Update: Some Bad News and Some Good News (Patreon)

The Bad News

It's always best to start with the bad news and I'll always strive to be honest and transparent with everyone here who contributes to my work, so here goes...

We suffered a fairly catastrophic system failure that resulted in the loss of all of our in-progress sets, including the Olympus set and a nearly completed sequel in the Machines series. Needless to say, I'm gutted over this.

I normally back everything up, but these were saved on a local SSD and the chance of recovery appear to be slim. That said, if anyone has any suggestion on how to extract data from an SSD, I'm all ears.

The Good News

We already have a new render machine that is roughly 400% faster! The set released just prior to this post was rendered on the new machine and each image rendered WAY faster than in a similar scene I built in the previous machine, so this thing is an MF'n rocket, even with the water effects, which tend to bounce virtual light all over the place.

Also, the entire roster of Taz models was backed up, along with all of the hair styles, clothes, etc., so big sigh of relief there.

We're basically starting over with all of our in-progress sets, but we already have a few in the works, including a new version of Olympus with the same cast in what I consider to be a much better setting.

We're still learning some of the intricacies of the new machine, but things should be even more productive once a newer, faster workflow is settled.

In closing, sorry for being such a bonehead and not backing up the in-progress work. Lesson learned. Feel free to post any questions you may have in the comments.