Merry Christmas, everyone! (Patreon)

It's been a while since I've posted but, you know me... Rarely I post when I don't have anything important to say. Now, it's Christmas and, for some reason, I've stumbled upon this image. My first work I've ever posted online, on F95 Zone. Back in 2018, it was all about lighting, posing and (patiently) rendering in Daz. The good old days of Visual Novels... Tried my luck with them but I've always wanted more.Today, things have changed. A lot! We've got from the image you see, to the era of AI. Back then, I was happy when the render stopped after an hour and 750 iterations. Now, I'm cheering when Windows PowerShell shows the "Model successfully loaded" message. In just 5 years, we've gone from image rendering in Daz to creating our own, in house trained AI model, AoraX, ready to be used to power the interactions with the characters in Project Bounded and all of its side stories.A hard task, but not far from being available for testing. I know it may sound weird, but technology just got powerful and accessible enough for my goals. I'm talking about smaller and powerful AI models that can run smoothly on a 3060, generate text, generate voice and, finally, animate Metahumans in Unreal Engine, through the new 5.5 animation pipeline. All real-time, all working smoothly, offline, on your local computer. And, since I'm coming from the past, when optimization was a priority, my goal is to make this run on a budget PC, so everyone can enjoy it.The first and most important step was made. The AI model is running smoothly and it will be available for testing as a standalone app soon. You will get the chance to talk to the characters and test them.Last but not least, a big hug and thank you, all, for your support and love for this project. See you all soon!Merry Christmas, everyone!Fireblade185