Presentation, project B.E.S.T

[Dolyla]

Thank you eagle ! It touches us deeply to have your comments on our production !

The link appears but i dont know why ... but you don't have miss anything don't worry !

For the prologue there are 3 different scenes : the intro / the travel from France to America / the Taxi for the academy
Intro is finished. that was is the easiest part. We are planning to rework it later when we will be more efficient with daz to make some animations during the intro but it is not necessary for the moment...

Travel by plane dialogues are done and scene rendering is on, we have all we need from textures to characters, it will be finished when rendering will be. One animation have been made for it... just to try animation... takes around 10 hours of rendering just for a travelling of camera but ... at least we have try ^^

Taxi dialogues are 50% done cause we are thinking of something for Episode 1 but we are not sure how to implement it.
We also have all we need about textures or others for this scene so when plane is finished we jump in the taxi for the last part

Episode 1 will be called : Selection

But i will not tell you more about it... we prefer collect feedbacks from prologue and rework what is needed in first time before focus on episode 1. If we make a prologue that players like we will continue in the same way for the game. If not we will rework until we are in the good direction

So let's go back to rendering cause there is so much dialogues and expressions to give to our characters ^^
Our computer never have work as much since we begin this project ... it blow like a plane reactor ^^

See you next time !

Dolyla

 

[Dolyla]

Hello zoners ! Here's Dolyla !

this week end we have almost finish the plane scene and one girl from the beginning roster appears

hope you will like her as much as the others ....

 

[Eagle1900]

hello sorry if I answer only now, but yesterday when I sent you the like I could not dwell too much to write.
what to say? I'm happy that everything is going on the right track, this new character seems interesting, now waiting for the first release is like waiting for the U2 concert for the first time ... I just hope that too much waiting, it won't be betrayed by something... maybe even take 24h more, but remember with bugs, try to reduce them to a minimum, or very close to zero, so the wait will be "well paid".
good luck.

 

[Dolyla]

hello ! Here's Dolyla !

I have some good and some bad news ...

The good news is all dialogs for scenes have been made.
coding is done
some improvements in user interface too ( need some polishing but will be Ok for a preview )

the bad new is our computer can't hold more than 2 models in a scene with details...
It seems that the memory of the 2070 super ( 8 GB ) is not enough for this way of rendering.
So we have to find a solution.
We think of a rendering like college bound could help . the scene is here and they use screens of characters above the scene but not really in.

That will be a way to do it when there is some multiple characters to talk.

It will broke the immersion a little but it's for the best...
When we will have the funds for a new working station we will retry the full scene option...

so i don't know exactly how long it will take to do these scenes but they are the last ones we have to make.
I think in a week or two the first preview will be playable...

I will come back after the week end to tell you how we succeed, or not ^^

See you later !

Dolyla

 

[Eagle1900]

hello ! Here's Dolyla !

I have some good and some bad news ...

The good news is all dialogs for scenes have been made.
coding is done
some improvements in user interface too ( need some polishing but will be Ok for a preview )

the bad new is our computer can't hold more than 2 models in a scene with details...
It seems that the memory of the 2070 super ( 8 GB ) is not enough for this way of rendering.
So we have to find a solution.
We think of a rendering like college bound could help . the scene is here and they use screens of characters above the scene but not really in.

That will be a way to do it when there is some multiple characters to talk.

It will broke the immersion a little but it's for the best...
When we will have the funds for a new working station we will retry the full scene option...

so i don't know exactly how long it will take to do these scenes but they are the last ones we have to make.
I think in a week or two the first preview will be playable...

I will come back after the week end to tell you how we succeed, or not ^^

See you later !

Dolyla

hitches can happen, just try with all your strength to overcome them.
good luck with the release of the project. we can't wait to try it

 

[Müptezel Emo]

hi Dolyla, I wanted to tell you that I really like the last characters you posted here. you can see that the style of the details is also growing slowly and this is an excellent thing. the red-haired girl is really a good choice, because I admit that she is a bit of a weakness of mine, so as far as I'm concerned, great.
only one thing, you put a link, but it doesn't lead to anything... that is, it leads to uploading photos here on f95, did I miss something??
however the prologue date I feel is getting closer and closer so I wish you the best of luck

She's Victoria 9, btw.

 

[Dolyla]

She's Victoria 9, btw.

Yes it's Victoria with little morph. We don't know how to create the character from scratch so...

 

[Cenc]

Hi Dolyla,

It's always great to see new players getting into working with Daz, and learning to code. Some advice that may help you and your husband:

- Start small, in both scope and story. as this looks to be your first release don't make it your magnum opus, DPC didn't start with BaDiK he started with Acting Lessons a much smaller project.

- Don't worry about the details. I know you want to have renders that are super high quality, but given your just starting to learn the DAZ program, there's many mistakes and traps you can fall into just because your still learning. Having a background in Maya and other 3D software, though helpful, doesn't protect you from the inherent issues or lack of common-sense options in DAZ. Don't get me wrong, DAZ is great, but there's a reason why its free.

- Assets, you can find many pose assets on the Daz store, or... other sites. use them to get a close approximation and then edit the final pose (be prepared you will need to do this for every pre-set pose). when making a scene, set the camera position early, then move the pose - this way you don't spend hours making the fingers look just right when they won't even be seen on the final image.

- Lighting - It might seem easy, but don't use sun-sky. it's lazy and it will introduce bad habits. Learn about lighting setups (there are many!) in-door lighting or outdoor, they still use basic setups (3-point is a 'standard' setup). Looking at some of those images you posted it appears to be a very strong light from one direction. Consider having 2 'face' lights left and right of the models head, and 1 rear light that adds some highlight behind the model.

- I could spend hours talking about lighting and the reason behind different setups, but I've a game to make - Take a look at some youtube channels, some recommendations for lighting:

You must be registered to see the links

You must be registered to see the links

You must be registered to see the links

and I also have some helpful tutorials

You must be registered to see the links

.

- The 2070 is a viable card for rendering (up until a couple of weeks ago, I was using the same (not super)) However due to the VRAM you wont be able to make overly detailed scenes, there are ways around this, scene optimiser is an asset that you can use to lower the texture map size of background items (don't EVER use it for characters). You can also lower the SubD rendering of background characters from 3 to 1.

Alternatively you can hide items (click the eye next to the items in the scene tab - hold Ctrl to select all the sub nodes as well)and render them separately, bring all the elements into Photoshop and merge them together. It's more work, but until you can upgrade to a card with a larger VRAM - it's a way to add busier scenes to your game.

Another method is to use billboards, its an asset that is effectively 'images' that can be orientated towards the camera, these are really useful for filling out a scene, however - the product is showing its age, and I know I for one am tired of the girl in the red dress looking at her mobile in the background of -every- game

- Nothing stopping you opening a patreon page early (give yourself some time to add text and images about your game onto it) you can work on the page without having it public, when you're ready launch the page (patreon will take a look to make sure there's nothing problematic) and your good to go. Once you have a patreon page, set yourself time to update it often, once a week at a minimum (imo).

- This is really for once you launch the game, but when it comes to feedback, don't dwell on the negative, but do keep the positive. People can be bastards on the internet because they have no consequences to the words they type. Life's to short to spend any time worrying over them.

Good Luck with your game, If you have any specific questions feel free to DM - I might take a day or 2 to respond though.



Example of 4 point lighting (3 point with eye light).

 

[Dolyla]

Thank you so much Cenc for your reply, it's a gift to have all these advices and links shared.
French community is... or isn't ? there is just a little community who shares some basic information and do not share as much ass you just do by replying to my post

So i will just reply to you :

As B.E.S.T will be episodic, we really want the quality of the game as a reflect of our evolution. This is our little baby and it will grows with us, learning how to make him grow up.
We understand now why don't focus on ultra detailed characters and 8KHDxtramapofthedeathofour2070v2 ^^
The lights are our weakness. We will study all these links you've given to us cause we really need to improve into this domain... as i said to my husband, no need for details if we can't see them !
You reassure us with the 2070... my husband was ready to put it in the bin since this morning cause it's been 2 days he doesn't success to make his scene in the avion with the three hyper detailed g9 ^^

For the Patreon, we will study the question... as i said previously it's not common here in France to be supported as an independant by others. But as we code in english then translate all in french the main public will be american ... and as we see in other projects or just with the contacts we have made since 2 months with your community, you share more, and if we make the efforts, you are more supportives than us.

Well we will come back to our plane, to finish these scene, ( thanks for the Dsub tip ), and for the last scene ( the taxi ) we will make an extra effort with the lights, i promise !

Thanks again,

Dolyla

 

[Dolyla]

We've done it

After 2 days of hard trys we make it : 3 G9 on the same scene.
For that we uses basic resolution of character, sublevel 1 for characters and minor changes of clothes but it's okay... now we can continue



Now we can come back to the story and render the last ones for this scene

Then we will make the taxi one and prologue first preview will be nearly finished

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I saw this thread as a sort of diary for our development, so sorry if it does not have so much importance for some of you who reads this topic ^^ but we are really learning step by step how to develop our game, manipulate the characters, and improve our english...

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I really want to thanks Cenc cause he gives us very important and good advices.
Now let's continue...

See you later !

Dolyla

 

[Mareeta]

Spoiler

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This one is a little bit weird. Maybe it's juste me but the ginger one seems more realistic (more details) than the others. Seeing her especially with the girl on the left side create a contrast in my opinion.
Don't worry it's not a big deal and you're still starting. Plus, it's more like the ginger girl is really polished. The others don't look bad.

Okay I was here just to saying good luck for ur project. It's pretty funny to see a couple doing that, but it could be fun even if it's a lot of work. You're probably not the first though, I just don't really try to be aware of this.

We would like to develop from scratch a VN like Badik, A.O.A ( RIP .... ) with a visual quality near of these productions with some sexy times.

Taper où ça fait mal. Ma becca..
Good luck for reach AOA level in term of renders and expressions ! He was the best, at least to me.

 

[Dolyla]

Yes we saw this too : Victoria Genesis basic resolution is far more detailed than the 2 others Genesis basic modded in this mode of rendering... But that's the max we can obtain for the moment with our knowledge and level in rendering... girl on the left have a skin and make up to imitate a little japanese style... maybe too much with quasi no details in the render ^^ We will see how it will goes when we will continue but i think we will rework a litlle her skin. And the blonde have a lot of details in "normal" mode but here all have disappeared...

Becca was my favorite too ! ( Valery for my husband )
And yes it's our goal to touch their level ( as Badik and AoA )... even if we cant reach it we are focus on it

Thank you for your support !

 

[Dolyla]

4 hours later... working on the same scene ... far better !

 

[Eagle1900]

4 hours later... working on the same scene ... far better !

View attachment 2311836

progress can be seen visibly, before the central girl did not have a "real" face, now she has improved so much congratulations!
even the details of the brunette have improved ... before it seemed they were all with too light colors, now the shadows are definitely something else, much more accurate.

 

[Müptezel Emo]

progress can be seen visibly, before the central girl did not have a "real" face, now she has improved so much congratulations!
even the details of the brunette have improved ... before it seemed they were all with too light colors, now the shadows are definitely something else, much more accurate.

It was about makeup assets

 

[Eagle1900]

It was about makeup assets

do you mean that before it had fewer resources and now it has invested for that?
I don't know, I give opinions as a layman, I think that even those who aren't too involved in certain situations, but have been crazy about this type of game for some time, can give their opinion and help to grow a little... (it's my personal thought)

 

[Dolyla]

Yes eagle he's right , i didn't change the lights or the shadows, just changed the level detail of some textures and removed the make up "japanese" white of the left one and played with the parameters for a skin color more realistic. For the middle one it's the hair color an the eyes who change all the face, but the skin looks "make up"... not really important cause she's a "sophisticated" person so it goes with the temperament of the character.

 

[Müptezel Emo]

Yes eagle he's right , i didn't change the lights or the shadows, just changed the level detail of some textures and removed the make up "japanese" white of the left one and played with the parameters for a skin color more realistic. For the middle one it's the hair color an the eyes who change all the face, but the skin looks "make up"... not really important cause she's a "sophisticated" person so it goes with the temperament of the character.

Btw, you can increase SSS for better skin results. ( It takes more time to render, btw)

 

[Dolyla]

We don't know how to make a character from 0 so we use assets made by others... it's kind of playing The Sims, we have a base body and we use cursors, change the clothes, change the colors.... that's for the basics but one day we maybe add a character made by us entirely... assets like this cost a lot. in this scene as assets different we have : Ginger and her clothes (60$ + 22$), genesis 9 essentials ( 77$ ) + mod ( 22$ ) , 3 differents hairs ( 27$+27$ + 30$ ) , the 2 dresses ( 25$) , skin map of the 2 others (given in the mod ) , the earrings for the middle one (free ) and the plane ( 18$ ). All of that costs about 300$ ....

 

[Eagle1900]

We don't know how to make a character from 0 so we use assets made by others... it's kind of playing The Sims, we have a base body and we use cursors, change the clothes, change the colors.... that's for the basics but one day we maybe add a character made by us entirely... assets like this cost a lot. in this scene as assets different we have : Ginger and her clothes (60$ + 22$), genesis 9 essentials ( 77$ ) + mod ( 22$ ) , 3 differents hairs ( 27$+27$ + 30$ ) , the 2 dresses ( 25$) , skin map of the 2 others (given in the mod ) , the earrings for the middle one (free ) and the plane ( 18$ ). All of that costs about 300$ ....

...................
I had no idea at all... so it's best not to "make a mistake", if you have to buy a modification, you risk opening a mortgage