3D-Daz 3D-HoneySelect I'm trying to get 3D renders to look more 2D/Drawn (Development Thread)

[artistx]

A few months back I decided to try hand at making my own game... I noticed people were using HS2 to make games and at the time I had been messing around HS2 creating popular characters for fun so I figured.. why not me? This sent me down a rabbit-hole of learning Hs2 studio and game dev in general... where the only previous skills I had was mainly photoshop.

Somewhere down the line I decided I wanted the art style to stand out and be a bit different... especially since my game would be fantasy/medieval so I wanted a storybook-ish style...

So I started experimenting with AI painters (Style Transfers) programs, and Photoshop Actions and techniques.

Started out simple enough I made used AI painter to make the backgrounds look less rendered and some other methods to make the sprites look less like renders

Spoiler: early stuff

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It was simple but it did its job of making it look like something not made with HS2..

Eventually I tried my hand at doing cutscenes where were I experimented with AI painters and eventually composited AI generated style changes with the original screenshots tweaked in photoshop... this had decent results... but it was inconsistent.(details were added to places I didnt want... took additional cleanup in photoshop. For every good result there was like 4 bad results..

Spoiler: first cutscenes

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I liked the results but I still messed around with different methods trying to make it more consistent... I realized I need to get better in studio... especially with lighting....

Eventually I took a short break from the game and messed around with all the stuff I learned and found even more methods... like compositing multiple different AI style transfer results together to get one really nice result... This presented it's own problems... each different AI generated style transfer had its own chance to fail... (by fail I mean AI could be random and add details in the worse way at the worse place) But random fails could be minimized with good lighting and angles... also found out AI style transfers hate blank or transparent backgrounds... which cause them to add way too much detail to character..

Spoiler: Here's some of my latest results. For some reason the lighting in this scene gives good results.

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These were all composites of 3-5 different AI generated images.. I think the lighting and studio settings made a world of difference... I tried applying similar settings to my own cutscenes(examples below)

Spoiler: My Studio Scenes

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I Still need work at learning to set up studio scenes and lighting...

But thanks to the stuff I learned I went back to my game and redid all the backgrounds and sprites.... cutscenes will take a bit longer...

Spoiler: New game style!

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On a side not my same methods would work on DAZ Studio too

Spoiler: 3D Daz test (just took some random images and tested them out)

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What do you guys think? should I maybe offer this a service? I've been spending way too much time trying to perfect this.... there's a lot of people who are really good at Hs2 and get really good results with with just studio... makes me wonder if I'm wasting my time... I'm posting here on f95zone since I don't really have many people to talk to about this stuff... especially HS2 related stuff...

Before you ask I'm probably not going to share my methods or software anytime soon... might be the only thing going for my game and the games I make in the futures... might offer it as a service... if there's demand..

If you'd like me to try doing one of your renders post them in this thread and I'll do it for practice if I have time... Must be decently well lit with soft shadows and decently high resolution.. High rez skin textures (with veins and pores) don't translate well at all.... blank/solid color backgrounds are also a no-go.

 

[Leeduva]

A few months back I decided to try hand at making my own game... I noticed people were using HS2 to make games and at the time I had been messing around HS2 creating popular characters for fun so I figured.. why not me? This sent me down a rabbit-hole of learning Hs2 studio and game dev in general... where the only previous skills I had was mainly photoshop.

Somewhere down the line I decided I wanted the art style to stand out and be a bit different... especially since my game would be fantasy/medieval so I wanted a storybook-ish style...

So I started experimenting with AI painters (Style Transfers) programs, and Photoshop Actions and techniques.

Started out simple enough I made used AI painter to make the backgrounds look less rendered and some other methods to make the sprites look less like renders

Spoiler: early stuff

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

It was simple but it did its job of making it look like something not made with HS2..

Eventually I tried my hand at doing cutscenes where were I experimented with AI painters and eventually composited AI generated style changes with the original screenshots tweaked in photoshop... this had decent results... but it was inconsistent.(details were added to places I didnt want... took additional cleanup in photoshop. For every good result there was like 4 bad results..

Spoiler: first cutscenes

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

I liked the results but I still messed around with different methods trying to make it more consistent... I realized I need to get better in studio... especially with lighting....

Eventually I took a short break from the game and messed around with all the stuff I learned and found even more methods... like compositing multiple different AI style transfer results together to get one really nice result... This presented it's own problems... each different AI generated style transfer had its own chance to fail... (by fail I mean AI could be random and add details in the worse way at the worse place) But random fails could be minimized with good lighting and angles... also found out AI style transfers hate blank or transparent backgrounds... which cause them to add way too much detail to character..

Spoiler: Here's some of my latest results. For some reason the lighting in this scene gives good results.

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

These were all composites of 3-5 different AI generated images.. I think the lighting and studio settings made a world of difference... I tried applying similar settings to my own cutscenes(examples below)

Spoiler: My Studio Scenes

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

I Still need work at learning to set up studio scenes and lighting...

But thanks to the stuff I learned I went back to my game and redid all the backgrounds and sprites.... cutscenes will take a bit longer...

Spoiler: New game style!

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

On a side not my same methods would work on DAZ Studio too

Spoiler: 3D Daz test (just took some random images and tested them out)

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

What do you guys think? should I maybe offer this a service? I've been spending way too much time trying to perfect this.... there's a lot of people who are really good at Hs2 and get really good results with with just studio... makes me wonder if I'm wasting my time... I'm posting here on f95zone since I don't really have many people to talk to about this stuff... especially HS2 related stuff...

Before you ask I'm probably not going to share my methods or software anytime soon... might be the only thing going for my game and the games I make in the futures... might offer it as a service... if there's demand..

If you'd like me to try doing one of your renders post them in this thread and I'll do it for practice if I have time... Must be decently well lit with soft shadows and decently high resolution.. High rez skin textures (with veins and pores) don't translate well at all.... blank/solid color backgrounds are also a no-go.

Not bad I know how you feel. I'm a Daz3d user a newbie. But due to Daz3d distinct look i can always tell when someone use Daz3d for their artwork. But their are great masters like Shibashake.

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Who does alot of post work to his renders and create a signature style that stands out. I want to do the same or rather something different then a standard iray render. So I have been thinking about using AI painters. This might be a sign to start using them.

 

[Saki_Sliz]

I've also toyed with AI a bit, but not nearly as much as you had.

As much as I want to use style transferring to transform renders to art, the style of art I want doesn't work well. Mainly I like something that looks more like it was drawn. Not so much hand drawn, but rather a character made with simpler shapes, curves, something like an animated cartoon. Gimp has some AI filter plug in's where its able to take the art, and 'somewhat' simplify it, so that it's not a filter but actually redraws a character similar to the given input, but its not a true AI like in some research papers where it analyzes and recognizes the human body, figures out pose space, and figures out how to simplify the body with shapes.

However, for the style i want, its more or less just simpler to draw over the render... but even that doesn't work, since I find poses still to be stiff, so I've been practicing 2D/cartoon drawing to be better at transforming renders into something cartoon like, but it still needs work.

As for doing what you do as a service, the only challenge i see is 1 people wanting some variation in the style, 2 the fact that the output depends on the quality of the initial render. I remember one artist I used to follow who did prefer making their render look painted, and that allowed them a particular style. So I may suggest, for now, focusing on yourself and your own project, but I can definitely understand wanting to have a reason to share your work with others and talk to other people about things that interest you.

but I will say, I really like how the AI / your mix technique handles skin painting with the daz character examples.