An update on the situation: good(ish) news!

Hello! I've got news for you, and they're important. To summarise them: they're good. Very good. But as always, there are… caveats. I will explain everything, and try to present it in a structure. We'll start with the good stuff, then the bad stuff, and once again get back to the good things. Let's go.

So. The good thing. I did receive my data this morning, and spent last several hours digging through it. It was possible to save a bit more than I was promised: about 90% of the files did survive, and the lost ones are mostly huge files (like standalone HDRI maps which I don't really need that much, and can easily restore if needed). I guess, it has something to do with how files are stored on SSD. This new disk is significantly slower than the previous one, though, and it does affect the rendering speed, but not too much.

The bad thing, however, is that a lot of stuff in the data that was possible to extract is corrupted. I only checked a couple hundred assets out of thousands, but ~50% of them have a dent of sorts, and those are just the ones I can check manually. Could be more.

But — and that's the good thing — my beloved Blake managed to survive in a pristine condition. My beautiful girl is just as beautiful as always, and I almost shed a tear of joy when I saw his face again. It meant that everything will be fine.

Unfortunately, not everyone was as lucky as Blake. In fact, almost none were. Aside from Blake, only Melinda, Suya, and Liam stayed intact (Suya does have a problem with her dick asset, but it's a separate thing, and can be restored easily). Everyone else has a problem of sorts. Some lost textures — like Rebecca, some lost geometry — like Samuel (he was a bunch of grey cubes). As their parent, I was distressed by all that.

However, the good thing is that I can fix the textures, and geometry by simply reinstalling the packages their original models came with. In fact, I already did so with most of them, and they look as they were supposed to.

Too bad that's not always possible. I noticed that some of my characters started looking rather… differently. Like, their shapes, their face features visibly changed, and sometimes pretty drastically. The only theory that I have is that I lost some important morph set that I've been using for them, and it affects thing. Daz, unfortunately, isn't giving me any information about it, and I'm still trying to pinpoint the culprit. All I know is that Dominique, Bree, Pepper, Trish, and Gillian are now all looking significantly different. Notice that they're all female models. This narrows down the list of possible morphs… a little. But I don't know if they'll be back to their normal form after I found the missing morphs.

The good news, however, is that none of those characters appear in the last scene of v0.15, which means that I can actually continue working. This is my number one priority now. I need to finish it so I could start restoring everything thoroughly.

As it stands, the development of Shattered officially continues. And I can't be any happier about this fact. Thank you very much for staying with me, and stay tuned for the progress report tomorrow. It's been a rough week to say the least, but we almost pulled through. Almost. But right now I'm an optimist.