I was recently thinking of ways to get promoting this site, Facebook page, or my work by streaming online. But I’ve come across a few issues.

Initially, I thought I could stream my writing. This was didn’t work as 90% of writing wasn’t done on PC that had good enough internet to stream with. I usually write on laptop or a my trusty old Tablet, usually when I have limited internet access. Some times I write on my “desktop” when it’s rendering, which means it’s not going to cope with Streaming.

The next thought was going to be editing my Video’s but, again, looking at the stats of Editing Homecoming, and the fact I didn’t feel comfortable with the only voice on the commentary tracks being my own. So with all of my Videos for my own channel and also most of the Taken Wolves videos only featured myself. Also there is alot of waiting around as, I often had to wait for Proxy videos to render, which would be used to edit with. Also I noticed a significant performance drop in Editing Homecoming which while with the old setup, has lead me to not to try it again.

So I’ve moved to working with my 3D art with DAZ Studio. Most of the time the performance of my PC is good enough, the only time I really notice it is when I’m actually ray tracing, which is late in the process. From a Technical Point of view I could make the production in to a Stream or a video, with a few sections where I’d have to consider stopping the stream for Technical reasons.

My issue is that most my models are Anatomically Correct, or basically don’t look like a Barbie doll when undressed. Nudity is a large issue that I can’t really step around. Most of the large Streaming Services essentially state “No Nudity” on their service. Twitch officially won’t let you stream most AO games, which are often porn games. Youtube and Facebook don’t blanket ban nudity, there has be a good argument for showing it. I’ve not looked at other sites, but I assume the there are bans on nudes on most of them.

Due to how slow the movement usually is, the stream can spend more time on details than keeping track of all the moment. While a someone can get away a quick flash without anyone seeing much, the Daz Studio takes at least few seconds cover up a nude character. (That’s assuming that the artist is fast enough. That few seconds is more than enough to see all the detail.

As for Censoring: unlike pre-recorded footage where I can apply “Blur effects” or “Black Bars” over the over the offending part after the fact, when I edit. Live Streaming doesn’t give this option. I can however add overlays that block the offending parts of the screen. This isn’t a large problem on it’s own, but 80% of the screen can show Nudity at some point. The remaining areas are controls or menus.. basically the boring parts, and don’t make any sense on their own. To put simply I need to stop the video feed at some points, which in itself than ideal.

There are ways around it, there are “Second Skin” textures which basically are painted on underwear, which includes Default skin for Victoria 4. Victoria 4 is the name of model I use. Many games, such as Fallout 3 and 4, and Skyrim use a modified version of this technique, and model the underwear and remove the offending areas underneath. However, Most 3rd Party skin textures don’t come with a safe for work skin, and usually includes genitals.

For the Most part, dressing the characters actually will help. While most outfits are built to fit my models with the morphs I have for my characters, some don’t, and you’d be able too see what I was hoping to cover up. Sammy’s outfit in the feature image is one of those outfits. Her shorts are little too baggy than intended. Her shirt is actually a few sizes too big as well, but was chosen because of the partially undressed. There are some underwear/swimsuit options for characters, which for the most part will fit fine.

Some outfits, mainly dresses, need manual tweaking to work at all. It’s quite commonly to see legs and hips poking though a dress. In a few cases, I found that the dresses may end up looking like that Marilyn Monroe shot from The Seven Year Itch, but worse.

Occasionally, when re-positioning or posing a character, the clothes don’t move with the Character. The result resembles the parties that all the molecules in the hostess’s undergarments leap simultaneously one foot to the left, in accordance with the Theory of Indeterminacy. I don’t get invited to parties. But getting back to the point, when the outfits fail to stay on during movement, and it’s at going to take a few moments to get them dressed, even if it’s the first thing I do.

Finally once the set was built, the final step was lighting it, but this is the step where I may be force to drop the stream for technical reasons. Ray Tracing is not kind to hardware.

So in all, even if I worked around the issue, I’d have to hide half my steps, just to make sure my stream wasn’t showing something I shouldn’t show. So I’ve had to choose not to stream it, at least while I’m creating characters, but now that I’ve got method to re-create most characters, I’d won’t be streaming for some time.