Despair and suffering.

It has been a very painful and frustrating week.

I spent about three days with Blender, trying to get my set and my characters to work properly on that software. And I kind of succeeded. But kind of only. The results are not close enough to the original look and feel of the images I render with Daz and Iray. The light and the textures look different, everything looks different, and that difference is jarring. I believe that it's something that can be worked on, but that would require a knowledge of Blender way deeper than mine, and most likely, a lot of time. So I can't use Blender for my animations and I'll have to work with Daz. 

I don't feel like I have wasted my time, however. I learned a lot during these three days and it made me want to go further. I will most likely keep trying stuff in Blender. Eventually, someday I'll know enough to use it properly. If not for the animations of Summer Scent, perhaps for a hypothetical next game.

After that defeat at the hands of Blender, I switched stance and got into the Daz animation wagon. And it's excruciating, as expected. However... I managed to do something. I invested two days of work into that thing, and it moved. It's not great, but it will do.

I'll consider it, and most likely all the animation I'll come up with in the near future, as placeholders. Until I get better at this or find a better technological solution. 

I will also have to find another way to post-process my images. 10 seconds of animation means about 300 images. I plan to have three, maybe 4 animations in this update... So a lot of renders to edit and I refuse to do this manually anymore, as it's a painfully boring process. I will have to find a way to automatize the process, and that most likely means changing the software.

Anyway, my first animation is posed, and I have yet to render it. I need to run some tests to define some appropriate settings. Rendering that thing will take quite some time.

As I already announced, the game will be available on Steam on January 2nd. This will have some consequences on the price of the game. On Itch, I will raise the price to match Steam's. On Subscribe Star, I will have to change the perks. The full game will no longer be available for the Gunners, and maybe even the Sailing Masters. They will however have access to the update files.

I'm not yet sure how I will price the game. A lot of voices are advising me to price it higher than what I initially planned. I'm going to look at what other games do and see.

You can follow my progress on this Trello board.

You can also add the game to your wishlist on Steam !

Thank you for your support!

The Naughty Captain

Wishlist the game on Steam!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2994790/Summer_Scent/