Random Outtakes from the year making SITA
I have been doing “Principal Photography” on Something’s in the Air now for a full year. By my guesstimate, I’m about 2/3rds done (unless I come up with a brilliant plan to add to the project), so maybe another 6 months? Maybe?
Anyways, here’s some random spoiler free screenshots of what I have been doing for the past year. Come to think of it, out of context, these pictures look a bit insane.
What is this a traffic jam? Lighting looks bad on this one.
Wait is that a Vampire? Does this story involve Vampires? Naw, that would be ridiculous. Background looks oddly familiar though.
Where is this supposed to be? And why is that guy dressed like an Observer from Fringe?
OK, now I am completely lost. Is the “second date” set in a renaissance fair in the Amazon or something?
OK, she’s cute. Finally a sensible picture. Is playing with sticks and balls a metaphor of some kind?
Date Ariane Games 
That one scene reminded my of “The Witcher”
First two shots and the last are cool. Others are…unexpected.
Don’t worry, it will all make sense when it is released… I hope.
Certainly whets the appetite.
Maybe you should run a caption contest 🙂
Don’t worry, you’ll come up with a brilliant plan to add to the project when it’s about 99.8% finished…
That’s happening already. My initial version of the Ariane second date had her starting off a little mad, because you waited over a week to call her back after your last date. In testing, people that have never played the first date says she came off cold. So i created a second version where Ariane is excited to get your call and go out again, which is great for the new players, but inconsistent with the Ariane storyline from the first date.
There is a feature that I implemented from the beginning to allow you to “import” what happened on your first date into the sequel and elements of the story would change based on that. So as a compromise to the two versions, I decided that if you play the default date or import a date that did not end in sex, you would get “nice” Ariane, and if your imported date did end in sex, then you would get “upset” Ariane, and a different set of dialogue.
But then I recently came up with a 3rd version designed for fans of Date Ariane where in the past month, the two of you have done “everything” spread over multiple nights. This leads to a bunch of inconsistencies, but the dialogue is a lot funnier filed with inside jokes only fans of Date Ariane would get.
Nice, albeit confusing. However… Uh, any word on threesomes/group sex in this? XD
Well anyway, can’t wait
Nice, albeit confusing pictures. Can’t wait for when this finally comes out XD
Though I must ask… is there any word on threesomes/group sex in this game, or is it just standard heterosexual stuff again? :p haha
One of the 5 stories is a bit more “mature” than the others, it also happens to be the one I have done the least work on, and the one most likely to be dropped if I need to drop one, which I currently do not plan to do.
I have two and two half stories done, and hope to make it three and a half by the end of the month. Ideally, I’d like to make it to four stories done before Guild Wars 2 comes out and I end up spending a month or two distracted in Tyria.
Is the pool cue upside down btw?
Soft shadows… There are only a few circumstances were the light gives hard-edged shadows. Allow a few more bounces if you’re raytracing, and add softness to the light(s). Around 2.5% is ideal if you’re raytracing daylight or bright indoor light, up the percentage if there are other kind of lights.Use 8-12% if you’re using shadowmaps, though you might get ‘glowing nostrils’. I use UberEnvironment with one raytraced light, and it doesn’t required long render-times. An example, I spent 1.5 hours rendering a quite detailed picture size 2560×2048 (with some reflections), and you can squeeze the time down significantly if your render size is half that (say 1280×1024). I posted this July 17:
It was a feeble attempt to render a desert environment as known from several western movies, though I lack a lot of stuff from that environment.
Here I used standard Light Dome Pro 2-tech in DS3A:
Simply saying, you should be able to render a lot better than me.
I see what you are talking about shadows. Poser has 3 different shading models:Diffuse, Ray Trace, and IRL. Of the three, Ray Trace is by far the easiest to use, as the other two have a tendency to leave odd artifacts. IRL leaves spotty shadows (see the “At The Office” picture in my portfolio for an example), and diffuse leads to shadow streaks. Thus I mostly use Ray Trace, and end up with hard shadows. The second to last picture is in harsh sunshine, but the shadows could be softer, the last picture needs more lights at different angles.
I’m saving the pz3 file of every picture I do, so I can change them as needed later. My primary goal right now is to get the pictures done, and work on improvements later.
A couple tips, set the shading rate at minimum 0.2 (lower doesn’t give better renders). Render each light separately, this will cut down time drastically. However, it is required to add the renders together in Photoshop. But the time saved is well worth it, even with Ambient Occlusion on. Typically, transparencies of hair takes most of the time rendering.
The best picture is number two IMHO due to the soft shadows in the face.