DevLog: Scene Reworks + Anya & Onessa's Major Glow-ups (Sneak Peeks Inside!) + Anya Wallpaper (4k NSFW)

Quick reminder: You can follow development more closely on the Trello board.

TLDR;

• Onessa improvements - better textures, eyebrows, and makeup

• Scene 5 & 6 - reworks nearly complete with dramatically improved visual quality (Sneak Peeks down below!)

• Doing lots of plotting for future chapters

✅ Last Week's Progress

What I accomplished since the last update:

• All-in on Patreon - After a lot of consideration and thought, Patreon will be the hub for all of the project updates, releases, and community content. This consolidation allows me to focus energy on building our community here rather than splitting my efforts across multiple platforms. The SubscribeStar account page has been paused for the time being.

• Anya 2.0 Continues - In addition to her previous rework, Anya has received some additional minor changes & fixes that dramatically improve her close-ups. The original asset had her eyebrows baked into her skin texture, without actually having any eyebrow fibers. This looked fine from medium-far away, but anything closer just looks awful. Thanks to a successful "eyebrow transplant" from another character and improved skin specularity, she looks much better!
  Thanks to Termz (a fellow artist) for his help on these.

• Scene 6 Rework - My skills in Blender and EEVEE (and also lighting) have improved dramatically over the past month, making it clear that some scenes needed attention. If you check out the Sneak Peek below, you'll certainly see a night and day difference, which makes these reworks completely worth it.
  Thanks again to Batman and C for giving me a push to update and rework this scene.

🛠️ Current Development

What I'm working on right now:

• Onessa refinements - Fixed some of her eyebrow hairs - was causing her eyebrows to look plucked. Better lip moisture. Better make-up. She looks more refined now.

• Scene 5 Rework + Scene 6 Rework (Sneak Peeks down below!) - Here's where my diagnosed ADHD actually works in my favor. These scene rewrites blindsided me - I was so close to preparing for release when I stepped back and realized the quality just wasn't where it needed to be. That was honestly a devastating blow, and my motivation took a hit.

  Normally when I'm not motivated, my ADHD brain just... stops working on what it should be working on. (This is why ADHD can sometimes be referred to as "Intention Deficit Disorder"). But I've learned to work with it instead of against it. When I get sick or annoyed with reworking one scene, I simply switch to reworking the other. This task-switching has been my saving grace - it's kept me productive and more on task while grinding through these necessary improvements.
  These two reworks are very close to being finished - the Trello Task Board is going to give a very accurate picture of where both scenes are with reworks.

• Plotting Future Chapters - I don't usually announce this much, but I have 10 chapters planned for Echoes of The Cataclysm. While I keep my writing and plotting relatively quiet, I've been spending a considerable time lately laying solid groundwork for these future chapters - working out narrative kinks and ensuring everything connects properly.
  If my DevLog seems light, it's because of the scene reworks and spending a LOT of time... just thinking... a lot of thinking. A lot of plotting. 37 new beats to the entire 10 chapters of story, to be precise.

• Discord Emojis - I've created just a couple of emojis (no, not stickers yet).
  Feel free to make suggestions of which emojis you'd like to see next!
  

  
  

🔮 Coming Soon

What I'm planning to work on next:

• Scene 6

  • 🎶Music + 🔊Sound Design (In Progress) - Working on 2 additional soundtracks
    Because of the rework, this has been placed on the backburner and will be worked on soon!

• Adding a "Gallery" to the menu

• Exclusive and available for a limited time Patreon "Foundation" tiers are coming!

⚙️ Technical Corner

• Character texture detail back-peddle
  When I first started out with Blender, I was trying out a few different things - even though I learned so much, I probably should have been more focused on actually working on scenes, rather than workflow. I originally created a "texture resolution" selector for each character, from 512px to 4096px - the intent was to save on VRAM. Each character has a Torso, Head, Arms, and Legs image texture - and as you can imagine, if a scene doesn't require a close-up of the character and we downscale their in-memory image texture, we're (allegedly) saving 8x memory (if my math is right, idk).
  The downside of this, was 16x more maintenance of image textures (4x Torso, 4x Head, 4x Arms, and 4x Legs). But in recent tests the VRAM usage was the same across all texture sizes. I'm not sure if a recent Blender update caused all connected image textures to be loaded into memory, or I had incorrectly measured it in the past. Either way, I've removed that resolution selection 😒

• Cool minor issue - Fun fact: while recreating Scene 5, Ambrose (the main character) had lost his hair! Within this particular scene his hair asset was "unlinked" (Blender lingo for not connected to something and on its way to the recycling bin) and was partially lost. This included all of his lovely blowing hair shapes that make his hair go woosh!
  Thankfully, through the power of love and magic, I was able to retrieve the original data-blocks that contained his hair and the "wind" movements, called "Shape Keys". After this, I copied the Shape Keys to his original character asset, which means anytime there's wind, or he moves really fast, you'll see the same Shape Keys as seen below.

👀 Sneak Peek

Ambrose (Main Character) Scene 5 rework example

Anya Scene 5 rework example

Onessa Scene 5 rework example

Ambrose (Main Character) Scene 6 rework example

Also bonus points [reddit post] [bluesky post] (Anya's Wallpaper 4k NSFW) for reaching this far. 😉

💬 Community Corner

Thanks again to BigBat_Productions and Celeritas for their willingness to provide their support, feedback, and additional expertise.
Thanks again to Barrabass for his very helpful feedback, helping me to fine-tune Onessa's looks - and scene rework ideas.

Thanks to everyone for their continued support - if you're reading this, THANK YOU.

What do you think of the before and afters for Scene 5?

Don't forget to check out the Trello board for detailed progress updates! ❤️