Gamedevs should work together with 3D artists

[Fuchsschweif]

The flood of games with mediocre and even bad sex scenes won't stop. Some games have so much potential and are great storywise, but you don't really feel rewarded after finally getting that one babe laid, if the entire sex scene is just a huge letdown.

In my guide about setting up sex scenes the side-to-side comparisons between NSFW game devs and actual 3D artists (later down in the "pov" bonus section) shows how many galaxies both are apart from each other.

Just a quick example from the guide:






Needless to tell you who's the 3D artist.

Getting back to the thread's topic, I think many game devs would actually benefit a t o n by working together with an NSFW 3D artist. Not only would the development time of the game speed up like insane - the game developer could focus on the technical aspects and the writing instead of bothering with stuff he isn't good at -, but the game would also be just a triple A experience in terms of sex scenes. Which, in theory, can even make up for not the best writing and gameplay mechanics.

What does that mean? That means more people who subscribe and buy the game, which equals to more money, a bigger fanbase and resources for the next project. It would be common to share revenue with the artist and cut him some provision of the overall sales. This way even developers without any budget could work with 3D artists right from the beginning.

Imagine all the good games out there would have this fantastically looking animations. A dream!

 

[NeonSelf]

Have you ever worked in a team? How about dealing with a coworker, who's only motivation is a promise of possible future profit instead of regular fixed payments?

Woking alone is easier:
- you make the game at your own pace,
- get timeoff whenever you want,
- dont have to communicate and deal with other people and their problems or delays,
- explore your own kinks,
- have all the assets for yourself, nobody will suddenly disappear with all the 3D models for your game

Anything with strict schedule and quality control becomes work. And most adult games I see here are a hobby projects with minimal risk and minimal programing experience.

Its great, if you can find a good artist willing to work on your game almost for free. But without actual experience of finishing any project alone, it will be even harder to manage a team.

PS: Your art looks great and I wish all games had perfect view angles and image compositions.

 

[Advent Games]

- other people and their problems or delays,
- have all the assets for yourself, nobody will suddenly disappear with all the 3D models for your game

These two in particular have killed or curtailed many a promising project. In MY experience, 3D artists have been very flaky. Unless you pay them something that won't pay itself back for years, realistically. Most of us devs don't have the kind of money for that kind of vanity project. Even if our projects don't make money, not many of us have the savings to blow on this either.

 

[♍VoidTraveler]

Working alone is easier:
- you make the game at your own pace, or you can just slack around all day. You can always finish that update next month.
- get time off whenever you want, after all, suckers on copium who subbed to your Patreon will pay you anyway.
- don't have to communicate and deal with other people and their problems or delays, or share any profits.
- explore your own kinks, who cares about the kinks of other people? You're making this game for yourself after all.
- have all the assets for yourself, nobody will suddenly disappear with all the 3D models for your game. Even if they were the ones who paid for those or made them.

You're absolutely correct my man.

 

[kytee]

The real truth of the matter is everyone wants to work on their own shit, whenever they want to work on it. Imagine a 3D artist who only makes porn of his favorite Overwatch characters now have to make some fucking landlady/roommate game with a game developer who he might not work well with, whose story might not resonate with, who might not even like the way those characters look, and might not even find the sex situations the developer put the characters in fun to work with or exciting at all. The reason this space exists at all is because people want to do and try their own shit. If one of those 3D artists wanted to work with the same set of characters over and over, why wouldn't he just make his own story? That way he dictates exactly what he wants to work on. This low barrier of entry is exactly what causes the flakiness that forces developers to learn how to create their own art and animations, because artists can easily decide they want to whip up their own story and pick up Renpy or RPGM and do everything themselves.

 

[Fuchsschweif]

Have you ever worked in a team? How about dealing with a coworker, who's only motivation is a promise of possible future profit instead of regular fixed payments?

That's pretty common in the world of freelancers and start-ups. Getting a provision also means that you can have some influence on how much you earn - the better your art draws customers in, the better the revenue, the bigger your share. That's a good motivation.

Woking alone is easier:
1. you make the game at your own pace,
2. get timeoff whenever you want,
3. dont have to communicate and deal with other people and their problems or delays,
explore your own kinks,
4. have all the assets for yourself, nobody will suddenly disappear with all the 3D models for your game

Choosing a provision based payment model doesn't make the 3D artist some sort of co-founder. He is still an employee that the developer hired, so all these points remain untouched. You can take breaks as you want, you can do it in your own pace and you can explore all sorts of kinks. It's not up to the 3D artists to step into the game design and tell you what to explore, he's only delivering the animations and is getting paid for it.

And point #4 is of course secured by the contract, where it's common to put on record that all assets created belong to the developer. That's what you pay for. In fact, you as developer would perhaps get the assets as you'd do normally and then provide them to the 3D artists so he can work with it. It's your game and your vision so you have to pick the models.

Most of us devs don't have the kind of money for that kind of vanity project. Even if our projects don't make money, not many of us have the savings to blow on this either.

That's why I suggested to run with the provision payment model. Like I said, that's common in the world of freelancers and start-ups. Many people don't have that initial budget, this is how they get things to run.

In this case it's even a bit easier because..

Imagine a 3D artist who only makes porn of his favorite Overwatch characters now have to make some fucking landlady/roommate game with a game developer who he might not work well with, whose story might not resonate with, who might not even like the way those characters look, and might not even find the sex situations the developer put the characters in fun to work with or exciting at all.

..the 3D artist still can get experience and more projects into his portfolio. It's not always about doing what you want. Committing to do XX amount of animations in a certain timespan can help immensely to grow as an artist. It's good against procrastination, many artists work better under pressure with actual deadlines, and of course money is a good motivator too.

That being said, of course it's optimal that a game developer and a 3D artist share somewhat the same interests when working together, if the 3D artist specifically wants to work on something he can stand behind. But like I said above, there are also 3D artists who are up for the challenge, like to put out a lot of content and learn along the way, build their portfolio and get paid.

It's not always about doing the exact perfect thing you could think of and only doing heart-projects. There's a lot of joy in the overall craft of being an artist, especially combined with a nice side income.

 

[Advent Games]

That's why I suggested to run with the provision payment model. Like I said, that's common in the world of freelancers and start-ups. Many people don't have that initial budget, this is how they get things to run.

Except half-way through, they decide it's no longer worth their time and leave, and now you're either stuck with an art style you can't reproduce and build on, or you have to redo all the art from scratch yourself anyway (meaning you might as well have done so from the start and save yourself a lot of time).

This is why things like Daz3D are so popular and effective. An artist does 80% of the work, and the developer pays, upfront, a fraction of the price of having an in-house or freelance artist. The remaining 20% of the artistic work is usually easy enough for the developer to learn. No delays, no flaky artists, no discussion about copyright ownership or royalties when the artist does leave, no worry about having to redo everything or trying to continue a certain art style seamlessly when the breakup happens.

I'm so adamant about this because it has happened to me. I used to have a partner in my development company. I gave them FULL artistic freedom for ALL the visuals, and they were into 3DCG as well. I was only going to do the coding and storywriting, and that's it. And even for the storyboard, I always had them with me, discussing and working out dialogue and plot. They got a 50% commission on the profits for their work; whatever came in after production costs were deducted, we split it evenly.

I don't know what else I can offer except an even bigger cut of the pie here. Long story short, it's better to pay upfront what you can afford as a developer and do the rest yourself. Things like Daz, the unity/unreal marketplace, Renderosity, and so on, fill that need perfectly. A professional gets you 80% there with the visuals and makes it easy to customise the remaining 20%.

 

[tanstaafl]

Anything with strict schedule and quality control becomes work. And most adult games I see here are a hobby projects with minimal risk and minimal programing experience.

I just wanted to throw out one small opinion. NeonSelf is right, I'm not going to debate that, but the trade off is quality of end result. Hobby projects, yes. But who doesn't want a better result? It's all a sliding scale of what you want vs. what you can afford. With a bit of pride tossed in to the mix. It's the pride part that gets in the way of most joint projects, I think.

I'm not a game dev, but I am a senior architect working over 20 years in non gaming fields. Years ago I got the thought into my head of making an AVN myself, but gave up on it fairly quickly. The coding and writing part was easy. With my experience I could make a renpy game that did double backflips compared to some I've seen here, but I have ZERO patience to learn the art/graphics side of it. I played with Daz and Blender a bit, did a few tutorials and just walked away from the idea. I thought about working with artists but the costs for what I'd need done are steep and there is no guarantee that the game I made, no matter how polished, would take off. So why risk that?

 

[Fuchsschweif]

Except half-way through, they decide it's no longer worth their time and leave, and now you're either stuck with an art style you can't reproduce and build on, or you have to redo all the art from scratch yourself anyway (meaning you might as well have done so from the start and save yourself a lot of time).

That wouldn't happen, see here:

In fact, you as developer would perhaps get the assets as you'd do normally and then provide them to the 3D artists so he can work with it. It's your game and your vision so you have to pick the models.

You could just give the assets to the next 3D artist you hire. It's also common in the world of freelancers to jump in mid-project when a position suddenly becomes vacant. Being able to quickly analyse the project, see how it was done and then reproduce the vibe is one of the skills every good working artist holds.

Regarding your story, I think you did it differently. You treated your artist like a co-founder, you even incorporated him with questions about the game design itself and so on. That's a different thing than the one that I have recommended in this thread, where you just hire someone to do the 3D stuff and animations.

What you eventually suggested is exactly what I suggested in this thread. Another benefit is of course, that the 3D artist will most likely have a very powerful machine which means short(er) rendering times.

 

[Living In A Lewd World]

That's pretty common in the world of freelancers and start-ups. Getting a provision also means that you can have some influence on how much you earn - the better your art draws customers in, the better the revenue, the bigger your share. That's a good motivation.



Choosing a provision based payment model doesn't make the 3D artist some sort of co-founder. He is still an employee that the developer hired, so all these points remain untouched. You can take breaks as you want, you can do it in your own pace and you can explore all sorts of kinks. It's not up to the 3D artists to step into the game design and tell you what to explore, he's only delivering the animations and is getting paid for it.

And point #4 is of course secured by the contract, where it's common to put on record that all assets created belong to the developer. That's what you pay for. In fact, you as developer would perhaps get the assets as you'd do normally and then provide them to the 3D artists so he can work with it. It's your game and your vision so you have to pick the models.



That's why I suggested to run with the provision payment model. Like I said, that's common in the world of freelancers and start-ups. Many people don't have that initial budget, this is how they get things to run.

In this case it's even a bit easier because..



..the 3D artist still can get experience and more projects into his portfolio. It's not always about doing what you want. Committing to do XX amount of animations in a certain timespan can help immensely to grow as an artist. It's good against procrastination, many artists work better under pressure with actual deadlines, and of course money is a good motivator too.

That being said, of course it's optimal that a game developer and a 3D artist share somewhat the same interests when working together, if the 3D artist specifically wants to work on something he can stand behind. But like I said above, there are also 3D artists who are up for the challenge, like to put out a lot of content and learn along the way, build their portfolio and get paid.

It's not always about doing the exact perfect thing you could think of and only doing heart-projects. There's a lot of joy in the overall craft of being an artist, especially combined with a nice side income.

The absolute main problem with good 3D-artists is, there are actually only a few. Much less than game creators. And those who exist can make more and easier money doing non-lewd-content.

So, if you want to work with any 3D-artist, as a developer, you will probably mostly work on their terms, if you even find somebody, who will work with you.

Regarding the assets: This is actually also a question of the art. One can buy standard-models especially for DAZ, but art will be higher valued, when one uses rather uncommon models, for which you need the artists again to create them.

Regarding hire another artists, when one left you. And I don't speak about that even two artists using DAZ or HS or whatever will probably still produce quite different images, as they might have different imaginations about lighting, angels, poses post-production and whatever... . And finding an artist who will produce the art of another artist in a world, in which artists are rare is quite hard, especially when you might accidentially not become of the 1 % being able to earn their living from producing lewd games. But I think this is still the smallest problem and with drawn art much more problematic than with e.g. DAZ-Art. The question of the assets and even finding an artist, who shares your vision and will work with you is much more important.

 

[woody554]

you can invert the question and ask why don't professional 3d-artists make their own game here alone to rake in those sweet 50K+ a month patreon incomes with their superior art quality?

because:
-they're building a career in serious projects, the one they got good FOR.
-unlikely to score the success you assume they would.
-it's just not that easy.

 

[Advent Games]

sweet 50K+ a month patreon incomes

Only a tiny, tiny, tiny percentage of developers ever reach that. For the vast majority of us, this is a hobby, and most, if not all, of the money we get from our supporters goes back into the game. Patreon/substar support usually means not a high-end career but rather more high-end renders, music, mechanics, and so on for the game itself. Developers usually take this for granted, or come to the realisation pretty quickly and either continue it as a hobby project or they abandon the game.

Most 3D artists want to build a portfolio for it, and as they realise it's not making them any money any time soon...or ever, they hop over to the next shiny thing that catches their attention.

where you just hire someone

Like 99,99% of developers (read the first part of this reply), I have no money for that. What you're suggesting is very nice for both parties, but most of the time there's no budget for it. Sure, the 50k+ a month devs can do this, and they typically have (a) part-time or full-time in-house artist(s) already. What you're asking is that all devs, no matter their budget, do this. It kind of shows the stereotype of artists being oblivious to business.

 

[Fuchsschweif]

The absolute main problem with good 3D-artists is, there are actually only a few. Much less than game creators. And those who exist can make more and easier money doing non-lewd-content.

If you look at the very well performing NSFW games, alone their monthly Patreon revenue is insanely high, and that's not even concluding post-release-sales. The NSFW game market is one of the biggest in terms of making money. But in order to be at the top, the art really needs to be fantastic as well.

Regarding the assets: This is actually also a question of the art. One can buy standard-models especially for DAZ, but art will be higher valued, when one uses rather uncommon models, for which you need the artists again to create them.

As the contract gives you exclusive rights over the assets created, any custom characters that are built with let's say DAZ would belong to you, even if the animator decides to leave the project. So the next one can work with it.

Regarding hire another artists, when one left you. And I don't speak about that even two artists using DAZ or HS or whatever will probably still produce quite different images, as they might have different imaginations about lighting, angels, poses post-production and whatever...

That's not much of a problem, like I said earlier, this happens in many different projects across all digital media. These people can adapt so that the casual customer won't notice it.

you can invert the question and ask why don't professional 3d-artists make their own game here alone to rake in those sweet 50K+ a month patreon incomes with their superior art quality?

Because they don't enjoy coding and writing text, they enjoy making 3D animations. That's the whole point of the thread That people work together doing the fields they enjoy and they're actually very good at.

3D animators who will force themselves to code, do game design, write tons of text, most likely will run out of motivation if it's just a vehicle for them to implement their animations. On the other hand, what's taking so long for most NSFW game devs is doing all the renders and animations. Their machines aren't built for that, they frequently have to troubleshoot things, learn how to do this and that and the output is still mediocre.

That's why most updates after half a year come back with 5 new animations but 200.000 new words. And many just give up along the way. I see the appeal of doing everything by oneself, but it does nothing for you if it will eventually lead to you abandoning your game or all the effort going to waste when your game is finished and all the sex scenes are so mid, that they feel rather unrewarding for the players.

 

[Fuchsschweif]

Like 99,99% of developers (read the first part of this reply), I have no money for that. What you're suggesting is very nice for both parties, but most of the time there's no budget for it. Sure, the 50k+ a month devs can do this, and they typically have (a) part-time or full-time in-house artist(s) already.

I said two times that I am talking about a revenue-sharing-model. This is common in the freelancer world when working with startups / indie developers. You don't need upfront payments for that.

 

[bethrezen0]

Can they get a state mandated 3D artist(or even 2D) then please ? No ? Well, there's a problem then.
Artists usually have their own Patreons, Gumroad Itch.io and stuff to care about. They don't need some amateur no name game developer. And they probably don't want to make a game either, since making an actually good game is much way harder than spamming some r34 overwatch animations. And probably less profitable.
Only way then is to commission them the assets and stuff, which is not very profitable for you as a game dev, where do you get all that cash anyways ? 3D artists ask a fucking lot for their work.

 

[Fuchsschweif]

Can they get a state mandated 3D artist(or even 2D) then please ? No ? Well, there's a problem then.
Artists usually have their own Patreons, Gumroad Itch.io and stuff to care about. They don't need some amateur no name game developer. And they probably don't want to make a game either, since making an actually good game is much way harder than spamming some r34 overwatch animations. And probably less profitable.
Only way then is to commission them the assets and stuff, which is not very profitable for you as a game dev, where do you get all that cash anyways ? 3D artists ask a fucking lot for their work.

Make 5k a month, give 30% to the artist, that's 1500 extra bucks for him on the side and 3500 for you. For a part-time project that's absolutely fantastic, and 5K is a realistic goal for a good game. With excellent animations from an actual 3D NSFW artist, 5k is probably even pessimistic, given that you'll leave a lot of other developers in that area behind. Because 99% of the market doesn't deliver that quality of animations, so you'll naturally see this extra effort reflecting in the numbers. Now since you split the workload instead of trying to do everything alone, the better update frequency will also have positive effects on the subscriber numbers.

There are NSFW developers on Patreon that make even way more than that (10k+) who definitely not even put part-time effort into their project. Ironically, the number #1 DarkCookie has released almost nothing in the past 2 years and is still having over 31.000 paying monthly members. And again, that's still pre-release without all the post-release sales.

 

[woody554]

DarkCookie has released almost nothing in the past 2 years and is still having over 31.000 paying monthly members.

and he did it with first tracing over porn then slowly improving his drawing skills to mediocre hobbyist.

also after he hired other people the development speed absolutely crashed with no visible improvement to the game. he was doing much better alone. that's something we see constantly in this space as well as real game studios starting from a1-2 developers getting a hit. (it's also what the science of project management has shown in studies since 1960s, starting from the one done in carnegie mellon that's probably taught to software engineers everywhere. "adding people to late projects makes them more late".)

 

[Fuchsschweif]

and he did it with first tracing over porn then slowly improving his drawing skills to mediocre hobbyist.

The point was that you can make these amounts of money on the side, it doesn't require you to work full time on the project. And since you split the workload anyways instead of trying to do everything alone, it's even less work. So making 5k with such a project is even way more profitable than doing 5k working fulltime somewhere.

 

[woody554]

The point was that you can make these amounts of money on the side, it doesn't require you to work full time on the project. And since you split the workload anyways instead of trying to do everything alone, it's even less work. So making 5k with such a project is even way more profitable than doing 5k working fulltime somewhere.

the problem is getting to that 5K is super rare. and a 3d-artist of that level makes a lot more as a freelancer. there's really no incentive.

 

[Fuchsschweif]

Here's an example: https://f95zone.to/threads/the-bouncing-agency-v0-19-adn700.142560/

This game really stands out with the quality of the animations. In the reviews you can basically read all over the place that the animations are so great, that they even make up for not the best writing.

The game has been in development for not even 2 years, and the dev already has 1.054 paying subcribers on Patreon alone. Another 23 on Boosty. And that's still pre-release without actual game sales.

That's because the game simply stands out. And if you look at the changelog, the last update, despite being only version 0.19 brought over 40 new animations. 40!

Most NSFW developers don't even deliver 40 new animations in an entire year. In August 2023 the game was at v.014. That's 5 new updates in 10 months, and almost each of those came with 50+ new animations.

This is how it could run if people who are mainly good at coding and writing text would let some talented people do their animations instead of struggling year after year with mediocre output, letting their fanbases wait for an eternity each time.

the problem is getting to that 5K is super rare. and a 3d-artist of that level makes a lot more as a freelancer. there's really no incentive.

5k isn't super rare (check Patreon NSFW top lists), especially not for those putting in effort and standing out from the masses with great visuals.