When did we have our last development roundup? Oh wow. Over a year ago? Jeez. Well, let's share about a year of updates with you then!
(This post is mirrored from https://open3dlab.com/news/development-roundup-summer-2025/ )
The end of 2024 was marked by highs and lows. After a year filled with unfortunate database, connectivity and file upload related incidents, a ...
2025-08-02 04:20:38 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey everyone, over the past few weeks, I've been working on the site search for all three websites. This has obviously caused some frustration for a lot of you, as the new search hasn't been as specific as it was before. Th...
2024-11-06 20:35:23 +0000 UTC View Post
Please don't use the iOS app to subscribe. Use a web browser, or the Android app.
2024-08-14 23:26:28 +0000 UTC View PostHey everyone,
Firstly, welcome to all the new Patrons who joined over the last few weeks. And returning patrons, thanks for your continued support. If you haven't already, connect your Patreon account to your site and Discord accounts to claim your benefits.
It's been a while since the last development update. Here's what's been keeping me busy these last few weeks.
If you've been around the sites long enough, you may know that it uses a pro...
2024-06-15 09:26:41 +0000 UTC View PostA series of data loss events occurred between April 10th and 13th at Open3DLab, following a server cluster update.
The new database management system that's been put in use has been most reliable, but unfortunately I still had to learn a lot in terms of monitoring and recovering from failure scenarios. A full technical writeup of what happened is listed below.
I'm really sorry for not noticing the issues sooner, and not being able to prevent the dataloss. There is ...
2024-04-13 18:38:03 +0000 UTC View PostHello everyone, After a long delay, the Open3DLab connection with SubscribeStar has finally been established. If you're supporting the site through Open3DLab, you can now connect your SubscribeStar account to receive benefits. You can connect your account through this page: https://open3dlab.com/accounts/social/connections/ - After you've connected your account, you should be able to access benefi...
2023-10-16 08:32:03 +0000 UTC View PostHello everyone,
By now, you've probably heard about the controversy around X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. The company's owner has been making some erratic decisions with regard to the operating platform. In the community, a lot of people have expressed concerns regarding the direction he's taken the platform, and what it might mean for the future of adult content on the platform. There's not a perfect solution, but I want to provide an alternative for people who want to put ...
2023-07-29 11:48:16 +0000 UTC View Post
Two days ago, I reported on an incident related to the webhook connection between the Open3DLab sites and Patreon. (Read the full story here) The error (caused by Patreon) resulted in our Patreon subscribers no longer being able to access their benefits on Open3DLab.
Since communication with Patreon has been slow, and a fix on their part was not forthcoming, I started the process of manually ...
2023-07-15 14:57:23 +0000 UTC View PostDear Patrons,
I am writing to inform you about an unexpected issue that occurred two days ago, on July 12th, that has affected some of our Patreon users' ability to access their benefits on Open3DLab. I want to explain in simple terms what has happened and what steps we are taking to resolve this problem.
Open3DLab uses a system called webhooks to communicate with Patreon. Whenever a user makes a pledge, updates it, or cancels it, Patreon sends us a notification. This notification...
2023-07-14 00:03:20 +0000 UTC View PostHi everyone.
Firstly, welcome to all the new Patrons who joined over the last few weeks. And returning patrons, thanks for your continued support. If you haven't already, connect your Patreon account to your site and Discord accounts to claim your benefits.
I am excited to share my recent experience of bringing Open3DLab to Kubernetes with you all. This is what the recent migration and downtime was all about. In this article, I'll describe what Kubernetes is in layman's term...
2023-03-15 23:08:11 +0000 UTC View PostHello everyone,
I would like to inform you that I will be performing extended maintenance on Saturday, March 4th, 2023. This maintenance is necessary to improve the performance and reliability of our website in the long term. This maintenance involves the migration of web and database servers to a different provider. Storage servers are unaffected, and any running downloads will not be interrupted.
During the migration process,
Hi everyone,
Many people have mentioned in the past that they remember downloading a certain file, but can't find easily the original on the site.
Today, I deployed a new "download history" feature to address this. You can find yours under the "Download History" menu options in your account settings. Note that it will only show downloads from today onward, since no records were kept previously.
And that leads us to one particular consequence that I want to explicitly mention...
2023-02-19 07:16:43 +0000 UTC View PostHi everyone.
Firstly, welcome to all the new Patrons who joined over the last few weeks. And returning patrons, thanks for your continued support. If you haven't already, connect your Patreon account to your site and Discord accounts to claim your benefits.
Happy new year of 2023! Let's jump right into the update!
In the "Behind the Site" video I released in early November, I made reference to issues regarding the storage server I'm maintain...
2023-01-01 23:08:34 +0000 UTC View Post
A quick peek behind the scenes at the datacenter.
That broken disk kicked off the long maintenance and intermittent downtime over the last week. Apologies for the inconvenience.
Hi everyone.
Firstly, welcome to all the new Patrons who joined over the last few weeks. And returning patrons, thanks for your continued support.
If you haven't already, connect your Patreon account to your site and Discord accounts to claim your benefits.
Wow. It's been a while. Half a year has passed since the last dev roundup, although you wouldn't notice if you used the site as a yardstick. Still, a lot has happened behind the scenes, and will continue to hap...
2022-09-22 18:00:07 +0000 UTC View Post
Unity is an engine that's used for many games. So how do we get to the models and textures? With some publicly available tools, of course!
Check out how it works in this latest video!
2022-06-28 15:41:27 +0000 UTC View Post
A quick video to test Blender functionality on the Steam Deck.
2022-05-14 09:43:02 +0000 UTC View Post
I messed up. Please watch the video for clarification.
2022-04-01 20:45:42 +0000 UTC View Post
UPDATE 2022-04-02: This was part of an elaborate April Fools joke. You can find some clarification on the followup post.
For years, SFMLab and Smutbase have been kept running thanks to our excellent uploaders and wonderful supporters. Operating a site ...
2022-03-31 20:39:38 +0000 UTC View PostHi everyone.
First of all, welcome to all the new Patrons who joined over the last few weeks. And returning patrons, thanks for your continued support.
If you haven't already, connect your Patreon account to your site and Discord accounts to claim your benefits.
It's been a while since the last update, and a lot of work has been happening on the site over the past half year.
The biggest changes happening on the site have been related to ...
2022-03-24 22:37:29 +0000 UTC View Post
If you didn't already know; there is a Youtube channel! Subscribe if you haven't already.
This is the first in a small "Behind the Scenes" series I want to make about what it takes to run the site. Since COVID restrictions have lifted, I'm more free to move around and will soon visit the datacenter for some filming. But for now: Welcome to my living room! It's quite small, but I make the best of it. Doesn't help that I'm a bit of a hoarder. :') The backup server is the most laid-b...
2022-03-11 02:57:28 +0000 UTC View PostHi everyone,
First of all, welcome to all the new Patrons who joined over the last few weeks. And returning patrons, thanks for your continued support.
If you haven't already, connect your Patreon account to your site and Discord accounts to claim your benefits.
As some users may have experienced, the "free" servers have gotten significantly slower. This is not due to some bugs or capacity issues. This was a calculated decision th...
2021-07-14 21:24:34 +0000 UTC View PostHi everyone,
First of all, welcome to all the new Patrons who joined over the last few weeks. And returning patrons, thanks for your continued support.
If you haven't already, connect your Patreon account to your site and Discord accounts to claim your benefits.
2021 feels like it's only just started, but March is already here. While my main job has demanded most of my attention for the past two mo...
2021-03-15 17:00:06 +0000 UTC View PostFor new Patrons: connect your Patreon account to your Open3DLab/Smutbase/SFMLab and Discord accounts to claim your benefits.
Hi everyone,
Today, the 31st of December 2020, I would like to thank all of the Patrons who have supported the site this year. This has been an especially trying and stressful year for many of us. But we've made it through to the end, and look toward the future with new hope and enthusiasm.
Ignoring the state of the world of...
2020-12-31 00:50:33 +0000 UTC View PostWelcome to the new Patrons, and thank you all for your continued support. Here's a quick follow-up to the previous November update.
As mentioned in previous updates: With the storage issues last summer, the EU0 server became much more expensive to keep around. That's why we got the new EU1 hardware configured recently. It should be much cheaper to manage in the long term. Since it hasn't seen as much traffic as EU0, we're looking to stress the server a bit by eliminating most EU0 traff...
Hi everyone,
First of all, welcome to all the new Patrons who joined over the last few weeks. And returning patrons, thanks for your continued support.
If you haven't already, connect your Patreon account to your site and Discord accounts to claim your benefits.
This month, I have a shorter update for you, but I didn't want to wait for the year end to share it. I have been crunching at my day job, and have not spent m...
2020-11-16 10:49:01 +0000 UTC View PostHi everyone,
First of all, I want to welcome and thank all the new Patrons who joined over the last few weeks. Your support allows me to spend more time on the site and pay for the operating costs.
If you haven't already, connect your Patreon account to your site and Discord accounts to claim your benefits.
I added a new page on the sites that has taken the place of the Special Thanks section on the old site. You can see the $10 Patrons ...
2020-09-28 12:13:36 +0000 UTC View PostTLDR: I discuss the site goings on since March, and sum up the numerous features and site improvements, like the Migration, the upload process, Verified uploaders, automated upload validation and other ongoing improvements. I also talk about some of the site performance issues of the past few months.
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Hey everyone,
I'd like to provide you with a summary of my activities for the past few months, and where we're headed from here. While I'm not usually some...
2020-09-15 15:49:23 +0000 UTC View Posttl;dr To start syncing perks, action is required from you. Link your Patreon account to your Open3dLab/Smutbase/SFMLab account.
Hello everyone.
Regardless of whether or not you're abiding by your local government's guidelines related to the ongoing pandemic, I hope you're all doing so in safe and sensible manner.
As mentioned in the previous update post regarding the site migration, I've begun the process of restoring certain site features, starting with the...
2020-07-11 17:37:15 +0000 UTC View PostHi everyone,
It's been a busy month, but we're almost out of the woods. You may have noticed some major changes and severe service disruption over the past few weeks. To those who asked, my answers have been terse and vague. The banner on the homepage explained little, and naturally that had people worried. As such, I owe everyone an explanation regarding the state of SFMLab over the past month, and how we will continue going forward.