User blog comment:Jkphantom9/World of Remnant this Thanksgiving Weekend, Vol 4 Episode 5 will air next weekend/@comment-28288412-20161122231022/@comment-4010415-20161123225852

Pretty sure that Miles said the pipeline for each individual episode takes anywhere from a few weeks to however many months.

Honestly, think about it, with each episode, they have to do stuff like


 * Write the script for the episode, first of all.


 * Have the voice actors voice their lines. Each VA voices each line multiple times, so the crew can choose whichever take sounds the best.


 * Have Jeff's group work on music and any songs that go in the episode. They have to collaborate on this via the internet because Jeff's family doesn't live in Austin.


 * Have the audio people get together whatever sound effects they'll need. Every sound effect has to be added in at the appropriate times. I'm sure footsteps are a bitch. In fact, I remember something about the footsteps in the vault in volume 3 and how they needed to be extra careful to make sure those footsteps sounds lined up with the actual footsteps in that scene.


 * Make a storyboard for the episode. They have to think up how exactly they want the camera angles to go and what kinds of poses and positionings they want the characters to be in.


 * Apparently, people will set things up where the character models are already standing in their starting position, so whoever animates the scene or the piece of that scene doesn't have to worry about who stands where. And just think about scenes that have a lot of background characters! Someone has to put each individual background character in their spots and pose them in something other than the default T pose.


 * A bunch of different people on the animation team work on different scenes, so it's not like the scenes get made in sequential order.


 * Someone has to put the audio tracks in and make sure they're synched with the video.


 * The visual stuff is made in layers. There are people, called compositors, who put everything together at the end.


 * Rendering is an important part of the pipeline and makes everything look prettier, but it apparently takes a while. Though, they got a new render farm, so yay.

Not to mention that, before they even begin animating the new volume, they have to make brand new models and textures for every single new location, character, weapon, Grimm, and object, and they have to make rigs for the characters, Grimm, and any object that moves (such as transforming weapons, Scrolls that open and close, etc).

Volume 4 is likely gonna have a ton of new locations. What new places have we seen so far in the four episodes that're out?


 * 1) Salem's domain has a new landscape we didn't see before.
 * 2) Salem's meeting room.
 * 3) Oscar's farm, including the barn interior.
 * 4) The forest RNJR was walking through.
 * 5) The village from The Next Step, plus the interior of the blacksmith's shop.
 * 6) Weiss' bedroom, followed by seeing other locations in the Schnee home. Granted, some of that may have been 2D cleverly disguised as 3D, but someone had to draw that stuff.
 * 7) Shion.
 * 8) The forest that RNJR camped in seemed a little different than the one they fought the Geist in. Plus, they needed to make models for the sleeping bags and campfire.
 * 9) The ship Blake was on, atop the endless expanse of ocean water, plus the rock formations she and Sun jumped around on.
 * 10) Tai's cabin. I believe, in volume 3, we only really saw Ruby and Yang's room, the guest room Yang was staying in, and some of the exterior. Now we've seen the living room, the kitchen, the stairs, the hallway, a shack, and a lot more of the exterior, including a mailbox, a porch, and some flowerboxes with sunflowers in them.
 * 11) The ruined cafeteria in Yang's nightmare scene. It doesn't look like they used the same set from volume 3.
 * 12) Higanbana. Though, we only saw the exterior of an inn and the interior of a tavern.

And that was just in four episodes. Episode 5 will be taking place in Menagerie, and we've seen from the sneak peek screenshots that places we'll see will include a market next to the docks, a grassy area, and the interior of a building (the Belladonna home?).

Not to mention the number of new models for new characters we've been introduced to so far:


 * 1) Watts
 * 2) Tyrian
 * 3) Hazel
 * 4) Oscar
 * 5) Klein
 * 6) Whitley
 * 7) Jacques (was 2D in volume 3, so he counts)
 * 8) Blake's parents in the opening
 * 9) Minor characters, but the ship captain and Matte Skye (the first mate)

This isn't even counting new outfits for already-established characters, nor the fact that they likely remade practically, if not literally, their entire library of assets (read: their models and the models' respective textures).

Also consider the fact that every model means concept art.

And we also have the fact that they have new assets for cobbling together background characters. Might I say, they're much better-looking (and more unique-looking) background characters than the ones in volume 3. The extra decorations to their clothes and the different hairstyles make them look less alike.