figure out how to make crowded scenes like that. I've made some progress in this regard, but I'm still improving here.

Anyways, here are the progress stats:

• Writing: 100%

• Coding: 90%

• Environments: 75%

• New Characters: 7/7

• Background Characters: 24/40

• Renders: 26%

  • Part 1 (9:00pm): 852/852

  • Part 2 (10:00pm): 75/360

  • Part 3 (11:00pm): 0/550

  • Part 4 (12:30am): 0/750

  • Part 5 (2:00am): 0/500

  • Part 6 (3:00am): 0/600

• Music/Sound: 0%

• Testing/Polish: 0%

📆 Release date estimate: July/August 2025

If you're interested in how the whole background character workflow looks like: Basically, I first create characters normally (although with much less time spent on them compared to the main characters). I have created reusable skin textures in 12 different skin tones, and then created 2 sets per tone in different resolutions. So when I work on a scene I place a group of background characters and pose them accordingly. After that I go through each character and use a (very buggy 😅) tool to lower their mesh resolution, with the final resolution depending on how far away they are from the camera. I apply the low-res skin textures and export the figure as an object. The export lowers file size but means I can no longer pose the figure. I import it again as an object, adjust some textures and save it as a reusable, finalized prop. Et voilà, I have a low-res prop of a background character that I can use in scenes. There's a little more things in there that I left out, but that's the gist of it.

Now, as you can see there's still quite some time spent on each background character, but the good thing is, once I have the prop I can reuse them in later scenes again. I just have to make sure the pose and resolution fits for what I'm using it for.

I'm also still trying to finesse how low I have to go with the resolution for optimal performance and whatnot. Also, some hair and clothes don't work well when lowering resolution, so there's a lot of trial and error involved still. But I'm confident that it's getting easier and faster the more I progress with the renders.

❤️ Enjoy your weekend! And thank you for your support! ❤️