Unity Daz Character creation for Unity

[Fockstar]

A professional unity developer here with a question related to adult imagery in Unity games. I have an idea that will focus on adult themes, not just erotic imagery, but on drug abuse, violence, discrimination etc. that are rarely portrated in the indie game scene. Kinda like a walking simulator with sex scenes, psychoactive substances and a grim storyline - an "Enter the Void"-like experience but in games.

My problem is the character creation and animations - and from all the information that i've gathered - for a solo developer the least work is the most desired and my options are really something along Daz Studio, Honey Select or doing by hand. Honey Select is kinda out of the question, since i'm planning to go for steam because of the uncertain Patreon/Itch.io situation with the payment processors and i believe the game has a niche in steam around the more heavier adult themes, more than just the sexual imagery.

I do have reasonable skills in programming and 3d modeling, but rigging and animating even a few characters with clothes, facial rigs etc. it's a ton of work doing by yourself.
What would be an ideal workflow for Unity to create 3d characters? I guess Daz? Are there any alternatives and if so, what?

Edit: And for what comes to the quality of the characters, they don't need to be super realistic or high-poly, but a reasonable quality will be enough, like max 20k polys. What i'm looking for is the quickest way to incorporate the pornographics scenes with the same models used in the main game. For timesaving purposes the props aren't gonna be hdrp either, but somewhat simplistic with nice shading and lighting to set the mood for different scenes. I guess the animating will be the most time-consuming part so i'd like to have it as hasslefree as possible.

 

[Tompte]

I use Blender. Unity has built-in support for .blend files, which is a convenience.
In my case, I actually use a slightly outdated version of Unity so I have to manually export my models to FBX but that's unique to my specific project because of reasons. I think Blender/Unity works quite well.

 

[ttrspamm]

You could use the unofficial Daz to Unity bridge by danielbui78. The official one doesn't work properly. But odds are you'll need to modify your models further using Blender anyway.
My cobbled together workflow is DAZ > diffeomorphic bridge to blender > Export FBX to Unity.
It's not very streamlined and there are quite a few things you need to figure out and adjust, but once you get the hang of it, you can get decent results.

Your main problem with DAZ might be performance however, if that matters to you. The base figure looks a bit blocky if you get in close enough. That means you might need to subdivide your mesh. The Daz editor uses a subdivision level of 2 by default, which results in nice renders. This is too much for Unity in my experience. Level 1 should be good enough for decent visual fidelity, but this still results in a high poly mesh and Daz figures are already high poly to begin with (at least Genesis 8; haven't tested Genesis 9). It should be totally fine if you only have a couple actors on screen, but if you want more Daz might not be what you're looking for. Also finding the right hair might be a bit of a challenge, since most in the asset store tend to be high poly (and are not rigged)

Not sure if you can avoid doing animations yourself though.

Another thing to note is that Daz, Unity and Blender use different weight painting methods. So if you imagine a pose in Daz, its limbs might bend a bit differently in the other two environments. For example if you want the figure to have its arms straight up, it might appear unnatural in Unity. There are a couple of approaches to fix that. Some take more effort then others and produce better results. But that's again more time spent fighting your workflow and not developing your game.