Fan Art Dating My Daughter: Fan Art

[OhWee]

I've been using 2nd & 3rd gen i7 PC's with older GTX cards so far to learn DAZ. You don't have to spend big $ to start and learning to use DAZ is easy enough that even a caveman like me can do it.

I still think that you are using Filament. Your renders don't look at all like mine...

That's not a bad thing, it's good to have different looks/artistic styles!

I played with Filament briefly, but I'm just too 'married' to the Iray look that you see in my renders. And rendering at a high resolution, which is one reason why my renders tend to take so long. DMD is rendered at 1280x720 though, at least it was at first, which is not a bad resolution to start with. I'm rendering at Ultra HD though (3840x2160), for quality purposes...

Note that if you do the 'superimpose character over separate background' thing in Renpy, this can cut your render times considerably, you just need to get the hang of making this look 'good enough' with your lighting choices. This comment is directed at others though, not yourself. Several games do this, such as Katie's Corruption.

Renpy I think has by far a more intimidating learning curve (on the game engine end) if you are straying away from the basics than say Daz Studio has on the rendering end. Just my opinion... but Renpy is a great place to start when doing a 'choose your story path' sort of game such as DMD.

 

[RustyV]

This is how I think D and Martin should have gotten together for the first time.

 

[RustyV]

The brown spot on Martin's pants is chocolate icing from his b-day cake not me forgetting to fit the pants asset.

 

[RustyV]

Of course maybe it's D's birthday.

 

[Hermit76]

wunderbar!

Prost!

 

[AlfredBundy4]

Been there working on a second spinoff/homage (Enthralled being the first), can totally sympathize.

I learned Daz Studio on a pretty low end system by today's standards. The new Filament rendering engine is a bit friendlier to low end hardware, but definitely has a different look than the Iray renders you see in DMD, my fanart, etc.. My point here being don't underestimate your hardware, Daz Studio has been around for two decades now, so chances are you PC may be able to run it. Of course, it's a bt more resource intensive these days, but some people in the Daz community are still using Windows 7 and runnng Daz Studio...

Iray does require a decent Nvidia card, and those are massively overpriced atm, so don't be afraid to experiment with 3Delight and Filament instead, those rendering engines are more 'low end hardware' friendly.

It's free to download (you'll need to register though) and there are a number of free assets you can grab to get started. You can also acquire quite a few Daz assets by other means, but of course that'd be wrong...

My point here is don't be afraid to take Daz Studio for a spin to see if you like it or not. Lots of tutorials on YouTube, etc. if you should decide that you like it. It can be a bit of a time sink though, as Yonamous pointed out.

Anyways, while I'm here, just having some fun with changing up Rachael's hairstyle...

Awesome reply! Probably the exact info and push I needed to give it a shot. I appreciate it, I really do.

I have some experience with Python, too. Renpy should be easier to learn due to that.

I just play DMD and many other games and think how uncreative they are or slowly become and it's usually when the money rolls in. It seems like a few bucks come their way and suddenly they milk their stories rather than finish as they clearly intended in the beginning. Most give in to fan complaints, etc.

My whole notion is to make a game for you, do not compromise at all and people will come. Finally, don't milk a story but finish it and make a new one.
It seems like many successful devs find their big successful story and then act in a way as if they're afraid they can't replicate it.

This is with all due respect to the dev of DMD! It's just that SL and Melody never achieves the same success because it was kinda-sorta the same thing as DMD, IMO. Both popular, for sure. No doubt. Just not quite DMD and I'd guess it's because they split their time to milk DMD.

Finish it, move on to the next. All-in. 100%.
Yet, in their way of making DMD and seeing all the amazing work in this thread, I really want to do side stories with D that I think could/should have been in the actual story. Maybe I'll learn doing that and then make my own stuff?

Enough blabbing lol. Thanks for the great reply!

 

[Big Rooster]

Of course maybe it's D's birthday.

Or....Martins D-Day!

 

[Jack0h]

I still think that you are using Filament. Your renders don't look at all like mine...

That's not a bad thing, it's good to have different looks/artistic styles!

I played with Filament briefly, but I'm just too 'married' to the Iray look that you see in my renders. And rendering at a high resolution, which is one reason why my renders tend to take so long. DMD is rendered at 1280x720 though, at least it was at first, which is not a bad resolution to start with. I'm rendering at Ultra HD though (3840x2160), for quality purposes...

Note that if you do the 'superimpose character over separate background' thing in Renpy, this can cut your render times considerably, you just need to get the hang of making this look 'good enough' with your lighting choices. This comment is directed at others though, not yourself. Several games do this, such as Katie's Corruption.

Renpy I think has by far a more intimidating learning curve (on the game engine end) if you are straying away from the basics than say Daz Studio has on the rendering end. Just my opinion... but Renpy is a great place to start when doing a 'choose your story path' sort of game such as DMD.

filament....iray....are there examples of the rendering result of each?

 

[Yonamous]

There are lots of tips and tricks you can use.

- Change the resolution: if you don't have a powerful GPU use a lower resolution like x720, or if you do have a powerful GPU have a high resolution (2k - 4k) and then change the resolution to something smaller in a photo editing program (that way you keep all the detail). Higher res does mean more time to render though, but you will be able to see some real details at that res where you won't get them on lower res.
- Lighting: Dream lighting is a must if you don't have a powerful GPU; the lighting isn't as natural with this, but it doesn't require near the same amount of power. Multiple light sources also add to render times.
- Model Texture Resolution: Scene Optimizer is a good program to have to reduce the texture size of characters. Never use this in close up pictures, but if your character is at a distance where you're not going to get all the minute details in the shot, then use a lower resolution texture to save on render times.
- Reflective surfaces: These really increase render times, so just keep that in mind when creating a scene.
- SubDivision Level: Higher levels in these (if the model has it, or supports it) will allow for greater details (Vein's actually poking out of the body, sunken pores, laugh lines, etc.) It does however increase render times, and once more if you're going to lose the detail due to distance, you can reduce the subdivision level.
- Render Quality & Converge Ratio: If you want a detailed render, that will take time (or a really good GPU), increasing the Render Quality and setting the Converge Ratio to 98 or 99% will give you a crisp image (although sometimes you can get some detailed images even in the 50% range for Convergence. Denoiser can work to remove the nose on images that have a low convergence, but you're going to lose detail.
- The Little Details: These things can make a render even better. Things like Vascularity on a muscular guy or girl, using Skin Builder to add slight blue veins, minor pores, and various skin details to make it pop. Vellus hairs on the face, body, etc so that you can see them in close range shots.


I'm sure there are many other tips as well.

 

[Big Rooster]

There are lots of tips and tricks you can use.

- Change the resolution: if you don't have a powerful GPU use a lower resolution like x720, or if you do have a powerful GPU have a high resolution (2k - 4k) and then change the resolution to something smaller in a photo editing program (that way you keep all the detail). Higher res does mean more time to render though, but you will be able to see some real details at that res where you won't get them on lower res.
- Lighting: Dream lighting is a must if you don't have a powerful GPU; the lighting isn't as natural with this, but it doesn't require near the same amount of power. Multiple light sources also add to render times.
- Model Texture Resolution: Scene Optimizer is a good program to have to reduce the texture size of characters. Never use this in close up pictures, but if your character is at a distance where you're not going to get all the minute details in the shot, then use a lower resolution texture to save on render times.
- Reflective surfaces: These really increase render times, so just keep that in mind when creating a scene.
- SubDivision Level: Higher levels in these (if the model has it, or supports it) will allow for greater details (Vein's actually poking out of the body, sunken pores, laugh lines, etc.) It does however increase render times, and once more if you're going to lose the detail due to distance, you can reduce the subdivision level.
- Render Quality & Converge Ratio: If you want a detailed render, that will take time (or a really good GPU), increasing the Render Quality and setting the Converge Ration to 98 or 99% will give you a crisp image (although sometimes you can get some detailed images even in the 50% range for Convergence. Denoiser can work to remove the nose on images that have a low convergence, but you're going to lose detail.
- The Little Details: These things can make a render even better. Things like Vascularity on a muscular guy or girl, using Skin Builder to add slight blue veins, minor pores, and various skin details to make it pop. Vellus hairs on the face, body, etc so that you can see them in close range shots.


I'm sure there are many other tips as well.

Great tips here! *Thanks Yonamous* !!!
And you can switch, under edit render settings, optimization, speed - memory - auto. I always select the speed setting.

 

[Kryptozoid]

Installing 'third party' assets and figuring out where they are later is probably one of the trickier things with Daz Studio, but once you learn the 'proper' ways to place asset folders, it's rather easy peasy once you get the install methodology down.

That's exactly what made me stop. And it looks like it wouldn't have been much easier if I paid for the stuff.
So instead I used other means to make 3D scenes :
My go-to 3D workflow was : make characters and poses in TK17 (I'm an expert with that thing nobody uses anymore since Modsgarden died), export the scene in Blender, improve it, render it. But it takes so much time I will probably directly learn to import DAZ characters in Blender next time I try to learn 3D.
Was really annoyed by the file system of DAZ. The rest seemed pretty underdstandable, especially since I had a lot of exp with TK17 and a little with Blender. Posing, clothing and rendering should have been ok for me after a year of practice. But no the file system made my brain explode.
It's sad because now I have a 2080Ti (at the time only had a 1070).

Btw, mildly related but what do you guys think of VAM ? It uses DAZ characters and I see more and more good results. when they are rendered in 4k it still looks inferior to DAZ or Blender, but way superior to TK17 and Poser, and for animation (hair, clothes) it's fucking incredible.

 

[Big Rooster]

I'm so glad that Daddy caught it with his phone

 

[Big Rooster]

Come on Daddy, can I finish, please? I promise to make it up to you!

 

[Yonamous]

That's exactly what made me stop. And it looks like it wouldn't have been much easier if I paid for the stuff.

It takes a little extra time, but I manually install all my assets. This allows me to create my own groups, like have an Anatomy folder, but in it I have sub groups like Genitalia, Skin (for wet or dirty skins, tattoo's etc). I have various groups of clothing folder's, and so on.
It is annoying that you have to organize it personally.

 

[Big Rooster]

If you thought my Daddy was good, wait till I introduce you to Martin!

 

[OhWee]

filament....iray....are there examples of the rendering result of each?

OK, I have not messed with Filament for a few reasons. I'm still using a pre-Filament version of Daz Studio (reasons) so I can't do side by side comparisons.

The main advantage of Filament is that it's fast, but the downside is that there are tradeoffs. About the best description I came across essentially calls Filament 'game engine quality' vs the 'ultra' quality of Iray renders. But the flipside is that rendering frames for animation will be a LOT faster with Filament. We are talking on an order of say 10x faster or more, depending on the hardware you have.

This thread has a few Filament renders in it:
https://f95zone.to/threads/anybody-use-filament-for-animations-rendering.72086/

And a few animations.

Sickleyield made a script to convert things over to Filament from Iray and 3Delight:

You must be registered to see the links

But that's probably talking over your head if you are just getting started.

Here's an F95 search if you want to see Filament renders and such:

https://f95zone.to/search/141004098/?q=filament


I do have 4.15 installed on this laptop for testing purposes, but I'm about out of disk space (relatively tiny hard drive) so I only have a handful of assets installed, and said install is fucked up, so I'll have to wipe it and try re-installing it on this laptop...

No desire to install 4.15 on Uber Laptop (it has 4.12), don't want to risk fucking stuff up!

 

[RustyV]

 

[RustyV]

 

[Big Rooster]

IMO Cassandra, despite her feminine proportions, has man hands.

 

[OhWee]

Someone requested this homage a while back...

Deebarella
Galactic Hottie

Credit to RustyV for the name variation...