Development update - Chapter 1 Part 4

Hi everyone,

I start by saying that I've felt a little under the weather over the past few days, so I wasn't as productive as I'd like this week.

I fixed the animations. It was not easy. Took 2 tries. But it's now complete. And I'll render it over the weekend.

Let me take you for a little ride in developer life. Remember that? I am not crying about how hard it is; I just want to be as transparent as I can so you can understand what I am doing. Not whining here :)

Well, the flow is simple - create the animation you want, test it, and if the test passes, render the whole thing as an image series at full quality, then combine the renders into an animation with a tool. Now let's break it.

• Create the animation:
  The hardest part (also fun for me) takes 2-6 hours, depending on how long it is, how complicated it is, and how many elements need to move in the scene (hair, hands, tongue, eyes, brows, cheeks, organs, etc.).

• Test the animation:
  A big-time consumer, I used to do it right after creating the animation, but it took up too much of my time in the middle of the day. And I can't afford to be idle. So I now test it at night; sometimes I manage to test 2 animations. Takes 1-3 hours to render, depending on the animation length and the scene's lighting complexity. After the image sequence is ready, combine it and see the result at low quality. If it fails, fix the animation and test it again.

• Render it in full quality and combine:
  This is the easiest part: just render it at the max quality your machine can handle. Post-edit all the images and combine them into an animation. This one can take 12-24 hours to render.

Also, if something fails several times because it's sometimes hard to stop little issues, I test-render it on the spot, cause moving from one animation to another shifts your focus, and it's sometimes hard to come back to it. Here, I needed to switch the tongue to a new high-quality object and re-render 2 animations. And now you know what it takes. I hope you find it interesting to understand how things work at a high level from my side.

I want to add 2 more angles to the animations, since I think 2 of them really need them.
I managed to continue a little bit with game renders this week. I am right before the next animation for this flow.

Visual status
Static renders: 1,616 ⬆️
Animations: 10⬆️

Renders

This week was a bit weak in terms of customs and renders in general. Only one custom render, with the rest of the time spent on story-related and new profile renders. We'll make up for it next week. I got several customs lined up, and I also did some soul-rendering. I apologize to everyone I owe a custom, I'll feel better and work on it next week.

Polls

New month, new poll, we are left with Rose and Adelynn before beginning a new, fresh round with all the ladies again.

Join Senior+ (6$) to vote here.

Rating and reviews

Thanks to anyone who helped and continues to help me bring TPOT to the big stage. Your reviews and ratings are important for the game's exposure. As an indie dev, I can't afford advertising yet, so every exposure is organic. If you did write a review and rate my characters, I thank you. If you want to do it, you can find my detailed request here.

Thank you, and have a great weekend and happy holidays.
DC