A swing and a miss! Tried to do a thing this week and it didn't work out. Ah well! Renders over the weekend.

Sometimes, what I see in a set is limited by the software I'm using. This week is one such week, and I had to make that worst of words: concessions!

At the start of the week as I was working on finalising the setup for the wedding on Yelena's yacht, I couldn't help but think that something about that as a location wasn't working for me. I wanted something more, something grander. Something that did justice to a set that was this long in the making.

I tried to move the wedding to a scenic island location, complete with beautiful palm trees, pristine white architecture, and everything that made a girl's dream wedding a reality. My idea was simple: a long, beautiful procession to the actual location where vows would be made, with a chance to let the girls show off their dresses in all their glory. Then, in the background on the water, the fleet of yachts to add an even further level of opulence to an already hedonistic affair.

Unfortunately, it was all too much. The island, the yachts, the girls, the outfits, there was simply too much going on. No matter what I did, no matter how many assets I tried to purge from the scene without compromising its look, no matter how many distant objects I reduced to the lowest quality, and no matter how many unseen frames of animation for clothing and hair sim purposes I deleted, I couldn't reduce scene clutter to an acceptable level. And I really tried approaching this from all angles, including even the loading order of my assets. Maybe if I loaded the island first, then the girls... maybe first the girls, then the yachts, then the island? Maybe if I turned all my assets invisible until the final moment came to render a shot?

Alas.

The scene works fine if I confine it to just the ships and the girls. And as you can see above, I did move it to Kayla's ship as well. I just like it better. Yelena's ship will provide background scenery. It also makes more sense this way; the whole bridal makeup room is on Kayla's ship to begin with.

It's a concession. I hate to make it! But sometimes I have to. I really tried to make this alternative vision work, but it was a gamble. Even more so given that I really have nothing to show for it. So over the next week I'm gonna have to work extra hard to make up for lost time. But I think it was worth a try, anyway.

Stay tuned, render drops this weekend! It's time to finalise the outfit prep with the other ladies and then get to proper set production.