Question about getting started

[jimmydiddly]

I wanted to try my hand at making a renpy VN and I would like to know what kind of work flow I could do to build scenes for renders.

I know the bulk of development would be learning and creating the game itself in renpy but just being able to make a basic scene and an idea of how I would eventually go about creating the renders would help keep me motivated. I think I have a pretty fun idea for a VN and I think it'd be a fun hobby to work on in my spare time.

Right now my list of things I think I'll be using for scenes are:

Daz3d for creating/editing characters
Blender to import the characters for scene building/posing/rendering (maybe animation eventually)
Ren'py engine for the game itself

The premise of the game would be the MC is an aspiring amateur wrestler that wants to eventually make it big. It would be heavily inspired by games like Public Defense Corp, Being a Dik, and Desert Stalker.

It's also been recommended to me to start making the game in renpy and add renders in after but I still want to get my feet wet with at least creating a character, importing to blender, and then making a basic scene with some simple assets to render .

Any general recommendations on getting started, additional tools/software, and especially assets for creating characters/scenes would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Droid Productions]

Daz3d for creating/editing characters
Blender to import the characters for scene building/posing/rendering (maybe animation eventually)

Unless you're already quite proficient in Blender this will add quite a lot of complexity to your task. It means you'll need to set up all the materials yourself (DAZ assets tend to be tuned for IRay, you'll need to set them up again in Blender for Evee/Cycles). Getting poses and clothing working out of the box will be tricky, etc.

If you know what you're doing in Blender it's super powerful, but it's got a much much higher learning curve than DAZ.

For Love of Magic I mostly use Blender for hard surface stuff (cutscenes not involving humans).

 

[jimmydiddly]

Thanks for the insight. I'll need to do more research on the pros and cons of bringing blender into the mix.

 

[Synx]

I wanted to try my hand at making a renpy VN and I would like to know what kind of work flow I could do to build scenes for renders.

I know the bulk of development would be learning and creating the game itself in renpy but just being able to make a basic scene and an idea of how I would eventually go about creating the renders would help keep me motivated. I think I have a pretty fun idea for a VN and I think it'd be a fun hobby to work on in my spare time.

I think your vastly underestimating how much time and effort creating renders take. Creating the game in Renpy isn't that complicated, unless you want complex systems, a lot of different paths, etc. Renpy does most work for you. But getting the renders to use in your game will be where you spend the majority of your time on.

For Blender vs DAZ I would just look at what DAZ has to offer. It's really good at what it does, but it has limited flexibility. You are sort of limited to DAZ assets, animating tools are a bit lackluster, and it requires a Nvidia GPU, but if that's not a problem for you I would just stick to DAZ. Blender is extremely powerful and flexibility but comes with a much steaper learning curve.

 

[Deleted member 4879170]

First off, I wish you the best of luck with your project.

I think DAZ is the best beginner-friendly software to create your renders. But I don't use it myself because I honestly got sick of the number of games with the same faces, hair, body types, etc. So if you have the capital to invest in new assets or if you can scour the deepest parts of the internet for more "uncommon assets", then I'd say go for it.

As for Blender, I very much agree with what Droid Productions said. It takes a lot more time to learn, but it makes up for it with what it offers you. As I said, I don't use DAZ, so I think I use blender differently than how other devs use it. I use it for creating in-game clothing/objects, facial expressions, posing, and animating.
Mastering Blender is very hard (at least imo) and time-consuming, but also very rewarding.

 

[Rafster]

Man, I would try my hand at Daz, but my potato PC would explode

 

[♍VoidTraveler]

Sigh~
Not another daz please...
So bored of them.

 

[Gwedelino]

Sigh~
Not another daz please...
So bored of them.

For a first game it might be better to go with the easiest solution.

 

[Atemsiel]

For a first game it might be better to go with the easiest solution.

I mean, the easiest solution is probably to use HS or Koikatsu, but a lot of people don't like those. I do, but that's just me.

Personally I usually find daz to hit the uncanny valley more often than not. Unless it's done very well.

 

[Sizzl]

1. For import to blender use Diffeomorphic. Not daz to blender bridge created by daz devs (its not updating and its garbage)
2 Install Diffeomorphic in both daz3d and blender
3 Create character in daz 3d and save it as a scene (character must be in default pose)
4 Then do a pose or animation in Daz. You can make animation with set of poses which is REALLY useful, you cant do that in blender. Save animation or pose - as pose
5 Go to blender. open global settings in diffeo addon and locate all your daz libaries. Click OK
6 Click on the "Easy import" because with that import, clothes will be attached to your model when its moving
7 In the next window choose "Morphed" (if you dont do that, there is a high chance that your model will mess up during a pose). Then check main boxes, idk wtf they are doing, but most important ones are "expressons" and "Make bones poseable". Choose file which you saved AS A SCENE
8 Your character will be imported, click on the sketeton go to the items tab in blender and disable all locks so you can move the model. You can start moving model in blender
9 You can also import pose from Daz. Click on skeleton Go to the diffeo tab and then click on "posing" (UNCHECK ALL ROTATION, LOCATION etc BOXES in this tab)
10 Click on the "import pose" and choose youre pose file and its done or your character will be messed up because of some morph or any other goddamn reason.
11 If you are importing animation, its exactly the same as step 10. But what you will notice if you moved your figure, when you click on play, your figure will move on a original spot. To avoid that, yo must click on skeleton (or mesh?) right click on location and press "clear keyframes", you can do that with scale and rotation (I have watched all possible tutorials, none of them said about that and i found that by accident, i guess that is pretty obvious to everyone.)

Making animations in blender will be fucking painful, so i recommend doing them in daz. You can also save your animations in daz, you can to that in blender but its much harder and they will probably wont work on your other models i dont know, never tried that. Daz is easier for your characters animations, blender will be very useful in objects animations.
You shouldn't have any problems with textures, but you'l notice that your imported objects are always lighted cuz it imports som default hdri. Go to world shader settings and just delete it, and you can use your hdri/lighting in blender.
This is all about diffeomorphic, there are tutorials on youtube but every single one of them misses out some crucial information. There is a diffeomorphic, but its very convuluted and all i need is "what the fuck am i supposed to click, to get this shit to work properly".
One last thing when you put clothes on your character in daz and you see a poke through. Dont bother about it, cuz when you import your character to blender? click on a mesh? go to edit mode, and delete/hide skin under clothes.

Thats it.