5 years in the making, and answering questions.

Seeing as today is pretty much exactly 5 years since I sat down with Daz Studio and Ren'Py and decided to make a Visual Novel, I thought I'd take a little trip down memory lane with you all, and look back at how it all started. I also encouraged you to send me questions for an AMA, which you'll find the answers to further down this post.

The beginning.

So, it's the 16th of January 2020, and the new thing everyone is talking about is Covid, mouth protection masks, and being less social than we used to. But for me, it's the day I opened Daz Studio for the first time and was immediately intimidated by the user interface. It reminded me of when I picked up a guitar for the first time, where nothing about that felt natural. But since I'm a decent guitar player today, I knew that it was just for me to keep at it until it did feel natural.

This was followed by me watching two 90-minute tutorials on YouTube about lighting in Daz Studio, which was a complete waste of time since the best way to learn about lighting is to load in a table with some flowers, a glass, or something else on and just experiment (yes, I know it sounds boring because what we want to render is tits and asses, but trust me on this one).

After that, I went looking for 3D assets. The only thing I knew I wanted was a girl, ponytail hair, and a bus stop. This was pretty much the result of that shopping spree.

That was the very start of it. Since then, I've been working just about every day, whether actively posing or creating scenes in my head. It probably sounds exhausting, but it's not really when you enjoy doing it. But it's something to consider if you're actively looking to make games like this yourself. You can't get away from the game even when not working. If you drop the string, even for a week, it's tough to pick it back up.

A question I'm asked occasionally is if I want to create a remaster of Leap of Faith. Before I answer, I thought we'd take a little look at some before and after scenes I redid yesterday just to see how an improvement might look.

Let's start with that bus stop. I think most of you remember that scene.

For this, I added Depth of Field to the camera. Cece is now centered, and you're seeing her from a 3rd person perspective, which also removes the distracting white field on the right. I removed the "slight smile" morph, which created unwanted lines on her face. I also gave Cece the PBR surface skin, which is a lot better than the normal Iray shader, but in this case needs a lot more tinkering as pale skin is harder to get to look right.

Here, I changed the sky completely, as the old one was way too bright. I rotated the sun to light Steph up, added clouds, and also added more Depth of Field to the camera to tone down those horrible trees in the background. I gave Steph's skin the PBR shader, which looks especially good on Steph in these conditions, as tanned skin and sunlight really make it stand out. I also squeezed her boobs together slightly to make them more enjoyable... I mean, more realistically, squeezed in her bikini.

Lexi has some fantastic female assets, and I admit that it's a crime against humanity to make an image with as flat lighting as the old one. Or like my old photography teacher said: 'Female boobs are great. But it's the shadow they cast that makes them really stand out.' So, some different lighting was needed for this one. I opted for sunlight, as it's a nice warm summer day. I also gave the interior light of the plane a warmer tint and toned it down. Probably overdid the saturation on this one, but it proves the theory of my photography teacher. I also loaded her hair into Blender and created a custom morph for it to make it fall more natural against the side of her head. That's something I didn't know how to do back then, but I could never agree with the sides of her hair of the original shape. Why would there be a space between the side of her neck and her hair, unless she's constantly using incredible amount of hair products? Lastly, which you probably didn't notice, was to reload the whole airport asset to create a better reflection in her glasses. The original one looked like this due to me removing and resizing textures to free up VRAM for rendering (yes, that's Lexi's plane in the middle of the image, with her standing in the doorway. It looks like winter wonderland because there are no textures.

I spent yesterday loading and tinkering with old saves like this and truly had fun doing so. But to answer the question of if I would do a complete remaster of Leap of Faith?

Short answer: No.

Long answer: Yes.

By that, I mean that I don't think it's worth the effort of spending perhaps a year or longer replacing the images of the original Leap of Faith game with upgraded versions and replacing/adding more animations. But I would love to completely remaster and re-release the game as a "Life is Strange" style game made in Unreal Engine. But I guess only time will tell if I do either.

Well, that was it for the little trip down memory lane, and I could probably talk for hours more, but let's save some for the 10 year anniversary. :p

So, for the answers to your questions.

Ask Me Anything

I'll answer the first two questions by one answer, as they both cover roughly the same ground.

When did you first decide you wanted to pursue the AVN creator route and what's been your favorite thing about what you do in your time so far?

How did you get into writing/creating? And what made you choose AVNs as your choice?

The inspiration for wanting to write something came directly as a result of what you've seen as the 'blue text' in the end of LoF chapter 6. But when I finally got around to actually make the rough outline for Leap of Faith back in 2018, I was also playing a story app called Choices, and wanted to convert the story script into something similar. While Xcode wasn't too hard to learn, it didn't really make for a good 'visual novel' type of app, especially since I wanted to have a lot of routes in it, so I ended up scrapping the project.

It wasn't until Steam recommended me Depraved Awakening from Philly about a year later that I learned of Ren'Py and Daz, and decided to give it another try, this time for PC.

The best thing about doing this is the variety of things that need to be done for a full release. One day I can work on still renders, one day animations, one day it's Ren'Py, and one day tinkering around in Blender or finding music. It's due to that variety, and mixing it all into one product, I enjoy it as much as I do.

Who's your favorite of all the girls you've created?

I've got this question quite a few times, and my answer is always the same: my favorite girl is the girl I'm making a scene with at any point. It's not meant to be a diplomatic answer; it's just how I feel about it when creating content. When I load the characters into a scene, they come alive, and I have fun no matter who it is. I think if I didn't enjoy writing content for a girl, you, the player, would be the first to notice. It's the same whether it's Lexi, Kira, Teagan or Celeste. But having said that, Nyah and Cece have the ability to surprise me and make me go off-script with what they come up with for a scene.

When can I lewd Nikita?

For you and any other daredevils out there, Nikita will get her scene as the added content between the ep4 Patreon release and the Steam release. Though you might not be able to walk in a straight line when she's done with you.

Will you be selling your kidney to get your hands on a 5090? My eyes are set on the new 5090 laptops coming in March.

I am extremely happy with my 4090s. They are a great leap up from the 3090s, which were absolutely horrible. Now I can render at a constant temperature of 62C with fans running at a relaxing 33% capacity (which isn't audible), where the 3090s were rendering at 105C temps at 100% fan speed. So it's not a huge priority to upgrade all of those, but I want to pick up one for the posing rig since my motherboard already has a PCIe 5.0 slot for full utilization of the 5090, and a big PSU, since it's a bit power hungry.

Have you ever considered going away from daz? Like taking your assets and moving over to another 3d software such as blender or cinema 3D. Daz seems restrictive at times.

I have absolutely considered going away from Daz. I'm actively using Blender as a tool in my workflow, at one point I also had a running license for Cinema 4D, due to it working nicely together with the Octane (the render engine City of Broken Dreamers was made with), and even held a $2.600 a year license for Maya at one point.

The sad thing is that Daz, even with all its quirks, misbehavings, and limitations, is a great piece of 3D software for this specific purpose, where you can do/pose a lot in a short amount of time. And with its whole ecology of ready-to-use, out-of-the-box assets - with a good free render engine (Iray) from Nvidia, it is the best way to get work done fast with good results.

Of course, with Blender, C4D, Maya, or any other 3D software tools, you have the freedom to do anything you want, but for 99% of its users (me included), it will be drastically slower to work with. And even though it will output better results, it's also down to the skill of the person using it to a lesser degree than Daz. A skill that can take years to develop. 

So, for now, Blender especially is a good tool to help me achieve things that are not possible within the limits of Daz Studio, but taking the full jump away from Daz Studio is unlikely. My hope, however, is that the tools available for exporting/importing assets back and forth between Daz and other programs become better so I can utilize other 3D software more in my Daz workflow - which also improves the end result. This would be especially useful in animations.

In lof and u4ia other than cece are any of the characters based on people from real life - friends public figures ect

No character I've made is based on someone in particular - in terms of actually creating the character (looks, shape, mannerisms etc.). But people I've met during my life or events have spawned character arcs.

The characters themselves are just a big mishmash of impressions from several people and/or events, and deciding what fits the character and their arcs.

The only example I have of a direct real public figure comparison was deciding Lexi's wealth by googling "How much is Rihanna worth?" A number that most likely has increased substantially since then.

How hard is it to find the right music to fit the mood of your scene you intend to use it for? Is it easier for the creator of the song to have you send them a sample of your work or for you to hear their music and then connect with the creator about the track or sample?

It's not incredibly hard to find music, but remember that there's a very limited selection of songs to choose from. Most do not allow their works to be used in adult content. But I try to listen to music while I work, either by libraries I have access to or musicians I've licensed from before.

Mostly, I go looking for a song that fits a certain mood and make a note of potential candidates. This can be a transition scene, some humorous segment, or generally filler music. In scenes where you have a special moment with your girl I try to find something a bit more shazam to emphasize the moment.

On rare occasions, I hear a song and instantly know it will be amazing for some future scene I've planned. When I finally get to making that scene for that specific song, I'm like a kid in a candy store, and loving what I'm doing. Most likely, that scene also gets bigger than planned, but these scenes are by far my favorite to do. Even if they're sad, like the end of LoF chapter 6, because I know that if I'm touched by it, there's a big chance you'll be too. I have one of those scenes to make for the upcoming U4ia episode, and I've been looking forward to posing it for more than a year now because it has such a great and powerful song that accompanies it.

I've also found a fantastic Christmas song I would like to use in a Christmas special with all of my characters, but I have no idea when I'll get around to doing that.

What has been the hardest part about devving both LoF and u4ia?

Both LoF and U4iA have had different 'hardest' parts. For LoF, mostly, it was having to learn as I made the story, which often led to my inexperience and limited hardware preventing me from creating the visuals I wanted. For example, if I had made LoF today, I would probably have commissioned Wibble to make a full-size 1000-meter bridge just so I could properly show you the actual horror of hanging down from it.

For U4iA, I was plagued with technical problems throughout most of episode 1. While upgrading both the software (Daz) and hardware (GPU) on almost the same day broke the assets I had chosen as the island's location and caused problems for several other scenes. This caused them to be extremely slow to load/save and pose in. I remember Daz crashing for the nth time trying to render a scene, after having used 15 minutes to load it, where I literally asked myself "why do you do this to yourself?" Luckily, I don't give up easily.

can you have roxy as gf later on?

Roxy was designed as love interest by you, my patrons, so she has a very dedicated path (you can check this page of how she was created through votes if you were not a part of it). As for exactly when you establish a serious, steady relationship, time will tell.

What's your favorite fruit?

That was a joke question, Mr. Panty Sniffer! :)

But... yellow kiwis. Hands down.

Thank you for joining in my little trip down memory lane. It's time for me to go back to working on future content, and I can promise you that I'm having as much fun as I had in the early days. And, as always, a heartfelt thank you for your support, big or small, and a shoutout to the community for always cheering me on, helping me create content I could never have made on my own, and learning new things I would never have been able to figure out myself by just hiding in my own corner of the internet somewhere.

I'll end this with a special shoutout to my top 20 oldest remaining supporters, in order of joining at the end of this post. They put their trust in me before anyone else, and if you're in any way active within the community, you should recognize some names there.

And if you came for the cake in the banner up there, I'm truly sorry, the cake is a lie. But on the other hand, there will always be bunny slippers.

Have a nice weekend, and stay safe out there.

// Drifty

Longest running Patreon supporters, in order of appearance.

1. Raksha17 (day 1 - LoF chapter 1)
2. Frederik M. (day 3 - LoF chapter 1)
3. Yukinohki (day 4 - LoF chapter 1)
4. Alex (day 5 - LoF chapter 1)
5. ODX (day 13 - LoF chapter 1)
6. The-Exotic-Titan (day 13 - LoF chapter 1)
7. MasterSav (day 16 - LoF chapter 1)
8. Sancho (day 54 - LoF chapter 2)
9. Alexander H. (day 54 - LoF chapter 2)
10. PeeM (day 55 - LoF chapter 2)
11. Chet Storm (day 58 - LoF chapter 2)
12. Daniel S. (day 61 - LoF chapter 2)
13. Wolvy (day 63 - LoF chapter 2)
14. KindaLoud (day 63 - LoF chapter 2)
15. Meiki (day 66 - LoF chapter 2)
16. Kytronix (day 66 - LoF chapter 2)
17. IncredibleH (day 67 - LoF chapter 2)
18. Beast of Bray (day 74 - LoF chapter 2)
19. Steele (day 78 - LoF chapter 2)
20. Sean (day 81 - LoF chapter 2)