Help with possible tools for scenario and character design

[Breinex]

Hello everyone!

Well, as the title says, I need a bit of help with this topic and I didn't know where to put it exactly. I think I'm in the right place, if not, let me know and I'll take the post where it belongs.

But the thing is that I want to start working my own project. The problem I'm facing is that I'm great at programming, but not so much with art. I was trying to study my options but so far people have recommended me using Daz3D and such, and I tried to take a look at it, noticing that it takes some investment to get certain models and clothes, and sex animations... Either that, or do all that manually which would take a huge toll on me, more so because I have no clue how to use the program and I'd have to start from scratch. Is it too hard to do it all manually? Or what do you recommend?

Someone also pointed out that I could do things like some games in here, and use Honey Select or Honey Select 2. But is that even legal? And how exactly does that work?

And then I was recommended to find me someone who could actually draw and use some tools to animate in 2D. But what are those tools?

As of right now, based on what I wrote (My story is finished), I think 2D is kind of the best option for what I want. I'll be using Ren'py, and I want to create a fun game, with comedy and relationships, stats, and events... Not sure yet if I'll put mini-games on it... But still, I'd like to know all my options and your recommendations for such a project.

So, let me know what you think, and if you have any advice or warnings, they're all welcome!

Thanks!

 

[Dark_Sytze]

I can't really talk a lot about 2D, animations and such. But for Daz3D you can "find" a lot of resources for "free". If you go to the asset releases and asset requests topics on this site there's a lot of assets being placed there every day. There's also a couple of website recommendations where you can find the most popular assets for free.
Daz3D is a great program, fairly easy to get started with but quite difficult to master. There is a big risk that your art will not stand out from other games, who all use the same assets.

I'm actually sort of facing the same issue as you, where I have a pretty decent start on a game, including working mechanisms but I get stuck on the art. I've used Daz extensively but it's just doesn't make your game stand out.

 

[Breinex]

I can't really talk a lot about 2D, animations and such. But for Daz3D you can "find" a lot of resources for "free". If you go to the asset releases and asset requests topics on this site there's a lot of assets being placed there every day. There's also a couple of website recommendations where you can find the most popular assets for free.
Daz3D is a great program, fairly easy to get started with but quite difficult to master. There is a big risk that your art will not stand out from other games, who all use the same assets.

I'm actually sort of facing the same issue as you, where I have a pretty decent start on a game, including working mechanisms but I get stuck on the art. I've used Daz extensively but it's just doesn't make your game stand out.

Thanks a lot for your reply man!

This is exactly one of my worries of using Daz3D. I don't really want my game to look like a "Copy" of other games, and being honest, I didn't know where to start with Daz3D and all those things about genesis that and genesis this, got me quite confused about what to use. The animation part... I noticed that most people are just using pre-made animations that they got from somewhere, don't know if they're free or paid, but I guess this is not a huge problem as it is the issue with modeling and creating authentic characters.

The other issue I have is that i really wanted to start with my comedy game and using 3D animations for it sounds like quite a burden... So if I start with Daz3D, while I learn, I might have to go with another story I have in mind and I'm not too fond to that idea. But we'll see.

Thanks again, brother! Good luck with your game, and if you have already published a version of it, let me know, I'd like to take a look at it!

 

[Dark_Sytze]

Thanks again, brother! Good luck with your game, and if you have already published a version of it, let me know, I'd like to take a look at it!

It might never come to a published version in my case to be honest. I've decided to start to learn to draw. If I do ever publish a first version it will be filled with terrible hand drawn artwork as placeholders. As I feel that even having bad hand drawn art suits the feel of the game I'm making better than having Daz renders.

Animations can be pirated as well, however I do think Daz had a relatively easy system in place for animations, where you sort of place a beginning pose on a frame at T=0, and then another pose at for example T=60 frames and it does a pretty decent job if filling in the in betweens.

 

[Sad_Guts1880]

I am by no means some one qualified but y not use ai as a basic placeholder? to get the general feel of the look u want then recreate in whatever medium u want be it 2d or 3d just add notes, u dont need to find an artist if u have no idea what they should draw and the problem with daz3d in my eyes are camera angles and the minimalism aka boring houses. like Dark_Sytze said u can pretty much pirate anything if u know were to look. u can disregard anything i said tho really dont know what im talking about lmao

 

[Breinex]

I am by no means some one qualified but y not use ai as a basic placeholder? to get the general feel of the look u want then recreate in whatever medium u want be it 2d or 3d just add notes, u dont need to find an artist if u have no idea what they should draw and the problem with daz3d in my eyes are camera angles and the minimalism aka boring houses. like Dark_Sytze said u can pretty much pirate anything if u know were to look. u can disregard anything i said tho really dont know what im talking about lmao

Do you have any idea which AI to use? I was given the same advice before, to use AI and learn a few tricks to make animations... But I didn't know exactly where to look. If you could give me a hand with it, please!

 

[Dark_Sytze]

Do you have any idea which AI to use? I was given the same advice before, to use AI and learn a few tricks to make animations... But I didn't know exactly where to look. If you could give me a hand with it, please!

If you have a decent GPU you can run it locally by using Stable Diffusion or Flux based models. Otherwise you will have to find a provider that has uncensored models. Just do keep in mind that a lot of people dislike AI, and poorly done AI work is even worse than Daz3D.