As you know, Techwarrior has been delayed for a good many months now for an assortment of reasons. Well, the wait will soon be over! Techwarrior #5 has started production and already the cover and first four pages are complete with beautiful results.
During the delay, new things were learned. One that’s proven to be the most impressive lately is the ability to use Iray. Iray is a DAZ3D render engine that does photo realistic renders. Clearly, used properly, this render engine is extremely powerful. A simple test scene is still getting “liked” on Facebook!
There’s a cost to Iray, though. Each panel render takes 2 hours! This means, to get a 4 panel page done takes over 8 hours! Yet, the phenomenal reaction to this new style of rendering does make it quite worth it.
So, what about Techwarrior? When will we see it?
Techwarrior is going at a rate of about 3-4 panels a day, which is quite good. The chosen release date is March 13th, 2017. At the current rate of rendering, it should be done by then, even with time to spare for preparing it to be added to the shop. This means we’ll be having quite a party to celebrate the first book in several months.
What about Dream Angel? When will we see the next book?
Well, progress for Dream Angel is still pretty slow, but it is progress. Dream Angel #24 should soon be ready to begin production. The thought along that line is to get the series rendered to #30 and then possibly begin updating the earlier books. #2-6 used Poser, so those mean completely re-creating the scenes in DAZ for Iray. The hope is that in the meantime, Techwarrior #1-4 can be swiftly updated to Iray so they match #5, since they were all made with DAZ to begin with.
It’ll be a while before Dream Angel starts seeing books updated – unless a publisher expresses interest in seeing them updated – but Techwarrior might see updates first. In any case, the aging laptop that’s used to make these books is in desperate need of a replacement to keep up with Iray, because it requires a lot of power to do the renders.
So, are you looking forward to the new book? Think it’s worth the wait?