Much smaller stage - Playblast (Rough) (Patreon)

First playblast of the second part of Encounter 3 is here, albeit being a short one! We're a bit further in than this scene short would suggest, but anything past this point isn't particularly presentable yet, but that will change in the coming weeks!

We've segmented the rooftop battle into a compilation of multiple scenes so we can add anything to the script should either Disregard or me get another cool idea later on, or remove anything that might end up being too ambitious animation- or even rendering-wise. Once the next three noms are animated, I'll go ahead and start rendering these so we parallelize this task as soon as possible, especially with rendering taking up so much time lately.

Speaking of which, the Goth Zoe mini-animation is still taking its sweet time, with it currently sitting at 650/1050 rendered frames. I've already done some diagnostics on why the scene is so insanely heavy and it essentially boils down to the light scattering through her long hair from behind. Turning off her long hair in the render brings the render time down from 80 to just 25 minutes per frame. Unfortunately her hair AND the lighting are quite substantial to the scene, so there's no choice but to tank the long render time, especially since we're this far in. Apologies for the long wait on it. ;-;

Should I make a longer animation with her in her new room at some point then I'll have to carefully reconsider the lighting choices and likely go for something taking place in broad daylight, even if I really, REALLY like the soft ambient/TV lighting in this animation. Since it's taking such a long time I'll probably look into doing some sound design for it so it's nice and polished on release!