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I had no idea about this. I picked it up and it's really helpful. The image in my last post of the girl on the bed doggy style used the combo you recommended!
I don't see too many tutorials about it which sucks. Stuff like that and creating unique faces are really missing from the Daz community. People obviously know how to do it, but it seems very "trade secrety" right now.
The only problem is that now I'm going absolutely nuts with contrast lol
sweet, i'm glad it helped
Yeah, postwork and using image editors is straying right into actual "can draw / paint like an artist" territory, which is one skill i have never developed.
And don't worry about contrast, the main issue i have with many "default lighting" daz renders is the lack of contrast/depth. So go hard, make a look that is unique for your game.
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Table of Contents:
1. Current Progress
2. Adventures with VRAM
Current Progress
So, I'm going through each of my renders for issue 1 and doing post-work to them.
I have "basic settings" that I do for them but each image requires that I fiddle around and see what looks best. It's unfortunately not like just applying a filter and saving it.
I'm still trying to "deconstruct" some of the settings that some of the better artists do in post, but it's a lot of trial and error. I'm shocked no is is selling a good post work tutorial, I think there's money to be made for a good, hour long video.
Adventures with VRAM
I also encountered another VRAM issue.
This is a render I did last night in it's raw format (no postwork). 3 figures, clothes, the only light is HDR dome, so no spotlights or anything. The only props in the scene are what you see, I removed everything else. I rendered this in a shocking amount of time (I think it was around 7 minutes and it completed). I then tried to rotate the dome for better lighting, hit render and nothing happened. Last time this happened was when I tried to do the group shot a few posts back. Usually this means that the scene takes up too much VRAM.
I then used scene optimizer and cut all the textures except for the skins and hair by half and tried again and it worked but I didn't save the render. The quality didn't really drop. So it's nice that we have a definite workaround, it was just frustrating because this image was only 3 figures and very light props and we ran into issues.
Looking at the image, I think the clothes and particularly the back wall were the main culprits. All the clothes look heavily textured, which is cool, but other than close up shots where only one person is on the screen anyway, you don't really need to see the threadcount of a shirt.
I also rendered it after more than 16 hours rendering various other images. I heard that Daz hordes VRAM and that the longer you go without restarting your computer and clearing the VRAM, the less VRAM it actually allocates to new images. I don't know how true that is, but there's a lot of anecdotal stories about that happening so that may have been the case.
EDIT:
I'm adding this, here's an example of the postwork I'm doing. Top is the original raw render, bottom is the render with the postwork:
Obvious is the blurred background, but also check the shadows and lights on chest and right side of the face.
I have to get a little cleaner with the blurring, especially near the edges but that'll come with experience and when I'm not trying to do 90+ renders in a row.
1. Current Progress
2. Adventures with VRAM
Current Progress
So, I'm going through each of my renders for issue 1 and doing post-work to them.
I have "basic settings" that I do for them but each image requires that I fiddle around and see what looks best. It's unfortunately not like just applying a filter and saving it.
I'm still trying to "deconstruct" some of the settings that some of the better artists do in post, but it's a lot of trial and error. I'm shocked no is is selling a good post work tutorial, I think there's money to be made for a good, hour long video.
Adventures with VRAM
I also encountered another VRAM issue.
This is a render I did last night in it's raw format (no postwork). 3 figures, clothes, the only light is HDR dome, so no spotlights or anything. The only props in the scene are what you see, I removed everything else. I rendered this in a shocking amount of time (I think it was around 7 minutes and it completed). I then tried to rotate the dome for better lighting, hit render and nothing happened. Last time this happened was when I tried to do the group shot a few posts back. Usually this means that the scene takes up too much VRAM.
I then used scene optimizer and cut all the textures except for the skins and hair by half and tried again and it worked but I didn't save the render. The quality didn't really drop. So it's nice that we have a definite workaround, it was just frustrating because this image was only 3 figures and very light props and we ran into issues.
Looking at the image, I think the clothes and particularly the back wall were the main culprits. All the clothes look heavily textured, which is cool, but other than close up shots where only one person is on the screen anyway, you don't really need to see the threadcount of a shirt.
I also rendered it after more than 16 hours rendering various other images. I heard that Daz hordes VRAM and that the longer you go without restarting your computer and clearing the VRAM, the less VRAM it actually allocates to new images. I don't know how true that is, but there's a lot of anecdotal stories about that happening so that may have been the case.
EDIT:
I'm adding this, here's an example of the postwork I'm doing. Top is the original raw render, bottom is the render with the postwork:
Obvious is the blurred background, but also check the shadows and lights on chest and right side of the face.
I have to get a little cleaner with the blurring, especially near the edges but that'll come with experience and when I'm not trying to do 90+ renders in a row.
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Last post for today, but it's kind of an important thing:
While going through and doing postwork work on all the current renders, I noticed that my early renders were not up to my current standards. Mainly, they had way too much dead space or featured strange design choices. I've since gone back and rerendered them. Since I'm doing a bunch in one shot, I rendered them in their native resolution, so no 4K renders but the end results are WAAAY better.
Take a look at this for example. This was the original render I made for when you first meet Rebecca:
There are a couple of things with this. First, the environment washes everything out. This has to do with these strange native lights on the walls that I can't figure out how to turn off. There's also clipping on the left hand and the model is way too small given the scene. The pose also seems awkward and I'm not exactly sure what her face is trying to convey. If you're eagle-eyed, you'll also notice I didn't fix the feet poses for the shoes... In my defense, this was the first render I did on this project and it predated my decision to not to a standard comic book with text balloons. All in all, this is a very poor render.
This is the updated version:
The pose is way more natural, the lighting is better and the composition fits a ren'py project better.
Another one render I changed is here:
I absolutely hate her upper lip in this. The context is that Rebecca is letting the MC know about an upcoming meeting and they have a bit of playful banter. It doesn't really fit this render.
I've replaced it with these two:
Much better. The lighting is now consistent and the renders fit the mood of the scene better. The expressions are more dynamic and I like mixing up the camera angles so renders aren't just people standing there changing poses.
I wish I could do these in 4K but for some reason, this environment asset in particular is taking 2 hours to render at 4K and 30 minutes to render at 1280x720, so for the reshoots we're just doing 1280. (The average 4K render on my rig takes anywhere between 40 - 80 minutes)
It's one of those things where even if the render quality improves as the story goes on, I'm worried about people looking at the first 10 renders and closing out because it's not up to their standards.
While going through and doing postwork work on all the current renders, I noticed that my early renders were not up to my current standards. Mainly, they had way too much dead space or featured strange design choices. I've since gone back and rerendered them. Since I'm doing a bunch in one shot, I rendered them in their native resolution, so no 4K renders but the end results are WAAAY better.
Take a look at this for example. This was the original render I made for when you first meet Rebecca:
There are a couple of things with this. First, the environment washes everything out. This has to do with these strange native lights on the walls that I can't figure out how to turn off. There's also clipping on the left hand and the model is way too small given the scene. The pose also seems awkward and I'm not exactly sure what her face is trying to convey. If you're eagle-eyed, you'll also notice I didn't fix the feet poses for the shoes... In my defense, this was the first render I did on this project and it predated my decision to not to a standard comic book with text balloons. All in all, this is a very poor render.
This is the updated version:
The pose is way more natural, the lighting is better and the composition fits a ren'py project better.
Another one render I changed is here:
I absolutely hate her upper lip in this. The context is that Rebecca is letting the MC know about an upcoming meeting and they have a bit of playful banter. It doesn't really fit this render.
I've replaced it with these two:
Much better. The lighting is now consistent and the renders fit the mood of the scene better. The expressions are more dynamic and I like mixing up the camera angles so renders aren't just people standing there changing poses.
I wish I could do these in 4K but for some reason, this environment asset in particular is taking 2 hours to render at 4K and 30 minutes to render at 1280x720, so for the reshoots we're just doing 1280. (The average 4K render on my rig takes anywhere between 40 - 80 minutes)
It's one of those things where even if the render quality improves as the story goes on, I'm worried about people looking at the first 10 renders and closing out because it's not up to their standards.
You're absolutely correct with the "Daz hordes VRAM" comment - if you ever weirdly hit the vram limit on a scene that previously rendered in the card memory, then restarting Daz is the only known way to fix it. Some users on the daz official forums even report cases where they need to restart windows to get the full memory back.
As a general rule, using the scene optimiser to reduce distant surfaces (background objects) to 1kpx or even 512px is nearly always effective and also speeds up the render. This is especially helpful if you are using in-camera Depth of field, or blurring the BG in postwork.
That's looking good.
Considering trying the Daz camera "depth of field" setting at render time - saves the effort of manually cutting out the BG for the blur, and gives more "realistic" levels of blur for objects at various distances. also lets you do the cool "hitchcock dolly zoom" effect
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Update time:
It's Happening... no not the good thing...
I'm updating the early renders. In an earlier post I mentioned that I hate it when other devs go back and redo their old content, but damn do I understand it.
For example, I've gone on multiple rants about how this is a truly horrid render:
The rework looks like this:
There's so much more going on in the second render. You can almost feel the emotion and tension in the air and just one look gives you a good idea of the two character's relationship to each other (hint: it's not good).
It looks like I have only 2-4 more renders to finish the scene so then we just continue the post work on the rest of the images.
By the way, how the hell do you do DOF in Daz? I use fstop and stuff and nothing works. Is there another setting I have to hit?
It's Happening... no not the good thing...
I'm updating the early renders. In an earlier post I mentioned that I hate it when other devs go back and redo their old content, but damn do I understand it.
For example, I've gone on multiple rants about how this is a truly horrid render:
The rework looks like this:
There's so much more going on in the second render. You can almost feel the emotion and tension in the air and just one look gives you a good idea of the two character's relationship to each other (hint: it's not good).
It looks like I have only 2-4 more renders to finish the scene so then we just continue the post work on the rest of the images.
By the way, how the hell do you do DOF in Daz? I use fstop and stuff and nothing works. Is there another setting I have to hit?
You should have the option as follows:
1. in the Scene objects pane, select the camera
2. then in the Parameters Pane,, select the Camera Settings section
3. There is a switch for DOF.
Note: I don't think you can get DOF using the viewport render only - you need to be rendering through an actual camera in the scene
1. in the Scene objects pane, select the camera
2. then in the Parameters Pane,, select the Camera Settings section
3. There is a switch for DOF.
Note: I don't think you can get DOF using the viewport render only - you need to be rendering through an actual camera in the scene
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I got absolutely slammed at irl work the last 2 weeks but things seem to be slowing down. In the meantime I've continued post-work on issue 1 and been doing a bunch of side renders to improve my style, technique and generally just build hype for my work.
Good news is, I've started rendering Issue 2! I'd post a preview but since issue 2 is a direct continuation of issue 1, the scenes I've done contain spoilers for Issue 1.
Instead have this non-cannon teaser:
Good news is, I've started rendering Issue 2! I'd post a preview but since issue 2 is a direct continuation of issue 1, the scenes I've done contain spoilers for Issue 1.
Instead have this non-cannon teaser:
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As I'm doing the dreadfully boring post work on 100+ renders, I noticed something I want to talk about:
Image composition.
In this interim, I've been doing a lot of side renders trying to focus on my image composition. All too often I see visual novel renders where there's a lot of blank space. There are two massive reason for this which are 100% understandable:
1. More props = more render time = less renders per day
2. Landscape (horizontal) rendering which is necessary for VNs is way less optimal for images. Ideally, square or portrait sizes show characters and actions the best.
I submitted this next image for a contest. I've resized it so that it doesn't take up the whole screen:
There's a couple of thing composition-wise I did to spice this up.
First the asset that was used had a lot of empty space. Everything on the top right of the render and the carpet was already included, but the entire foreground was empty. There was no couch, no tv, no stand, nothing. Everything highlighted in blue in this next image was added from other assets:
You do this to add "clutter" to space. Empty space draws the eye towards it. When your brain see's empty space, it tries to fill it. Since I knew I wanted the focus of the image to be the characters on the couch with the eye drifting upwards towards the character in the doorway, I knew that empty space to the left of the image would draw the eye to the empty space instead of upwards towards the character in the door. I even added that painting in the top left on the wall because that wall was empty (If I had infinite time, I actually would have created my own painting asset to put there).
The other thing I wanted to do was to make the space feel "lived-in". Hence, the pillows and cereal on the floor. This serves two purposes, first, to fill the space for the above reasons, but secondly, because, I'm telling a story through the image. Look at the backpack next to the doorway. That's obviously a male's backpack. Seeing it, you can imagine the male character arriving and putting his bag down, walking in on the female eating a bowl of cereal and playing videogames. Just that one small asset placed in view tells an entire story to you. You know he doesn't live there, but is comfortable enough to put his bag down so he can grab it before he leaves. So much is established about their relationship from just one small addition.
The problem with this for VNs is that if I showed you the layout of this room, it would make no sense. The couch looks very strange placed in the middle of the room from any point of view that isn't the camera, and immediately behind the camera is empty, just bare floors and a blank wall. So how do we rectify this?
I don't think there is a good answer. In VNs, efficiency is key to getting updates out, but looking at a character standing in front of a blank wall is boring.
I'm also absolutely guilty of this. In a previous post I mentioned how I completely rerendered a scene of 10+ renders because the room was so empty that it looked like they were in an abandoned warehouse and I've identified another scene where it's pretty much the same except for 1 table placed in the center of the room. I tried to use clever camera angles to hide that the rest of the room was empty but there are a few renders where it's very obvious, at least to me, but this is due to the limitations of having to use the horizontal landscape cameras to use them in a VN.
Further more, in VN's, the bottom quarter of the screen is usually filled with the text box, adding yet anther limitation on rendering. Renders, particularly lewd renders, need to be aware of this as part of the image will inevitably get cut off, which means having to pull the camera back which means more opportunities for empty space on the far left and right side of the horizontal render.
Basically, it's more fun to render non-VN images and there's greater creative freedom. However, with a VN, you can tell more complex stories which lead to character attachment which in turn, ideally, leads to better, more emotional scenes.
Image composition.
In this interim, I've been doing a lot of side renders trying to focus on my image composition. All too often I see visual novel renders where there's a lot of blank space. There are two massive reason for this which are 100% understandable:
1. More props = more render time = less renders per day
2. Landscape (horizontal) rendering which is necessary for VNs is way less optimal for images. Ideally, square or portrait sizes show characters and actions the best.
I submitted this next image for a contest. I've resized it so that it doesn't take up the whole screen:
There's a couple of thing composition-wise I did to spice this up.
First the asset that was used had a lot of empty space. Everything on the top right of the render and the carpet was already included, but the entire foreground was empty. There was no couch, no tv, no stand, nothing. Everything highlighted in blue in this next image was added from other assets:
You do this to add "clutter" to space. Empty space draws the eye towards it. When your brain see's empty space, it tries to fill it. Since I knew I wanted the focus of the image to be the characters on the couch with the eye drifting upwards towards the character in the doorway, I knew that empty space to the left of the image would draw the eye to the empty space instead of upwards towards the character in the door. I even added that painting in the top left on the wall because that wall was empty (If I had infinite time, I actually would have created my own painting asset to put there).
The other thing I wanted to do was to make the space feel "lived-in". Hence, the pillows and cereal on the floor. This serves two purposes, first, to fill the space for the above reasons, but secondly, because, I'm telling a story through the image. Look at the backpack next to the doorway. That's obviously a male's backpack. Seeing it, you can imagine the male character arriving and putting his bag down, walking in on the female eating a bowl of cereal and playing videogames. Just that one small asset placed in view tells an entire story to you. You know he doesn't live there, but is comfortable enough to put his bag down so he can grab it before he leaves. So much is established about their relationship from just one small addition.
The problem with this for VNs is that if I showed you the layout of this room, it would make no sense. The couch looks very strange placed in the middle of the room from any point of view that isn't the camera, and immediately behind the camera is empty, just bare floors and a blank wall. So how do we rectify this?
I don't think there is a good answer. In VNs, efficiency is key to getting updates out, but looking at a character standing in front of a blank wall is boring.
I'm also absolutely guilty of this. In a previous post I mentioned how I completely rerendered a scene of 10+ renders because the room was so empty that it looked like they were in an abandoned warehouse and I've identified another scene where it's pretty much the same except for 1 table placed in the center of the room. I tried to use clever camera angles to hide that the rest of the room was empty but there are a few renders where it's very obvious, at least to me, but this is due to the limitations of having to use the horizontal landscape cameras to use them in a VN.
Further more, in VN's, the bottom quarter of the screen is usually filled with the text box, adding yet anther limitation on rendering. Renders, particularly lewd renders, need to be aware of this as part of the image will inevitably get cut off, which means having to pull the camera back which means more opportunities for empty space on the far left and right side of the horizontal render.
Basically, it's more fun to render non-VN images and there's greater creative freedom. However, with a VN, you can tell more complex stories which lead to character attachment which in turn, ideally, leads to better, more emotional scenes.
This is a really cool thread for those of us who are not Dev's but are interested in the process. It's fascinating to see all you go through to try to make something look good. I'm sure I will look more generously on some of the VN's I've been critical of as relates to the quality of their renders. I always ask myself why they pick such unattractive NPC's (and MC'), why the animations are so clunky (in many cases), why the same camera angles, dark lighting, etc. The ones who really kill it set the bar so high that we just expect each VN or game to have girls as attractive as in Mr. Dot's games, Sweet Neighbors, etc. I've always assumed it because 'different people think different things are attractive.' However, it's clear that doing this well is very difficult and even in this realm there are Kubrick's and Alan Smithee's. Thanks, look forward to more.
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Thanks, and that's exactly what I wanted to show. I used to get frustrated at 4 month development cycles where there were only 200 additional renders. Also, there always seem to be really bizarre issues that pop up.
For example:
I finished all the post-work for issue 1 and plugged them into renpy and now I'm livid. We seem to have a quality problem with the renders themselves. I don't know why because I thought I fixed this completely, but the renders when they're in renpy look noisier. I suspect it's not as bad as I'm making it out to be but now I'm wondering if it's because I'm using the 1280 resolution and not the 1920. I originally did it because I saw research done that said that more devices display 1280 better but I'm wondering if the lower resolution is what is making my images look worse. I showed the renpy demo to a irl associate and she said it looked good so it may just be me being hard on myself.
The Script
Issue 1 is completely written in renpy but I'm unhappy with it. I'm very concerned about info-dumping, in particular the scene where you meet Hange. The current iteration has you introduced to 5 characters and connecting in particular to 1 character. Because of this, most of it is seeing how these characters interact with the MC, seeing the power dynamics and trying to draw you into the mysteries of the ship. I envisioned this as a sort of "Spiderman meets Battlestar Galactica" in sense of tone. There's not really any humor in issue 1, nor will there be a lot of humor in issue 2 since it's the conclusion of the issue 1 story. During beta readings, I really want to make sure that the story is easy to follow and it doesn't feel like I'm just throwing lore out at the reader.
Concerns
I worry that I may have been too ambitious in doing this. I'm enjoying it and I like all my character designs (as you can see through the SFW non-canon images I post everywhere) but if I could have done this over again, I probably would have started with a few 30 render short story comics (something similar to what NLT did).
Basically, this is a lot more work than most people think, especially if you want to try and make it good and it not be a cash grab. Guys like MrDots, NLT, the people who do Timestamps, they sink a ton of work into those.
Howdy, don't know if you are still around but if so I wanted to ask some questions. I have played maybe 70+/- games over the last couple years. And some are great and some not so great. But there are a few things that come up frequently that genuinely puzzle me and I thought you might know the answers. If you don't know and can tell me where to go I'd like that just as well. Really, just looking for opinions as I doubt there are true 'answers,' so:
1. Why do Dev's spend countless hours developing beautiful renders and then have incredibly crappy (3 movements over and over type) gif or other animations? If they have them at all. Some folks, like Dots, NLT, whoever does Betrayed,TFMG, Philly - have actually interesting, sexually varied (not just Hand Blow Sex Done), and fluid animations. I get that maybe they are more difficult to program or what have you, but why spend so much time on the story render and so incredibly little on the sex when, for I'd guess a fair portion of the players, the sex is the most interesting aspect? It seems like 99% story 1% animation effort.
2. Why is it so hard to make the characters attractive? Dots, for example has most of his characters attractive -to some person's taste. The lead female interest is always staggerging. Some of the B girls are as attractive (in Melody) some less (DMD). But generally they are bilaterally symmetrical, have appealing features (large eyes, small nose, etc) and nice bodies. Even well liked games like Sisterly Lust or WVM have some of the characters (the mother and blonde in SL, the primary (non-trans) girlfriend in WVM) with somewhat lopsided features. So, many games they are either off, in that way, or more often, simply plain looking. You don't have to master make-up like say, Slooty Sloots in Doll City, to make the characters seriously attractive. Do you? So many look like the 10th prettiest girl in your HS class. I don't get it. Hollywood, Porn, even big budget games all have clearly attractive characters. What is so different about here?
2.5 Honey Select girls. The chracters have no expressions. Are they just really easy to use? They are attractive (sometimes) but all look the same. Seems like a low-effort choice or something. I don't get it.
3. Sandbox. Why do Dev's make games that require endless grinding? You know, the 'well, I'll just go to that coffee shop at noon, and then advance the time till night, then sleep, then advance and go there again and maybe something will happen) - sometimes for a week just to trigger something. It makes anything that says 'sandbox' high on the avoid list. Even though some are probably cool. Who are the players out there who want to do this grinding? Why would they? So why do Dev's put it in? As filler? You know, to make it seem like they are doing a big release because you actually spend a ton or real world time in the game even though it's for very little true plot development. That cant' be it, can it?
4. Dorky and unattractive MC's. Do I really need to give examples? Is it really hard to do a DMD style where you don't see the protagonist? If we do have to see them, can the sex scenes be first person? Some of the situations are cringe city. And some, like where Mao Sama went with Mc as a kindergartner having sex, are (to my taste) just gross. The real question is, 'Why?' Why use a zit faced dork? Just some person who is inoffensive would work for most story lines. I don't get it.
5. Stupid sex. I have often thought that the people writing some of these scenes have no idea what having sex is actually like. Not only that, but they haven't even seen good porn. Absurdly mechanical, same camera angles... you know. Look at some of the Philly games scenes - really interesting set up, smart and sexy use of fetishes, etc. Dev's know that players here are looking for adult content, right. Why isn't that their focus?
6. Proportions. Ok, players want chicks with big tits and MC's with a Godzilla Dick. I get that. However, many of the girls are sort of boob-less (I get that's a thing too). No, here I'm talking about things like DMD. If you notice, D is short when she is doing most things (she comes up to the armpit/nipple of Georgina) when next to her. She is supposed to be a foot or more shorter than the MC. But when they are in bed she is magically the same size as him. Also in the shower (I'm using these examples because I know you know DMD). Anyway, if you look around, many games have characters that shrink and grow relatively. Especially during sex (and not talking about dicks). Is it hard to keep sizes consitent? Is there some reason why you don't want to do that? Even sex scene that are supposed to have characters that are unquestionably varied in size end up all the same. Why?
7. Updates. Final question: One of the things I love about NLT (besides that Nadia is maybe the most fun RPG out there) is that He(?) posts update only downloads. Why don't people do that? Is it because he doesn't use Ren/py? There are endless gigs of games that are downloaded just so we can see the game's 60 new renders, or see that they've cleaned up the punctuation or whatever. It so easy to download an update, paste it to the previous version, and tell it to overwrite in all cases. Poof - save 2 gigs of download. I would think this would be a general issue in the Dev community as size is a barrier to adoption.
Anyway, this is a huge dump of question, I know, but really, I don't know who else to ask. I looked at some forums and the dev forums don't have a 'ask the dev' category. You are the only one I've found. Still, if you could give me some sense of how Dev's think about some of these issues I'd appreciate it. Thanks. And again, if you know a better place to ask I'm happy to go there. These are just itches that are begging for a scratch. Happy New Year.
1. Why do Dev's spend countless hours developing beautiful renders and then have incredibly crappy (3 movements over and over type) gif or other animations? If they have them at all. Some folks, like Dots, NLT, whoever does Betrayed,TFMG, Philly - have actually interesting, sexually varied (not just Hand Blow Sex Done), and fluid animations. I get that maybe they are more difficult to program or what have you, but why spend so much time on the story render and so incredibly little on the sex when, for I'd guess a fair portion of the players, the sex is the most interesting aspect? It seems like 99% story 1% animation effort.
2. Why is it so hard to make the characters attractive? Dots, for example has most of his characters attractive -to some person's taste. The lead female interest is always staggerging. Some of the B girls are as attractive (in Melody) some less (DMD). But generally they are bilaterally symmetrical, have appealing features (large eyes, small nose, etc) and nice bodies. Even well liked games like Sisterly Lust or WVM have some of the characters (the mother and blonde in SL, the primary (non-trans) girlfriend in WVM) with somewhat lopsided features. So, many games they are either off, in that way, or more often, simply plain looking. You don't have to master make-up like say, Slooty Sloots in Doll City, to make the characters seriously attractive. Do you? So many look like the 10th prettiest girl in your HS class. I don't get it. Hollywood, Porn, even big budget games all have clearly attractive characters. What is so different about here?
2.5 Honey Select girls. The chracters have no expressions. Are they just really easy to use? They are attractive (sometimes) but all look the same. Seems like a low-effort choice or something. I don't get it.
3. Sandbox. Why do Dev's make games that require endless grinding? You know, the 'well, I'll just go to that coffee shop at noon, and then advance the time till night, then sleep, then advance and go there again and maybe something will happen) - sometimes for a week just to trigger something. It makes anything that says 'sandbox' high on the avoid list. Even though some are probably cool. Who are the players out there who want to do this grinding? Why would they? So why do Dev's put it in? As filler? You know, to make it seem like they are doing a big release because you actually spend a ton or real world time in the game even though it's for very little true plot development. That cant' be it, can it?
4. Dorky and unattractive MC's. Do I really need to give examples? Is it really hard to do a DMD style where you don't see the protagonist? If we do have to see them, can the sex scenes be first person? Some of the situations are cringe city. And some, like where Mao Sama went with Mc as a kindergartner having sex, are (to my taste) just gross. The real question is, 'Why?' Why use a zit faced dork? Just some person who is inoffensive would work for most story lines. I don't get it.
5. Stupid sex. I have often thought that the people writing some of these scenes have no idea what having sex is actually like. Not only that, but they haven't even seen good porn. Absurdly mechanical, same camera angles... you know. Look at some of the Philly games scenes - really interesting set up, smart and sexy use of fetishes, etc. Dev's know that players here are looking for adult content, right. Why isn't that their focus?
6. Proportions. Ok, players want chicks with big tits and MC's with a Godzilla Dick. I get that. However, many of the girls are sort of boob-less (I get that's a thing too). No, here I'm talking about things like DMD. If you notice, D is short when she is doing most things (she comes up to the armpit/nipple of Georgina) when next to her. She is supposed to be a foot or more shorter than the MC. But when they are in bed she is magically the same size as him. Also in the shower (I'm using these examples because I know you know DMD). Anyway, if you look around, many games have characters that shrink and grow relatively. Especially during sex (and not talking about dicks). Is it hard to keep sizes consitent? Is there some reason why you don't want to do that? Even sex scene that are supposed to have characters that are unquestionably varied in size end up all the same. Why?
7. Updates. Final question: One of the things I love about NLT (besides that Nadia is maybe the most fun RPG out there) is that He(?) posts update only downloads. Why don't people do that? Is it because he doesn't use Ren/py? There are endless gigs of games that are downloaded just so we can see the game's 60 new renders, or see that they've cleaned up the punctuation or whatever. It so easy to download an update, paste it to the previous version, and tell it to overwrite in all cases. Poof - save 2 gigs of download. I would think this would be a general issue in the Dev community as size is a barrier to adoption.
Anyway, this is a huge dump of question, I know, but really, I don't know who else to ask. I looked at some forums and the dev forums don't have a 'ask the dev' category. You are the only one I've found. Still, if you could give me some sense of how Dev's think about some of these issues I'd appreciate it. Thanks. And again, if you know a better place to ask I'm happy to go there. These are just itches that are begging for a scratch. Happy New Year.
- Oct 9, 2019
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You probably could have made your own thread but I'll answer them:
1. Animating and rendering are two completely separate skill sets. The fact is that most people are using premade animations because actually rendering even just a 3 second loop is insanely time-consuming and difficult, especially if you don't have any animation experience prior. Rendering is way easier, comparatively.
2. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I personally don't think the girls in DMD are necessarily super attractive as opposed to other games. The other thing you have to remember is that these models come premade and then there are options to customize them. A lot of the models we use are very popular so for a lot of us the name of the game is to try and customize them as much as possible to get different and unique looks. It's usually an artistic decision. That's also why you'll see different games with girls who look similar.
2.5. Honey select is significantly easier. People use HS because they like the art style.
3. I agree. I hate most sandbox games.
4. First Person POV is difficult because it limits a lot of choices you have when coming up with poses and first person POV sex scenes are more difficult than you think. Dorky MCs exist because it's a power fantasy and the dorky MC becoming the chad is a popular trope. I never liked it, that's why I tend to use a relatively normal looking guy in mine. The super young mcs I don't understand other than they misjudged how young he'd look.
5. Sex scene are more difficult to navigate than you think without them getting really repetitive. As for the same camera angles and stuff, it's usually because you're getting the same poses reused over and over again. Fully custom posing is really time consuming.
6. This has to do with using premade poses. It's kind of difficult to explain but instead of fiddling with all the joints to make the pose work, they just lift up the shorter character on the Y axis. That way, the premade pose works as intended but now you have to hide the fact that your character is floating off the ground. It's kind of just laziness.
7. That's a ren'py thing. Nothing we can do about that.
One thing I will say, NLT is a genius mainly because, the only real time consuming work he does on the art is the actual animations. Every update, those three animations are the only thing that take up time. The rest of the talking head renders take like 10 minutes to pose and render. Fortunately, his team is REALLY skilled at animating and they're getting better and better. I also heard that they work 5 updates ahead of schedule for time, hence why they're always able to get an update out on time.
Doing these are a lot of time consuming work. So much so that I got really burned out and just this month kind of started up again. Even doing 3 or 4 render stories is tough. I highly recommend that you give it a try. It's amazing to see the things that go into making this stuff and how much work goes into making stuff look good. I spent 3 months only practicing lighting because it's THAT important.
Here's a freebie for the people that came here thinking this was going to be an actual update. It's Rebecca but with implants and slutty.
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Wow, thank you so much for the answers more than I imagined.
You are right about NLT. Nadia is so great because the little tasks each new version are fun, so it makes the action scenes icing on the cake. To my mind, for most games its the reverse.
If I were to create a new thread whats the correct forum I couldnt find one.
As you may have noticed many of the keys on my keyboard dont work so I have to work around.
Again, thanks for your thoughtful resonse (and hot render. You rock!
- Oct 9, 2019
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Imagine not thinking this would take so long?
Still working on this, a few things:
Issue 1 Script
Issue 1 is done. Completely done, I'm just fine tuning the script at this point. I rewrote vast swaths of it and had to go back and change a few things to make it easier for modders to make incest patches if they want to. I debated having a hidden "switch" that changes the script to the incest patch, but I think that breaks TOS also.
Issue 2
Renders
The renders for Issue 2 are chugging along. Issue 1 has no real lewd scenes (kind of 2 but... you'll see) but Issue 2 is going to have definitely a solo scene and then at leas one other lewd scene I haven't decided on.
I'm rendering the scenes in native 720. By using a lot of tricks and even advice from this thread, I've managed to get an average render time of about 15-30 minutes per render. I think this render time is ideal and it lets me mess around a lot and try different poses and camera angles without wasting too much time with renders that don't work. I can usually tell within 5 minutes if a render wont work, so this allows me to have as little dead time as possible in between renders.
Script
The script for issue 2 is broken up into two main parts. There's a literary device I'm using for the first half of the script, which might be jarring at first but makes sense in context, and then the second half proceeds normally.
Scripting is actually way harder than I originally thought it'd be. There's stuff that works in my head that flat out does not work in practice, hence why rewrites are important. The problem with rewrites though is that you have to let it sit for a bit before you edit. Usually that means overnight but there are times where I'll look at something that I read 3 times previously and the fourth time I think "wait, this makes no sense." It's a little frustrating, but that's really the truth.
A few other random things
The two biggest time sinks are posing and dressing sets
My theory on posing is that I start with a pre-made or downloaded pose and then adjust to get what I want. This shockingly takes a whole lot of time because there are so many joints to pose and all of them work in conjunction with each other. I know a few tricks to make it easier and watched a few tutorials about posing animations that make the job slightly more bearable, but it's still fairly difficult.
I hate it when I play someone's work and I can name exactly which pose pack things came from, so I try to customize as much as I can.
Set dressing is another big thing. Segmented and customizable sets are a godsend but you still have to dress the sets. I write a post earlier about how dressing sets in a VN is more difficult because you need to have consistency and realism which can mess with what angles you are able to position your camera in. Too much dressing can also drastically elongate render times so it's a fine line you have to navigate. Most my my sets and focused on one half of the room which leaves a lot of empty space but allows me to be able to get ideal camera angles for my scenes. You'll notice that there are some scenes where the camera is always shooting from stage left, and that's usually why. It's not something you really notice unless someone tipped you off to, so it's not the biggest deal in the world, but it's something to think about.
Shaders are great but finding clothes is not
I have a bunch of great futuristic shaders, but finding clothes that use them isn't the easiest thing in the world. The shaders work best when the clothes are segmented, (for example, a shirt that uses different shaders for the sleeves, abdomen, collar, etc.) but many clothes assets are not. This has been frustrated, particularly with a bunch of jumpsuits I have that I wish I could customize further but I can't customize the separate parts.
However, I've noticed that fantasy/medieval clothes with the futuristic shaders look pretty cool and are basically unrecognizable from their original asset.
Multiple endings for issue 2?
This is something I'm very seriously considering. Since rendering is seemingly taking faster, I was thinking about having a choice that leads to an alternate ending. The reader wouldn't know which ending was canon until the next issue where it'll be established which ending was the true ending. Just something I'm toying with at the moment.
Rendering out of order
44 renders for Issue 2 are done, so we're at around the halfway mark there. I'm expecting, like last time to maybe have to add a few renders for transition scenes.
Unlike the first issue where I rendered everything in order, this one I'm jumping around a bit. I'm sure there will be repercussions to this but I'm finding the rendering process way more fun as a result.
Ren'Py UI
I'm not going to lie, I'm absolutely dreading this. I figured out kind of how to make a gallery and am trying to figure out how to do a chapter select with icons so I can have the comic covers as the clickable icon.
Preview from Issue 2
This is what issue 2 is looking like:
Still working on this, a few things:
Issue 1 Script
Issue 1 is done. Completely done, I'm just fine tuning the script at this point. I rewrote vast swaths of it and had to go back and change a few things to make it easier for modders to make incest patches if they want to. I debated having a hidden "switch" that changes the script to the incest patch, but I think that breaks TOS also.
Issue 2
Renders
The renders for Issue 2 are chugging along. Issue 1 has no real lewd scenes (kind of 2 but... you'll see) but Issue 2 is going to have definitely a solo scene and then at leas one other lewd scene I haven't decided on.
I'm rendering the scenes in native 720. By using a lot of tricks and even advice from this thread, I've managed to get an average render time of about 15-30 minutes per render. I think this render time is ideal and it lets me mess around a lot and try different poses and camera angles without wasting too much time with renders that don't work. I can usually tell within 5 minutes if a render wont work, so this allows me to have as little dead time as possible in between renders.
Script
The script for issue 2 is broken up into two main parts. There's a literary device I'm using for the first half of the script, which might be jarring at first but makes sense in context, and then the second half proceeds normally.
Scripting is actually way harder than I originally thought it'd be. There's stuff that works in my head that flat out does not work in practice, hence why rewrites are important. The problem with rewrites though is that you have to let it sit for a bit before you edit. Usually that means overnight but there are times where I'll look at something that I read 3 times previously and the fourth time I think "wait, this makes no sense." It's a little frustrating, but that's really the truth.
A few other random things
The two biggest time sinks are posing and dressing sets
My theory on posing is that I start with a pre-made or downloaded pose and then adjust to get what I want. This shockingly takes a whole lot of time because there are so many joints to pose and all of them work in conjunction with each other. I know a few tricks to make it easier and watched a few tutorials about posing animations that make the job slightly more bearable, but it's still fairly difficult.
I hate it when I play someone's work and I can name exactly which pose pack things came from, so I try to customize as much as I can.
Set dressing is another big thing. Segmented and customizable sets are a godsend but you still have to dress the sets. I write a post earlier about how dressing sets in a VN is more difficult because you need to have consistency and realism which can mess with what angles you are able to position your camera in. Too much dressing can also drastically elongate render times so it's a fine line you have to navigate. Most my my sets and focused on one half of the room which leaves a lot of empty space but allows me to be able to get ideal camera angles for my scenes. You'll notice that there are some scenes where the camera is always shooting from stage left, and that's usually why. It's not something you really notice unless someone tipped you off to, so it's not the biggest deal in the world, but it's something to think about.
Shaders are great but finding clothes is not
I have a bunch of great futuristic shaders, but finding clothes that use them isn't the easiest thing in the world. The shaders work best when the clothes are segmented, (for example, a shirt that uses different shaders for the sleeves, abdomen, collar, etc.) but many clothes assets are not. This has been frustrated, particularly with a bunch of jumpsuits I have that I wish I could customize further but I can't customize the separate parts.
However, I've noticed that fantasy/medieval clothes with the futuristic shaders look pretty cool and are basically unrecognizable from their original asset.
Multiple endings for issue 2?
This is something I'm very seriously considering. Since rendering is seemingly taking faster, I was thinking about having a choice that leads to an alternate ending. The reader wouldn't know which ending was canon until the next issue where it'll be established which ending was the true ending. Just something I'm toying with at the moment.
Rendering out of order
44 renders for Issue 2 are done, so we're at around the halfway mark there. I'm expecting, like last time to maybe have to add a few renders for transition scenes.
Unlike the first issue where I rendered everything in order, this one I'm jumping around a bit. I'm sure there will be repercussions to this but I'm finding the rendering process way more fun as a result.
Ren'Py UI
I'm not going to lie, I'm absolutely dreading this. I figured out kind of how to make a gallery and am trying to figure out how to do a chapter select with icons so I can have the comic covers as the clickable icon.
Preview from Issue 2
This is what issue 2 is looking like:
if you have the patience (because the daz UI is not as easy to use as e.g. blender, and that it saying something!), and the clothing model has "seams" between the major parts (e.g. torso/arms etc), then you can create a new "surface" and assign selected polygons to it with the Daz geometry editor tool, then add a different shader to that surface.
I feel your pain here - there are actually people on the renpy official forum who just do UI work on commision. I find Renpy UI code to be just as confusing as CSS's weird tricks and corner cases, but without the massive wealth of searchable internet solutions to help you!
- Oct 9, 2019
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With over 50% of the renders done for Issue 2, I present the cover for issue 2:
Don't read too much into it, I was inspired by this cover of Uncanny X-Men 440:
I think it's cool. And yes, I chose it because I had a pose set that matched it almost perfectly...
Anyway, all the lewd scenes are done so I'm basically just doing the fill ins, transitionals and two scenes that I keep putting off. We're at 60 renders so I'm assuming we should hit around 80-100 for the second issue.
I looked over Issue 1 last night and I'm fairly happy with it, so I'll be shipping it off to beta readers for notes very soon.
The UI
I took a hard look at the start menu UI including seeing what other games have done and I think I can do it. It's going to take a while for me to figure it out, but I think it's definitely possible for me to customize it. I can make buttons and icons fairly proficiently in photoshop and I think the hardest part will be coding it in a way where it doesn't send you into a voidless infinite loop.
The idea is to have the menu at the bottom with the splash title screen taking the background. From the menu you can Start and load, Issue select and Gallery. I really want to have behind the scenes, making of stuff and non canon images in the gallery, sort of how they used to put them in the back few pages of old comic books. For chapter select I want to have icons of the issue covers as the chapter buttons so you click the issue you want and t jumps right to it. Cooler still, would be to have it look like the cover icons are on a shelf so it looks like you're browsing a comic book store, but that's more a wishful thinking goal.
Don't read too much into it, I was inspired by this cover of Uncanny X-Men 440:
I think it's cool. And yes, I chose it because I had a pose set that matched it almost perfectly...
Anyway, all the lewd scenes are done so I'm basically just doing the fill ins, transitionals and two scenes that I keep putting off. We're at 60 renders so I'm assuming we should hit around 80-100 for the second issue.
I looked over Issue 1 last night and I'm fairly happy with it, so I'll be shipping it off to beta readers for notes very soon.
The UI
I took a hard look at the start menu UI including seeing what other games have done and I think I can do it. It's going to take a while for me to figure it out, but I think it's definitely possible for me to customize it. I can make buttons and icons fairly proficiently in photoshop and I think the hardest part will be coding it in a way where it doesn't send you into a voidless infinite loop.
The idea is to have the menu at the bottom with the splash title screen taking the background. From the menu you can Start and load, Issue select and Gallery. I really want to have behind the scenes, making of stuff and non canon images in the gallery, sort of how they used to put them in the back few pages of old comic books. For chapter select I want to have icons of the issue covers as the chapter buttons so you click the issue you want and t jumps right to it. Cooler still, would be to have it look like the cover icons are on a shelf so it looks like you're browsing a comic book store, but that's more a wishful thinking goal.
That's way past my paygrade.
And it sucks because all the tutorials look like they're for old versions of ren'py and the new ones don't really explain anything or skip steps they expect that you know. I don't want to pay anybody although I've seriously though about it, but since this isn't really a true game and more just like a comic book that uses ren'py, I don't know how worth it it would be to pay someone just for basically the start menu.
That cover image looks awesome.
From what i understand it's a bit like the old UI Widget layout tools like you would have in Delphi or VB FormDesigner, but everything is in code and it's hard to find examples that are actually well programmed. So you have your frames and vertical or horizontal layout components that will evenly space their children along an axis. each component has size, margins and padding, alignment. it all works out somehow but as the documentation doesn't really have any examples... hard to see what to do.
The Starwars homage game by Mortze has a really nice customised UI. Can't think of many others as useful reference works as most games see to use the default UI, although i admit i haven't paid much attention to that part.
i guess the only option is to "have a go", and ask for help when you get stuck.
From what i understand it's a bit like the old UI Widget layout tools like you would have in Delphi or VB FormDesigner, but everything is in code and it's hard to find examples that are actually well programmed. So you have your frames and vertical or horizontal layout components that will evenly space their children along an axis. each component has size, margins and padding, alignment. it all works out somehow but as the documentation doesn't really have any examples... hard to see what to do.
The Starwars homage game by Mortze has a really nice customised UI. Can't think of many others as useful reference works as most games see to use the default UI, although i admit i haven't paid much attention to that part.