No nVidia GPU. What's the best way to create VNs?

[BadWolf71]

Title is too short for the question. I am a beginner that has just downloaded DAZ & Blender and installed them. I know nothing else, please keep that in mind.

PC Specs:

CPU: AMD 5900X
GPU: Radeon 6900XT 18GB
RAM: 64GB

I know that DAZ is built for nVidia & I'm not going back to them. I want to start doing VNs with animations for my own story that I am writing. So, what are my options to get me going?

 

[noping123]

Your options are learn blender (steep learning curve, could take over a year just to become decent with it. If you're good, maybe 6 months?), use honey select, or suck it up and get an nvidia card.

It IS possible to cpu render with daz, but it would take you over a year just to create 1 very small release. Average render time could easily be in the hours. It's something that is somewhat feesible if you're just messing around making random renders - it is absolutely not reasonable if you are trying to make a VN - and absolutely not for animations.

But if you're dead set on never getting an nvidia card? just abandon daz right now. Either spend the next 6+ months learning blender, or go grab HS and learn that. Or learn to draw I guess.

 

[NemesisGames]

My game is entirely CPU renders with a five-year-old integrated Intel graphics card. No, it definitely does not take over a year for a small release.

It does, however, take clever use of Daz3D to do.

I mostly use RenderQueue to set up a batch of scenes to render while I sleep. And I use Intel Denoiser to denoise images so I can spend shorter render times on each image.

I have other techniques as well. I wrote a rough draft article about these processes. One of these days I’ll publish it.

 

[MissFortune]

My game is entirely CPU renders with a five-year-old integrated Intel graphics card. No, it definitely does not take over a year for a small release.

It does, however, take clever use of Daz3D to do.

I mostly use RenderQueue to set up a batch of scenes to render while I sleep. And I use Intel Denoiser to denoise images so I can spend shorter render times on each image.

I have other techniques as well. I wrote a rough draft article about these processes. One of these days I’ll publish it.

Context is massively important here. OP quite literally has CoBD in his signature. It's safe to assume that's the quality he's likely expecting to reach. No matter how you spin it, you aren't getting renders that quality from a CPU. Animations are possible, but just aren't feasible for a reasonable workflow.

I say this respectfully as possible, and mean nothing bad by saying it (there still better than a lot of GPU renders I've seen to be clear), but your renders look CPU rendered. Basic lighting, obvious spot rendering, obvious signs of denoiser (smooth skin, lacking detail, etc.), heavy compression likely caused by Scene Optimizer. If OP is simply looking for passable quality, then it might be serviceable. But if he's looking for anything higher end (think CoBD, Summer's Gone, etc.), then a CPU likely isn't going to cut it in a timely fashion. If at all.

Blender is going to treat him a lot better, especially with an AMD card.

 

[DreamBig Games]

Another option, with the build, would be to do your renders in Unreal.
Not very easy to set-up, but better than Blender, also, much faster to render still and also animations.
But, the quality of the renders is not that great...

 

[BadWolf71]

Context is massively important here. OP quite literally has CoBD in his signature. It's safe to assume that's the quality he's likely expecting to reach. No matter how you spin it, you aren't getting renders that quality from a CPU. Animations are possible, but just aren't feasible for a reasonable workflow.

I say this respectfully as possible, and mean nothing bad by saying it (there still better than a lot of GPU renders I've seen to be clear), but your renders look CPU rendered. Basic lighting, obvious spot rendering, obvious signs of denoiser (smooth skin, lacking detail, etc.), heavy compression likely caused by Scene Optimizer. If OP is simply looking for passable quality, then it might be serviceable. But if he's looking for anything higher end (think CoBD, Summer's Gone, etc.), then a CPU likely isn't going to cut it in a timely fashion. If at all.

Blender is going to treat him a lot better, especially with an AMD card.

Yes, I do want quality. But this being in the pre-learning stages of what DAZ & Blender are, I have no idea on how to do anything, but watch learning videos. Like this question comes to mind. Does Blender have models of characters like DAZ has, or do I have to, somehow, transfer all the models from DAZ to Blender?

I have already read that the DAZ to Blender bridge is not working correctly, I'm assuming that is the process that takes everything that I have done in DAZ to place in Blender to render. I know I am way ahead on this, because I don't have any of the models (let alone the money to pay for them), yet.

 

[BadWolf71]

Another option, with the build, would be to do your renders in Unreal.
Not very easy to set-up, but better than Blender, also, much faster to render still and also animations.
But, the quality of the renders is not that great...

Yeah, but I know what is happening with the Unreal engine. Something about everything made with it is going to become the property of the Unreal creators, or something like that.

 

[DreamBig Games]

Yeah, but I know what is happening with the Unreal engine. Something about everything made with it is going to become the property of the Unreal creators, or something like that.

WTF ???
Lol, where did you hear that???

I've made 11 games with Unreal Engine, got another 3 in development right now.
Trust me, there is no way something like that would be true.
Also, it would not EVER hold in court....

I think you are confusing it with Honey Select.

 

[MissFortune]

Yes, I do want quality. But this being in the pre-learning stages of what DAZ & Blender are, I have no idea on how to do anything, but watch learning videos. Like this question comes to mind. Does Blender have models of characters like DAZ has, or do I have to, somehow, transfer all the models from DAZ to Blender?

I have already read that the DAZ to Blender bridge is not working correctly, I'm assuming that is the process that takes everything that I have done in DAZ to place in Blender to render. I know I am way ahead on this, because I don't have any of the models (let alone the money to pay for them), yet.

Most of the newer projects being made in Blender feature Daz figures (just not Genesis 9.). Hellcat Lounge is animated in Blender (not sure if rendered entirely in Blender, though.), Freshwomen is Blender (as of the latest update), and I believe some of Summer's Gone is currently rendered via Blender. The Daz to Blender bridge is pretty historically awful. I'd take a look at Diffeomorphic before the official bridge, especially if you're only going to be using Blender. You'll need to learn how to convert textures from MDL/Iray textures to Blender's own, though. I'd check out Anime Nyan's NSFW Blender discord, too. Tons of valuable information + people to help, like

You must be registered to see the links

for example. Though, you may want to just start with basic Blender tutorials before doing anything else. The Donut tutorial by Blender Guru is always a good starter. Though, you'll find plenty of paid tutorials on something like CGPersia.

As for Blender compatible models, I'd look at Smutbase and Open3DLab.

 

[SecretSal]

Yeah, but I know what is happening with the Unreal engine. Something about everything made with it is going to become the property of the Unreal creators, or something like that.

Haven't heard anything like that. They're bringing in subscription costs for production companies over a certain revenue threshold (because UE is popular for cinematics these days), but it'll still be free to use for small-time indie game devs.

As for owning your IP, fat chance. It would be a long shot even with games made in UE, and destroy whatever goodwill Epic has left. But for renders made in UE and exported to still images and videos, how would they even keep track of those? Just sounds like too much trouble to me.

 

[BadWolf71]

WTF ???
Lol, where did you hear that???

I've made 11 games with Unreal Engine, got another 3 in development right now.
Trust me, there is no way something like that would be true.
Also, it would not EVER hold in court....

I think you are confusing it with Honey Select.

Ok, I misread it. There's a royalty price for something over $1 million. And a price per-set for movies and such.

 

[MissFortune]

As for owning your IP, fat chance. It would be a long shot even with games made in UE, and destroy whatever goodwill Epic has left.

And even then, they'd have to take it up with Daz (assuming said UE project is made with Daz-imported meshes/figures.). Even with the $100+ interactive licenses, we're only paying for the license to use said asset. We don't own them or the IP, the vendors and Daz do.

 

[DreamBig Games]

Man, if you reach a million in sales, you won't give a fuck about the royalty fee
When I started this game development thing, I was paying Epic royalties for every 5K profits. Now, with 1 million, per year ( so, if you sold 999.999 in 2023, you won't pay a penny in 2024 ), I don't even care about royalties...

 

[BadWolf71]

Most of the newer projects being made in Blender feature Daz figures (just not Genesis 9.). Hellcat Lounge is animated in Blender (not sure if rendered entirely in Blender, though.), Freshwomen is Blender (as of the latest update), and I believe some of Summer's Gone is currently rendered via Blender. The Daz to Blender bridge is pretty historically awful. I'd take a look at Diffeomorphic before the official bridge, especially if you're only going to be using Blender. You'll need to learn how to convert textures from MDL/Iray textures to Blender's own, though. I'd check out Anime Nyan's NSFW Blender discord, too. Tons of valuable information + people to help, like

You must be registered to see the links

for example. Though, you may want to just start with basic Blender tutorials before doing anything else. The Donut tutorial by Blender Guru is always a good starter. Though, you'll find plenty of paid tutorials on something like CGPersia.

As for Blender compatible models, I'd look at Smutbase and Open3DLab.

I know I have tons to watch, now I got a lot of searching to do. Guess I got a lot of time on my hands since being diagnosed with Parkinson's with my job's short term disability just approved (don't know when they'll give the money).

That's just one of the reasons why I don't want to switch back to nVidia. I like my Radeon. Shame DAZ won't develop something to help Radeon users for rendering. I've seen some good looking models that I would like to use. But that also costs a lot of money.

 

[BadWolf71]

OP quite literally has CoBD in his signature.

I have her there because she's freaking hot!

 

[cherrylizard]

Use unreal engine, There is a learning curve involved(ex. dealing with geografts) but after you figure thing up its super easy to render imgs/anims in real time. Another option is which I really don't like is blender, there is diffeomorphic plugin that help you import anything you need from daz that way you don't have to spend too much time learning Blender

 

[osanaiko]

Here's one more crazy idea:
- get StableDiffusion (Automatic1111 etc) running with your AMD card (much easier now than it was before)
- use daz to render shitty 512x512 characters
- spend time working out how to use SD+controlnet, then use that to make AI art controlled by your daz source images + upscale
- batch "render" a few dozen images each time and pick the one that is most consistent with your desired character
- then fix minor issues with photoshop etc.
- Voila! you have images that are already better than Honey Select!

With sufficient investment of time, you'll get some pretty decent results. Plus the AI art scene is advancing at a crazy rate - maybe we'll get easier tools for character look/clothing consistency soon

 

[BadWolf71]

Here's one more crazy idea:
- get StableDiffusion (Automatic1111 etc) running with your AMD card (much easier now than it was before)
- use daz to render shitty 512x512 characters
- spend time working out how to use SD+controlnet, then use that to make AI art controlled by your daz source images + upscale
- batch "render" a few dozen images each time and pick the one that is most consistent with your desired character
- then fix minor issues with photoshop etc.
- Voila! you have images that are already better than Honey Select!

With sufficient investment of time, you'll get some pretty decent results. Plus the AI art scene is advancing at a crazy rate - maybe we'll get easier tools for character look/clothing consistency soon

That's some good info as well. I'll be watching video tutorials soon.

 

[lobotomist]

A couple of years ago daz added a raster renderer called filament that should run on anything.

You would need to learn about tonemapping thou, because the defaults have too much exposure (looks like they are under some extra bright lights). A cheat I use is:

1.-Switch the viewport to iray and daz automatically adds lights and tonemapper to the scene.

2.- Switch back to filament.

3.- Select the tonemapper and lower the exposure.

Now it should look good enough. But, if you study daz lighting and compositing techniques you should be able to achieve great results.

Bear in mind that amd cards are not only not compatible with daz but are also very unreliable for 3d rendering . A while ago I saw a video that tested cerds for 3d artist and the 7900 xt came slower than the rtx 3060. But intel cards did surprisingly good, equivalent performance to gaming. So if you are dead set on not using nvidia, intel might be a better choice.