DEVELOPERS: What are some of your bottlenecks, and how did you widen them?

[MidnightArrow]

To be more specific:

When you render a scene, every pixel of the render stores the results of the light calculations in a 32-bit floating point number. This is called "linear" or "scene-referred". As long as the image is stored in Blender's memory, you have access to all 32-bits of data. This gives you a lot of precision in color grading. The reason it looks muted and gray is because your monitor can only output a limited range of color (one byte per RGB channel). So a huge range of color is scaled down to your monitor's color range to let you see it. But when you use the compositor, you're still operating on that scene-referred data from the renderer for maximum flexibility.

Soon as you save your render in PNG or JPG format, it's chopped down into the limited range of color your monitor can display. It becomes "display-referred". All the extra data is lost. With a filmic render, you at least have the whole spectum of color data saved out and can use that in an image editor. But Daz Studio can't even do filmic renders, it only outputs display-referred images (unless you use canvases, I think). So while Iray is creating 32-bit float data, Daz Studio discards everything that goes above 1.0, which is why the highlights are horribly blown out in my test render.

If you want to save scene-referred data for use in an image editor, save in OpenEXR format.

tl;dr "muted and gray" = better range of colors

 

[kintarodev]

To me posing is not a problem, but truth to be told, I did literally thousands of them in different programs (Daz, Blender, Unity...) and thus the skills... You can say that eventually you get some kind of intuition when adjusting parameters, but no matter what, the mesh count and rigging of your characters will always determine the final results and if a pose is meant to work on a character or not.

This said, to me anything on the creative side is a significant bottleneck, specially designing characters, writting scenes, and, for some reason, coming up with convincing main screen portrait pictures.

Unlike programming, there's no closed answer to it, and thus, no matter how much I dig into it, sometimes things just don't work out the way I want.

My future solution to that, at least for writing dialogues, is to eventually, comission it if I can make enough money. Time will tell.

 

[CurvyLinesEverywhere]

To be more specific:

When you render a scene, every pixel of the render stores the results of the light calculations in a 32-bit floating point number. This is called "linear" or "scene-referred". As long as the image is stored in Blender's memory, you have access to all 32-bits of data. This gives you a lot of precision in color grading. The reason it looks muted and gray is because your monitor can only output a limited range of color (one byte per RGB channel). So a huge range of color is scaled down to your monitor's color range to let you see it. But when you use the compositor, you're still operating on that scene-referred data from the renderer for maximum flexibility.

Soon as you save your render in PNG or JPG format, it's chopped down into the limited range of color your monitor can display. It becomes "display-referred". All the extra data is lost. With a filmic render, you at least have the whole spectum of color data saved out and can use that in an image editor. But Daz Studio can't even do filmic renders, it only outputs display-referred images (unless you use canvases, I think). So while Iray is creating 32-bit float data, Daz Studio discards everything that goes above 1.0, which is why the highlights are horribly blown out in my test render.

If you want to save scene-referred data for use in an image editor, save in OpenEXR format.

tl;dr "muted and gray" = better range of colors

Got it. Thank you.

The facepalm was because I'd noticed earlier that Textures also had an import option for "Filmic," which made them super-saturated, and all this time I'd assumed you needed to use the two together somehow, possibly with some other settings or consideration in the way scenes are lit, and I just didn't feel like re-importing that many textures. "Just fix it in post" felt like a quick-and-dirty hack. Guess I should have looked it up. Thanks for telling me.

 

[CurvyLinesEverywhere]

To me posing is not a problem, but truth to be told, I did literally thousands of them in different programs (Daz, Blender, Unity...) and thus the skills... You can say that eventually you get some kind of intuition when adjusting parameters, but no matter what, the mesh count and rigging of your characters will always determine the final results and if a pose is meant to work on a character or not.

This said, to me anything on the creative side is a significant bottleneck, specially designing characters, writting scenes, and, for some reason, coming up with convincing main screen portrait pictures.

Unlike programming, there's no closed answer to it, and thus, no matter how much I dig into it, sometimes things just don't work out the way I want.

My future solution to that, at least for writing dialogues, is to eventually, comission it if I can make enough money. Time will tell.

Oh. Dude.

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They can copyright their characters. They can copyright their rendering of those characters. But they

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Just find something good, maybe 2 or 3 examples, look at them, then do in your software what they did with a real camera or a 1990s CGI workstation or whatever it is you're referencing. If you always draw from 2 or more reference images, your output will be, at worst, a blend between them, which is exactly how real original ideas are made in the human brain. By recombining existing ideas.

The only caveat is don't reference drawings, unless what you're trying to learn from them is Surface, or you're referencing the Character Design because you're trying to make fanart. The reason for this is because drawings have already been through this process of interpretation from another reference, so you're building upon the jank introduced by the previous artist's interpretation. Like a photocopy of a photocopy, each pass adds noise. 3D is not immune to this, but usually you can tell when something is off in 3D, like a shoulder bone is posed wrong or something, and you can choose not to use that reference. Drawings are a lot more fluid and expressive. The errors can be hard to spot, because your brain is reading between the lines.

Actually, now that I think about it, even photographs from advertisements and magazines are often manipulated in photoshop, these days, and now AI is getting in on the mix, so eventually the only "real" reference you'll be able to capture will be with your own camera. But for something like poses or shot composition? Those elemetns generally can't be made worse through editing, unless it's hand-drawn and the artist made a mistake and nobody including you notices. They can't do it wrong in a photograph because the actors would have fallen over. If they faked it somehow, like by having a subject stand on a box or jump in the air, or something, the result was apparently worth faking, so it doesn't matter if it's unrealistic.

Google image search the thing you don't know how to make look good. When it inevitably dumps you at pinterest and demands you make an account in order to see a larger version of the image, do it. You'll hate pinterest less and less the more you use it. You'll go from grumbling "These aren't ideas! They're pictures!" to actually getting inspired.

Work from inspiration hundreds of times, and you'll start to develop your own instincts.

Good luck.

 

[banchouforte]

I checked out the person in question and their work. It's actually possible (more likely, closer to 90% as I browse through their stuff) that the reverse is true - that this person is creating base models in Koikatsu, then exporting to blender to stylize them. Note that this isn't really an issue / problem. People share Koikatsu cards / models for free - constantly.

This would also explain why they have so many models available for free. If they were making models from nothing, it would take a significant amount of time - therefore it makes sense to start with a base body as close to what you want as possible. Making characters in Koikatsu is very, very simple, thus they most likely are doing it that way. In fact, I haven't seen anything that can't be stylized in Koikatsu so far upon looking at their pages.

The time / dates of their work also match up with the time when Koikatsu was first released.

Regardless, anime style characters all have certain similarities - the style isn't necessarily something exclusive to this particular artist. So, yea it was just weird (and not the first time) you've implied that I was thieving someone else's work. There really isn't a point for me to do so, as Koikatsu is fairly simple to use and just requires time and energy.

P.S. I'm not saying this artist isn't skilled - they obviously do alot of post work in blender before releasing their own models. I'm just pointing out that you might be looking at this backwards.

Greetings, just got here by ego-searching my name xD
First, thanks for looking at my work, I really appreciate it.

To answer some misconceptions on this post, I have been using blender since 2017 and from 2018 I made my first and second base model, that I been improving with the years. I'm currently working on a new base model (finally) with a higher poly-count, as my current one lacks geometry, specially compared with the clothes and accessories I make.
My goal is to start using this new model once I release 100 characters.

As I say on all my models, everything is made by me. This is my way of saying that I do all the meshes, textures, shaders, etc by myself, and that means I do not use anything from other sources (except that time I used a guitar on my Haruhi model, an open sourced model from blender swap, just because I didn't want to make a whole guitar for just a render XD)

Why I insist on doing thing this way?
-Self-Learning.
-Giving the blender community resources without restrictions
-It's fun

First point, I learned (and still do) to use blender by just making things, from small object to full rigged characters with +16 costumes, that gave me my current skills, while learning new things with each new project.

Second. By making everything by myself I can just say: Here is my model, do what you want with it, edit it, destroy it,use it on your projects, keep my model free if you redistribute it, just the model, you can commercialize your works made using it, just give me credit to keep them under cc by 4.0 (Although, the real reason I ask for credits is because I like to see what other people make using them, I'm guilty of that xD)

When I started learning blender, anime models, specially free and easy to download where pretty rare. You had tools to port from things like mmd and xna, but native anime models where not the norm and so I decided to start uploading each model I made.

Third. I do this for fun, not for profit. And I want to keep things like this as long as I can.

Sorry for the long post

 

[banchouforte]

Welcome!

Man, that's wild! I searched your username name online ( just now ) and after about 100 or so hits, I still haven't found a direct link to this forum as it pertains to you. In less than a week, no less (which is generally not enough time for most crawlers to index new information!)

It does however link to this thread if you type banchouforte + f95zone in .

Nevertheless, I'm glad you're here.

It would be excellent if you could also address the misconception that I (or anyone, really) have taken your work and used it to make adult games. Or, even edited some of your models to do so.

To be fair, some people, somewhere may have, but that seems impractical when you take into consideration that - as game devs - we use programs that allow us to make 3D models easily and simply. Most of us aren't artists, and therefore can't be bothered with the 1-5 hour process per model required to import a "bare" model into our rendering programs / game engines.

This clarification is just so all parties involved understand, after all, some people seem convinced otherwise.

It may also be worth noting that I also don't know anyone who has used your models for this kind of work, nor do I know anyone who knows someone who does this. The reason for that is that better options exist.

It seems exceedingly rare / unlikely / unrealistic that any developer who has an inkling of what they are doing would even consider using models (rigged or unrigged) importing them, animating them, etc -- when you have a program that allows you to create your own models within minutes, complete with tons of custom & default animations.

In fact, I daresay one would have to be insanely determined desperate, unaware of simpler options, or a complete beginner at their craft to consider doing what has been suggested up above by OP. Either way, I'm not really sure how you kept getting mentioned, to be honest. This isn't the first time I've seen OP mention you, so I'd wager they are truly a fan.

Don't worry, honestly it makes me happy when someone mentions me so it was nice to found this.
And, if you are talking about using my assets I don't see any on this thread (not that I mind, I made and share them to be free, even if you only want a small accessory or one of the textures)

About the other point, specifically on my case, blender is the only tool I need. Apart of making the models, rigs etc there,when I want to do a render to showcase my models, I can pretty much pose them to a rough approximation of what I have in mind in a pretty short time and then I fine-tuned the bones and the expressions.
For references I just look online, there is a site called POSEMANIACS that's gold for that.
I also have a big library of poses for my rigs as I keep all the ones I make for my previous renders saved on my PC, so reusing one takes even less time.

On the other hand, unless I re-target an existing animation, making one takes me a lot of time. Just making a small loop from scratch took me hours last time, so If one day I want to expand on this field I may have to get some mo-cap tools

What I'm trying to say is that, if your tool works for you and your workflow then that's perfectly fine. For me, I use blender, with it pros and cons cause, on my case, it's what works for me and the kind of art I want to make.

 

[CurvyLinesEverywhere]

Greetings, just got here by ego-searching my name xD
First, thanks for looking at my work, I really appreciate it.

To answer some misconceptions on this post, I have been using blender since 2017 and from 2018 I made my first and second base model, that I been improving with the years. I'm currently working on a new base model (finally) with a higher poly-count, as my current one lacks geometry, specially compared with the clothes and accessories I make.
My goal is to start using this new model once I release 100 characters.

As I say on all my models, everything is made by me. This is my way of saying that I do all the meshes, textures, shaders, etc by myself, and that means I do not use anything from other sources (except that time I used a guitar on my Haruhi model, an open sourced model from blender swap, just because I didn't want to make a whole guitar for just a render XD)

Why I insist on doing thing this way?
-Self-Learning.
-Giving the blender community resources without restrictions
-It's fun

First point, I learned (and still do) to use blender by just making things, from small object to full rigged characters with +16 costumes, that gave me my current skills, while learning new things with each new project.

Second. By making everything by myself I can just say: Here is my model, do what you want with it, edit it, destroy it,use it on your projects, keep my model free if you redistribute it, just the model, you can commercialize your works made using it, just give me credit to keep them under cc by 4.0 (Although, the real reason I ask for credits is because I like to see what other people make using them, I'm guilty of that xD)

When I started learning blender, anime models, specially free and easy to download where pretty rare. You had tools to port from things like mmd and xna, but native anime models where not the norm and so I decided to start uploading each model I made.

Third. I do this for fun, not for profit. And I want to keep things like this as long as I can.

Sorry for the long post

Hey there, banchouforte. That reminds me. Have you started using the free Loop Tools plugin for Blender yet? It is THE best way to smooth out geometry after manual vertex editing. Just select a string of connected edges and click Loop Tools > Edges > Relax. The verts are now an evenly-spaced curve with the start and endpoints untouched. I noticed a number of opportunities to polish with this function as recently as Princess Peach. (But I can't say for certain that none of the issues I was correcting were caused by me. )

 

[Deleted member 1121028]

CPU-bound simulation by far take the crown, whatever engine.
Can get really quick from "don't care" then "what a fucking nightmare".

 

[CurvyLinesEverywhere]

Welcome!

Man, that's wild! I searched your username name online ( just now ) and after about 100 or so hits, I still haven't found a direct link to this forum as it pertains to you. In less than a week, no less (which is generally not enough time for most crawlers to index new information!)

It does however link to this thread if you type banchouforte + f95zone in .

Nevertheless, I'm glad you're here.

It would be excellent if you could also address the misconception that I (or anyone, really) have taken your work and used it to make adult games. Or, even edited some of your models to do so.

To be fair, some people, somewhere may have, but that seems impractical when you take into consideration that - as game devs - we use programs that allow us to make 3D models easily and simply. Most of us aren't artists, and therefore can't be bothered with the 1-5 hour process per model required to import a "bare" model into our rendering programs / game engines.

This clarification is just so all parties involved understand, after all, some people seem convinced otherwise.

To clarify, all I did was ask you if you were using his models exactly the way he explicitly allows you to under

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. And the only reason I asked was because I thought the hair technique looked kinda similar.

I suggested you compare topologies to rule it out because it's something that's easy for you to do on your end. I'm not really sure how you'd expect banchouforte to "address" the issue if he either doesn't own a copy of the program you used or else doesn't have access to the content used in your renders. (And he certainly can't check every adult game that ever existed to rule out the possibility that someone used his models.)

In fact, I daresay one would have to be insanely determined desperate, unaware of simpler options, or a complete beginner at their craft to consider doing what has been suggested up above by OP. Either way, I'm not really sure how you kept getting mentioned, to be honest. This isn't the first time I've seen OP mention you, so I'd wager they are truly a fan.

You're right that I'm a complete beginner to the craft of creating original models from scratch in Blender. Although the banchouforte models I've seen so far aren't perfect, they do improve with each new release, and I'm very excited about the previews I've seen for the newer ones. I look forward to the day when his work gets so good that users importing them into some of the more limited hobbyist programs out there becomes not only plausible, but almost inevitable.

CPU-bound simulation by far take the crown, whatever engine.
Can get really quick from "don't care" then "what a fucking nightmare".

I assume you're talking about Physics Simulation?

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,

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, etc? I try not to use it in Blender. When I do use it, I usually bake the results, but the exact workflow depends on my goal.

 

[banchouforte]

Hey there, banchouforte. That reminds me. Have you started using the free Loop Tools plugin for Blender yet? It is THE best way to smooth out geometry after manual vertex editing. Just select a string of connected edges and click Loop Tools > Edges > Relax. The verts are now an evenly-spaced curve with the start and endpoints untouched. I noticed a number of opportunities to polish with this function as recently as Princess Peach. (But I can't say for certain that none of the issues I was correcting were caused by me. )

I am! I actually started using it some time ago, mostly on current WIP projects, and I think I used it a lot on while remaking Sakura.
Also curious, what are the opportunities you mention? Helpful feedback is always appreciated!

 

[CurvyLinesEverywhere]

I am! I actually started using it some time ago, mostly on current WIP projects, and I think I used it a lot on while remaking Sakura.
Also curious, what are the opportunities you mention? Helpful feedback is always appreciated!

I want to say there were some janky jagged angles in the chin and cheekbone area? I was trying to change the shape of the chin and nose, though, so it might have been all my doing. Remember to turn off the Subdivision Surface modifiers while in Edit Mode, otherwise you may not see them even if they're there. They were certianly subtle enough that you wouldn't notice it with Subsurf turned on.

Side note: The crown and the dress all looked amazing. So crisp and precisely scaled! How you managed to set that up without referencing any of Nintendo's models or images is beyond me... or is it just the base mesh you made without referencing other models, not neccessarily the accessories?

 

[banchouforte]

I want to say there were some janky jagged angles in the chin and cheekbone area? I was trying to change the shape of the chin and nose, though, so it might have been all my doing. Remember to turn off the Subdivision Surface modifiers while in Edit Mode, otherwise you may not see them even if they're there. They were certianly subtle enough that you wouldn't notice it with Subsurf turned on.

Side note: The crown and the dress all looked amazing. So crisp and precisely scaled! How you managed to set that up without referencing any of Nintendo's models or images is beyond me... or is it just the base mesh you made without referencing other models, not neccessarily the accessories?

Yes, the face is where I'm mainly using the plug-in. One of the reasons I'm making a new base model is to add more geometry to some areas that are lacking, like the face and the torso.

As I said, everything that's on my uploads was made by me.

That costume, for example, started as a base cube. Then I cut it in half to be able to work on mirror mode. I manually subdivide the cube and start adding geometry to roughly cover the body as needed. After that it's "just" adding-removing geometry, adjusting shapes, adding new bases to add more geometry, separate edges, join them again, making curves. Oh and also using the sculpt tools a lot to move things around and smooth vertex. Modifiers like lattices, solidify, skin-wrap, etc are also part of the process.

I guess it's because I have made a lot of costumes and accessories, that I feel pretty comfortable just using blender to do all from scratch. In fact, I just use one ot two pictures for reference while making a model. Desing sheets like the ones found on artbooks are really helpful for details and hidden parts.

Also, by having so much stuff made already, I can recycle meshes from my other models. A generic shirt can be made into a jacket. A generic short into a pair of trousers, and so.

 

[CurvyLinesEverywhere]

Yes, the face is where I'm mainly using the plug-in. One of the reasons I'm making a new base model is to add more geometry to some areas that are lacking, like the face and the torso.

As I said, everything that's on my uploads was made by me.

That costume, for example, started as a base cube. Then I cut it in half to be able to work on mirror mode. I manually subdivide the cube and start adding geometry to roughly cover the body as needed. After that it's "just" adding-removing geometry, adjusting shapes, adding new bases to add more geometry, separate edges, join them again, making curves. Oh and also using the sculpt tools a lot to move things around and smooth vertex. Modifiers like lattices, solidify, skin-wrap, etc are also part of the process.

I guess it's because I have made a lot of costumes and accessories, that I feel pretty comfortable just using blender to do all from scratch. In fact, I just use one ot two pictures for reference while making a model. Desing sheets like the ones found on artbooks are really helpful for details and hidden parts.

Also, by having so much stuff made already, I can recycle meshes from my other models. A generic shirt can be made into a jacket. A generic short into a pair of trousers, and so.

By any chance, are you familiar with

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? They have the fastest Blender tutorial videos on Youtube. Dude talks fast, makes his point concisely and doesn't waste your time. Maybe it's because he's a New Yorker? I don't know. Anyway, even though you clearly already know what you're doing and you have a wealth of experience and practice to draw from, I think it might be worth taking a couple days to grind through their

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,

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and

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tutorials. Only 1% of what you learn might be new information, but it might be a pretty valuable 1% to have. Learning is learning. And I can almost guarantee nobody else will cover the redundant material faster.

 

[IridescentTaste]

For me it's music. I like to do everything myself - and when I have a story, then programming, dialogs and art is all fine because I already have a vision of how the game should look and how it should play out. Yes, it takes time but I know what I need to do to get the expected result.

And then I need to add music... For some parts, I can take some royalty free music when it fits, but for some scenes I want to make my own. Sometimes (rarely) I'm instantly inspired and it's easy, but sometimes (usually) it's just pain and I spend hours, even days on a theme for a character and just can't get it right.

Possible improvement - be less obsessive about it.

 

[banchouforte]

By any chance, are you familiar with

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? They have the fastest Blender tutorial videos on Youtube. Dude talks fast, makes his point concisely and doesn't waste your time. Maybe it's because he's a New Yorker? I don't know. Anyway, even though you clearly already know what you're doing and you have a wealth of experience and practice to draw from, I think it might be worth taking a couple days to grind through their

You must be registered to see the links

,

You must be registered to see the links

and

You must be registered to see the links

tutorials. Only 1% of what you learn might be new information, but it might be a pretty valuable 1% to have. Learning is learning. And I can almost guarantee nobody else will cover the redundant material faster.

Just checked his modelling tutorial, pretty useful and to the point, I like that. His modelling workflow is pretty good if you are making models for games and learning how some not so common tools work.
Nothing that I didn't know before but pretty useful to those that are learning! Wish I had something like this back when I started.

Also, on my case, I always make my models so that I do not need to use mask, instead everything is layered over the body, that way all the objects can be individual enabled/disabled easily, like a dress up doll (plus I can easily move clothes between my models as an added value), so his workflow doesn't work for me, but again, pretty cool to learn stuff you didn't knew before. Imay come back for that animation tutorial if I decided to follow that path too

 

[Deleted member 1121028]

I assume you're talking about Physics Simulation?

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,

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, etc? I try not to use it in Blender. When I do use it, I usually bake the results, but the exact workflow depends on my goal.

Mostly an old Phoenix build. But doesn't really matter.
One should know any CPU bound sim is one click away from complete disaster.

I don't make the rules.

 

[KiaAzad]

The tightest bottleneck in my projects is the drawn art, an all of my attempts to cut corners and simplify the process just backfired and made it worse.
It was the same with the writing, but I've found out I can write the story myself, people will tolerate bad writing more, than bad art.
Since there is a discussion related to tools going on too: Better tools doesn't necessarily speed up your workflow, there's a strong human element at play as well.
I've noticed that often acquiring better tools has the opposite effect on my workflow, I've been trying to learn to draw, I've bought 3 different pen tablets, and with each one the time I'm spending on practice has shrunk, the same with 3D, ever since I've upgraded from my laptop to a new PC, I've stopped rendering 3D images. At this point, my daz account just accumulates dust and every now and then new assets I'm not using.

 

[CurvyLinesEverywhere]

The tightest bottleneck in my projects is the drawn art, an all of my attempts to cut corners and simplify the process just backfired and made it worse.
It was the same with the writing, but I've found out I can write the story myself, people will tolerate bad writing more, than bad art.
Since there is a discussion related to tools going on too: Better tools doesn't necessarily speed up your workflow, there's a strong human element at play as well.
I've noticed that often acquiring better tools has the opposite effect on my workflow, I've been trying to learn to draw, I've bought 3 different pen tablets, and with each one the time I'm spending on practice has shrunk, the same with 3D, ever since I've upgraded from my laptop to a new PC, I've stopped rendering 3D images. At this point, my daz account just accumulates dust and every now and then new assets I'm not using.

I had to look it up. Just to clarify for people who aren't familiar with your backstory, you've been commissioning hand-drawn fan art of popular characters for your games, is that correct?

Learning to draw will be a long slow journey, but when you come out the other side of it, you will be able to create the scenes you imagine with the characters you want, at cost, and on-model.

I guess the takeaway is, sometimes it's worth doing things the slow way?

 

[KiaAzad]

I guess the takeaway is, sometimes it's worth doing things the slow way?

It is a valuable skill I like to have, but I'm leaning towards pixel art these days, and I'll probably jump to AI branch next. That might be another issue worth keeping an eye on, not sticking to one discipline and jumping around too much can slow your advance.

 

[CurvyLinesEverywhere]

It is a valuable skill I like to have, but I'm leaning towards pixel art these days, and I'll probably jump to AI branch next. That might be another issue worth keeping an eye on, not sticking to one discipline and jumping around too much can slow your advance.

Yeah, not gonna lie... you've already released your game? And you still sound like one of those guys who never releases a game.

Try and fight that instinct to jump from project to shiny new project. (And, no, redefining the scope of your current project doesn't count!) The more high-level the scope of your decision, the more costly it is for you to change your mind about that decision after you've already committed to it. This isn't even a rule of game design, so much as project management in general. Learn it now, practice it often.

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, course-correcting as early as possible. If you've already released a build, you're on the right track.

The only reason to quit or drastically change what it is would be if people hated the previous version. (In which case chaging only helps if you change what they didn't like about it. And

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They only care about the experience.)