Hello Crew, so its that time of the month again. This one is a bit longer due to changes coming from Patreon and some process changes on my end.

First, I want to start this off by talking about some changes that Patreon is putting in place. So I had already switched to the Subscription billing model while I was pausing the Patreon, with this you get charged as soon as you sign up and charged again on that same date each month, this only applies to subscriptions made after that change was applied, existing members would continue to be charged on the first of each month. Patreon is forcing everyone onto this by November 2025 and this change is being made due to Apple's Billing Requirements that are now being applied to Patreon. In addition to that, Apple's 30% App Store fee is now going to be applied to all memberships purchased in the Patreon iOS app starting in November 2024.

There are two ways to handle that as a creator, you can choose to either eat the fee so that people that sign up to support you through the iOS app get charged the same as everyone else, but you get less from their membership, or you can choose to charge more for iOS memberships so they pay more and you the creator would earn the same amount as if they supported via Web/Android.

Now I have already decided how I will handle this, I will charge more for memberships through the iOS app, but I would advise that you use Web/Android to actually sign up for a membership so you don't get charged extra for using iOS.

Second, I have realized that I have not necessarily been using the best settings in the app that I use for converting from the .PNG renders to .WEBP for the actual releases. In the past I was using the lossless setting, which when converting the files resulted in a file size decrease of around 33%. As it turns out, I am unable to distinguish the difference between lossless and 100% quality, even compared to the original .PNG. And when using the 100% quality option, the .WEBP files are about 84% smaller then the original .PNG.

So I went through and converted the previous images to use the new settings, I might have missed a few and will deal with those later if I did (stupid Windows Explorer was crashing on me while doing this). As things stand at this moment, we have gone from the PC build (Windows and Linux) being about 1.11GB to being about 437MB. Now I do want to note as well that I haven't done a ton of renders for this release yet, and probably won't have any animations, or they will be very short if there are any. But this release may end up being a smaller total file size for the distributions compared to the previous one, even though it has more content.

This month I mostly focused on creating some of the Daz3d scene files so that I can more easily just load them each up and render them in turn, I think I've said it before, but one of things that really slows down creating the renders is just the time it takes to import some of the assets as well as then posing them. I would say the script it about 3/4th done, not considering a branching path near the start of the update that I have just skipped over writing for the time being because its not high priority.

It's that time again, and I really need to get back into the habit of doing these before the last day of the month (or at least get it typed up and scheduled). This monthly update is going to be pretty short, unlike the last one I don't have a ton to talk about.

This month I spent most of the time working on code related changes, mostly how the codex works and some menu layout changes. The renders done this month were mostly focused on the Summer 2024 extras.

I know I have said this for a while (like the past year or so), but I have been setting aside some of my own money, not just what you all support development with, and I think I am pretty close to pulling the trigger on a GPU for a second rig (or to toss in the server running my Plex server and just toss a Windows or Linux VM on there to run iray server). While there are alternatives like Boost for Daz3D that enable basically the same effect, but without buying the hardware. However, I am a big believer in owning the hardware, especially when it doesn't take much to break even and then after that point you're actually saving money. For example, the card I am potentially considering buying is the RTX A5000, which can be found on eBay for anywhere between $1200 and $1500, closer to $2100 if you buy new from a retailer. Well, Boost for Daz3D charges you $6.52/hr to use a setup that has that same card, using those eBay figures, after about 183 hours (~7.6 days) to 230 hours (~9.6 days) of rendering, you will have broken even on costs (not considering electricity).

Now some of you may be thinking, that is a lot of time rendering, that would take a while to hit wouldn't it? To which I'd say no not really, when rendering animations in the past (and is a reason I don't do too many animations) they can take the better part of a month on my current rig to render, and its not like my current rig is particularly low powered for the GPU (RTX 3080 12GB). And unfortunately during that time I am limited with what I can use my system for, so I often end up needing to start and stop those renders when I want to use my system for stuff, which further makes the renders take longer. But if I can offload those to a second rig then I can more easily just set and forget them, and of course can have my main PC join in as an additional node when I'm not using it. I also won't need to spend quite as much time trying to find ways to speed things up that possibly lower the quality.

So I will possibly be making that purchase closer to the end of the year, potentially as a Christmas present type thing, baring any major changes in my finances, like winning the lottery (in which case I'd buy 4 and that is only half joking).