I have some doubts about the development of VN

[Bunta]

First of all I want to apologize to the admins if I am in the wrong area, I have been in the forum a short time ago.

I have interesting ideas (from my point of view) for adult games, but before starting a learning process in programming and rendering the game, I want to clarify some doubts.

I follow a game for 5 months, and I remember seeing the developer asking for donations a while ago to buy pieces (video cards specifically), the argument was that with the process of rendering the game required a lot of hardware and consequently eventually decreased the life of it, my question is, do I need an extremely advanced hardware to be able to make a game? I have no intention of making a game with extremely detailed and high quality renderers like his (A Wife and Mother L & P), I would like to keep the best quality possible (if possible) with the hardware I currently have.

This is my current hardware, it's pretty outdated, I stopped updating it at a time because I decided to start playing my games on the console.

Spoiler: Specs

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Thank you very much for the attention, I hope that in a short time I can collaborate as a game developer here in the forum

 

[kimoo]

First of all I want to apologize to the admins if I am in the wrong area, I have been in the forum a short time ago.

I have interesting ideas (from my point of view) for adult games, but before starting a learning process in programming and rendering the game, I want to clarify some doubts.

I follow a game for 5 months, and I remember seeing the developer asking for donations a while ago to buy pieces (video cards specifically), the argument was that with the process of rendering the game required a lot of hardware and consequently eventually decreased the life of it, my question is, do I need an extremely advanced hardware to be able to make a game? I have no intention of making a game with extremely detailed and high quality renderers like his (A Wife and Mother L & P), I would like to keep the best quality possible (if possible) with the hardware I currently have.

This is my current hardware, it's pretty outdated, I stopped updating it at a time because I decided to start playing my games on the console.

Spoiler: Specs

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

Thank you very much for the attention, I hope that in a short time I can collaborate as a game developer here in the forum

i dont know about the gpu but your ram is okay
you can even make game with GTX 1050 ti (and it take about 40-45 min for every render )

you just have to start working on your game
if the game decent and good enough you could upgrade your hardware through the money you earn
every single developer st asked for money to upgrade from the patron
but you should earn their trust first

personally supporting 7 developers until now
and every time i like the style of developer i support him

 

[Conviction07]

If I'm being frank? You can forget it with that GPU. Sure it's possible, but renders will take so long you'll hate the process of making your game before you even release the first version. I have a GTX 1060 which is considerably better than yours, and I'm still not happy with it. Especially when making bigger scenes.

 

[Keldar]

Plz bare in mind that I am critiquing your hardware based on the intent of using it as a workstation not for the intent you had when you first purchased your system. The needs of a home/gaming system are not the same as a work station so what works for games doesn't necessarily work for a workstation.

your hardware is WAY out of date. A 6 year old CPU is utter crap today. I have a i7-6800k and that is utter crap by today's hardware and it is just over two years old. The advent of the resurgence of AMD with the Rysen and thread ripper CPUs has sparked a rapid improvement in CPU technology with both the red team and the blue teams.

You have significant hardware issues in that your GPU is also crap by todays standards, not by half a decade ago but still it wasn't top of the line then, so you will run into very slow renders with such a card AND you lack the CPU power to make a straight video card upgrade viable. You will get CPU throttling if you buy this gen's GPUs or Last gen's GPUs. So there isn't an easy fix.

Rendering is not a "casual" usage of a PC it takes significant power and given that the vast majority of your productivity will be subject to your ability to render images in quantity, quickly you will be very frustrated. So while the GTX xx60 cards are more than powerful enough for basic gaming just not at the fastest FPS or settings, that doesn't translate into being powerful enough to render images at a reasonable rate. This requires power mainly from your GPU but also your CPU.

Also most work stations doing rendering usually have at least 16 gigs of ram if not more. Again 8 gigs of ram is MORE than enough to run todays games it isn't really viable for a professional workstation. Also looking at your specs I am pretty sure your ram is DDR3 and not DDR4 which will also slow you down by a fair chuck when making renders.

In short your system needs to be upgraded to be viable as a workstation. Again this is based on stated intent not on whether this was a viable gaming machine 5 years ago.

 

[OhWee]

I generally concur with what the others are saying.

The CPU is probably the least important if you are doing Daz Iray rendering, which tells me that you COULD maybe work with the existing system... with some upgrades.

16 GB of memory is recommended. 32 GB is better. Anything over 32 GB of memory is generally overkill, but nice if you can afford it.

On the graphics card end, probably a comfortable minimum would be a 4GB recent Nvidia card (9xx-10xx series). 6 GB would be much better, 8 GB is awesome, but the 8 GB cards are getting into the pricey range. And yeah, there's those 11GB 1080Ti's as well, which are ideal at their price point, if you could afford one. This is probably the most important thing you can upgrade, if looking to do Iray renders.

Storage: As you accumulate Daz assets, yeah Daz assets suck up drive space. So that 1 TB HDD should be fine for now, assuming that it's not full of a bunch of other stuff. Ideally, plan on upgrading to say a 4 TB HDD at some point (those are fairly cheap these days), and/or an SSD if you can squeeze one into your budget. SSD's are much faster on boot times, responsiveness, and just generally awesome.


NOTE that you DON'T have to go the Iray route. Daz also has 3Delight as a rendering option, which is pretty much CPU only (so your card would be used just for the Daz viewport). 3Delight has a somewhat different ecosystem though. Most people go the Iray route in Dazland these days, including asset creators.

Something I've seen mentioned in other places. If you have another machine that you otherwise aren't using, that has say 8-16GB of memory, you could use your main computer to set up your scenes, then load the scene file onto the second computer (with it's own Daz instance) and just let it crunch away CPU only for however long it takes to get the render done. Of course, it's much more convenient to just have one good machine for this though.

There are also a few tricks you can use to help keep your render file sizes down. Renpy and other game/visual novel engines often use static background images, with the character images (with a transparent background around the characters) overlayed onto these backgrounds.

Rendering the characters by themselves, with a basic but appealing light setup (or a decent but simple HDRI background, with Draw Dome set to Off to hide the dome in the render) can really cut down on render times. A number of games use this technique (superimposing characters over background images). The renders won't be 100% 'accurate' lighting wise, so don't expect to win any rendering contests this way, but it's a tried and true technique.

So yeah, your current system could be used to get you started at least, and give you a chance to learn Daz3D, but ideally you should look at grabbing a newer system on sale, which has say 16+ GB of Ram and say a 6 GB+ Nvidia video card, plus say at least a 1-2 TB HDD. Just plan on slow rendering times in the meantime.

Or watch for decent deals on video cards, memory, and drives, if you can't come up with a killer deal on a newer desktop system.

 

[Deleted member 235904]

I generally concur with what the others are saying.

The CPU is probably the least important if you are doing Daz Iray rendering, which tells me that you COULD maybe work with the existing system... with some upgrades.

16 GB of memory is recommended. 32 GB is better. Anything over 32 GB of memory is generally overkill, but nice if you can afford it.

On the graphics card end, probably a comfortable minimum would be a 4GB recent Nvidia card (9xx-10xx series). 6 GB would be much better, 8 GB is awesome, but the 8 GB cards are getting into the pricey range. And yeah, there's those 11GB 1080Ti's as well, which are ideal at their price point, if you could afford one. This is probably the most important thing you can upgrade, if looking to do Iray renders.

Storage: As you accumulate Daz assets, yeah Daz assets suck up drive space. So that 1 TB HDD should be fine for now, assuming that it's not full of a bunch of other stuff. Ideally, plan on upgrading to say a 4 TB HDD at some point (those are fairly cheap these days), and/or an SSD if you can squeeze one into your budget. SSD's are much faster on boot times, responsiveness, and just generally awesome.


NOTE that you DON'T have to go the Iray route. Daz also has 3Delight as a rendering option, which is pretty much CPU only (so your card would be used just for the Daz viewport). 3Delight has a somewhat different ecosystem though. Most people go the Iray route in Dazland these days, including asset creators.

Something I've seen mentioned in other places. If you have another machine that you otherwise aren't using, that has say 8-16GB of memory, you could use your main computer to set up your scenes, then load the scene file onto the second computer (with it's own Daz instance) and just let it crunch away CPU only for however long it takes to get the render done. Of course, it's much more convenient to just have one good machine for this though.

There are also a few tricks you can use to help keep your render file sizes down. Renpy and other game/visual novel engines often use static background images, with the character images (with a transparent background around the characters) overlayed onto these backgrounds.

Rendering the characters by themselves, with a basic but appealing light setup (or a decent but simple HDRI background, with Draw Dome set to Off to hide the dome in the render) can really cut down on render times. A number of games use this technique (superimposing characters over background images). The renders won't be 100% 'accurate' lighting wise, so don't expect to win any rendering contests this way, but it's a tried and true technique.

So yeah, your current system could be used to get you started at least, and give you a chance to learn Daz3D, but ideally you should look at grabbing a newer system on sale, which has say 16+ GB of Ram and say a 6 GB+ Nvidia video card, plus say at least a 1-2 TB HDD. Just plan on slow rendering times in the meantime.

What do you think a good amount of money to spend putting together a computer for making games would be if all you've got currently is an old laptop? I'm thinking about getting a desktop, but I don't want to waste money.

 

[OhWee]

What do you think a good amount of money to spend putting together a computer for making games would be if all you've got currently is an old laptop? I'm thinking about getting a desktop, but I don't want to waste money.

OK, so this Newegg system would be a decent target to shoot for:

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6 GB GTX 1060 (note that there are 3GB versions of the 1060 as well, watch for this when shopping)
16 GB Ram
128 GB SSD (this means faster boots) + 1 TB HDD

It's currently just shy of $1000

As for CPU, if you are already looking at spending this amount of money, definitely look at getting an AMD Ryzen or current Intel CPU (7th-8th gen? I'm not up on the Intel CPU lineups). Ryzen's have been hitting very reasonable price points lately, especially the 1st gen ones. The 2nd Gen Ryzens are a bit faster, but you can do just fine with a 1st gen Ryzen.

If your budget is tight, you could do this in 'steps', i.e. grab a system with 8 GB for now, IF that 8GB system has two free ram slots for later (so that you could upgrade to 16GB with 2 more 4 GB DIMMs), that way you aren't tossing existing memory. You could do 2 x 8GB too if you don't mind retiring the existing ram - Ryzens seem to do best with 2 sticks of ram, 1 in each channel.

But yeah, if looking at doing this in steps, I'd recommend shooting for that 6 GB Nvidia card at the very least. Storage is relatively easy to upgrade later, plus you can use USB external drives (to store less used stuff and make backups) too.

As for laptops, it's generally not recommended to use a laptop, as rendering generates a LOT of heat. There are some higher end gaming laptops that are better suited for this. That being said, there are a number of people that do the Daz thing on their laptops, just be aware that cooking the insides of your laptop is a very real concern.

 

[Catapo]

3D rendering requires a lot of resources. In a render there are detailed models and a lot of light computations to be done so your hardware may not be able to handle rendering at all and even if it does it will take a LONG time to render something and it is not worth it.

On this forum people really like Daz3D but there are other options for making art assets
- Pixel art animations
- 2D drawn graphics
- not a good ideea but I would like to see someone make a game using low poly model renders

All of my options require some work from your part though if you have artistic talent or if you are a good programmer you can partner up with someone who makes art or can even make renders for you.

 

[Akatriel]

You don't need any expensive hardware to make games, but you need to be realistic.

Your hardware is very old and you're gonna struggle making 3D renders without killing yourself. Waiting 90 minutes to find a light needs to be moved and you need to re-render will kill your project.

Pick your battles. Make a sexy HTML game. Make a twine game just with text. What are your strengths and how can you get them into a game? Are you a great writer? Do you make cute drawings? "Good" ideas won't get you far unless you find something about game development that you enjoy and a skill you want to improve. You can always add renders later if you feel it would please your fans.

If you are learning to code, then I would focus on that for the time being. As it's not just learning a new language, it's a new way of thinking and expression. Pick a HTML game engine like SugarCube, read some tuts and get stuck in. Good luck.

 

[TheTypist]

I myself am doing the static background, character rendered alone type of renders. In my first images I was learning, but as I finished my demo, the renders became considerably better and people noticed. In my most recent render I posted, I made sure the lighting made perfect sense to me, and I personally think it’s coming out quite well after photoshop post work. You can experiment however you like, don’t let anyone put you down.

But that graphics card is quite old. I have a 1070, but if you have batch render for daz3d, leave the scenes over night and boom, you have 70 or so renders.

 

[Bunta]

thank you all for the explanation, you guys made everything very clear to me, I decided to buy a new PC in the near future, but while I don't do this, I will learn about programming and what I can about rendering, I hope I can give news in the future

 

[Akatriel]

BTW. We will laugh at your first game. Most probably because it won't be very good. It might actually be painfully broken. But it is a rite of passage. You'll either keep going or move on. Rinse and repeat. Eventually, you'll nurture an internal critic to skip the more humiliating public parts of failure.

Then you'll come back with something cool, and we'll shower you with Pateron bucks and praise. Maybe.

 

[uradamus]

Just for the record, while iRay and other unbiased renderers make setting up a realistic scene a lot easier, they are far from the only solution. I've been messing around with 3D for around 18 years now and we got by just fine without them for a long time. You do have to learn a thing or two about studio lighting, because biased renderers use much more simplified lighting algorithms that just approximate reality, instead of trying to simulate it. While they take a bit more effort when it comes to setting up the lighting and environmental settings, they have a massive advantage in as far as they are very fast and cheap (in terms of calculations and processing) and can even be spread out over huge render farms if need be using CPUs and system RAM for most of the work.

Here is a really quick example image I tossed together in Blender just now using it's old internal renderer with a simple 3 lamp outdoor lighting setup. The model isn't my own, just something I bought a while back in a bundle of T-posed models with clothes I could use for rigging practice. This image rendered in about a minute with a really outdated system that's on its last leg. There's a lot I could have done to improve the image quality, but I wasn't going to spend a bunch of time on an example.