How Are 3DCG Games Made?

[The Loli Lover]

I am going to be blunt, I know drawn games, such as nekopara, summertime saga and that are made by coding images to appear (which are predrawn) following dialogue blah blah blah. And the animations are just looped frames. These games are the most popular amongst patreon because as far as I can tell they have the most work put into them and are rewarded for that.

My question truly is that I don't know how the 3dcg stuff works. Are these also drawn or are thye just models used in some engine? A lot of these 2dcg games take months on months to update so I assume the character models aren't made by an engine? Or are they?

The reason I can see it being premade moderls etc is actually due to a lot of 3dcg games having the liquids (e.g. piss/cum) go "through" the "sprites"(?) to create an illusion of sorts.

Any response would be appreciated, but if you are going to use any terms that aren't exactly newbie friendly (like if you talk about animation words/techniques used) please explain them either in brackets or briefly explain them after. I'd rather not have to google a bunch of terminology for words. Lol

Thank you in advance~

 

[Egglock]

To put it simply, 3D objects are still drawn very much like 2D, with the exception that the artist is now working with 3 axis instead of 2, and there is more complexity to it. With out getting into the technical stuff, there is more work upfront for 3D, but once it's done the artist can iterate through it with ease, where else 2D, the upfront cost isn't as much, but there is more work during the iteration period, for example if they have to re-pose, give new clothing, hair, ect. the artist has to redraw any changes.

 

[Saki_Sliz]

Are you asking about how the3Dcg games are made?

Many use the technique of having scenes and characters pre-rendered. This means, using a software or engine (Daz3D being very popular since there is a NSFW community for it) they render a scene. Rendering is the act of working with a 3D scene or objects, and to make it into an image or video. Often this is important if say, your scene is too complex or trying to be soo realistic (such as bouncing simulated light rays around) that the engine or software cannot simulate or animate your scene in real-time/live, you have to render ready-made images and videos, and use that in the game instead since it is much easier for games and older computers to display a video or an image instead of trying to run a 3D engine.

Now what is common is that using a bunch of images rather than just the 3D models in your game leads to your file size growing very big. To fix this, a couple of tricks are used. Background scenes of locations are rendered by themselves. Characters are rendered with a transparent background, often characters will have multiple images of themselves, either with different poses, expressions, etc. Rarely will they be rendered as part of the scene itself. The reason for this is that artist (3D and the programmers) do not want to re-render the scene every for every pose and expression, it would be easier if they could reuse the images for a bunch of different background images/locations. not to mention it would save on file size. Although there are two exceptions to this. One is say, having your character sit on something in the background, in that case, you may make a set of expressions and poses that fit with the background, but again avoiding re-drawing/rendering the whole image with the background again, because if you can just make the smaller images of teh character and fit that onto the background, that's data that's saved. Second would be special scenes, such as cutscenes, where you want the most control and quality, it could be a sex scene and in that case you could pre render an entire video just for it, so characters are rendered with the scene/background.

using tricks like this not only saves on memory if assets (characters rendered with different expression) can be reused, but by making assets reusable that means you could put your game together in a faster way because you don't have to stop to work on more art. It would be like working with sprites.

As Egglock mentioned, there may be some upfront 3D work. what that means is, doing the work to make the 3d assets (models, animated rigs, locations, etc) so you can then actually do the fun part of making the poses and renderings or animations. with Daz3D, there is a story and community where you can get most of this stuff with just some money, so people can skip this part to right to the fun bit. If say you use blender like i do, and there is not so much stuff out there that is free, then you have to do the work of character design, modeling, re-topologizing, rigging, maybe some coding, material and shader creation, and doing this for anything you need in your scene (although it is easier to find objects like a bottle of soy sauce for free online). Doing that work makes you a 3D artist, and a technical artist if you can get it working, if you can pose and animate, you are an animator artist, and if you can build shaders and compositing, then you are even more of an artist. and you can do what I do and through your renders into Gimp 2.10 and with some plug ins take the 3D renderings and make them look like there were drawn or painted. making them seem 2D. There is some support for more cartoonish shaders to make things like anime characters, but I haven't really looked into the art style.

 

[xht_002]

normally using daz3d to create the charector and exported using a plugin so the model can be used in game engine

each model has a skeleton, and particle effects in a game engine are attached to a bone as a starting point to play the effect, which you then can set the offset in the particle effect editor

 

[DreamLab Studio]

I like to view it as the "3D" part is using a program, such as Daz Studio, to create the scene with characters, settings, fluids... Whatever you want to have appear in the image. You pose the figures and objects in the scene and setup the lighting as well to try and create a good looking scene that sets a mood.

You then have the 3D program "render" or produce a 2D image, just like a drawing or photograph, from the 3D scene. From that point on it's pretty much the same as games using other methods to create the artwork. You can edit the photos and then create the game to load the images and display text when you need them.

I think a number of people who aren't familiar with images made from programs such as Daz Studio think it's very simple. The program is free, you can buy the characters, clothing, rooms, and other things online. Then you just add them to a scene like your playing with dolls and "snap" the image. You can do that but usually the image you end up with will be really poor quality.

There is a lot more work that goes into it to get really nice looking shots. Like anything, the more you put into it and work at it the more you get out of it. You don't need to know how to create 3D models in a program such as Blender but it could be a very useful skill to have to adjust something to make it perfect for you or even create something from scratch you just can't find for sale online.