Legit assets sources request for DAZ

[Frosthugger]

Hi everyone first post ever. Hello, I'm Frosthugger

I've started working on a RENPY game with DAZ renders. It's going to be a few months before I complete a demo, this is not self-advertisement. Not yet, though my avatar can serve as a micro-preview

I want to keep it fully legal and so on. I have purchased PC+ and a few assets from DAZ, some characters and morphs, but if I buy everything I need there, I will go bankrupt quickly. I started looking around sites like sharecg, but I'm new to this and there is A LOT of stuff to go through.

So here's my question: can the developers here share their favourite NON-PIRATE sources or any advice on getting free assets from creators themselves?

 

[JKnight]

Start with Daz's freebie section in the forums:

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There's stickied threads there with links to lots of other sites.

 

[Thundorn]

I post my own creations on my website for download. Not much there at the moment but i will add as I create.

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[Frosthugger]

Thanks for your responses. So far I've picked up a lot from renderosity, sharecg, deviant art, renderotica and Wilmap as well as purchased a few more. Now I have to stop myself from buying more, at least until I launch the demo. Now to get to work. Here's a teaser test render. I have a lot to learn about lighting and posing I guess

 

[Studio Errilhl]

Thanks for your responses. So far I've picked up a lot from renderosity, sharecg, deviant art, renderotica and Wilmap as well as purchased a few more. Now I have to stop myself from buying more, at least until I launch the demo. Now to get to work. Here's a teaser test render. I have a lot to learn about lighting and posing I guess View attachment 54152

That there is really not that bad. You have a floating hand, and the lighting is a bit more photostudio than real life, but apart from that, it looks quite good.

 

[JKnight]

Thanks for your responses. So far I've picked up a lot from renderosity, sharecg, deviant art, renderotica and Wilmap as well as purchased a few more. Now I have to stop myself from buying more, at least until I launch the demo. Now to get to work. Here's a teaser test render. I have a lot to learn about lighting and posing I guess View attachment 54152

Nice start, she looks really cute.

If you're looking to improve the image I'd suggest using a fill light aimed at her eyes, it'll reduce the blowout on the skin as well (after reducing the main light to compensate). Posewise, I'd bend her wrist and toes less, it looks a bit painful.

That looks like a 3Delight render? I'd really recommend iray even if you don't have the hardware at the moment. It's slower CPU-only but is still doable.

 

[Frosthugger]

Thanks guys, it's encourageing. The character's working name is Sonia and she's the planned main love interest (probably niece to add some taboo, but I'm not set on that yet). I'm aiming for Big Brother visually (high bar, I know), probably first person and for something between Babysitter and Teacher's Pets, perhaps with a dash of Luxee's style gameplay wise.

Render: it's Iray, but on default settings, I don't know enough about it to change much yet.
Lighting: it's just a single warm spotlight, but I've found a free HDR set that I'll be trying soon. I'm using some non-Iray materials, because I thought they looked a bit better (eyes), I'm not sure if it affects the render negatively.
Pose: it's a free premade one. I suppose I should adjust for the morphs I did to the gen8 body.
Character: It took me 3 days of experiments with morphs, makeup and hair - right now I'm saving makeup options for her and adjusting Golden Palace (looks too "open" by default, even if set to closed), pubic hair and the final hair color, I know I want blond, but I have around 20 blondes to check for this gorgeous hairdo and they were all free After that she'll be done and I'll move on to other characters.

 

[Thundorn]

Lighting is a huge pain in Daz. Point lights seem weak as hell compared to everything else. Save yourself a lot of frustration and look into Ghost lights. You don't have to buy anything as its really just a case of setting up emissive primitives and it can make lighting a scene so much quicker and make your renders faster by providing more light for the darker areas.

 

[Frosthugger]

Hm, the ghost lights seem like a really good and simple idea. So far I've been experimenting with adding emissivity shaders to lightbulbs in the house set I've bought, so that I wouldn't have to set everything up every time for different viewpoints, but the results weren't great. Perhaps if I mix that with ghost lights... I still need to look into that HDR thing No idea about it yet, but I've heard good thing

 

[Frosthugger]

Sorry for the double post, but I want to show what difference your tips made:
-I've adjusted the wrist and toes
-got rid of the floating hand
-changed nail polish to a less bland one
And finally applied ghost lights. Took me a while to understand how to make them work and not show up in the render, but the results are... look for yourselves. Thank you.


There are 3 ghost lights: right, top-front and face.
Any more tips?
The render took 30 minutes on my GTX970. The previous one was 5 minutes. Still, worth it. Do you know how to see how much memory a scene takes in Iray?

 

[Thundorn]

looks great man. If you want to push it to the Next level, have a look at replacing the shader on her skin, just to remove that little bit of sheen.

I don't like to assume anything so apologies if i am teaching you to such eggs, another thing which a lot of people mess up on which is easy to fix is composition, take a look on google for the rule of thirds and the golden ratio, these are photography principles which can be applied to daz renders too.

 

[Frosthugger]

Hm, I tried using a more mat shader, but I like the old one much better, even with the sheen. Also did that framing thing.



I'm also considering purchasing this

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to replace the hair

 

[Thundorn]

Nice. hair is always tricky and really boils down to personal preference as a hair prop is a lot of money for something you can only really use on one game character per game so its an investment that's for sure. Ultimately as long as you are happy with the results and don't start settling for half baked renders you will smash it i'm sure

 

[Frosthugger]

Old shader, new framing, new hair. Feedback appreciated

 

[Studio Errilhl]

I like the composition (although the golden ratio / rule of thirds is a good rule of thumb, avoiding it / deliberately going outside its comfort zone is something artists have been doing for years just to make the viewer look again, feel something else than content, and so on).
However, you have one issue - whether it's with your model, or whatever morphs you've been doing, I dunno, but her right thigh (the one you see) is not... all there. The significant drop off from where her hand is, to where it joins the hip... doesn't look right. Basically, either the thigh needs to be slimmer all the way to her knee, or you need to make it thicker where it meets the rest of her body.

 

[Frosthugger]

Thanks for the feedback. Hmm, you're right. My morphs were done in the default pose, after that I only used posing. The pose is making it clip. I looked into it and apparently I can't bend the leg by more than 90 degrees, then it starts to happen. Is there some sort of an automatic tool for fitting this, or do I have to do it by hand every time she kneels? I'd rather avoid having to morph the leg every time, but I'll do it if I have to.

 

[Thickgravy49]

Sorry for the double post, but I want to show what difference your tips made:
-I've adjusted the wrist and toes
-got rid of the floating hand
-changed nail polish to a less bland one
And finally applied ghost lights. Took me a while to understand how to make them work and not show up in the render, but the results are... look for yourselves. Thank you.
View attachment 54306

There are 3 ghost lights: right, top-front and face.
Any more tips?
The render took 30 minutes on my GTX970. The previous one was 5 minutes. Still, worth it. Do you know how to see how much memory a scene takes in Iray?

Recently got the ghost lights myself. Can I ask you how you do stop them from showing up in the render?
I haven't had time to work it out yet.
Thanks very much : )

 

[Frosthugger]

decrease cutout opacity value to 0.00001 or something like that. It's 1 by default. Its under surfaces->editor once you make the object emissive

 

[Thickgravy49]

decrease cutout opacity value to 0.00001 or something like that. It's 1 by default. Its under surfaces->editor once you make the object emissive

Thanks mate. Much appreciated : )

 

[Thundorn]

Last tip i would like to give you is fairly simple. Don't be afraid to use contrast. The image you have shown is good as there are nice shadows. Only reason I mentioned it is because you said that you wanted "Big brother" quality renders, which is setting the bar fairly low in reality. DarkSilver uses very flat lighting, if you notice there are hardly any shadows, this is a trick to speed up the renders, but in my opinion also makes the images look very dull and cartoony. The renders might take a bit longer but shadows help bring your scene to life