Okay, well, first of all thank you for your replies. I really appreciate any help.
However, if your hypothesis is correct that means I'm screwed and FFH will never be remade, because my strengths are writing and coding. I'm actually good at photography and videography in real life, so composition is fine, but 3D art is quite hard; there is too much stuff involved that I just don't understand properly. Bummer. See below for details.
There's cartoon shaders for IRay. And they would effectively give a cartoonish look, not a bleached one like in your old renders. Even 2D have a sense of depth that was missing in your original renders.
Yes, my old renders have undeniable technical issues. The models are, imo, very attractive but it's true the colors and other technical details are not great.
However, I wanted to make a game focused on building a whole fantasy world, which implies having a lot of characters and tons of images. That is just not feasible when using Iray (at least not on my computer or at my level of understanding all the million details that go into creating good Iray images)
Worth noting that having to apply extra shaders to a zillion images would also make Iray even more impractical than it already is, and not appropriate for my project.
3Delight was always a poor imitation. Not of IRay, but of raytracing render engines. It's just that it's now a bit better imitation. It handle shadows, and reflections, better than it did before, and apparently also SSS or what take its place.
But well, it's just a question of configuration. I'm more than certain that you can go back to renders like your old ones. It just need to play with the surface, probably disabling few parameters. Changing the color and strength for the SSS equivalent, lower the shadow strength, and so on.
After all, Daz Studio is intended to be easy to use, but never was effectively intended to be used as it without at least a bit of configuration for the assets before you starts rendering.
If by that you mean adjusting various values and shaders for each scene and character (and involving various models, clothes, props, etc,) once again there is no way that could be done in any practical way if I am crating a ton of scenes.
To be honest I doubt it would be possible because the values you mention don't usually alter models' skin that drastically, but let's say I'm wrong: it would take hours of testing to figure it out, and that's on top of hours spent creating models. scenes, writing dialogues etc.
Like I said, not feasible, not even a little bit.
Now, I can try to fiddle around with the render engine's settings a bit.... There aren't many so it won't take too long and it would affect every scene, but I don't see any of those might help with this.
A couple of comments
One Positive - Genesis 2 looks okay
Assuming your hypothesis is correct, it must be said that newer renders of Genesis 2 models do look nicer because they have more depth, but different models still have different skin colors (only vaguely darker than before)
However, those 3Delight improvements have been disastrous to say the least for Genesis 3 and anything above it (the models most people use - those all have that ugly dark gold skin in the renders above - all of them - EDIT: technically, that is not completely true - some characters who had a weird skin, like the Dark Elven Beauty model for example, still look about the same in the new renders).
Regardless, I love the Genesis 2 models, but they were not popular for long so there isn't that much in terms of clothing, poses, etc. So, once again my whole world building concept goes down the Drain
DAZ Studio - Iray
You said:
After all, Daz Studio is intended to be easy to use, but never was effectively intended to be used as it is without at least a bit of configuration for the assets before you start rendering.
That is a contradiction in terms. Anything that requires plenty of specific knowledge and/or adjustments is not and cannot be 'easy to use'.
What DAZ should have been, and could have been, is something easy to use to create simple although limited images for people without said professional knowledge, but with the option to produce something even better for people who do know what they are doing.
What they created instead is something very hard to use for everybody, and that clearly emphasizes Iray (which is an effing nightmare to use for any non-professionals) while pretty much ignoring easier to use render engines.
I believe it's done on purpose - Iray users need and buy more stuff (and get more headaches but that's not DAZ's problem)
Imo it's all a giant ripoff and I will spend money on their Iray crap the day Hell freezes over.
That's the way I see it.
Now, sure, some Iray renders on the DAZ site look great, but they are one-offs created by professionals using professional equipment.
Have I ever seen even one Iray render, in any game on this site, that looks good to me?
Honestly, no. (and I have 0 interest in even downloading any game that uses them)
I feel bad about saying that because I know how much work goes into those renders, and I know other creators, like me, are better at writing and other things, but it's still the truth. Non-professional Iray renders look decent at best, but usually just crappy.
Guys, it's not a coincidence that 99% of the games that make good money (not just a few crumbs here and there) use either original art or stuff like Honey Select (based on manga art).
Using Iray to make those games is, simply put, almost always a waste of time. Sure, we can enjoy Iray as a hobby (if you enjoy undergoing torture) but ti's not my cup of tea.
There would be more to say about this but end of rant for now.
Thanks again for the help though. I do appreciate it.
