Ren'Py Completed Callisto [v1.00] [Xavster Gaming]

[McWoodz]

The messy one does make more sense but the wet ponytail looks good.

Maybe she could get caught in the rain sometime...
The poor girls clothes would just be soaked through...
It's quite a complicated looking new outfit she's got too...
Looks like the sort of thing she'd probably need help to get off...

Hmmm...

I'll be in my bunk.

 

[Xavster]

Development Update:

Progress over the last week departed from what I originally planned. I spent most of the time coding / scripting and creating the imagemap idle / hover images. Through this process I realised that the renders I had done for Kara's and Alice / Rachel's room were from a poor angle for the creation of the imagemaps. Hence I had to redo these from a different angle. Additionally, I underestimated the work to complete the kitchen scenes. Having said this though very good progress was made on the game scripting as well as tweaking the code to make it more efficient.

Trading System:
Implemented the travelling from sector to sector, with appropriate adjustments to commodity prices. Did the coding to have the hold inventory represent what is on the ship at any time. Completed and tested the trading system via buying and selling various items and travelling from sector to sector.

Spoiler: Hold Examples

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

Contextual Representation of Rooms:
The scenes displaying in each room now dependent upon calendar and also which sector you are travelling. Have done this for kitchen, bridge and all of the girls rooms. Scenes in the hold / common room also display dependent upon whether you are travelling from the front or back of ship. Idle and Hover imagemaps also created such that mouseover exactly conforms to figures and not just a box in the region of the figure. Particular thanks to anne O'nymous for assistance with the coding.

Spoiler: Contextual Room Example

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

Composite Images:
For scenes in the kitchen / lounge I am also using composite images consisting of a background and then placing characters / items in front of them. Care was taken to ensure that lighting is consistent and that shadows are represented where appropriate. This is all done in-game which allows me to create a multitude of scenes using a smaller set of small images. For example in the spoiler below I have a number of images for Tiffany on the left which I can pair with images of any other character on the right (only Lia / Julia at present).

Spoiler: Composite Images Example

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

Webp:
Embraced the power of using webp images, not only for small file size but also transparency. The current game folder has 740 images, however is only 130MB (@ 1080p).

Plans for Next Week:
No surprises here, as I will be completing what I didn't get done last week.
- Complete renders for the lounge / engine room / captains room.
- Create renders for ship travelling to different regions (more to keep the render queue full than anything else)

 

[Xavster]

Development Update:

Things went to plan over the last week and tasks set were completed. Some sample images of the engine room / captain's room and also a sneak peak of an additional crew member.

Spoiler: Sample Images

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

This marks the completion of the game environment and mechanics. Hence moving forwards over the next month, the main points of emphasis will be the following:
- Fleshing out the story in Ren'Py, supplementing with additional renders as necessary.
- Creation of the animations for 0.2.
- Insertion of music and sound effects (will be fairly minimal - just intended to create some atmosphere)

PS: I did the animations for the ship travelling between sectors, expecting it to take a few days to render out. Rather than taking 10 mins a frame it was closer to 20 seconds. Hence after 4 hours it was all done. Simple animation, however when coupled with sound effect and camera movement, I think they turned out fairly nice.

 

[Xavster]

As I will be programming the story events / dialogue over the next month, wanted to make sure I was headed down the right path. In some ways the game style will be similar to Harem Hotel (Runey), however with some variations. Seeking some feedback on the alternatives below.

With the story progression, I am currently weighing up 2 different alternatives.
- Story progression variable for each character, where you will have to do certain events in sequence.
- Still have a progression variable, however it will advance if you say complete 2 out of 3 events at that level.
The first option will mean that you will always see every piece of content and is easier to program, however will likely mean that hints / walk-through would be necessary. The second is more difficult to program, however should mean that the game may be played with no walk-through at any point.

For storyline events, I am planning for these to trigger when you enter the relevant room. Normal navigation would require you to click on the relevant character to initiate speech. The issue with this is that you could end up seeing the same dialogue many times in an attempt to progress the storyline. I believe auto-triggering is advantages as it means that you can simply scan through the rooms in order to ensure game progress. As many of the storyline events are related to character development, the majority of them are interactions between other crew members, where you will be an observer.

As far as lewd content progression, I am planning on tying this to a few character variables via the following:
- Experience - essentially repeatable lewd content has been done sufficiently at one level to progress to the next relationship level. Don't worry, I won't make it a grind.
- Relationship - As this increases it will open up more options to player in terms of activities. I will also try to tailor game dialogue / scenes to this level.
- Development - This will be for character progression and will be related to non-lewd content. Planned to interact with the main game story events (meant to be a sci-fi story). Certain characters will have to be developed before higher relationship levels can be achieved.

The intent of this system is that lewd content is intended to be played in tandem with the game / sci-fi elements. It is not going to force you do anything, however it will require that you invest in a characters storyline to fully open up their lewd content. To assist the player, I plan to create a weekly crew meeting in the game that will give hints to what each character desires at the time. It will also give an update of finances / events over the past week.

PS: Whilst I have nothing against lewd content, it is not intended to be the only focus. Story driven character development will always have you invest more in the content. I just hope that my writing / coding skills can keep with the ideas I have planned.

 

[Blowfly]

I absolutely loved it. Very in-depth, especially for a prologue, with excellent characters having real personalities and intriguing backstories. I'm very much looking forward to more!

Question 1 are there be pregancy in this game 2 what a hairy pussy bald one look so unreal and 3 milf would be great so that my wish list LOL

 

[McWoodz]

Xavster
Personally I'd prefer to see sequential story progression with an in-game hint system if possible.
Don't want to miss out on any content that you've gone to the trouble of making and in-game character menus with hints usually work pretty well. (Although I have no idea how easy or hard actually implementing that is.)

The experience/relationship/development system sounds great as does everything else.
Happy to hear story and character development's going to play an integral part as we're not all just here for the lewd stuff.
Generally we like both and the ones that only like one can read a book/go to pornhub.

Anyway everything's looking incredible. The ship, the characters, the new outfits, the trading system etc...
Maybe time to get that patreon up and running for 0.2 as I think between the initial release and all that you've posted, showing what will be happening in the game, you've made it clear that you "can deliver quality" and I'm sure many people will be happy to offer their support even at this early stage.

 

[Xavster]

Question 1 are there be pregancy in this game 2 what a hairy pussy bald one look so unreal and 3 milf would be great so that my wish list LOL

1) Pregnancy - there may be eventually, however trying to implement it early in the game introduces too many variations. It is simply impractical to implement early / mid game. For example if you were to have a scene with all 7 female characters, you would need 128 variations for every single image. This is why it is typically handled in an epilogue.
2) Pubic Hair - 3 of the 7 main girls have pubic hair. Note that 2 of the main girls are alien.
3) Milfs - There is 1 milf type in game. Not really my thing, hence unlikely to expand significantly.

 

[Xavster]

Xavster
Personally I'd prefer to see sequential story progression with an in-game hint system if possible.
Don't want to miss out on any content that you've gone to the trouble of making and in-game character menus with hints usually work pretty well. (Although I have no idea how easy or hard actually implementing that is.)

The experience/relationship/development system sounds great as does everything else.
Happy to hear story and character development's going to play an integral part as we're not all just here for the lewd stuff.
Generally we like both and the ones that only like one can read a book/go to pornhub.

Anyway everything's looking incredible. The ship, the characters, the new outfits, the trading system etc...
Maybe time to get that patreon up and running for 0.2 as I think between the initial release and all that you've posted, showing what will be happening in the game, you've made it clear that you "can deliver quality" and I'm sure many people will be happy to offer their support even at this early stage.

Thanks for the feedback.

The hint system is fairly easy to implement, however if done with something like a phone, I think it detracts from the immersion. In terms of the second system I am proposing, where you don't have to see every scene to progress, many of these scenes are fairly minor in nature. More of an investigation of what is happening on the ship at any time. Hence when the major scene occurs, you will have witnessed several minor scenes leading up to the major scene. The only scenes that will be missed are ones that no longer make any sense in terms of current story progress (<10%). For example, if one of the characters has a conversion with someone that it is their dream to become a pilot, it would not be appropriate for this scene to be shown after they had already become a pilot.

I'll get Patreon up and running with 0.2. I have delayed this as I didn't not want to accept any funding prior to overcoming the main hurdles (coding - already sorted). Also, I did not want to feel pressured to release the 0.2 version before it was ready. Technically the game is already functional, however I want to include sufficient content to ensure that first real release gets people invested. I would rather that anyone whom decides to support this game be happy with their investment, than seek remuneration in the short term.

 

[McWoodz]

Thanks for the feedback.

The hint system is fairly easy to implement, however if done with something like a phone, I think it detracts from the immersion. In terms of the second system I am proposing, where you don't have to see every scene to progress, many of these scenes are fairly minor in nature. More of an investigation of what is happening on the ship at any time. Hence when the major scene occurs, you will have witnessed several minor scenes leading up to the major scene. The only scenes that will be missed are ones that no longer make any sense in terms of current story progress (<10%). For example, if one of the characters has a conversion with someone that it is their dream to become a pilot, it would not be appropriate for this scene to be shown after they had already become a pilot.

I've seen phones break more than just immersion. Sometimes they break everything.
I was thinking more along the lines of Mythic Manor for example where you hit an icon in the corner of the screen to open a character relationship screen

Spoiler: MM Example

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

Just a suggestion but it can work quite well.

 

[Xavster]

I've seen phones break more than just immersion. Sometimes they break everything.
I was thinking more along the lines of Mythic Manor for example where you hit an icon in the corner of the screen to open a character relationship screen

Spoiler: MM Example

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

Just a suggestion but it can work quite well.

I was planning on doing something similar with the computer in the captain's room. It will have a screen for each one of the main characters, providing information on their background and status of their relationships. It is almost essential when trying to debug the code for any errors. If I know the location / time / character relation status, the error search is confined immediately to a few lines of code.

It will also serve to provide information on the ship and the universe in which you are traversing (different sectors / stations / planets etc). Haven't implemented this yet, however shouldn't be particularly difficult as it uses the same coding method that was used to generate the trading pad.

PS: The ship Callisto has been created in 3D with all of the rooms to scale and located in different portions. Much of the work I have been doing is to make the ship feel as real as possible. The nature in which you traverse the ship will be as per the information schematic.

 

[jranderson3224]

2) Pubic Hair - 3 of the 7 main girls have pubic hair. Note that 2 of the main girls are alien.

As a hairy lover, thank you. I love the prologue, the story really makes this game stand out above others. Can't wait for more!

 

[Xavster]

Development Update:

Over the past week I have made good progress on the animations and also scripting of the main character development for 0.2. Whilst the PC has been crunching through the animations (rendering time >> posing time), I have had sufficient time in order to implement the computer interface in the Captain's room. This contains various information about the characters and also the environment. I will also incorporate the Prologue content within this interface, by adjusting it into a chapter format, allowing players to view different portions of the backstory as desired. A selection of in-game screens of the working computer are included in the spoiler below.

Spoiler: Computer Interface

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

Tiffany's char development storyline for 0.2 is almost complete (main focus of 0.2), with only 2 out of the 10 or so scenes remaining to be completed. I will also do some storyline development for Lia prior to starting beta testing in a couple of weeks. A couple of examples of the Tiff development screens in the spoiler below.

Spoiler: Tiffany Development

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

The animations are going well and hopefully will be completed for 0.2 next week. The new features in Daz 4.12 are making these are bit easier than before and the results are an improvement over what was in the prologue. The following week will then just be tidy up and internal testing. Following this I will forward to a few individuals for Beta testing for a couple of weeks. Whilst this is happening, I'll just add some polishing events that will make the ship seem more alive (simple renders / coding in existing environment - won't need external testing). All things going well 0.2 should be out in early November.

 

[Quriousg]

Great little hidden gem. Great renders. Looking forward to the next installment

 

[Quriousg]

Been experimenting with wet hair for the shower scenes and am seeking some feedback on the following options for Kara's hair in the scene. What do you prefer, the messy hair out look or still in the ponytail.

Out Messy:
View attachment 386050

Ponytail:
View attachment 386051

I think without gives character some more vulnerability and realism could add to her storyline

 

[Xavster]

Development Update:

Things have been fairly quiet over the past week, waiting for the animations to render out. To give you an idea of what happened over the past week:
- Animations are done with the exception of a 240 frame animation where I messed up the lighting. Problem fixed, however it will take 24h to re-render. Might add 1 or 2 more, however undecided at present.
- Prologue incorporated into the computer so player can access as desired. I have broken it up into chapters for easier watching.
- Incorporated the ability to name your character, which also flows over into the prologue.
- Included music into game utilising 2 different tracks per sector (selected to give appropriate mood for each sector).
- Added a couple minor sound effects.
- Did some miscellaneous renders to fill out the ship environment and also to fill gaps in images during the scene scripting.
- Scripted out a few scenes.
- Created the info panel for day / time / credits.
- File size is also well under control with the total folder size for game currently <400MB despite inclusion of prologue and music.

Tasks for next week are as follows:
- Predominately writing / scripting dialogue for the miscellaneous scenes.
- Contacting a few people to organise Beta testing.

Spoiler: Couple in-game Samples

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

PS: One of the main changes I have made from the prologue is to switch most of the action from 3rd person to 1st person. As such the main character is rarely shown, allowing the player to imagine themselves in the role. This is reflected in the ability to name the MC and also many of the camera angles used (MC eye location).

 

[Xavster]

Development Update:

I have had a bit of a change of thinking in terms of Beta testing. Originally I was planning on undertaking early to predominately test the game mechanics. However after scripting the bulk of the scenes over the past week, I think testing the cohesiveness of the storyline is going to be more important than testing what I believe is fairly robust mechanics (travel / trading). Given the game is not linear, certain scenes have conditional requirements before they will play. Hence testing is required to ensure that the story still makes sense despite this increased freedom. Also that the storyline can be progressed fairly easily, despite not leading the player by the nose.

Whilst completing the main storyline and miscellaneous scene scripting and testing, I have determined exactly which additional renders I need to undertake to round out 0.2. I think I can get all of these completed next week. So allowing another week to complete scripting / testing, 0.2 should be ready for testing in 2 weeks. Hence to give a little summary of what I have left before the Beta:
- Sunday night kitchen scene (3 full + 20 partial renders)
- Friday night lounge scene (~20 full renders)
- Wednesday night hold scene (~10 full renders)
- Phase 2 maid scenes (~20 renders)
Note: Completing the above is actually easier than it seems, as many of the renders are duplicates with different camera angles / background.

I'm not going to post the recent renders / animations I have been working on as they would be rather spoilerish, however a few older ones to keep you interested.

 

[Sin'Gul Arity]

Hi Xavster!

Thanks for the game and my undying gratitude for the developer's notes! Very, VERY interesting! Please keep it up!

I'm happened to be a rookie game-dev myself... You don't mind me asking a few questions?

1. What's your render PC specs? That speed is impressive. And a word of advice about RAM, please... Some sources I read say it has no influence on the process at all until you have enough to sustain the Daz3d program instance. Others say that 32GB is a minimum...
2. In your and a few else top-tier games scenes are overlighted (IMHO, of course) ... this is your visual preference or reason is more physical? Like, not to mess with shadows more than it's necessary? If yes, maybe a few tips about how to set up lighting to prevent immersive consuming of the GPU resources?
For example, this image had taken 22 hours/15000 iterations to render, but still grainy... I can improve it a little in post-processing, but perhaps I just made some initial mistakes in render settings or scene setup?

Spoiler: grainy image 1

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

This one was done in 18 hours and 15000 iterations, the result is still bothering me:

Spoiler: grainy image 2

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

3. Some scripts/plugins/additions or whatever to Daz3d you considering as must-have?
4. This one is actually offtopic, so I'm sorry if it's will bug you in any way - why don't you have the Patreon or any other similar page? I guess there will be a bunch of people who will support you. And besides that, I'm inquisitive to know how popular it can be a good Sci-Fi game today, comparing to modern incest/corruption tides.

Whatever you choose - to answer or not, good luck!

P.S. I'm not a native speaker, so sorry for any possible sparks of Engrish in my message.

 

[Xavster]

Hi Xavster!

Thanks for the game and my undying gratitude for the developer's notes! Very, VERY interesting! Please keep it up!

I'm happened to be a rookie game-dev myself... You don't mind me asking a few questions?

1. What's your render PC specs? That speed is impressive. And a word of advice about RAM, please... Some sources I read say it has no influence on the process at all until you have enough to sustain the Daz3d program instance. Others say that 32GB is a minimum...
2. In your and a few else top-tier games scenes are overlighted (IMHO, of course) ... this is your visual preference or reason is more physical? Like, not to mess with shadows more than it's necessary? If yes, maybe a few tips about how to set up lighting to prevent immersive consuming of the GPU resources?
For example, this image had taken 22 hours/15000 iterations to render, but still grainy... I can improve it a little in post-processing, but perhaps I just made some initial mistakes in render settings or scene setup?

Spoiler: grainy image 1

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

This one was done in 18 hours and 15000 iterations, the result is still bothering me:

Spoiler: grainy image 2

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

3. Some scripts/plugins/additions or whatever to Daz3d you considering as must-have?
4. This one is actually offtopic, so I'm sorry if it's will bug you in any way - why don't you have the Patreon or any other similar page? I guess there will be a bunch of people who will support you. And besides that, I'm inquisitive to know how popular it can be a good Sci-Fi game today, comparing to modern incest/corruption tides.

Whatever you choose - to answer or not, good luck!

P.S. I'm not a native speaker, so sorry for any possible sparks of Engrish in my message.

Please find the following answers to the queries you have posed:
1) Currently running with a GTX1060 6GB RAM with 32GB system RAM. In relation to RAM, this is largely dependent upon how many characters you wish to place simultaneously in a scene. With 4 or less character models in the scene, you can get away with 16GB, however having 32GB is preferred.

2) When undertaking lighting of a scene you are typically better to have more rather than less light in order to get the scene to converge quickly. You can adjusting overall lighting in post processing. One of the main aspects for getting an image to converge is to have a dominant light source (spotlight / emissive or HDRI). The second is to not have too many highly reflective surfaces. Essentially when lights are competing or reflections are competing, the render iteration keeps producing different results, dependent upon where the light source is originating or the path light it is taking.

For your specific renders I would suggest that emissive light from the datapad is fighting with the scene lighting on the first render and the second render has the issue of reflection off the back wall fighting with direct light on the character.

I have done many renders with more atmospheric aspects, however when doing a VN you often have to compromise between render time and quality. With my current hardware I can't render these more complex scenes in a reasonable time. Couple examples below.

Spoiler: Atmospheric Renders

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

3) About the only must have is a batch render script. Also if you are doing animations then Keymate and Graphmate are useful.

4) I have been holding back on Patreon until the release of the next version 0.2. I did not want to feel pressured by Patreons to release this version early, as it will serve as the backbone of the rest of the game moving forwards. As far as popularity of sci-fi, I really don't know. Personally I would rather produce a game that I like creating, rather than a cookie cutter incest game seeking to rake in funds.


PS: Best of luck with you game. The renders you have posted look very nice. You will however need to get rending time down to less that 2 hours per image, or you will not be able to create sufficient content. If you take a look at the tutorials in my sig or search some of the posts I have made, you will see many tips on how to do this effectively.

 

[Sin'Gul Arity]

Please find the following answers to the queries you have posed:
1) Currently running with a GTX1060 6GB RAM with 32GB system RAM. In relation to RAM, this is largely dependent upon how many characters you wish to place simultaneously in a scene. With 4 or less character models in the scene, you can get away with 16GB, however having 32GB is preferred.

2) When undertaking lighting of a scene you are typically better to have more rather than less light in order to get the scene to converge quickly. You can adjusting overall lighting in post processing. One of the main aspects for getting an image to converge is to have a dominant light source (spotlight / emissive or HDRI). The second is to not have too many highly reflective surfaces. Essentially when lights are competing or reflections are competing, the render iteration keeps producing different results, dependent upon where the light source is originating or the path light it is taking.

For your specific renders I would suggest that emissive light from the datapad is fighting with the scene lighting on the first render and the second render has the issue of reflection off the back wall fighting with direct light on the character.

I have done many renders with more atmospheric aspects, however when doing a VN you often have to compromise between render time and quality. With my current hardware I can't render these more complex scenes in a reasonable time. Couple examples below.

Spoiler: Atmospheric Renders

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

3) About the only must have is a batch render script. Also if you are doing animations then Keymate and Graphmate are useful.

4) I have been holding back on Patreon until the release of the next version 0.2. I did not want to feel pressured by Patreons to release this version early, as it will serve as the backbone of the rest of the game moving forwards. As far as popularity of sci-fi, I really don't know. Personally I would rather produce a game that I like creating, rather than a cookie cutter incest game seeking to rake in funds.


PS: Best of luck with you game. The renders you have posted look very nice. You will however need to get rending time down to less that 2 hours per image, or you will not be able to create sufficient content. If you take a look at the tutorials in my sig or search some of the posts I have made, you will see many tips on how to do this effectively.

Great thanks!

1. Funny... my GPU is actually the lesser version of yours (3GB), but I mostly can't render even 2 fully clothed figures with background and some props on the same screen without slipping to CPU. Eventually, I came up with the idea of turning off figures bones covered by clothes, cloth/body parts that are not visible from the current angle and all scene props/surfaces which is out of camera sight. It makes it somehow bearable, but meh it's time-consuming... with more than 2 figures and more complex scenes, there are no options except rendering by layers - figures, background, and props separately. The only problem there is shadows, which I'm trying to add in the post-processing... rarely happy with the results though.
And it looks like my 8GB of RAM is a huge bottleneck too. I guess I know what to improve in the first place then.

2. Oy, I've actually read your manual before and lost it track after... thanks!
The main complication about the lighting for me is that authors mostly premade the light sources for their interiors/exteriors but usually didn't take low-tier GPUs into the account. So options here is to keep the default ones with some improvements or get rid of them and set your own... The first one mostly looks better, but much more hungry for the resources. I understand that no other routs here except for practicing and diving deeper into render/surfaces/lighting settings. I will do it for sure. Just wish Daz3d can be documented better than it is...
As about reflecting surfaces - that idea did not cross my mind before (I only have 2 months of work with Daz3d)... but hell it's logical! Perhaps you can lead me to the surface parameters which has the biggest impact?

3. WOW! Scored a bull's eye with the "batch render"! Exactly what I need to make my PC night-stands more fruitful! Thanks!!!

The animations are for sure beyond my grasp now... they need eternity to render and look really poor. Perhaps I will return to this matter in case I ever will be able to put my hands on the better workstation.

4. Got it. Makes sense. Not like I have such patience for myself ))
I absolutely agree with the last statement. Actually, I don't think it is possible for me to produce a decent quality thing without being deeply interested in the process (by the "process" I mean the development of course, not money-making). Guess this is the reason why so many abandoned projects exist - authors get incredibly bored with them.

About rendering time - those images I posted are extremums, of course. I was curious how do they look under huge iterations count (was really disappointed btw). Usually, I try to stay between 3-6k iterations and 1-6 hours of time for 1 render.

 

[Xavster]

Great thanks!

1. Funny... my GPU is actually the lesser version of yours (3GB), but I mostly can't render even 2 fully clothed figures with background and some props on the same screen without slipping to CPU. Eventually, I came up with the idea of turning off figures bones covered by clothes, cloth/body parts that are not visible from the current angle and all scene props/surfaces which is out of camera sight. It makes it somehow bearable, but meh it's time-consuming... with more than 2 figures and more complex scenes, there are no options except rendering by layers - figures, background, and props separately. The only problem there is shadows, which I'm trying to add in the post-processing... rarely happy with the results though.
And it looks like my 8GB of RAM is a huge bottleneck too. I guess I know what to improve in the first place then.

2. Oy, I've actually read your manual before and lost it track after... thanks!
The main complication about the lighting for me is that authors mostly premade the light sources for their interiors/exteriors but usually didn't take low-tier GPUs into the account. So options here is to keep the default ones with some improvements or get rid of them and set your own... The first one mostly looks better, but much more hungry for the resources. I understand that no other routs here except for practicing and diving deeper into render/surfaces/lighting settings. I will do it for sure. Just wish Daz3d can be documented better than it is...
As about reflecting surfaces - that idea did not cross my mind before (I only have 2 months of work with Daz3d)... but hell it's logical! Perhaps you can lead me to the surface parameters which has the biggest impact?

3. WOW! Scored a bull's eye with the "batch render"! Exactly what I need to make my PC night-stands more fruitful! Thanks!!!

The animations are for sure beyond my grasp now... they need eternity to render and look really poor. Perhaps I will return to this matter in case I ever will be able to put my hands on the better workstation.

4. Got it. Makes sense. Not like I have such patience for myself ))
I absolutely agree with the last statement. Actually, I don't think it is possible for me to produce a decent quality thing without being deeply interested in the process (by the "process" I mean the development of course, not money-making). Guess this is the reason why so many abandoned projects exist - authors get incredibly bored with them.

About rendering time - those images I posted are extremums, of course. I was curious how do they look under huge iterations count (was really disappointed btw). Usually, I try to stay between 3-6k iterations and 1-6 hours of time for 1 render.

I see a number of content creators running a large number of iterations on a scene in order to get it to highly converge. Whilst it works it is not an effective use of computing power. It is far more effective to render at a higher resolution, denoise (eternal program) and then reduce the final image size. For reference I render at 2 x final resolution, which takes 4 times as long per iteration, however use less than 200 iterations. In comparison to your 3k iterations it takes 1/4 the time.

The scene setup largely comes down to lighting. As a very quick guide always have 1 main source with every other source being <1/2 the luminous flux of the main source. Typically stay away from high intensity emissive surfaces. These then to produce fireflies as they emit very few, but highly intense rays, which show up on the camera / final images as intense spots. I also tend to redo the lighting on the scenery assets I utilise. Most assets have high intensity emissive surfaces that converge poorly. They also do things like simulating a light by creating an emissive filament inside a glass globe. Whilst this is reality, you are far better removing the filament and then making the globe emissive. The light looks the same in the scene, however the render will converge way faster.

In terms of you hardware, you will really need an upgrade if you plan on taking Daz / VN creation more seriously. I would suggest 32MB system RAM and GTX2060 (8GB video RAM), as a suitable upgrade. You can keep going using rendering in layers and utilising tools such as Scene Optimiser (reduces texture map sizes / removes normal and bump maps = reduces memory requirements), however the quality and quantity of your work will suffer.

PS: If you don't mind sharing, what is the clothing asset in the first image (woman) you posted?