3D Software Help and Assistance. Ask Away.

[Dragonbait]

There are simply too many features to point to any one guide in general for "advanced" stuff. Also depends on your learning style. If you're a visual learner, YouTube is the best and there are some awesome tutorials there. I recommend WP Guru and Thundorn/Game Development Training has some good tips. It will help you have some experience. I had a background in Revit and Maya and found Daz pretty easy to learn but difficult to master. Recommend learning to manage your content library early and sorting everything if it is something you plan to really get into.

FYI lighting in Daz also uses lumens. Imo using HDRIs as lighting is a great shortcut and preferable to constantly setting up your own lights when possible.

Personally I have not found the official Daz forums to be very good but you may try there for specific tips.

Programming a game is going to be a whole other can of worms to get into. For many people that is harder than the modelling portion but your mileage may vary.

Thank-you for the feedback bit excited about the news on lumens, my EIT experience will come in handy with lighting by the looks of it! I will try some of those suggestions as well. The only issue i was having with tutorials was the quantity and having to sort through them to find the one that was useful. Almost like swimming in the ocean with no land in sight lol

I guess I was more hoping to apprentice someone as it were, but that is probably asking alot. I'll start with WP Guru tonight and see how it goes! Programming for me isnt an issue did that for years early on and from the looks most of these things only use basic scripting or code.

Was thinking ren'py till i get the hang of things.

Though now that I think on it do you happen to know a good specific tutorial for asset aquisition or even making your own unique characters/assets in daz? (if it is possible) I saw blender today and that felt pretty simple and almost like playing with clay lol.

Either way I appreciate your time,

 

[Fatalmasterpiece]

Thank-you for the feedback bit excited about the news on lumens, my EIT experience will come in handy with lighting by the looks of it! I will try some of those suggestions as well. The only issue i was having with tutorials was the quantity and having to sort through them to find the one that was useful. Almost like swimming in the ocean with no land in sight lol

I guess I was more hoping to apprentice someone as it were, but that is probably asking alot. I'll start with WP Guru tonight and see how it goes! Programming for me isnt an issue did that for years early on and from the looks most of these things only use basic scripting or code.

Was thinking ren'py till i get the hang of things.

Though now that I think on it do you happen to know a good specific tutorial for asset aquisition or even making your own unique characters/assets in daz? (if it is possible) I saw blender today and that felt pretty simple and almost like playing with clay lol.

Either way I appreciate your time,

Understandable, I feel that way about coding haha. There is also the rat race on hardware to consider but you probably already know this. If you get really into working with DAZ be prepared to spend a lot of money on your machine.

Making your own characters is a bit of reinventing the wheel but is definitely possible. People use ZBrush or Blender for custom "morphs" or sculpts. There are thousands of good premade characters though, tons of existing morphs and it's easy to mix and match all of them to your taste. Primarily you want to start with Genesis 8 or 8.1 (Victoria 8+) and go from there. Previous generation is Genesis 3 (Victoria 3-7) which there is also a lot of content for.
That is kind of the entire point of using DAZ, an almost unlimited supply of ready made assets. Otherwise animating in Blender, Unreal and iClone is arguably much better.

I recommend installing and managing all your content manually. Others will disagree but this gives you an intimate understanding of what files you download, install and where they are on your PC.

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[Dragonbait]

Understandable, I feel that way about coding haha. There is also the rat race on hardware to consider but you probably already know this. If you get really into working with DAZ be prepared to spend a lot of money on your machine.

Making your own characters is a bit of reinventing the wheel but is definitely possible. People use ZBrush or Blender for custom "morphs" or sculpts. There are thousands of good premade characters though, tons of existing morphs and it's easy to mix and match all of them to your taste. Primarily you want to start with Genesis 8 or 8.1 (Victoria 8+) and go from there. Previous generation is Genesis 3 (Victoria 3-7) which there is also a lot of content for.
That is kind of the entire point of using DAZ, an almost unlimited supply of ready made assets. Otherwise animating in Blender, Unreal and iClone is arguably much better.

I recommend installing and managing all your content manually. Others will disagree but this gives you an intimate understanding of what files you download, install and where they are on your PC.

You must be registered to see the links

You must be registered to see the links

Thanks so much for your insights they are very helpful. Ironically enough I tend to favour manual installation myself. I guess I am a bit old school

I do have a half decent rig though I am prepared to drop 5 or 6k on a render machine should i get the hang of it and enjoy the process! I would like to ask one thing though, what would you consider essential for starting something like a visual novel... clothes and backgrounds (including hairs in that) seem like it would take a considerable investment to start up. Are there particularly good starting resources that people favour or just as I find em and say sure that'll do?

I am hoping to do basic animations and/or animated portraits depending on the art direction I might take. I think Daz handles those well from the looks of some of the newer games unless i am mistaken.

 

[Fatalmasterpiece]

Thanks so much for your insights they are very helpful. Ironically enough I tend to favour manual installation myself. I guess I am a bit old school

I do have a half decent rig though I am prepared to drop 5 or 6k on a render machine should i get the hang of it and enjoy the process! I would like to ask one thing though, what would you consider essential for starting something like a visual novel... clothes and backgrounds (including hairs in that) seem like it would take a considerable investment to start up. Are there particularly good starting resources that people favour or just as I find em and say sure that'll do?

I am hoping to do basic animations and/or animated portraits depending on the art direction I might take. I think Daz handles those well from the looks of some of the newer games unless i am mistaken.

A good PC should only cost you about 2-3k, that will get you an i9, RTX3080 or better, and at least 32GB ram if not more. I've maxed out even 64GB of ram when converting characters from DAZ to Blender so even 128GB wouldn't be a waste. Keep in mind DAZ IRAY only works on NVidia cards as far as I know.

Assets completely depend on your taste and style. You're just going to have to pick and choose what you like the looks of and want to invest in. Newer assets tend to be higher quality but that isn't a hard rule. I will DM you regarding this.

Yes there are lots of good premade animations and aniblocks for Daz as well it is easy enough to make your own however the Daz timeline is missing some features to make it really good. AFAIK there are no timeline curves for interpolation and editing keyframes is a pain in the ass compared to other software. The physics in Daz are hard to work with and take a LOT of tweaking. Animating in Daz is like 10 years behind other software, but the plethora of assets and ease of use kind of make up for it.

 

[tsuki3341]

Is there a "definitive" thread on Honey Select 1/2, and if it is legal to use it, and which version and in what cases?

 

[osanaiko]

Is there a "definitive" thread on Honey Select 1/2, and if it is legal to use it, and which version and in what cases?

tl;dr just do it. no-one has been sued (yet?) by illusion.

1. No
2. All illusion games start with a disclaimer that it is not for sale and not intended for use outside Japan. AFAIK that's intended to absolve themselves of any legal claims as to it's contents which allow the player to create images that would break the law in various countries (i.e. in the UK *any* pornography where the actors are wearing school uniforms is considered **********).
So if you a) pirate the software and b) ignore that warning, then what's the concern about "legality"?
3. how would version be relevant?
4. see item 2.

 

[Xavster]

Thanks so much for your insights they are very helpful. Ironically enough I tend to favour manual installation myself. I guess I am a bit old school

I do have a half decent rig though I am prepared to drop 5 or 6k on a render machine should i get the hang of it and enjoy the process! I would like to ask one thing though, what would you consider essential for starting something like a visual novel... clothes and backgrounds (including hairs in that) seem like it would take a considerable investment to start up. Are there particularly good starting resources that people favour or just as I find em and say sure that'll do?

I am hoping to do basic animations and/or animated portraits depending on the art direction I might take. I think Daz handles those well from the looks of some of the newer games unless i am mistaken.

I'm happy to lend you some assistance should you be interested. From an engineering background myself, hence likely to be able to relate in familiar terminology. I would suggest that you take a look at my game, sample art and tutorials I have already created, to see whether my art style is something similar to what you are intending. The links to these are in my sig.

I have some time after wrapping up my first game (currently in final testing), so can help over the next month or so. Feel free to hit me up on Discord.

 

[Dragonbait]

I'm happy to lend you some assistance should you be interested. From an engineering background myself, hence likely to be able to relate in familiar terminology. I would suggest that you take a look at my game, sample art and tutorials I have already created, to see whether my art style is something similar to what you are intending. The links to these are in my sig.

I have some time after wrapping up my first game (currently in final testing), so can help over the next month or so. Feel free to hit me up on Discord.

Xavster I would really be interested in that. Is there anything I should buy or pick up prior to starting to make things easier?

I am at work now (PST) though I did download your game and will take a look at it tonight. Congrats btw making it to the end is a big accomplishment!

I'll reach out on discord when I get back home tonight. Just wanted to say thanks in advance I am kind of excited to try something new and appreciate the help.

 

[Xavster]

Xavster I would really be interested in that. Is there anything I should buy or pick up prior to starting to make things easier?

I am at work now (PST) though I did download your game and will take a look at it tonight. Congrats btw making it to the end is a big accomplishment!

I'll reach out on discord when I get back home tonight. Just wanted to say thanks in advance I am kind of excited to try something new and appreciate the help.

No need to buy anything or prepare anything. We will try to work with what you have already. Hit me up on Discord when you are ready.

 

[podkop09]

Hi!
What do you think, in order to create games like Anna Exciting Affection and Fashion business, what kind of software is needed?

Is it possible to work more or less well on my system: amd ryzen 5 2600, rtx 3050, 16 gb ram?

 

[amster22]

Hi!
What do you think, in order to create games like Anna Exciting Affection and Fashion business, what kind of software is needed?

Is it possible to work more or less well on my system: amd ryzen 5 2600, rtx 3050, 16 gb ram?

The cheapest solutions to create the renders are daz studio (free) and blender (free & open source). Daz is simpler with a large library of assets, Blender is less user friendly but has more powerful features.
Concerning your hardware, it is definitely usable, but is probably a bit short on memory. You will be limited in the rendering quality (size of the texture image maps) and in the complexity of the scenes (notably the number of models that you can use). 32Gb+ RAM and 12Gb+ VRAM would probably be better, but the first renders of the games that you mention were probably done with a system similar to yours.

 

[podkop09]

Thank you!

 

[acusrola]

I have a figure whose eyes are (IMO) slightly split. I can fix this easily enough by just adjusting the left and right eye individually to be "cross eyed" However, this leaves the eye bones at non-zero rotations. Are there any suggested things I could do to zero the rotations whilst still keeping the updated bone location?

I have tried updating the base geo, that turned into a horrific monster - probably due me using morphs on the figure already, so it turned into 200%
I have also tried using the joint editor, bake joint rotations - but it breaks the eyelashes and moisture, as well as fiberbrows.
Memorizing the figure pose doesn't quite do what I want as it sets the non-zero values as default.

Fortunately this is only affecting the eyes so it isn't like the figure is broken, I can manually adjust the eyes. However, I would prefer to update it, as - for example - some expressions adjust the eyes and if the "start" isn't correct, then the end result won't be either, as the eyes are split slightly. Making the eyes track a camera for example is impossible since the figure is always looking slightly split.


Default G8F - Morphed character (derpy eyes) - corrected eyes (approx. 4 degrees crosseyed)

 

[Eliont]

Thinking about trying DAZ for Era Drakonis graphic - it has very cool dragon models and male characters, though mostly cringe-looking females.

Maybe someone know good suitable fantasy DAZ female models+morphs?

 

[SciGuy]

Have DAZ installed on a 256G SSD drive. Been accumulating assets for a while - have over 2TB on NTFS drives, many that don't use DIM. What's the best way to manage my content? When I modded 'The Sims 3' in what seems like a past lifetime, the software slowed to a crawl from file bloat. I want to prevent that before even starting this time around! I want to create a lot of images for a new game, but dread running out of room for all the assets I plan on using. Can I relocate the storage area DAZ uses for installed assets? There's lots of available help for using DAZ, but not much (that I can find anyway) that deals with maintenance of asset files. Any help would be much appreciated. After dragging my feet for far too long, it's now time to start putting a new game/VN together. It's all storyboarded - time to get into the nuts and bolts of bringing it to life.

 

[osanaiko]

Have DAZ installed on a 256G SSD drive. Been accumulating assets for a while - have over 2TB on NTFS drives, many that don't use DIM. What's the best way to manage my content? When I modded 'The Sims 3' in what seems like a past lifetime, the software slowed to a crawl from file bloat. I want to prevent that before even starting this time around! I want to create a lot of images for a new game, but dread running out of room for all the assets I plan on using. Can I relocate the storage area DAZ uses for installed assets? There's lots of available help for using DAZ, but not much (that I can find anyway) that deals with maintenance of asset files. Any help would be much appreciated. After dragging my feet for far too long, it's now time to start putting a new game/VN together. It's all storyboarded - time to get into the nuts and bolts of bringing it to life.

tl;dr:

Use a tool like NSware makes that helps identify and disable/enable assets (it works by literally copying out to a temp folder)
Tool is in here: https://f95zone.to/threads/daz3d-morph-manager-2-0-v-1-1-0.112526/

Long explanation:

Daz certainly does have performance issues as you accumulate more assets. The biggest contributors to this is the slowdown of scene/model load times as you have more and more applicable "morphs". Every morph that is relevant to the model is loaded whenever the model is placed into a scene or a saved scene containing that model is loaded.

The solution to this is to avoid having lots of different morph packs or models-from-the-same-base-figure with morphs in your active daz libraries. Once you've got "200 morphs for F8" asset, do you really need several "realistic morphs" and "sexy morphs" and "super expressions pack #4" as well? This also counts for hair assets - some of them are absolutely enormous and have lots of morphs. Luckily the morphs are only applicable to the specific hair so you don't get the cross-slowdown from multiple hair assets like you do for figure morphs. The textures can take LOOTS of space. There's a thread in the dev-help section talking about how to manage your asset folder size by e.g. deleting textures for figures/colors you know you will never use, or re-encoding png/tif image textures as JPG.

Back to morphs: the slow your daz down but how do you try out these morph packs to see what you want to use for your game? IMO the best way is to delete OR MOVE them again after you have decided you don't need for your every-day content creation workflow.

Be aware that most content does not get affected like this: most clothing, all environments and props do not cause significant slowdown.

There's a few solutions to the slowdown:

1. having a "core" library with the main assets you need, and a second library (or more) into which you install new assets while you decide if you want to keep them. Then you can add/remove the heavy library via daz config as necessary only when you are experimenting. If you want the asset to be in your core library, uninstall from the secondary and reinstall in the primary.

2. Use a tool like NSware makes that helps identify and disable/enable assets (it works by literally copying out to a temp folder)

Tool is in here: https://f95zone.to/threads/daz3d-morph-manager-2-0-v-1-1-0.112526/

 

[SciGuy]

Thanks for the help. Quick scan looks like my major questions will be handled once I have the chance to play around with it. I promise to try and resolve things myself before making any future 'I'm too stupid' posts!

 

[osanaiko]

Thanks for the help. Quick scan looks like my major questions will be handled once I have the chance to play around with it. I promise to try and resolve things myself before making any future 'I'm too stupid' posts!

NO problem. And don't worry about asking questions here, that's what this forum is for. The morph-related slowdown is a bit more black-magic than most noob questions (hurr durr how do i get vagine on my character?)

 

[Akkanero]

I'm looking to try my hand at making some 3dcg art/renders/whatever you call them. What are the best/most popular programs and where/how should I start?

 

[MissFortune]

I'm looking to try my hand at making some 3dcg art/renders/whatever you call them. What are the best/most popular programs and where/how should I start?

Do you mean making scenes, like the ones you see in games (VNs)? Or are you actually looking to make figures and models? They're two very different things. That being said, I'm going to roll with the assumption that you're looking to make the renders you see in games/VNs (Being a DIK, Sisterly Lust, etc.). I'm also going to assume you have a relatively beefy PC and Nvidia GPU (1660 Ti being the least I'd recommend, 20 series a good happy medium, 30 series will make life a lot easier.). If you're working on a lower end PC, you can still use Daz (see below), but it's going to be bit of a struggle. You can try looking into KoiKatsu (spelling is probably wrong) or Honey Select 1 or 2.

Daz is going to be the program you use, especially for a beginner. Then there's the assets. The Daz Marketplace, Renderosity, and Renderotica are where you're going to be buying assets (or you can pirate them. Which I'm morally against, but who cares what I think?), there are others but those three are probably the best of the bunch. YouTube tutorials for the UI and basic lighting techniques (regular photo/film lighting tutorials can also apply to Daz, as well. Though it may take a bit more work.) Beyond that, it's just learning lighting, posing/expressing the figures in a natural way, and just sort of putting it all together as you get a better understanding of it all.

If you're just making renders, then Daz and some sort of editor should be more than enough. Photoshop, Affinity, and Photopea being what I recommend. The latter of the three being a free, online clone of Photoshop. Lightroom could be good, too. That'd be where I start.

Maybe if you're into it, you can jump into Source Film Maker or Blender later, but neither are going to be as easy as Daz.