Dev Diary, August 21st, 2026 (Patreon)

I thought that instead of the normal "everything went well this week", I'd give you a bit of insight into a typical scene setup where I plan for something, but the 3D world had other plans (everything still went well this week, though).

The scene is Celeste and Sam's car breaking down on a remote desert road.

First, I loaded the environment and Celeste's rental.

So far so good, but then I find out that the person who made that car didn't add the option to open the hood. Well, since I need the hood to open, and I can't change the car, since it's been Celeste's rental all throughout the game, I have to make it myself.

Loading the car into Blender and removing the hood isn't hard. Tinkering, time-consuming work, but still, it worked out fine.

Then I have to do it all over again, this time removing the car and keeping the hood.

With these as two separate objects, I can load them back into Daz Studio, re-shade them, and position the hood so it looks open and connected to the car.

Since the hood was never meant to open, there's no engine in there. Luckily, Wibble and his constant attention to detail have an engine in his 3d model car, so let's bring it over.

It doesn't fit perfectly, the dampers/springs are wrong, and there's a bit of clipping towards the windscreen, but it's enough for my needs. I still don't like how there are spaces at the corners where the headlamps are, so let's fix that. Another round in Blender of aligning, and I'm left with this.

So, with the car done, let's bring in the fun part. It's also a hot spot to break down, so let's give Celeste a bit of moisture to her skin.

While Sam is more comfortable on the top of a hood, Celeste isn't afraid to get under it. She knows the difference between a carburetor and a flux capacitor, and don't mind getting dirty. Let's fix that. I have an old "skin dirt" asset that I never used. This is a good time to change that.

Okay, so that didn't work. And to top it off, it's horrible. Looks like she's been run over by a car and is now in a full-body cast. Checking into it, I see that the dirt layer is meant for Genesis 8, and Celeste is Genesis 8.1. After converting the dirt layer and changing it so it looks more like she's been wiping sweat with her dirty hands and leaning on dirty things, she finally looks like this.

I guess you're wondering why I go through so much trouble to set these things up? Well, here's why...

And let's add Sam to the mix as well.

HQ versions attached to this post.

And with that, have a warm, hot, delightful weekend, and always get under the hood and give the gal a full service before going on a long journey. The car, that is. Or your significant other. Or both.

// Drifty

DISCLAIMER: All my tinkering with this scene didn't impact my progress, as the render queue is constantly rendering. 251 story renders and 1,640 animated frames were rendered this week.