Five Days [0.25]

[Archast]

Guys, I've been creating a game for the past months, I have all the scripts done, the engine is ready and the assets are all acquired (as far as I can tell), but I would like to get some feedback on some things before I start to render all the scenes, here are some infos:

Engine: Unity
CG: 3D models rendered on 3DSMax
Genre: 2D RPG(ish)
Fetishs planned: Corruption, naive, F/F, F/M, M/F/M, voyeur.
Length: Some hours

So here comes the "whys", if you're not interested go down to the last paragraph.

Why Unity for 2D: So I can export to any platform, and I already have knowledge of the engine (have made games before), because it's far more optimized than rpgmaker, and because it's free.

Why 3D models: Because I can't draw, and don't want to rely on other people to do my job, as I'm a 3D amateur artist, I can compose, set materials, model and render my own scenes on my own, I use some models from daz to speed things up, but everything is done in 3rd party software.

The game: The player will follow the story of Marcy, a young woman that has to work in her mother's place for a week at a hotel, as the week goes by the player will face options and can end the game as a slut or a saint and anything in between, and as this is a porn game expect porn on it.

But I need some input on the renders, I have 2 options:
1st: Render with Daz3D, it would take me minimal work to set up (~30 min) but the render scene I used for testing took up almost 10 hours to render.
2nd: Render with 3DSMax, it takes me some time to set things up (fix the materials mainly, 1 or 2 hours), but the same render scene took me 50 min to end.

So for the question, should I stick with 3DS (as I intend to do right now), or change to DAZ? The render I have in this post was made using 3DSMax, if the quality is not enough I might go back to DAZ, and DAZ quality is the same you see in every 3D game around.

 

[QBQ]

well, the image is good but it all depends on you, if you use 3DSMax, you work more on the setup, but you will probably render more things in less time (and time is money) but if you are more at ease whith DAZ you should probably go back to it. As I've already told you, the image quality is good, so if u want an opinion just on the quality, I say stick with 3DSMax.
Hope I've been of any help

 

[depeche]

My 2 cents :

Render with the engine you feel most comfortable with, let flow the images as fast as you can, cause it could be a real pain in the ass to wait hours for one image.

The render you posted is very good ( for my taste) and by far sufficient for a first game.

Once it will be done, you sure can switch to another program for the next game if that one finaly don't fit the quality you aim.

 

[TCMS]

My 2 cents :
Render with the engine you feel most comfortable with, let flow the images as fast as you can, cause it could be a real pain in the ass to wait hours for one image.

This is my response

 

[Archast]

Thanks for the answers guys, I'll stick with 3DSMax for now, I might change it later but it's good enough for the quality I want now, I'll keep you guys informed

 

[Archast]

Guys, I think I'll have a test build for tomorrow, really short with only 6 CGs, would you be willing to test it for me? Really need to know if there's something to change while I can.

 

[muttdoggy]

That should be fun.. I'll give it a sniff.

 

[Archast]

Guys, here's the build, it's really rough and it "ends" after the first time you sleep, there are some things to do after but no cg whatsoever. Right now there aren't any soft locks, so it's easy to "break" the flow, I'll fix this later, because right now I want speed to test, but please tell me what you think.

Ps.: I'll change the text display box, it's ugly and out of position, it's just there for testing purposes.

 

[Archast]

@muttdoggy Found the bug with the bed you've mentioned, thanks for the heads up, I'm working in more content right now and should release a new version in a couple of days.

 

[Davidreiter]

@muttdoggy Found the bug with the bed you've mentioned, thanks for the heads up, I'm working in more content right now and should release a new version in a couple of days.

Maby a stupid Question but test the build is possible? and if yes were to get it?

 

[Archast]

Maby a stupid Question but test the build is possible? and if yes were to get it?

Two posts above, it's attached to the post itself

 

[Davidreiter]

thought it was only a picture:FeelsBadMan:

 

[Archast]

thought it was only a picture:FeelsBadMan:

The test build is up on the main post too, so others don't feel lost , sorry for the inconvenience.

 

[D3ssel]

Being a 3d modeller myself, I do have some serious beef with 3daz models, and how amateurish they look (especially when it comes to hair, skin textures, etc...). If you do know your way around 3DMax (or Zbrush, Maya, Modo, etc) I would seriously suggest that you consider making your own models.
Also, I've yet to see a single render in Daz that is anything near barely decent in my books. I would definitely avoid it. If rendering times are a problem, maybe you should consider options like Keyshot, Octane (which has a very nice subscription option now) or, (best option, imho) Redshift. That would seriously lower your render time.

Huge kudos for going Unity. It's a proper game engine, leagues better than RPGMaker, RenPy and the likes.

Still, I'm curious and looking forward to see your work developing ^^

EDIT: After playing the alpha, I also believe that the lighting of your renders could use some improvements. As such, I really think you should consider doing your renders using Keyshot. It's one of the easiest to learn rendering engines out there, pretty fast, and can output stuff like this (This is a 3Daz model, btw)

Also, please don't feel disappointed by my words. I've yet to see a 3d game in Patreon impress me with its CGs. Just the fact that you are willing to use a proper 3d modelling program for your game is a huge plus in my books. Keep it up

 

[Archast]

@D3ssel I know my ways around but I'm still fresh in this department, I don't think I have enough knowledge to make my own models, or rig and pose them to be something good, right now the only factor keeping me with 3DS is the render time, because daz is much easier to work with, but I'll take a look at the other options you mentioned, right now I'm stuck with Vray.

 

[Archast]

EDIT: After playing the alpha, I also believe that the lighting of your renders could use some improvements. As such, I really think you should consider doing your renders using Keyshot. It's one of the easiest to learn rendering engines out there, pretty fast, and can output stuff like this (This is a 3Daz model, btw)

Could you please elaborate a little on the light issues? I agree that this is one of my weak areas. And about keyshot I've seen it and will try it to see if I can do something with it.

And don't mind about the criticism, this is the kind of thing I need to read and learn in order to improve, keep it coming

 

[TCMS]

A few things I'd like to ask:
1st: Always run
2nd: Make walking / running faster

That's pretty much it

 

[Archast]

A few things I'd like to ask:
1st: Always run
2nd: Make walking / running faster

That's pretty much it

On my dev build I have shift for run, it doubles the speed

 

[Archast]

@D3ssel I followed your suggestion and here are the products of a day fiddling with Keyshot.

The render quality is amazing, I'm really impressed, but it lacks a lot of fine tuning, I can't make the material transparent or make the subsurface scatering use a color map... I know these should be noob problems but I saw some videos and still couldn't make the cloth a bit transparent, even ramping up the specular transmission did not help... But the scatering map is really not necessary as the skin is already realistic enough.

But as far as I could tell the hair will always look like shit, I couldn't fix it.

I guess I'll keep trying to find options, I'm trying to use a script to export from daz with everything in place, so it should be easier to work ahead.

 

[anime]

Why on earth are you making a VN/2D RPG hybrid in Unity? RPGmaker (VX Ace) being "bad" is just a meme fed by Patreon devs being lazy and/or bad at programming. If anything, Unity is a piece of shit for what you're doing. Every render is packed uncompressed. So for a standard 1080p render, you're looking at 2 MB of disk space. Then consider your actual game: you'll have to assemble a spriteset, character sprites, spend days or weeks defining basic classes that are default in RPGmaker, ...