thedude3dx
patreon
End year recap! Thank you for a great 2023, and plans for 2024!
🕑 Added 2023-12-31 18:01:21 +0000 UTCHey everyone! I'm about to head off to my own NYE celebrations, but before I leave the house I wanted to write a few words here to thank everyone for this year, as well as tease some plans for what's to come.
The Girl Who Won 2023!
Let's start with a quick recap of releases this year: other than wrapping up the Kayla & Sayako set at the start of the year, I then went into a flurry of new content with the introduction of four new girls, a brand new plot line with the Peak Performance story, the wrapping up of the Royal Exhibition trilogy with a part 3, as well as that leading into a brand new summertime wedding set that's going to feature the entire Lust Unleashed cast.
On top of that, some Patreon-exclusive releases, such as Kayla's brand new bio, her climax set, as well as the Mari & Breanna bridal set that I posted just yesterday which serves as a fun little appetizer to the rest of the wedding content!
But honestly, between her appearance with Sayako at the start of the year, her later appearance in Peak Performance and her continued role in that series as it develops, her own biography, and her climax set, Kayla really did come out on top of this year!
Second place will go to who Marcella appeared in two new releases this year, both Peak Performance as well as The Royal Exhibition 3, on top of the A3D store release of The Royal Exhibition 2. We'll be seeing a lot more of her in the nearby future, and I think it's fair to say that after spending a few years in the shadows, Marcella has finally risen through the Lust Unleashed ranks to achieve bombshell status ;) Stay tuned!
Third place goes to Breanna, who featured technically in as many new appearances this year as Marcella did, but neither were as prominent (both her Lust-tier shots from One Night Stand as well as her bridal pair-up with Mari were Patreon-exclusive content), and neither were hugely story-driven (yet, obviously the bridal theme is a teaser/lead-up to more). Nevertheless, it's impossible to get bored of rendering Breanna, and there's something about the way she looks that makes her have great energy in each set she appears in!
What's coming up in 2024!
There are a lot of things I didn't get around to in 2023, that I'll be putting my full attention towards in 2024. For instance, Peak Performance 2 is super high on the list of things I absolutely need to get out the door. I've also got several image sets roughly mapped out again, as I do at the start of each year, hoping to hit an average release of once per quarter, so you can count on those. And of course wherever I have time, fun little extra minisets.
However, something has also become clear to me that I was already beginning to suspect in 2022: in order to meet the ever rising level of quality I've come to expect from myself, renders have become more labour intensive to make. Let's say four years ago, a render didn't involve much: I had a very basic understanding of lighting, I wanted to picture two girls having sex, sometimes the scene was as simple as a very basic set, I put them in some sexy outfits, and off to render it went.
These days, there's a lot more to it: consider this picture:
This is one of the more labour intensive shots I've done this year. It involves outside scenery placement, interior scenery design, exterior lighting elements, interior lighting elements, clothing sim, hair sim (re-simming for errors is such a timesink), small correctives, and then inevitably once dickgirls start being involved these shots also require cumshots which is a whole other step.
No matter what, I always feel like the work is worth it. Nothing hypes me more than finally seeing the actually render and getting that dopamine rush of "holy shit this looks great". But all this labour intensiveness also means that there's a graph where labour intensiveness meets productive time spent, and I think I'm starting to get really close to where those two lines meet.
The Big Word
I've always said that I wasn't going to animate until I felt like I was in a good position for it. That I had really hit the ceiling in Daz, and that the only way for me to keep growing as an artist from that really solid foundation was to move into different software that was capable of doing more things.
I feel like as a render artist, I'm getting about as much as I can get out of Daz while still being able to meet reasonable deadlines. It honestly is just time to move things up to animation at this point.
Now I'm not going to hype you guys up big by saying "I've got a release planned for XYZ date and it's going to be this long and feature those and those girls". What I'm here to tell you is that I've always struggled considering my own technical journey as a 3D artist as content for this Patreon page. I've always tried to keep posts limited strictly to what's sexual in nature. I think for 2024, this mindset has to change.
Throughout the year I'll be updating you guys on what we're working on in regards to animation. I say we because it's me and another 3D artist who's filling in some technical gaps for me. January will be a little slow still, but after February I expect this will start to pick up. This content will be interspersed with regular Daz content that I'm going to keep posting here all the while. I hope to strike a good balance in 2024 of finding time for both.
With that, I wish you all a very happy new year!
I hope for your continued support as I set out to evolve my skillset, deliver more sexy steamy renders, and expand as an artist. I also hope I can continue to meet your standards in 2024, and I'm ever so grateful for the backing you guys have given me throughout 2023 and every year prior. May I never let you down. See you on January 1st!
Comments
Enferno8
I would love to see more polls regarding what direction to take some of the sets. I see you mentioned another hardcore set as well. I would love that and I think that because a lot of HC content is quite polarizing in terms of taste, I think it'd be a perfect place for a poll before putting in the work. ETA: I love the outfits in the last picture on this post. Perfect everything imo.
TheDude3DX
Alright whole lotta comment so it took me a little bit to drum up a reply haha. Let's dig in: Yeah as I got started with PP2 I realised that I both wasn't getting the assets right (as in, it was hard to build the scene it actually took place in because the story demanded more than I felt I was capable of conjuring up in the time I had available), as well as wasn't 100% sure of whether I wanted to do a pure lesbian set which is what it was shaping up to be. That latter point of indecision in particular made me move it up to 2024. I'm glad you loved Kayla's bio though, as well as the bridal stuff. The bio was a little spur of the moment thing that I really enjoyed making, the Empire one that I had for her was just too old and too outdated and Kayla had changed too much since then. And yeah the way the bridal set shaped out I think maybe I can do a few more like that and have it all tie in ;) Different boats, different girls, it's a step up from the ONS/ACE problem where it all was too much featuring the same characters in the same scene. This will allow me to switch it up. As far as what I have lined up, it's very rough outlines. I have an idea of which characters I wanna use this year (Taylor and Jordan basically received no attention throughout 2023 so if that's something I can rectify, I will, plus I want to develop Jordan's role in the story more), and I have an idea of which events definitely have to happen (both the actual wedding as well as PP2 are sets I want to get done). Outside of that I have some freedom to do as I please so it kinda comes down to what I feel like making also. Maybe something hardcore? Haven't done that in a while. Last year with Kayla's miniset made me realise that just raw smut still does very well, haha. As for animation, yeah unreal is definitely a consideration. For starters I just want to wrap up work on the blender rig we've been having sit around for a while now, we just need to get it done. The base character for that is Marcella, so decent odds she'll make an appearance in the very first piece of animation I'm putting out, but no promises either since who knows what direction the process takes us in. It's just that Marcella's body is what we're working with in Blender at this point. I've spoken with Puppetmaster a few times and he showed me how he does his unreal thing and it's definitely an interesting route to go down. He still works in Unreal 4, at least he did at the time we spoke, maybe he's updated since. But yeah it's super viable. I think Unreal 5 is probably a more pick-up-and-play than something like Blender is as well. But for sure I'll share more WIP stuff! Glad to hear there's interest in that.
TheGreatCornholio
Happy New Year! May 2024 be an amazing and fulfilling year for you and your art! Have to say that 2023 didn't start out so great from my point of view since it took almost a quarter of it to move on from those ONS sets. As I've said before, I liked that content, but felt they took way too much of your time for what they were finally worth. On the flip side I pretty much loved everything else you did this year. Kayla Bio's was great and I've always been more attracted to content that tells a story, so I was very happy to see you start with PP and see Marcella actually get more characterization than "the one with the ultra large nipples" lol. Only downside here was that it ended just as things were getting interesting and PP2 stalled for the bridal set and the bio. Really happy to see that it's considered a priority for the start of 2024. Introducing 4 girls and getting Marcella to fuck them separately and then together is gonna take a lot of work lol. But and even the "simple" sets like TRE3 and the bridal stuff were amazing. I feel they weren't just random sets, but something that built into the world and direction of the overall story. That's the kind of "random" content I want to see from you :)). TRE3 was like an unscripted intro into the floating bridal fuckfest that will come and the bridal set felt like something that could happen on the side of bigger things, with Bree stealing away to visit her bride to be for one last pre marital fuck. Maybe you planned that, maybe you didn't, but I think those 2 sets are very memorable to me because of how I saw that integrated into your world. Oh, and they're stupid sexy as well :D. You mentioned several sets that you have mapped out for 2024. Would you be willing to share your rough plans (like the theme of the sets/comics/stories and the characters involved) for what you want to do next year? Are you planning to start the wedding story in 2024? Do you have a rough outline of the story? Are you going to start directly with the whole cast, or show us the prep with the girls having some fun in separate groups as they get ready? As for the animation stuff I am pleasantly surprised to see you wanting to give it another try, especially trying some other software than DAZ. Can you tell us what you're considering using? Blender or are you going to go the gaming engine route? I'm blown away by what Puppetmaster is doing with his futas in Unreal Engine. Anyway please keep us in the loop. In fact I'd love it, in general, if you would be ok with sharing more WIP-ish stuff with us. Both renders and animations I really love to see how things are moving along.
Aaron Ferguson
the year came and went really fast! hoping for more action soon! keep up the amazing work!
