Anyone else getting bored of Daz/HS/KK models?

[MarbleCrown]

As a huge pregnancy fan I really wish DAZ models would finally get the preggo belly right. In most games it looks rather strange... another issue with DAZ seems to be the lack of realistic clothing morphing. Not sure what it's actually called but you probably know what I mean. You often see women wearing a top and it just looks like it's skin tight around the breasts even tho it's supposed to be a loose shirt.

Pregnancy morphs are okay, but it's a slider so a lot of artists just crank it to max and call it good, when it would probably look closer to reality if it was dialed back a bit. The problem with sliders too, is it might not look as good on every model as some others.

As for the clothing stuff you mentioned, this is actually relatively easy to fix with Fit Control which I've been using for years now specifically so that loose tops don't look glued to the character's breasts. But there are tons of other uses for Fit Control as well and it works on any piece of clothing. There are very few assets I would recommend every DAZ artist to use and become familiar with, but Fit Control is definitely one of them.

 

[FlamesOfVengeance]

Pregnancy morphs are okay, but it's a slider so a lot of artists just crank it to max and call it good, when it would probably look closer to reality if it was dialed back a bit. The problem with sliders too, is it might not look as good on every model as some others.

As for the clothing stuff you mentioned, this is actually relatively easy to fix with Fit Control which I've been using for years now specifically so that loose tops don't look glued to the character's breasts. But there are tons of other uses for Fit Control as well and it works on any piece of clothing. There are very few assets I would recommend every DAZ artist to use and become familiar with, but Fit Control is definitely one of them.

That's interesting. I'm not a developer and I also have no clue about how DAZ models actually work but I've just noticed the aforementioned oddities here and there in a few games.

 

[baneini]

Daz models got boring When Big Brother started the wave of "I can make a BB-vania porn game and money too" and when Patreon combined forces with the cash grabbers by enforcing a variety of policies.

The lack of talent/creative drive, the limiting tools and censorship constricted expression to such a great degree it made the whole genre of 3dcg games garbage thats gonna be a 5/10 game at best from the starting conditions alone. They all look same, they all have same themes, they all gravitate towards the median expression.

 

[unocrus]

I think the Daz models themselves are very high quality and offer a lot of flexibility. The issue in my opinion is those benefits don't amount to much when authors pay no attention to lighting, shot composition, or even basic human anatomy when it comes to posing those models. You could have the most beautiful real-life model in the world posing in front of you, but your photos won't automatically be good if you don't actually know how to take a good picture.

 

[Deleted member 3735541]

I think too much focus is put on the models, when it should be on the lighting. Doesn't matter how good the model looks if the lighting is bad, but spectacular lighting can make a scene look great even if the model is meh.

Also, where the Unreal metahumans at?

this is probably at least partially because lighting is much harder to do well

for models, the "monkey with a typewriter" approach of randomly fucking around with sliders until you get an aesthetically pleasing result is at least somewhat effective, not to mention that most models used are already highly attractive right out of the box

lighting, however, quickly becomes complicated due to position, size, strength, angle, type, color, quantity, shadows, etc. so you generally can't just try random things and reach a result that you would consider near-perfection

you also usually want to adjust the lighting for different poses or steps in a scene, and have to redo it completely for new scenes, whereas models stay mostly the same (except for outfit choices, which also could use more effort, but that's another topic)

 

[Domiek]

As a huge pregnancy fan I really wish DAZ models would finally get the preggo belly right. In most games it looks rather strange... another issue with DAZ seems to be the lack of realistic clothing morphing. Not sure what it's actually called but you probably know what I mean. You often see women wearing a top and it just looks like it's skin tight around the breasts even tho it's supposed to be a loose shirt.

The clothes themselves are usual fine but to fit them to a wide variety of models, there's an auto-fit option that conforms the clothes around the figure resulting in the boob-tubes and other oddities.

Fixing it to some degree requires buying additional clothes morphs. A better option is manually sculpting the clothes in Zbrush or Blender. The best option is to do cloth simulations which can take some time.

I use Marvelous Designer which is a bit spendy and increases the time spent on each render as now you have to deal with a pipeline in two softwares.

The results look good though.





It's constantly a trade-off with quantity of content vs quality since time is scarce.

 

[NRFB]

Yes, but I don't think of them as a point against a game. They end up feeling like just a generic default visual style, so I do kind of scoff whenever I see someone write 'gorgeous renders' in a review for one of these games. I'm not a big graphics guy even in porn games. To me, the writing and context presented in the porn games is on a much higher tier of importance. Seeing one of these programs just means that the developer doesn't have a method of creating art assets by themself and they didn't have the starting funds to hire/work with an artist, so they've ended up with one of the common popular options. It's not necessarily a good or bad thing.

I will say that it feels like there SHOULD be more variation in the way these tools are able to be used so that a developer SHOULD be able to still carve out their own art direction, but for how often that happens...

Well, I haven't actually used any of the programs, so maybe I just don't know anything.

 

[Xephyrus]

Three points on this speaking as an indie dev/artist of non-erotic games.

1.
There is nothing wrong with using third party assets to make your art. It's HOW you use them that matters, because that will affect people's PERCEPTION of your creative work.

The question of originality and creativity will always arise when devs/artists try to use stock assets either as is, or with very mundane alterations, instead of trying to trying to turn those assets into something more unique.

I've seen other devs be called thieves, and their games get called out as "asset flips" if they so much have the audacity to include a stock CC0 asset like a piece of furniture (even though that is the whole point of such an asset). God save you if you decide to use a highly recognizable stock asset like a full character model, if that model has also been used in another, more popular game.

I don't believe every content creator needs to try to be super original with all of their designs, or try to create everything from scratch. That's just not feasible for most of us, myself included. However, people may not be as understanding when they evaluate your work.

2.
If a certain style or trend becomes popular, people may start to find it boring, or they may start criticizing devs/artists for not being more original.

People tend to dismiss platformer games because there's just so many of that style of game being made every day. Doesn't matter if the dev included some unique, never before seen mechanics. People may trash it just because its popular.

Same thing might be going on with art that uses Daz, HS, etc. It might not matter how unique the artist tries to be with those assets, if people perceive the style itself as being overdone.

3.
It is much harder to achieve uniqueness with character art that uses a 3d, realistic style like Daz. Stylized 2d characters such as those found in anime and comics can really push the boundaries on what can be done with the human anatomy, while still being believable.

That is also why there is a far more degree of originality possible in the anime/comic style. If you try to do the same in Daz you won't be able to get nearly the same results or worse, you will fall deep into the uncanny valley.

So most Daz characters end up looking really samey, which once again affects people's perception that the artists are getting lazy and the style is getting overdone.

 

[cesid]

They should just allow to customize characters.