Update Log - November 2022

Hey all. As usual I would apologize for the lack of content on here, but at this point you've heard it enough from me that it serves practically no meaning anymore. But today I am here with an update post to show you all how things have been going.

Why I've been quiet

tl;dr i stopped animating for a bit and depression is a bitch and gives me no energy and i just want to sleep and keep making excuses not to work tbh ahja hjgoiageroijargjoi

My mental health has been pretty rough lately and I've felt that I've been heavily burnt out from my recent slopes of depression. Alongside constant IRL work that is required of me to do, it's hard to find the energy after work to animate and/or work on fun things. The amount of free time I have is something that I cannot control, so honestly all I ask for is patience during this time of constant life upkeep as well as maintaining my job, because, well, both of those things are kinda important for me in order to survive :p

The past while I've ceased majority of online communication in attempts to isolate myself and actually get to working with the time that I have. If you don't hear from me for a while, do understand that I'm still around, I'm most likely isolating myself and keeping my focus high on projects that need attention. Content is still being worked on, just not as fast as I want it to.

Untitled 2: Part One

The other day I spent my whole morning upgrading my system to a 1300W PSU, as well as giving me (more than) enough power to run both my 4090 and 3080 Ti cards. This means that frames required for the project will render even faster, with roughly a +20% render time decrease.

The blocked-out animation for Scene 6 is done, which will most likely be uploaded tomorrow on the website, where Scene 1 will also get posted on Trello to the public. Worst case, it will be uploaded sometime by the end of this week. As of making this post, I am attempting to actively work on tweening Scene 7. So far, one out of the five shots for Scene 7 are completely tweened. This also means that roughly a total of 8 shots left require tweening, until the polishing phase for the project finally begins.

For your enjoyment(?),  here are some sample frames for the upcoming bits that I tested on new hardware. not final frames yea yea you get it already

> this frame took 1 minute and 37 seconds to render. the settings i used were pretty strict, these times could definitely be improved. redshift brute-force/IPC, 512 samples, 0.007 error threshold

> DOF test, baked into frame, so this took longer at 2 minutes and 19 seconds. redshift brute-force/IPC, 512 samples, 0.007 error threshold

>  this test was rendered a while ago but i was kinda screwing around making a prototype of how saliva strings might work. this also shows the concept of "dynamic painting" as chester """interacts""" with andre's mesh and makes things glossier, as he, uh, does his thing...

U2:P1 Roadmap Going forward

As we continuously reach the close of the blocking phase of this project, the polishing phase will begin (the process of making everything less blocky and the animation actually having fluid motion :p). I anticipate this phase being less-or-equal the amount of time that it has taken to block out the project but anything can happen, so don't take my word on it. Going forward, this is how the rest of the production will go:

- Wrap up blocking for everything

- Polish everything

- VFX (VDB and fluid)

- Final QA meetup and review

- Render

- Audio Score (A HARD MAYBE, may outsource for custom sounds to master)

- Post (comp, color correct, dof, etc)

- Release

As always, your constant patience is greatly appreciated while progress of this projects continues on, despite IRL burdens and circumstances. Your support continues my drive to make things like this for the long run. I love you guys.

Take care,

A