Hey everyone! It's been a while, hasn't it?

I had a great break and did a bunch of fun stuff, like playing Persona 3 Reload, which is an awesome remake, totally recommend it if you haven't tried it yet.

Originally, I meant to share this announcement at the beginning of the month, but yeah, important stuff came up. Hopefully, March won't be as hectic, as I have a very interesting update to work on… Final fantasy 7 Rebirth, Dragons Dogma 2 and Rise of Ronin… oh, my.

Anyway, today I want to give you an update on my progress with blender and Chapter 7.

Let’s talk about blender first.

As you can see from the comparison renders, I've completely redone the base mesh for female characters. It was a bit of a journey, but I finally reached a point where I didn't delete the model a couple of days after creating it... only took me seven tries! Must be fate, right? By the way, any objections if I remove those Mirai renders? They're kind of an eyesore.

So, I've managed to create a female base mesh that's fully customizable without any hiccups, editable textures, and the performance is pretty good. Blender only started lagging after I loaded up 180 Akira models in the render view.

There's still one hurdle left, which is supposedly the most difficult part of character creation (based on what I read on the internet), which is rigging. Once that's done, I'll move on to the male characters.

Oh, and you might notice the hairstyle is different. Not because I couldn't replicate the old one, but because in Blender, I'm not limited by HS2 selections and can make things exactly as I envision them. I also switched from hair cards to sculpted hair, which is much easier to work with and looks way better. I do have a Mirai model ready (Without hair), but I'll save her for last since her hairstyle is quite complex and I want to gain more experience first.

Overall, things are pretty well, not perfect but almost great.

Now, onto the update...

I've already started writing the story, and I'm aiming to make it even longer than the last update. Thanks to this new rendering approach, I'll be able to spend less time on renders and focus more on the story itself. The only challenge will be custom maps, but I'll do my best to be efficient with them, especially since Chapter 7 will take place in different locations.

Chapter 7 will somewhat be a test to see if this new rendering approach works.

Moving on to the Discord server, I tried to add some custom commands like JasonTon has on his server (welcome, good night, etc.), but after checking the pricing for a MEE6 premium, I decided to stick with just one free command, which will be a welcome command.

Don’t get me wrong, I'm all for making the server more fun for you guys, it’s just that I don’t like to waste money on thing I do not consider worthy buying. MEE6 has some interesting activities, but I'd rather spend that money on Blender add-ons or courses. Besides, the server isn't super active anyway, which is fine by me. But if anyone has any funny, not cool but funny ideas, I'm all ears.

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I think that covers everything I wanted to talk about. As always, have a fantastic day, and if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.

P.s. Keep an eye out for random full Blender model drops. Oh, and I missed Lunar New Year, so Happy New Year, everyone!

I attempted to recreate the same three-point lighting setup I did in Blender render within Studio Neo 2, but the outcome wasn't good...