- Oct 29, 2021
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- Thread starter Maleficent
- Start date
- Oct 29, 2021
- 3,657
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- Nov 20, 2018
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i hope that is not a preview... it just looks wrong like an old genesis 2 3dlight render cut out and put over an screensot of a background.
- Oct 10, 2022
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- Nov 14, 2017
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- Oct 11, 2019
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Yes, people should just be happy that the looks have improved as much as they have from THIS.
- Nov 20, 2018
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... but the time it took... and just image the time it will take till they look as good as before the rework... i wonder if it woult have taken less time to just export the stuff he wanted from the unreal engine to daz so far static objects like buildings or clothes would be way simpler than importing and rigging chars.
also by the looks of the previews why not render the envirements in unreal and layer the chars with fitting lighning in daz and combine via photoshop (shadows may be a bit problematic but with a bit photoshp skills it would be doable)
i may be not completlely informed but from what i understood the dev was mainly limited in scenery and different places for upcoming updates and i did not really saw complains about the current game grafics. so i can just shake my head that so much time is wastedin redoing everything when the results arent not nearly as good as before...reminds me somehow of the update from windows 7 to 8 might make it more easy for the developers but what about the end user?
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Here is where we are with Chapter 11's development. Even more progress has been made in correcting issues and improving the look of the final renders and animations. In addition, there are a few story changes that I'm making to the script. This has been a slog to get everything into Unreal Engine, and every day I feel like a dummy as I learn something I didn't know before. Let's focus on the bright side of things. Renders are easier to churn out in Unreal Engine now than they were in Daz. That is just on the setup side. As I've mentioned before, render speed cannot even compare as Unreal Engine is so much faster (it being a real time render engine and all).
Chapter 11 static render work is ongoing, and the final big challenge is getting animations to a quality level I feel comfortable releasing. It is going to take months of practice for me to get to where I ultimately want them, but I am not going to wait for that moment to get Chapter 11 out to you all. I only need a bit more time to get them to a level where they don't suck. My thanks to the developers helping me train my eye and reviewing my animation work, as rough as it is right now. Every day I find new things in the animation toolset that helps me shorten my time to produce these.
I wish I had an ETA to give for Chapter 11's release, but sadly, having missed two rough estimates already, I'm not ready to give one until I am a bit further along with a few of these fixes and animation work. I will be sure to shout it from the rooftops once I have one.
So here is the shortlist of what remains before I have a beta of Chapter 11:
- Final script rewriting (probably 8-10 scenes left here)
- Animations to an acceptable quality
- Static renders produced for all scenes with fixes implemented
- Fixes for about half a dozen known outstanding issues
- Liquid simulation and shader work for a certain bodily liquid
- Final assembly of code, renders, and animations into the Ren'py game engine
Now, if you aren't interested in why I've spent months making this switch, you can go ahead and move on to something else you want to do. Otherwise, read on to learn about the key things I hoped would happen when I made this massive change in my development process. Mercifully, they have all born out, even if they took longer than I hoped. This could be its own lengthy article, but I am going to summarize as best as I can.
Efficient Animation Pipeline
This is my #1 reason for making this transition. Animation work in Daz Studio is laborious, painful, and limited. Not only is the process of creating the animation rough, but converting other animations to work in Daz and rendering out the final animation is equally time-consuming.
There are those who say I've gone this long without animations, so why add them? However, I know many of you want them, there are a significant chunk of players who won't even look at a game that doesn't have them, and animations do, when done well, add value to the gameplay. I'm excited to be able to deliver a few with Chapter 11, and then increase that quantity as my skill in these develops.
Large Scene Support
Coming in Volume 3, I plan for some new and diverse locales, including some nice outdoor scenes. Having attempted to do a city in Daz Studio, I knew that those would not be possible in Daz Studio. I could fake it with certain tricks, but even those were laborious and limited my creative vision. No such issues exist with Unreal Engine, which seems obvious given how many AAA open-world games are made with it.
Real Time Physics Support
This right here was another feather in Unreal Engine's cap. I wanted jiggle physics, both for some added "realism" and to save me from having to try and hand animate it. I also wanted the hair to move more naturally during animations and in static renders. It has been very freeing, even though I'm still fine-tuning this area, to not need to stress about hair clipping or weird distortions when I try to fake physics. The engine handles that for my renders and animations, even if it needs me to spend a bit of time setting it up for each character. It is even better that any changes I make to these physics settings apply to all characters or at least only need to be updated once per character. Then I can re-render anything I've setup before, and those changes will be automatically added.
Improved Render Speed & Variation
In order to output the volume of renders I do each release in a timely manner, I had half a dozen computers in my house to get these rendered from Daz. Not only was that a pain for updates & hardware costs, but it also meant my air conditioning usage was very high, as well as my electric bill (at least until I switched to solar). Unreal Engine provides near instant render output. This makes corrections and iterative testing extremely efficient. I'm down to just two systems (one to work on and one to output on). Unreal Engine also allows me to add variations easily and without any significant extra development cost. There are paths I wanted to open up in To Be A King, but it was too costly in terms of development time. I could write and code the script variations quickly, but then I would add days or weeks to development of the renders in Daz Studio.
Better Method For Fixes
One frustration of my old software was that every render was stored in its own individual scene file that had its own settings. This meant that, if I found an issue with a series of renders, I'd have to load up each file, implement the fix, and save it back out. That process alone would be 5-10 minutes per file. Multiply that by 80 files or so per release, and I'd have a couple of days in just fixing issues. That does not count the time to then re-render them.
Unreal Engine works a lot better in this area. I still have individual files for each render or animation sequence, but things like characters, lighting, etc. are linked into that sequence. If I make a change with say a character's hair. That update applies immediately. All I have to do is set the sequence for the render or animation to re-render and it grabs those changes automatically. Couple that with the increased render time and improvements and fixes are easier than ever to get done.
Final Thoughts
I love this work, and I love the daily challenges it presents (usually). Strange as it sounds, game development is like its own game. Only in game development, you are constantly solving the puzzle of how to bring what's in your head to a project that others can experience on their computers. If I put off making this change until after I finished To Be A King in a few years, I'd be even further behind (not to mention frustrated).
Now let me get back to getting Chapter 11 out the door to all you eager people, and then turning my attention to completing the final chapter in Volume 2. I'm in my own personal crunch mode to get this done, and I look forward to sharing a release date as soon as possible. Thanks for reading, and thank you for your interest in what I do.
- Oct 10, 2022
- 4,349
- 7,740
- Oct 10, 2022
- 4,349
- 7,740
Maviarab tbh, it became so much better than initial renders but still nowhere close to daz renders.
- Jul 12, 2020
- 10,610
- 24,874
Oh I agree...was laughing at your gif which summed it up perfectly hehe
- Oct 10, 2022
- 4,349
- 7,740
Oh cool, didn't want to degrade of the huge work that dev managed. It was an incredible development within the time he had.
Also run out of reaction. So,
.
- Nov 20, 2018
- 498
- 1,237
in theory it sounds good but when looking at the screenshots it is more a horrorshow then anything else...View attachment 3002843
You must be registered to see the links
Here is where we are with Chapter 11's development. Even more progress has been made in correcting issues and improving the look of the final renders and animations. In addition, there are a few story changes that I'm making to the script. This has been a slog to get everything into Unreal Engine, and every day I feel like a dummy as I learn something I didn't know before. Let's focus on the bright side of things. Renders are easier to churn out in Unreal Engine now than they were in Daz. That is just on the setup side. As I've mentioned before, render speed cannot even compare as Unreal Engine is so much faster (it being a real time render engine and all).
Chapter 11 static render work is ongoing, and the final big challenge is getting animations to a quality level I feel comfortable releasing. It is going to take months of practice for me to get to where I ultimately want them, but I am not going to wait for that moment to get Chapter 11 out to you all. I only need a bit more time to get them to a level where they don't suck. My thanks to the developers helping me train my eye and reviewing my animation work, as rough as it is right now. Every day I find new things in the animation toolset that helps me shorten my time to produce these.
I wish I had an ETA to give for Chapter 11's release, but sadly, having missed two rough estimates already, I'm not ready to give one until I am a bit further along with a few of these fixes and animation work. I will be sure to shout it from the rooftops once I have one.
So here is the shortlist of what remains before I have a beta of Chapter 11:
- Final script rewriting (probably 8-10 scenes left here)
- Animations to an acceptable quality
- Static renders produced for all scenes with fixes implemented
- Fixes for about half a dozen known outstanding issues
- Liquid simulation and shader work for a certain bodily liquid
- Final assembly of code, renders, and animations into the Ren'py game engine
Now, if you aren't interested in why I've spent months making this switch, you can go ahead and move on to something else you want to do. Otherwise, read on to learn about the key things I hoped would happen when I made this massive change in my development process. Mercifully, they have all born out, even if they took longer than I hoped. This could be its own lengthy article, but I am going to summarize as best as I can.
Efficient Animation Pipeline
This is my #1 reason for making this transition. Animation work in Daz Studio is laborious, painful, and limited. Not only is the process of creating the animation rough, but converting other animations to work in Daz and rendering out the final animation is equally time-consuming.
There are those who say I've gone this long without animations, so why add them? However, I know many of you want them, there are a significant chunk of players who won't even look at a game that doesn't have them, and animations do, when done well, add value to the gameplay. I'm excited to be able to deliver a few with Chapter 11, and then increase that quantity as my skill in these develops.
Large Scene Support
Coming in Volume 3, I plan for some new and diverse locales, including some nice outdoor scenes. Having attempted to do a city in Daz Studio, I knew that those would not be possible in Daz Studio. I could fake it with certain tricks, but even those were laborious and limited my creative vision. No such issues exist with Unreal Engine, which seems obvious given how many AAA open-world games are made with it.
Real Time Physics Support
This right here was another feather in Unreal Engine's cap. I wanted jiggle physics, both for some added "realism" and to save me from having to try and hand animate it. I also wanted the hair to move more naturally during animations and in static renders. It has been very freeing, even though I'm still fine-tuning this area, to not need to stress about hair clipping or weird distortions when I try to fake physics. The engine handles that for my renders and animations, even if it needs me to spend a bit of time setting it up for each character. It is even better that any changes I make to these physics settings apply to all characters or at least only need to be updated once per character. Then I can re-render anything I've setup before, and those changes will be automatically added.
Improved Render Speed & Variation
In order to output the volume of renders I do each release in a timely manner, I had half a dozen computers in my house to get these rendered from Daz. Not only was that a pain for updates & hardware costs, but it also meant my air conditioning usage was very high, as well as my electric bill (at least until I switched to solar). Unreal Engine provides near instant render output. This makes corrections and iterative testing extremely efficient. I'm down to just two systems (one to work on and one to output on). Unreal Engine also allows me to add variations easily and without any significant extra development cost. There are paths I wanted to open up in To Be A King, but it was too costly in terms of development time. I could write and code the script variations quickly, but then I would add days or weeks to development of the renders in Daz Studio.
Better Method For Fixes
One frustration of my old software was that every render was stored in its own individual scene file that had its own settings. This meant that, if I found an issue with a series of renders, I'd have to load up each file, implement the fix, and save it back out. That process alone would be 5-10 minutes per file. Multiply that by 80 files or so per release, and I'd have a couple of days in just fixing issues. That does not count the time to then re-render them.
Unreal Engine works a lot better in this area. I still have individual files for each render or animation sequence, but things like characters, lighting, etc. are linked into that sequence. If I make a change with say a character's hair. That update applies immediately. All I have to do is set the sequence for the render or animation to re-render and it grabs those changes automatically. Couple that with the increased render time and improvements and fixes are easier than ever to get done.
Final Thoughts
I love this work, and I love the daily challenges it presents (usually). Strange as it sounds, game development is like its own game. Only in game development, you are constantly solving the puzzle of how to bring what's in your head to a project that others can experience on their computers. If I put off making this change until after I finished To Be A King in a few years, I'd be even further behind (not to mention frustrated).
Now let me get back to getting Chapter 11 out the door to all you eager people, and then turning my attention to completing the final chapter in Volume 2. I'm in my own personal crunch mode to get this done, and I look forward to sharing a release date as soon as possible. Thanks for reading, and thank you for your interest in what I do.
i dont know if he is delusional or just in denial that all he has done so far only got this disorted faces and possesed doll looks if he thinks that it looks good...
- Oct 10, 2022
- 4,349
- 7,740
We'll all see the end results but I am more hopeful than before because there are some huge improvements. I was always positive about ITRoy deliver the game, not abandon it but also somewhat reluctant about the change because the learning process, huge workload, the different looks comes with the engine change and all in all convinced it's not worth it. I still am leaning towards not worth the trouble side but the explanation is somewhat plausible and renders are coming close to passable.
So I don't think he is delusional but a huge risk taker to create better things.
P.S. I am expecting at least one or two brush up along the road when he will learn to use UE better in future.
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- Nov 14, 2017
- 66,752
- 33,644
EXACTLY!!!
and soon after that unwatch whole game (at this rate).
- Nov 15, 2022
- 953
- 1,834
I guess the truth of the matter is... To Be a King should've been wrapped up in Daz sooner rather than later - and then the developer should've announced an engine change. I can understand wanting to streamline the process for the future, but "sacrificing" your current project is not the way to go about it...
- Oct 10, 2022
- 4,349
- 7,740
Oh I agree with you about that but if you read the explanations he was not planning to end the game any time soon and his future plans for the game is too much for the DAZ engine to handle, so he thought why not I change the engine early in the game. So it will be easy to change whole game. Now, when you think about this way it makes so much sense.
Though, a few problems with that. First one is being even though there is much planned for the future and that makes the game technically in early phase, the game is already huge as it is. So engine change brought huge work load with it. Second one, future problems are not tied to previous chapters. He mentions city environment, sea scenes etc. but none of them was a problem before. The game was already divided into volumes also. He could have said, with volume 3 I'm changing the render engine because this and that. There are even AAA games that did that. It would have been better I believe.
I think ITRoy is a perfectionist, that is why he chose to change whole game. He took huge risks with it but seems like he is gonna deliver it with some small damages and after that, he is not bound by the limitation of DAZ anymore.