Episode 11 Update - 06/08/25

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I got a little held up in May. I had to take off time to help some family and also attend a friend's wedding but I'm now back and at full force.

In my trying to lock down the Sound Cut, I realized that I had to make sure /everything/ was lined up. Every footstep, all the physics, every splash, every major physical action. Even though the character animation was "done" I kept finding a lot of cut corners and unfinished bits through the episode that I had to lock down for this cut to make it a solid draft that resembles the final product enough to add sound.

It seems I left a good amount of unfinished detail work in Scene A for myself that I hadn't realized. Additionally, my animation quality has become better, even over the past two years, and there was a noticeable quality difference in this scene that I had to correct and tweak. Even as I finish the Camera pass for this scene, I'm going to have to make more adjustments throughout than I expected. Similarly, I had to lock down Scene X and finish every little thing I'd left unfinished and lock it down so that the sound engineer could reference things properly.

In order to yield the simulated and special effects for the Sound Cut, I did a LOT of rendering these past few weeks. This episode is insanely effects-heavy and I needed to bring all the knowledge from previous episodes together to get it all working properly. I've been working on two computers simultaneously and having them output renders all day and all night. Both setups crash constantly, requiring my attentive monitoring and making all of it a frustrating slog. Despite this, I got everything rendered out for the Sound Cut, but it gave me pause for how I'm going to handle the lighting and rendering phase. Although I resisted the idea, I decided to dip into this Patreon account and upgrade my PC's rendering capabilities, and the parts are now being shipped to me. Without my realizing it, my current setup became several years old, and when the time comes to render out the final images for the episode, I am going to need a qualified graphics card for this to even be possible. This episode is super resource intensive over all. The simulation files of Scene F alone is an 82 GB folder. I usually try to save every bit of Patreon money for freelancers and assets and not my own equipment, but given the amount of crashing and overloading I'm experiencing, this now seems entirely necessary heading into lighting and rendering.

ANYWAY though - The Sound Cut is complete. The full episode is intact and watchable. This stage of production now even feels nostalgic and strange at this point given how long it took to get here again. The final runtime of the episode, without credits, is 29:19. It seems I had about 40 seconds of fat that got cut here and there from my initial estimate. But this is the final runtime with every moment timed out properly. I have my sound engineer engaging with all the files. When I get the proper chance, I now have the material to plot out the music score as well.

All "face" animation with the hired artist I've been working with is now fully complete and looks marvelous. Completing the camera pass will solidify the final version. The ball is back in my court here, and I intend to follow the Camera passes straight through, A, B, C, D, then F.

It's now occurred to me just how much I've familiarized myself with Blender over the past few years, and how quickly I can now manage once difficult tasks. I'm currently doing the "Camera Pass" starting with Scene A and I'm finding that I'm a lot more capable with the software and handling the camera itself. Although I'm needing to make a lot of manual adjustments in other areas, I've figured out means of doing this pass a lot more efficiently. The same goes for lighting. This Camera Pass is likely going to resemble the final product. Given that this is the case, it doesn't seem that lighting and rendering is going to be the hurdle that it used to be for me.

I have the time and now, and the path seems clear. I believe I can complete this before Summer ends. Given that we're getting close to the end, make sure you've designated your desired name and sprite for the end credits. You can do so HERE if you haven't already.

From here on out, I'm going to be listing out my Very Best Patrons - the top donors for this episode who will receive top billing in the credits. Here is the current standing:

I hope to have plenty to bring you in the next update. We're gonna take this home. Thank you for your support.