VN Ren'Py Where It All Began [Ch. 3 Full] [Oceanlab]

[RNasc4444]

This. While there are a lot now doing good renders, when it comes to mood and lighting, Ocean is still cinematically miles ahead of anyone.

He's the Christopher Doyle of AVN's at the moment.

I don't have the knowledge or experience to state otherwise because my collection of games played is tiny compared to most of you guys's but still I'm hesitant to take you at your word. I don't doubt Ocean is near the top but "miles ahead of anyone else" is hard to believe.

Just looking at Enyo Eerie's game, for example, that was abandoned over 2 years ago and was at at insane level of quality at the time. I can only imagine where he'd be right now if the development had continued. There must be plenty of similar examples of devs who are incredibly skilled, technically speaking. Is there really no one that stands at Ocean's level?

 

[yossa999]

I don't have the knowledge or experience to state otherwise because my collection of games played is tiny compared to most of you guys's but still I'm hesitant to take you at your word. I don't doubt Ocean is near the top but "miles ahead of anyone else" is hard to believe.

Just looking at Enyo Eerie's game, for example, that was abandoned over 2 years ago and was at at insane level of quality at the time. I can only imagine where he'd be right now if the development had continued. There must be plenty of similar examples of devs who are incredibly skilled, technically speaking. Is there really no one that stands at Ocean's level?

This really stands at offtopic, which moderators will delete if you continue it in the on-topic game thread. But in a nutshell, there are already a noticable number of developers who make individual renders no worse, at least in my amateurish opinion. But all together - composition, cinematics, details, music - no, I don't know who is better.
EDIT: Okay, maybe I know a guy or two whose work I would consider on par without any reservations.

 

[The Krogan Dude]

yesnt, you can obviously get on the same lvl just by upgrading hardware and being able to render stuff in 4k and higher but there is still things like angles/perspective/colors/lighting which play a huge role to create a very cinematic feel/image
and artists that can get all those things right are very rare

A lot of Ocean's renders are on the contrary some of the simplest stuff to produce in DAZ. Single character headshots with heavy depth of field takes like 2 minutes to setup, especially considering Ocean uses so much depth of field his backgrounds often become lost and meaningless bokeh delivery systems. A third of his renders are close up, he doesn't even need to make complex poses with his models. Ocean's characters never blink in dialogue while many other games have characters faces move around and blink as they speak. His games are very static.

His lightning are impressive but the way he works with his environments is very poor. The environments in the collegue game you can't mention are almost a character in of themselves, as you spend so much time interacting with it throughout the story, so they cannot be simply relegated to just being a strong depth of field blur as we're constantly moving through these places in the form of mini and full on free roam events. The complexity between the two games from a production perspective is not even remotely close.

 

[NebulousShooter]

A lot of Ocean's renders are on the contrary some of the simplest stuff to produce in DAZ. Single character headshots with heavy depth of field takes like 2 minutes to setup, especially considering Ocean uses so much depth of field his backgrounds often become lost and meaningless bokeh delivery systems. A third of his renders are close up, he doesn't even need to make complex poses with his models. Ocean's characters never blink in dialogue while many other games have characters faces move around and blink as they speak. His games are very static.

His lightning are impressive but the way he works with his environments is very poor. The environments in the collegue game you can't mention are almost a character in of themselves, as you spend so much time interacting with it throughout the story, so they cannot be simply relegated to just being a strong depth of field blur as we're constantly moving through these places in the form of mini and full on free roam events. The complexity between the two games from a production perspective is not even remotely close.

But, but, but the dutch angles.

 

[Maviarab]

Spoiler: Headshots and bokeh and poor environments?

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If going to try and make a point...then try and actually make a point

 

[NebulousShooter]

View attachment 4557915

I changed my mind. Clearly he is the best in the world, while he renders everyone else doodles.

 

[yossa999]

Spoiler: Headshots and bokeh and poor environments?

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If going to try and make a point...then try and actually make a point

No eye blinking animations for static renders. Laaaaaaame.
Frankly, this shit scares me more than it helps create the immersion.

 

[Penfold Mole]

Frankly, I don't mind that some of the renders are simple. I mean, you can't make each and every one of them a unique work of art. Just like in the movies there are simple shots with basic lighting - yes, often in dialogs where the camera jumps from a face closeup to a face closeup or medium closeups and not much else than a face is visible on the screen. Actors can just wear their everyday pants (

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) and sneakers instead of their costume and you may not need the full movie set, just the background and some basic lighting.

And then there are full and wide and extreme wide shots with the surrounding environment - this is where all the effort of all the people on the real movie set goes - the people who find places to shoot, people who set it up and decorate the set and the lighting team and the camera team who sets up the places and angles and depth and focus of the camera and everything else I haven't mentioned.

And the same goes for DAZ sets, with the only difference that everything gets done by one person - not necessarily, but at least in this case. Sure, the set is virtual and in most cases doesn't cost as much to find one and to set it up, but if you take it to the level Ocean has done already, then this is what you're dealing with. And multiple takes or in case of DAZ, multiple renders with different lighting and angles are likely being done, until the result is good enough.

I'm not saying that there are no other DAZ artists here on F95 who haven't done 3D CG art at a level this high, because there are, but only a few of them are involved in making game renders and pretty much none are making a game alone as a one man team.

If you guys have paid attention to Ocean's devlogs, then you likely noticed that he often mentions difficult scenes that take either a lot of time to set up or a lot of time to render. Now the rendering part got easier and faster, but not the setting up part.

 

[sorco2003]

No eye blinking animations for static renders. Laaaaaaame.
Frankly, this shit scares me more than it helps create the immersion.

I gave you my like in an opinion, but you had to make a stab in the back!
How are you going to say that about the blinking?
it's such a nice detail and relatively so easy to do that it deserves praise for whoever was the first to use it.

 

[Maviarab]

I gave you my like in an opinion, but you had to make a stab in the back!
How are you going to say that about the blinking?
it's such a nice detail and relatively so easy to do that it deserves praise for whoever was the first to use it.

But they are still stood still..like a statue...blinking.

It is also imo far more irritating and creepy than immersive. Now, if they did whole renders with a slight shift of the body with the blink..cool. But that's even more work...

They do it to add more immersion...it's like FPS games....something done to add 'immersion' which for me, doesn't look realistic in the slightest and breaks my immersion.

 

[Penfold Mole]

But they are still stood still..like a statue...blinking.

It is also imo far more irritating and creepy than immersive. Now, if they did whole renders with a slight shift of the body with the blink..cool. But that's even more work...

They do it to add more immersion...it's like FPS games....something done to add 'immersion' which for me, doersn't look realistic in the slightest and breaks my immersion.

Naughty Road does that pretty well. There's a lot of shifting around and blinking, but he uses sprites on these animated scenes and re-uses them quite a bit. And these dialog scenes are intentionally cartoonish, just like the characters.

 

[sorco2003]

Frankly, I don't mind that some of the renders are simple. I mean, you can't make each and every one of them a unique work of art. Just like in the movies there are simple shots with basic lighting - yes, often in dialogs where the camera jumps from a face closeup to a face closeup or medium closeups and not much else than a face is visible on the screen. Actors can just wear their everyday pants (

You must be registered to see the links

) and sneakers instead of their costume and you may not need the full movie set, just the background and some basic lighting.

And then there are full and wide and extreme wide shots with the surrounding environment - this is where all the effort of all the people on the real movie set goes - the people who find places to shoot, people who set it up and decorate the set and the lighting team and the camera team who sets up the places and angles and depth and focus of the camera and everything else I haven't mentioned.

And the same goes for DAZ sets, with the only difference that everything gets done by one person - not necessarily, but at least in this case. Sure, the set is virtual and in most cases doesn't cost as much to find one and to set it up, but if you take it to the level Ocean has done already, then this is what you're dealing with. And multiple takes or in case of DAZ, multiple renders with different lighting and angles are likely being done, until the result is good enough.

I'm not saying that there are no other DAZ artists here on F95 who haven't done 3D CG art at a level this high, because there are, but only a few of them are involved in making game renders and pretty much none are making a game alone as a one man team.

If you guys have paid attention to Ocean's devlogs, then you likely noticed that he often mentions difficult scenes that take either a lot of time to set up or a lot of time to render. Now the rendering part got easier and faster, but not the setting up part.

Luckily it's something more common in this industry, it's not just about how "pretty" an image looks, it's about the purpose. Art direction is fundamental in my opinion, not just the narrative decisions or the static image or the animations, but what you want to do with it. There are examples that come to mind where the images are not even remotely comparable to Ocean, but they have put a load of intention to the whole that ends up being (in my opinion) beautiful decisions

 

[Penfold Mole]

But they are still stood still..like a statue...blinking.

You mean, you wouldn't enjoy seeing blinking statues IRL?

I've seen in a few games where blinking is combined with breathing. Much less creepy.
But it also means rendering videos or sequences of frames instead of stills.

 

[yossa999]

You mean, you wouldn't enjoy seeing blinking statues IRL?

Reminds me of those fucking horror movies where the portrait comes to life. I remember when I was a teen these films scared the shit out of me.

 

[sorco2003]

But they are still stood still..like a statue...blinking.

It is also imo far more irritating and creepy than immersive. Now, if they did whole renders with a slight shift of the body with the blink..cool. But that's even more work...

They do it to add more immersion...it's like FPS games....something done to add 'immersion' which for me, doesn't look realistic in the slightest and breaks my immersion.

I don't agree, if an ass in close-up (or any forced angle) when the protagonist is on the other side of the room doesn't "break" the immersion, why would the blink of an eye of someone who is face to face in a conversation with the protagonist?

 

[yossa999]

I don't agree, if an ass in close-up (or any forced angle) when the protagonist is on the other side of the room doesn't "break" the immersion, why would the blink of an eye of someone who is face to face in a conversation with the protagonist?

 

[Maviarab]

I don't agree, if an ass in close-up (or any forced angle) when the protagonist is on the other side of the room doesn't "break" the immersion, why would the blink of an eye of someone who is face to face in a conversation with the protagonist?

Cinema (and now) the games industry have been using weird angles and 'out of space' shots since the 20's, it's not a new concept. Doing it well is another thing.

People do not stand perfectly still in a conversation so what's the point of adding blinking?

 

[sorco2003]

View attachment 4558241

See! this is a mayor example of a well made blink

 

[sorco2003]

People do not stand perfectly still in a conversation so what's the point of adding blinking?

Add a little detail just like, i dont know, a blueprint with a scooby-like plan

 

[Maviarab]

Add a little detail just like, i dont know, a blueprint with a scooby-like plan

Ruh roh!