Others 3dcg Games

[Bloemkool]

Ok hear me out, not sure if this is the correct place to put this but here goes.

I've noticed a trend of 3dcg/animation games using character assets from illusion games such as Honey Select or Koikatsu, now the thing is many of the games that lead to abandoned status tend to have really well made characters in there with different proportions & variety perhaps even utilising mods such as wideslider. Time & effort has gone into these characters but then the game just dies.

The games that get completed a fair amount of times have characters that look like ass giving off uncanny valley vibes & I'm thinking why can't the characters from that abandoned game have been in here?

I'll show some examples of better looking stuff imo but won't show what I consider trash to not trample on someone's work.

https://f95zone.to/threads/school-boss-harem-v0-0-3-hot-hill.74109/
https://f95zone.to/threads/arronhd-v0-1-2b-jimreynor.72659/page-9#post-8487007
https://f95zone.to/threads/off-the-beaten-path-v1-0-alpha-clad-in-a-flaxen-hue.98048/

Anyway in an ideal world the better character designers could get together with developers that finish their projects; games would be fire.

Stuff like this would be fantastic -

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[Saki_Sliz]

All of those look to be using model and renders from Honey Select. It's one of the common programs used to generate art for these kinds of programs. The game devs probably didn't actually create the models from scratch, but rather used honey select and mods. The few I've seen with bad models and lots of time tend to be those that were made from scratch, and that was a few years ago when blender was the only practical 3D modeling program for people starting out, this was before the 2.8 user friendly update, Daz was starting to become popular as more assets were pirated to get people interested, at the same time honeyselect was being used by a few projects but hard for people to start out with due the extensive moding needed to get started at the time, and smutbase (free fairly high quality blender models) only had like 13 models and hadn't been noticed by many yet (some were just basic Daz model ported out with shape keys).

Now a days, people struggle between their art skills/finding an artist or using the two common programs (Daz and Honeyselect mainly) at the risk of looking like most other games that would use similar programs (doesn't help that daz, the more easier program requires a decent computer, lots of time, and it is still not the most functional if you want to make small edits). Since most artist need to focus on their art, they can't afford to make games other than simple projects to test their skill and show off their art. Since most dev's can't get consistant art, nor do they like their art skill, its usually a struggle trying to find a tool they want to commit to for their art. So its the same issues as before Daz and HoneySelect became popular...

that pixiv link, I'm not sure what program makes that art, but I see a few artist have similar art (suggesting that they used the same program, just different characters). One of the recent programs starting to gain assets is VaM (I think it stands for Virtual Mate) and while I've seen some people make art with it, I haven't seen anyone use it for a project or a game (and I think VaM itself started out as just that, one of many projects that started out with a custom or basic character, but eventually enough time allowed for great improvements). I haven't looked into VaM to understand what it does and how usable it could be as an art tool (even if that's not how the program's ment to be used, just like with skyrim, people manage to fanagle programs to work once there is enough flexibility to get at least something).

But I've been out of the loop for a little over a year so I don't know what the current trends amongst the devs of this site.

 

[Tompte]

Maybe the people who copy/paste finish faster and thus avoid getting bored or distracted by other ideas?

 

[MissFortune]

still not the most functional if you want to make small edits)

I think Daz is fairly functional in regard to small edits, at least in post-rendering. Spot-rendering is often a good way to fix small things like clipping, eye direction, expressions, hair, or even just straight up adding people in the background after the main render is finished. There's also the progressive rendering tab in Daz when you render via New Window, which can add bloom or more samples, etc. It's not the best, but it saves you from having to render the same render again for a small fix.

One of the recent programs starting to gain assets is VaM (I think it stands for Virtual Mate) and while I've seen some people make art with it, I haven't seen anyone use it for a project or a game (and I think VaM itself started out as just that, one of many projects that started out with a custom or basic character, but eventually enough time allowed for great improvements).

Virta-a-Mate (I believe), started out as (and I could be wrong) interactive 3D porn software that you could hook up to fleshlight-type stuff. Not sure if that's still their thing or not, just reiterating what I remember of it. Never actually used it myself. Their community started making stuff to use and create their own stuff to share, and it sort of transformed into that. Someone who knows more about can correct me on that. From what I understand of it, people are using it in the same way as KK/HS in the sense that they make up the scene and screenshot it. Again, someone can correct me if I'm wrong.

As for using it as art? From the results I've seen, it's just not there yet. Of course, that could just be user error on the artists side, but I haven't been impressed with it. It feels like looking at Genesis 2 or 3 Figures (and same goes for the hair), with limited backgrounds/environments that seem to have the wrong perspective more than they don't (again, could be user error). It might be something in a few years, maybe, but it's pretty far behind the competition in the sense of VNs/games graphically. It's also easier to use (from what I've heard) and probably a bit faster than Daz (assumption), but the graphic side of it also currently reflects that.

 

[Saki_Sliz]

Virta-a-Mate

sounds more correct

post-rendering

The time spent on asset creation is an important factor. As Tompte hinted at, time is important. As I've worked on more projects I think there is another more serious issue. Say someone starting out has all these ideas, and don't realize how much work the project is and how much time it will take. A lot of people will say that the 'scope' is too big. But I disagree. While I understand why people say it and the two have a very high correlation, I'd say there's actually a bit of nuance.

Specifically, I'd say what breaks people is:
1) You start one part of the project
2) You get a bit of work done, such that you complete a 'virtual' milestone.
3) this virtual milestone gives you a point of reference to figure out how much work it will take to complete your true milestone
4) 1 month seems like a 'significant' amount of time. If the time it takse is more than this, we often want to reduce the work
5) after redesigning how they will do something to get it to fit within reasonable time, what they imagine the delievable result will be ends up not being as significant as 1 month's worth of work (the audience can think an art piece looks ok, but the artist will only see flaws because they know what the art was suppose to be)

Mainly, what I see is that once someone gains some perspective on time, they re-plan their ideas and how they want to deliver them, only to later realize that what they are 'able' to do doesn't seem as 'significant' as they wanted it to be, and drop it.

Spoiler: I like to ramble but couldn't bring myself to delete this

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