DevLog: Scene 1 - Part 1 Rendering, Part 2 Being Animated

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

Currently in the middle of animating Part 2 of 3 for Scene 1, and thanks to Blender's EEVEE, I'm able to animate Part 2, while Part 1 is rendering out 2,000 frames in 4k. Sidenote: after looking side-by-side at the difference between 30fps and 60fps, there's just no meaningful and noticeable difference 😔; so, the fps output is altered to be 30fps, which halves the number of frames and the rendering time (hurray).

Just to give you an idea of the length of this complete scene: Part 1 is 1min long (2000 frames), part 2 is going to be about 3mins long (5000 frames), and part 3 is a few seconds long.

Unfortunately, in order to keep some continuity with Ambrose (main character) being a voice-actorless character, the later portion of the scene (part 3) had to be lightly tweaked. This caused some slight redesign of how the scene flowed, but it's going to work out surprisingly well.

✅ Last Week's Progress

What I accomplished since the last update:

Scene 1
- Part 1
  - Ambrose's primary blocking animation
  - Ambrose's subtle movement (eyes, blinking, breathing)
  - Camera shake
- Part 2
  - Working with the voice actor for Daz Threadgill (Xana's accomplice). Thankfully it should be a quick turnaround, as there are only about 18 lines
nuii pointer avatar
- Taking some time to create something a little fun and reworking the avatar
- Using particles that make up the face shape
- Animating some extra UI elements

🛠️ Current Development

What I'm working on right now:

Scene 1
- Part 1
  - Rendering 2,000 images (3840 x 2160 at 30fps) and is expected to take ~3 days
  - Doing some minor post-processing to make some details pop (Psion eye glow + bloom)
- Part 2
  - Worked with the voice actor (Leo Greystone) for Daz Threadgill (Xana's accomplice); his voice is absolutely gorgeous; almost too gorgeous
  - Working on a repeatable clothing workflow to figure out how outfits can be swapped and fitted
  - Mapping out and splicing the voices to figure out the scene flow
  - Animating cameras will be after the voices are set (this is a complex scene with lots of voice acting). Oh, what have I done?...
  - Blocking out the general flow of the scene
  - Creating the character: Daz Threadgill (importing from Daz3d Studio)
    - Skin textures
    - Clothing
    - Hair

🔮 Coming Soon

What I'm planning to work on next:

Scene 1
- Part 2
  - Xana animation
  - Ambrose (main character) animation
  - Daz animation
  - Lip syncing Xana
  - Lip syncing Daz
- Part 3
  - Some of which will be copy + paste from Part 1

⚙️ Technical Corner

A brief heads-up: there may be a few days of downtime due to hardware upgrades. Although the system runs a 4090 RTX, it’s currently paired with a 750-watt power supply—unfortunately, not quite enough. If you're not familiar with GPU power requirements, don’t worry—apparently, I wasn’t either when I bought it. For this setup, around 900 watts is ideal. During rendering or other intensive tasks, the current PSU occasionally can't keep up, leading to full system freezes. This is confirmed by the kernel power 41 error in the Windows Event Viewer.

The good news is that a new power supply has arrived! I’ll be swapping it in as soon as I have a solid window of time. If I am successful, I should only be down for a day.