Designing and fiddling with characters is fun and the root of a game or VN, but the sets are where the work is and what makes a scene come alive. It's also a frustrating pain in the ass. Due to the size and complexity, it WAY slows down the computer and takes forever to render. The other thing is, unless all your story takes place during daytime or indoors in lots of light, lighting a scene can take forever. The other thing I've found is that low light levels that look correct on the screen render badly. Daz tries to render the scene with the light at hand and it makes a lower resolution end product than you want. The trick is to light it correctly, turn up all the lighting values so that the scene renders, then take it into GIMP (or Photoshop) and lower the light level of the final render. Adds post processing to every render
but makes a better product. This is a side by side of some of the difference
Basic Treehouse
As dressed and rendered. Good but too bright for nighttime.
After Exposure minor compensation. Better. Would probably do something to keep detail in the trees for actual game render.
Standard Interior, basic lighting
Standard Interior, increased lighting. Much more detail
Same bright image, minor exposure compensation. You can see more detail in this one than the first one of similar brightness.
Interior as dressed and rendered by me, lots of light. Too bright for candlelight
Same image with minor exposure compensation. Better but the "starlights" over the plants are too dark now.
Same image with heavier editing to bring down the light on the left but not the right. Quick and dirty, you can spot the area where they split
Ok, people. More images, none of them girls but still from the game (probably). Set dressing the treehouse and getting it lit and everything took me the better part of two days, with some work on other living quarters. This has made me want to go back and redo the house that I've already done layouts for 25 renders. Won't be horrible. Once I get the house like I want it I can merge the people from the originals into the new scenes and tweak them ( I hope). This is going to delay things, but I'm no where near ready to realease anything for months anyway and hopefully it will make a better product in the long run. I don't want to hate my earliest chapters and feel like redoing them. Too many games have died in "rework" or in some cases look worse.
