Tag: 10 confessions

More About 10 Confessions

Death
Zoe's new look thanks to DAZ's new way of breaking shader purchases. Cowlick to be added later when I figure that part out.
Zoe’s new look thanks to DAZ’s new way of breaking shader purchases. Cowlick to be added later when I figure that part out.

I’m sure you already know that 10 Confessions has been brought to a complete standstill by what I thought were further hardware failures. Weeks upon weeks later, many fightings to get my renders to look how they used to, and hundreds of explorations and experimentations later I had to accept it wasn’t Charlie. It was DAZ 3D and their latest stupid update, and the fact that toon renders seem to be very low on their totem pole. Where “realistic” lighting used to work before, it doesn’t now. And with pwtoon, despite the website saying it’s compatible, simple lighting is chancy at best.

If you’re not sure what I’m saying, then let me sum it up: DAZ broke my toy with their stupid update. It’s been weeks and months and the toy has never been fixed. 10 Confessions has suffered.

I’ve had to think of another way to make 10 Confessions – and let me tell you I’m sore unhappy with this development. But DAZ is free, and you get what you pay for. And speaking of what you pay for, something I’ve been coveting went on sale last night so it was bought for the sake of 10 Confessions: a manga shader.

It’s risky switching to this shader because I am seriously considering saving to purchase Poser at some point and switching some of my renders to it. Poser is more stable and people make my sort of  complaint less, you see. But they don’t have a manga shader.

So here I am working along, learning this new method. I’m almost there, which is good because I’m SO FUCKING TIRED OF BEING STUCK AT CHAPTER TWO. And there is one good thing about switching to this shader: I’ve been trying to imitate a manga like look since 10 began. It is now achieved on a level I am definitely happy with. See image.

Blessing in Disguise?

Death

lookingFinally the work flow was good enough I could devote a good solid amount of time to 10 Confessions. I mean, sure, our lights are about to be shut off for it but there’s no helping that right? I can’t suddenly procure a huge commission out of the blue. People come to me. So best use my time wisely.

Except when I sat down to do 10 Confessions – and I was going to knock out as many pages as I could mind you – to my horror nothing was working right. Every time I tried to render a panel, it just looked bad. For that matter a lot of things looked bad, to the point I couldn’t get any paying work done anyway. I thought I’d killed another video card… but in the end I could only figure out that the problem was in one of the 3D shaders I use to make things look all toonified. And nothing I could do would make it work right.

I honestly sat back and wondered what 10 Confessions had done for the universe to slap it around so much. I mean, every time I’ve tried to get chapter two done something has happened. It’s like trying to roll a boulder uphill by yourself, sometimes. But. Two days of fussing with Charlie the Computer later, I found a solution to the problem in a FREE shader offered by someone that just happens to create results better than the expensive one that broke.  So now I’m sitting here going, oh, well that was for the best sort of now wasn’t it?

Blessings in disguise.

The only real downer is I only got two pages done when I could have done so much more. Dang it.