Details in making 3d characters

[HFM]

Hello! this topic is more for the creators but everyone's opinion is appreciated too.

So after creating many characters by myself and lately looking into other peoples work here on this forum i want to talk about some details in characters being made with DAZ3D/Illusion games/other programs.

1 - Body shine, from what i have seen many people are using strong body shine, illusion games by default also have it strong, but honestly i think it looks way better with it lowered down a lot. When it is strong, i feel like youre loosing a lot of detail and overall it gives weird vibe when you look at characters, and also literally no other media, whether it be anime/hand drawn artwork or anything else doesnt have such a strong body shine - only 3d models have it like this.
If youre going for a more "realistic" look for your characters/art, strong body shine is far from looking realistic, unless of course you made it because your character is wet after leaving the bath or some scenario like that, but outside scenario like that it looks like your characters have some weird gooey staff on themshelfs wich causes this strong shine
Of course some of you may think this is a small detail that doesnt really matter but if you look at character with strong and low body shine there is a huuuge difference how they look!
Take a look at the attached images i provided, although on a simple character like that its not making that much of an impact, but its especially visible in characters made with DAZ3D.

So my question is why many people go for such a strong body shine? did you simply didnt care/pay attention to it while creating character, or maybe you think it looks better this way? and the same goes for viewers, if you look at somebody elses characters, do you pay attention to such details as body shine?

2 - Unproportioned body, bodies like that have been used in many media for a long time but i still wonder if you think bodies look better this way? is it a desirable trait in characters for you? of course i understand many people like big butts and breasts but you can make them big and have the correct body proportions at the same time so why people use this weird body curve? overly slim body with overly big butt, again see the pictures bellow for a reference.

3 - As a creator how much detail do you put into making your characters? do you spend much time to look at them from every angle and at every small detail, changing it many times until you reach perfection or you make it as simple as possible with the desirable look what you where trying to create?
And as a viewer, when you look at other persons work, do you appreciate the detail put into making characters or you will be happy with something what looks somehow good?

 

[Saki_Sliz]

As far as I know, daz's iray is powerful and flexable, but the default settings are not the best and the engine is not the best as well. I tend to port things to blender because I like the workflow better.

as for body proportions. as far as I understand it, one of the key tricks to art and specifically 2D art is to exaggerate to help with clear communication, ie, so not all the characters look the same, they have key traits and body types, which can often reflect their personality. when doing 3D, it is a bit more realistic, and you start to get close to the uncanny valley. as fare as I can tell, when it comes to the uncanny valley and art, it is a question of "good enough." at some point you have to stop. that is because what happens when you get more and more realistic is that, if you notice something is off, you fix it. but by fixing it, the art is more realistic just a little bit. but the more realistic you get, the less room you have for error (else you slip into uncanny valley), so the remaining issues stand out even more, so it is hard to stop one self. That is at least when it comes to 2D art. I assume with 3D art, a lot of the same behaviors carrier over. 3D adds realistic shading and forces the silhouette of characters to be less defined/segmented, so what use to work with 2D looks bad with 3D, so you have to fix it up a bit, put people still want to put in 2D practices, and I think the mix tends to give people issues, and that may be what you are noticing.

Doing art for 6 years now, I would say I am a perfectionist, or rather, an experimenter, a technical artist. I do art to get the skill, not so much to make art (I'm actually an engineer so everything I learn gets used for that, like making product ads for presentations). I know one issue is when you work on something for too long, you can no longer tell if it looks good. I think it was a great writer who said, after writing a book, take a 6 to 8 month break and come back to it with fresh eyes. when you work you see all the issues, at least the issues that differ between what you have, and what you have invisioned. but after you forget, you no longer see what you were trying to do, each step, but you are able to see what you have and what big picture it actually paints. So I take breaks and come back and see if the final product manages to invoke the thought I wanted them to, usually, I never need to fix anything because I don't go any further.

some examples https://f95zone.to/threads/blenders-assets-free-download-site.34452/#post-2261961

right now I am experimenting with anime bodies, which are not shown. I use my own shaders to get around some of the issues you mentioned. Let me know if you notice some of the same issues you described before.

 

[mickydoo]

Resource pics is the key, when I did a character creation for my 3ds max course ages ago (I failed this bit) BUT, the biggest thing they said over and over, resource pics. It is the only way you will get realistic proportions. All my characters faces are morphed to reference pics, the bodies are too but only by eye and close enough. The reason why games have unrealistic proportions is that either, that's what the author prefers, they don't know or can't be fucked using reference pics (it is tedious) or have never seen a naked woman before (I swear the later is true in sometimes.) Also remember, some ppl suck at making "realistic" characters so making out of proportion ones is a deliberate act for a bit of lolz.

 

[pasunna]

Body shine
Real proportions
Detail
I think every things is about taste
Dev have at least two type of this
One make for please audience
And second make to please themself

And as indy dev they more strong in please themself
Because they want to work on project that they like and have fun with it
So the realistic woman body maybe too boring for them

In term of art
We call this shiny is super realistic
It’s use to emphasis the shape of body
Yes as the name super realistic
It’s will not give the natural vibe
But we artist call it arts we don’t really care that it need to be realistic
As long as it stand out beauty fully that enough

And the same go with gigantic boob or detail
Art is subjective
You cannot please everyone
There always some one that don’t like you work
So they end up do what they like...simple...

And if you ask why gigantic boob or ass
Because real human can’t have that
So it’s feel spacial
Yes some one care and always comment she can’t really stand with that boobs?
But some one who adore those art just think
Fuck it!
She is my perfect imagination wife and not go out of her magical 3d world for sure!

 

[pasunna]

and about realistic body type
many forget that
something you never saw don't mean it's never exist


these are Anri Okita(1) and Hitomi Tanaka(2)
they are japanese porn star and never do boobs surgery
but if a game character got these big boobs
they say she cant walk for sure?
Hitomi got really slim waist
and she really got high performance moving

so... I don't think body type are clearly only right on the book someone rule it

 

[Yustu]

This question is adequate to comparing F1 to Fiat, both allow to travel, but they serve completely different purpose.

So to make it clear OP compares Dez3D vs Illusion games, with boils down to comparing render engines.

Daz iRay is focusing on image quality and utilize physically based properties of materials while Illusion games engine is, well as name suggest, game engine that utilize Unity 5 (IIRC, please correct me if I'm wrong).

Disclaimer: You are are talking about Daz and yet whole post and attached examples are from HoneySelect (if I'm not mistaken) and You do talk about this engine so I will focus on this.

So body shine is used to simulate surface specularity with in every non real time engines (and some new real times also) is done by using special map. Because Illusion was released in 2016 and has low minimum hardware requirements (so many people can run this game == more sales == more profit) they had to do some compromises so instead of using realistic appraoch they done simple shining shader to easily target performance that they are after. Also they could go for that "anime" kind of look so high spec helps to achieve that. Please not that this kind of spec is their (Illusion) choice and other engines, i.e. SFM / TK17, use different appraoch to this.

Body proportion - this is ero game so naturally that they allow to modify and exaggerate proportions of body. It's just a matter of taste really. Some like large natural breasts, some implants and other like small. This is also part of styling i.e. in Blade&Soul game characters has exaggerated limbs with not necessary exists in real life. Also $$$ as they say boobs sells .

Detail - depends on multiple factors, i.e.:

- is this commercial or personal project (in comm. projects as artist You will not worry about this)
- what's target style
- what's medium (still / video / real time engine)

As You can see there is no "correct" answer.

Do I appreciate details in 3D ?

This depends on content. I do watch 3D / anime just because what I see on screen can't be done in RL and I think this is true for many people. I mean why would You waste Your time and "energy" on watching something that can be seen with "ultimate details" performed by actors ?
Art in general, from visual stand point, is all about composition and style. If this is executed correctly then even not so detailed characters are satisfactory and if this is backed up by some kinky $hit even better.

I think that nowadays people do focus to much on this whole "realistic" problem and forget about power that art (be it 2 or 3 D) and tools offer. When creating content think what You would want to see not what others expect You to do, because later one is called JOB and if You don't take a joy in creation process then sonner or later You will abandon project.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[SpikeGames]

Body shine
Real proportions
Detail
I think every things is about taste

This ^^

Btw does her proportions correct?

 

[pasunna]

This ^^

Btw does her proportions correct?

View attachment 380365

Dose it matter?
If you like it,it’s good
I don’t think people think proportions first
They just don’t like those type of body so it’s wrong
We never judge something with justice
We always judge something by what we like
Anything against our like = it’s wrong

 

[HFM]

Hi again and thanks for all the answers! to specify few things
As an author myself i wanted to see other creators perspective, i don't really need the help or guide for myself.

after writing a book, take a 6 to 8 month break and come back to it with fresh eyes.

Excatly! personally i always double check my creations after some time.

I think that nowadays people do focus to much on this whole "realistic" problem and forget about power that art (be it 2 or 3 D) and tools offer. When creating content think what You would want to see not what others expect You to do, because later one is called JOB and if You don't take a joy in creation process then sonner or later You will abandon project.

And again very well said, i highly enjoy creating everything that comes from my mind!

This topic was not created to compare illusion vs DAZ but to talk about process of making 3d characters in general and the end result you come up with.
By "unproportioned" bodies i meant "unbalanced compared to the rest of the body" for example let's say you divide body into parts with different parameters;
head 50
hands 50
top 50
bottom 50
legs 50
If you will make legs at 10 they will look tiny compared to the rest of the body, if you want to make them to look slim, you set them to 30-40 while keeping everything at 50, but if you will set them to 10 the whole character looks "unproportioned"
Of course with making 3d characters there is way more options and parameters, after looking at other peoples work i noticed some parts of the bodies looked way smaller or bigger compared to the rest of the body so i wondered if it was intentional.

Some of the images you all provided, had fine proportions, while others not really.

By details i didn't mean "realistic" but just how much attention others put into creating characters, you can run fast thru some parameters and come up with something decent-looking or you can go thru every small parameter and pay attention to them all and create more detailed character.

 

[pasunna]

Hi again and thanks for all the answers! to specify few things
As an author myself i wanted to see other creators perspective, i don't really need the help or guide for myself.

Excatly! personally i always double check my creations after some time.


And again very well said, i highly enjoy creating everything that comes from my mind!

This topic was not created to compare illusion vs DAZ but to talk about process of making 3d characters in general and the end result you come up with.
By "unproportioned" bodies i meant "unbalanced compared to the rest of the body" for example let's say you divide body into parts with different parameters;
head 50
hands 50
top 50
bottom 50
legs 50
If you will make legs at 10 they will look tiny compared to the rest of the body, if you want to make them to look slim, you set them to 30-40 while keeping everything at 50, but if you will set them to 10 the whole character looks "unproportioned"
Of course with making 3d characters there is way more options and parameters, after looking at other peoples work i noticed some parts of the bodies looked way smaller or bigger compared to the rest of the body so i wondered if it was intentional.

Some of the images you all provided, had fine proportions, while others not really.

By details i didn't mean "realistic" but just how much attention others put into creating characters, you can run fast thru some parameters and come up with something decent-looking or you can go thru every small parameter and pay attention to them all and create more detailed character.

In that case I would say no
They mostly not look on detail to create
First of mostly all dev on this forum are amature
They are someone got lewd design and want to do something to get it real
They need to learn programing art and also writing
Because teaming is like a dream to be true
So most of dev are solo

The dev that come from base 3d knowledge or like to learn that will care about detail you talk about
But no
Some from writer programer 2d artist
Just see the Ui of 3d program
They just feel shit!
What the hell Am I doing?

So they make the 3d at the point of their wish or at the limit of their skill
There are many other thing they need to take care of
More than look in every detail that they don’t even got knowledge about what it is…

 

[HFM]

Saki_Sliz Since you mentioned making anime bodies, i didn't saw any anime-like characters made with DAZ so i wonder how it would look like, can you share some of your progress/images? maybe on priv if you don't want publicly.

 

[Rich]

Hello! this topic is more for the creators but everyone's opinion is appreciated too.

So after creating many characters by myself and lately looking into other peoples work here on this forum i want to talk about some details in characters being made with DAZ3D/Illusion games/other programs.

1 - Body shine,

This is just a guess, but I suspect that many people aren't so much "creating" characters as they are "using" them, and so are just taking whatever default settings they're presented with. I know next to nothing about Illusion, but in the Daz Studio world, you see lots and lots of people who are using unmorphed, standard base characters, possibly because they either don't understand the process of customizing them, or just don't want to take the time.

2 - Unproportioned body, bodies like that have been used in many media for a long time but i still wonder if you think bodies look better this way?

As others have said, I think this is 100% a matter of taste.

3 - As a creator how much detail do you put into making your characters? do you spend much time to look at them from every angle and at every small detail, changing it many times until you reach perfection or you make it as simple as possible with the desirable look what you where trying to create?

Varies. For the central characters in the story, I'll spend a lot of time making small adjustments and dealing with fine details, since there's a good chance I'll have close-ups, etc. of them. For side characters, I may do a few morphs so that they're not "pure base characters," but I won't spend near as much time.

And as a viewer, when you look at other persons work, do you appreciate the detail put into making characters or you will be happy with something what looks somehow good?

Yes, definitely.

 

[Saki_Sliz]

with regards to the anime character topic

for gen 8 characters,

You must be registered to see the links

is a common foundation, with a few character shapes based on this, but gen 8 doesn't really have that many options, gen 3 and even 2, and the victoria series have some better and more abundant options, but those models are starting to fade into obsoletion as more artist migrate to making gen 8 content.

I find the issue with the anime like characters is that they are still trying to look natural, and I am not really a supporter of the style. I find that there are 2 types of focuses you can have for the anime like body. Either, you can try to make a good looking 3D model, or a model that looks good after being rendered to 2D to mimic the hand-drawn style.

These two are very different, and it is because each looks good under different viewing conditions.

with full 3D, you have to worry that something looks good from every angle, and how the focal length of the camera lense distorts the render and can be used to emphasize or obscure various body features, in both good and bad ways. with art you first learn some tools, then anatomy, then you learn about simplification and then exaggeration, I could easily write an essay or two on the subject of how each aspect relates and empowers the next. With exaggeration, you have to tool to clearly communicate visually ideas to viewers, even at a subconscious level. I find that with 3D and specifically sexy 3D, that this is the ultimate test of skill, and not something I have fully grasped the concept of. I find that the best example of this, that is well balanced would be the character from Scarlet Blade Vendetta, which I have found a few ripped models from that I'll scuplt a gen 8 character to. but that is on the back burner, but I'll need to figure out how I can not only save a new body morph in daz, but also how I can save a new skeleton system since limb lengths and proportions will need to be resized to match the new anatomy.

as for 2D, that is a different beast and something I find is fun to toy with. with 2D you can cheat, changing body shapes and proportions for a drawing can not only help make it better, emphasizing varies aspects, but can make it look superior, and even look more "right." the most common example of this is the legs, in a standing pose, with a 3D model, it doesn't take much of a glancing angle for the legs to start to obscure each other, but often when drawing the legs, you want to keep them apart enough to make sure it is easy to tell each leg apart. In fact, I found that I can often improve some works of art if I render the character separately, and then morphe the image a bit, to again exaggerate key points that are lost when the angle and pose just don't do it justice. A common example is the area between the top of teh but in the middel of the spine, to the area just behind the hips, this area tends to be relatively flat, and any camera angle to the side and a bit up tends to result in this area making the image look like I drew the character's hip's a bit low, so that often needs correction. the morphes are not correct, but it matches people's expectations, so people think it looks more correct, because it helps make sure that we see teh land marks of the body that enable clear understanding of the body and the pose, eliminating complex thoughts such as an understanding of how the mid back hip works and is shaped. Not only that, but to make a character, and then to draw a 2D outline of them transforms them completely. since you can't see the shape you have to focus on the silhouette, which is what the brain uses to understand things that are small or some distance away. If you take a 2D drawing that looks good and make it 3D, it often looks pretty derpy, and it takes a good amount of refinement, but when you want to go back to 2d, you find that the image isn't what you hoped for. what looks good in 3D doesn't look as good in 2D, but can be tailored for a 2D experience, again another subject that I could describe in more length but still a subject I am exploring.

I've played a bit with character designs that are 2D like, but are ment to still have that 3D feel, so a hybrid, and I'm pretty ok with the results, so I am starting to explore a character design that works better with 2D, but it is something that needs heavy editing after being render, but so far automation of the task has worked out pretty well, but still very rough tests, I don't even have ready renders yet, so it will takee a few days before I can get around to the task.

 

[HFM]

Saki_Sliz thanks for insight again!

Since i started this topic maybe i should provide some insight into my work too, so im using Illusions Honey select for my creations, up to this month i didn't even knew about DAZ3d stuff.
I prefer more of a anime-like style rather than "realistic" one, Honey select compared to other illusion games goes more into this realistic style - which for somebody who prefers anime style is a little bit harder to work with, but! after tweaking the game you can make it to look like something inbetween anime-realistic, where in the end im happy how it looks.
But even if im happy how it looks there is still a problem that the face morphs/general outlines are going into realistic style, which means creating more anime-like characters is always a little bit more hard.
The way honey select works is that, character body has a specific number of "bones" these bones are the points that you can move/rotate/scale in order to change the face or any other body part.
Basic character creator has a limited amount of these points that you can edit, but with mods/utilities for the game you have way more options! only downside is that working with them is rather tedious and in the end you are still limited how much these points there is, so creating any, more unique characters is not that easy.

When i create character, i go thru every option, sometimes even couple of times.
I look at character from every angle, compare her to other characters i already created, after making her i double check after a few days, sometimes i even go back and change some things in characters I've created months ago.
So i pay a lot of attention to characters i create, but sometimes it also varies depending of what i want to achieve, what role character is going to have and how important is she going to be (since i create characters for my stories)
And i think im able to do nice characters with the feeling of more into the anime-like and a little bit of realistic touch,
although im still experimenting with some posibilities and outcomes to have more unique character faces/bodies.

To give you some examples, i provided some images of my work, Vimeya is more flashy/bright anime-like but yet she's not extremely made into this style, so when you put her next to Tyla who has a nice balance of style they look fine near each other.
Because im using honey select i always try to make balanced characters so that they will look good together.

 

[Saki_Sliz]

Over the weekend I'll look into Honey Select Neo, I found a tutorial on how to get the 3D models out, so I could port them to Blender. I'll play around with reshaping them, resculpting them, and play with shaders/textures to try to see if I can make the characters look even better. I might be able to produce something of interest to you. I need to work on learning the new api so I can work on making a custom interface for the rig to make it friendly to animate/pose.

Does one need to buy honey select?

 

[HFM]

Saki_Sliz yeah, you need to buy it, studio neo is addition to the game for making scenes/poses, character creator is inside a game, i recommend getchu or dlsite if you want to buy it.
But i warn you, preparing honey select is always time consuming problem, you will probably need some mods - english translation, some utilities that make the game run faster etc, depends how much you will want to use it, you can send me a priv later if you will need a help setting it up.

 

[Saki_Sliz]

I found some comparisons between honey select and Koikatu, and found koikatu to have a more anime style which is what I wanted to explore, and I could get my hands on some download links, so I am exploring it first since it seems the export process is simler.

 

[LenioTG]

I use Daz Studio.
I mostly tweak the skins of my characters with Skin Builder 8, but I like the realistic look. I also have a thing for freckles or Latinas.
I definitely dislike unrealistic body types, but that's my taste. To me, if a game has characters with huge breasts/butt, I'm 80% of the way to never play it.
To find the body and face shapes I like, I start with SimTenero Randomizer. I have thousands of morphs, and lightly mixing them in various phases gives me what I like to call "a gene pool".
Since most morphs are for beautiful people, it's a beautiful gene pool, but I usually need around 20 tries for each of the 3 steps to get a realistic figure.
Then I do the final touches by hand.

 

[Yustu]

... I found a tutorial on how to get the 3D models out, so I could port them to Blender. I'll play around with reshaping them, resculpting them, and play with shaders/textures to try to see if I can make the characters look even better ...

You do have solution in front of You. Why not to use Blender ? What HoneySelect have that Blender don't? Only think that I can think of is animations but they are basics, well maybe community ones are better.

 

[Saki_Sliz]

You do have solution in front of You. Why not to use Blender ? What HoneySelect have that Blender don't? Only think that I can think of is animations but they are basics, well maybe community ones are better.

?

I do use blender. I port daz charaters, sfm characters, and just about everything to blender because I find I can better optimize the render quality and speed, better shaders and light, as well as I prefer how blender handles animations.

Are you asking why I don't just make the characters in blender? I do sometimes, sculpting from scratch or based on a drawing, but I only really do that for characters that I need to retopologize to be game ready. One of the early stages of sculpting is blocking out a character's shape, proportions are what I have the hardest time even to this day, so I use programs like daz or other 3D assets as a base shape to then sculpt from. Most of the time I am testing ideas out, so I don't need to do the full 3D modeling process.