Ren'Py Daz Need help starting my own game development

[MissFortune]

There is a denoiser built into Daz. I can't speak to the quality vs other options, but it works for me. However, you need to play with the settings to have it not kick in until a certain point, generally after XXX number of iterations. If you kick it in too early, your images will look very blurry. I usually have it kick in around um... 80% to 85% complete. That denoises it a good bit without smoothing and blurring it too much

Daz uses the Nvidia AI denoiser natively, iirc. Which is fine, though I prefer the Intel one myself. But the way Daz (or even Blender) denoises isn't exactly ideal, especially if you're after detail. They're great for animations, not so great for closeup still renders.

The ideal process is to render out the noisy image completely untouched by any post-processing done by Daz, run it through an external denoiser the DnD denoiser by Taosoft is a good GUI option for either the Intel or Nivida denoisers. No need for both, just one will work. Bring them both into Photoshop/Photopea/etc. with the denoised version as the topmost layer (and work in 16-Bit instead of 8.). From there, you'll layer mask away the part of the denoised image where the original image didn't need denoising. Along with playing with the opacity.

 

[Shairi 3D]

Daz uses the Nvidia AI denoiser natively, iirc. Which is fine, though I prefer the Intel one myself. But the way Daz (or even Blender) denoises isn't exactly ideal, especially if you're after detail. They're great for animations, not so great for closeup still renders.

The ideal process is to render out the noisy image completely untouched by any post-processing done by Daz, run it through an external denoiser the DnD denoiser by Taosoft is a good GUI option for either the Intel or Nivida denoisers. No need for both, just one will work. Bring them both into Photoshop/Photopea/etc. with the denoised version as the topmost layer (and work in 16-Bit instead of 8.). From there, you'll layer mask away the part of the denoised image where the original image didn't need denoising. Along with playing with the opacity.

Oh wow, Thats brilliant advice. Thank you. This way i can preserve roughness along with denoising.

 

[peterppp]

Daz uses the Nvidia AI denoiser natively, iirc. Which is fine, though I prefer the Intel one myself. But the way Daz (or even Blender) denoises isn't exactly ideal, especially if you're after detail. They're great for animations, not so great for closeup still renders.

The ideal process is to render out the noisy image completely untouched by any post-processing done by Daz, run it through an external denoiser the DnD denoiser by Taosoft is a good GUI option for either the Intel or Nivida denoisers. No need for both, just one will work. Bring them both into Photoshop/Photopea/etc. with the denoised version as the topmost layer (and work in 16-Bit instead of 8.). From there, you'll layer mask away the part of the denoised image where the original image didn't need denoising. Along with playing with the opacity.

i don't get how the black color removes the layer. it looks like you're using an eraser? which is how i would do it

 

[MissFortune]

i don't get how the black color removes the layer. it looks like you're using an eraser? which is how i would do it

You can use an eraser, but it's destructive. So, if you went too far in and realized you messed up earlier, CTRL + Z wouldn't really save you, meaning you'd have to start over.

The technique in the video is a layer mask. It's a non-destructive way of removing parts of an image. Black removes, white restores. So, if you mess up, you can just turn the brush white and then go over the part you messed up on. It can save a lot of frustration and such, but it's absolutely not required.

 

[peterppp]

You can use an eraser, but it's destructive. So, if you went too far in and realized you messed up earlier, CTRL + Z wouldn't really save you, meaning you'd have to start over.

The technique in the video is a layer mask. It's a non-destructive way of removing parts of an image. Black removes, white restores. So, if you mess up, you can just turn the brush white and then go over the part you messed up on. It can save a lot of frustration and such, but it's absolutely not required.

i see now. my mistake was that i clicked on the image part of the layer (and turned it into a smart object). then it painted black as usual. clicking on the white part makes it work like in the clip

 

[SurpriseSunlight]

Good luck for your game, I'm on the same boat but still need motivation to start to make one.

Based on your renders (from Blender) I'll give you some tips/information:

So most of the games are using Genesis 8 and Genesis 8.1 assets - some old experimented developers might still be using resources from Genesis 3 - because there's more stuff for this generation than Genesis 9, that consumes more memory (because of the textures) and does not make it accept G8 easily, I suggest having MMX Genesis converter to help you go from G9 to G8.

Animation is not the best experience in DAZ (it works but there's better), but there's simulation involved for the physics part and will require you to be familiar with dForce, also please avoid stiff or slow movements as if you were a robot.

From your renders on Blender, I really like the Melina one. On DAZ you will prefer having a HDRI first then setting up some point lights and a distant light for some ray casts. Although you might be interested in KindredArts HDRI stuff, like fog, rain, wet, sweat, fire, camera light, etc. I won't say it's a must-have but for more cinematic renders it provides some tools.

DAZ provides the basics in terms of sliders and you will probably need to use a lot more sliders and for that I'd say Zev0 stuff IS a must-have, perhaps not everything but you'll have sliders for boobs (the most important of course) but also aging (making younger or older characters), glutes, magic camera (change pose or hide stuff based on the camera and not having to reload a new scene), etc. on probably every genesis generation so you don't have to worry about it.

About seggs, I guess there's two schools: the ones who are using the DAZ genitalia provided and using either vanilla or sliders (I do this) or you rely on custom genitalia with their sliders like NGV8/NGV9, Golden Palace or Dicktator for example. You should try both to see whatever you like, there's a lot of experimentation to do before you feel confident on your DAZ scenes, but you'll always learn something from this.

 

[MissFortune]

Based on your renders (from Blender) I'll give you some tips/information:

Just going to chime in on the first and third points:

If a dev is already using 8.1, there's not a whole lot of difference from a VRAM perspective. Both 8.1 and 9 use roughly 6.5GB-7GB of VRAM depending on the PA/vendor, assuming no optimizations. I think G9 skin textures, for whatever reason, tend to play nicer with lights than 8.1 often does. There are some 8K G9 clothing assets out there, which should promptly be downscaled in PS as it's nigh entirely useless for anything but extreme closeups.

If they're coming from Blender, they're likely already decently knowledgeable with light sources. The examples they posted seem to enforce it. HDRIs are great for outdoor stuff/window shots, but should be avoided for indoor scenes unless a user has a lower end GPU. Point lights are good for candles, smaller light sources, or anything else that tends to show light omnidirectionally. Distant lights should generally be avoided. Spotlights for Daz are what Area Lights are to Blender, imo. They kind of do nearly everything. Ghost Lights (for the practical lighting) and Spotlights for the character/focus of the shot should be your main light sources for indoors, if hardware allows.

 

[Eezergoode]

The ideal process is to render out the noisy image completely untouched by any post-processing done by Daz, run it through an external denoiser the DnD denoiser by Taosoft is a good GUI option for either the Intel or Nivida denoisers. No need for both, just one will work. Bring them both into Photoshop/Photopea/etc. with the denoised version as the topmost layer (and work in 16-Bit instead of 8.). From there, you'll layer mask away the part of the denoised image where the original image didn't need denoising. Along with playing with the opacity.

I hate to admit but I never actually thought of doing this. Mainly because i keep hoping I'll find an artist and be able to focus on writing and coding, but in all reality, that's not likely to happen, so I'll experiment with this method and see how it fits into my (very sporadic) work flow.

 

[no_more_name]

There is no provided buffer for Nvidia/Intel denoiser. It's not Blender.
Any AI denoiser would do a better job for Daz renders.

 

[Divine Cyberman]

Ever heard of the Diffeomorphic DAZ importer? It's a very solid unofficial plugin that allows you to export assets from DAZ to blender. If you are comfortable with blender already, you could use DAZ to create your characters and then import them to Blender to have better control with animation and rendering.

 

[Shairi 3D]

Good luck for your game, I'm on the same boat but still need motivation to start to make one.

Based on your renders (from Blender) I'll give you some tips/information:

So most of the games are using Genesis 8 and Genesis 8.1 assets - some old experimented developers might still be using resources from Genesis 3 - because there's more stuff for this generation than Genesis 9, that consumes more memory (because of the textures) and does not make it accept G8 easily, I suggest having MMX Genesis converter to help you go from G9 to G8.

Animation is not the best experience in DAZ (it works but there's better), but there's simulation involved for the physics part and will require you to be familiar with dForce, also please avoid stiff or slow movements as if you were a robot.

From your renders on Blender, I really like the Melina one. On DAZ you will prefer having a HDRI first then setting up some point lights and a distant light for some ray casts. Although you might be interested in KindredArts HDRI stuff, like fog, rain, wet, sweat, fire, camera light, etc. I won't say it's a must-have but for more cinematic renders it provides some tools.

DAZ provides the basics in terms of sliders and you will probably need to use a lot more sliders and for that I'd say Zev0 stuff IS a must-have, perhaps not everything but you'll have sliders for boobs (the most important of course) but also aging (making younger or older characters), glutes, magic camera (change pose or hide stuff based on the camera and not having to reload a new scene), etc. on probably every genesis generation so you don't have to worry about it.

About seggs, I guess there's two schools: the ones who are using the DAZ genitalia provided and using either vanilla or sliders (I do this) or you rely on custom genitalia with their sliders like NGV8/NGV9, Golden Palace or Dicktator for example. You should try both to see whatever you like, there's a lot of experimentation to do before you feel confident on your DAZ scenes, but you'll always learn something from this.

Thank you so much for the help and your time. You Guys are so supportive and i feel like family <3
I really love how indepth your advice are and i really do love you guys.

 

[Shairi 3D]

Ever heard of the Diffeomorphic DAZ importer? It's a very solid unofficial plugin that allows you to export assets from DAZ to blender. If you are comfortable with blender already, you could use DAZ to create your characters and then import them to Blender to have better control with animation and rendering.

That could work but if i do it manually wouldnt that take too long cause ive already have 100GB of DAZ library. Also will those assets need work after exported to blender? like weight painting and normals issue etc?

 

[MissFortune]

That could work but if i do it manually wouldnt that take too long cause ive already have 100GB of DAZ library. Also will those assets need work after exported to blender? like weight painting and normals issue etc?

Not really. Here's a video I did for another post that takes a Daz figure to Blender, but it's largely 1:1 with newer versions of Diffeo. Just bring over assets as you need them from Daz, while making use of SketchFab/3DWarehouse/etc. for other stuff you might need.


Depending on the hair asset and model you use, you'll likely need to go into the shader editor and adjust the hair to bring some life back into it. There's a pretty solid tutorial on YT for it, as well. Blender/Diffeo doesn't play well with hidden assets, either. So, make sure you remove any hidden items before you export to Blender. Stuff like Buttons, clothing assets you've turn off, and stuff of that nature will cause Diffeo to weird out during the transfer process. Shells can be tricky at times, as well. Good rule of thumb is to make sure your figure is in SubD 3, Tools > Geometry Editor, and then Export HD To Blender. This tends to work especially well for Geografts.

 

[Shairi 3D]

Update:
Once again thank you so much for all the time and help. I really appreciate it.
So after messing with Daz, researching and trying to learn a bit. I've come to conclusion i might have to back down from the project i had in mind. Its cause my PC isn't powerful enough to work on what i wanna work with. I can't even try to learn with 1 G9 model (which is one of the main heroine), forget about other assests. Blender is pretty forgiving in regards of render mode editing or experimenting with different angles.
Texture shader mode is weird in Daz. Some times it doesnt show clipping as all the assests are black also light is comp[letely different in both texture and Iray mode (too bright even though it doesnt light anything in texture shader mode)
So I am thinking about making a short game with G8 or G3 models so i can learn Daz a bit, start working with it and gain some experience with the software. Once i get better system i can focus on the original idea of the game i wanna make.
What do you guys say? Should i do it?
Also did a first still render with G8 wearing outfit and a little pose. Still getting hang of moving things cause i dont know wth is going on sometimes.

 

[eri]

Not sure if anyone said it here but you said it takes cpu and not gpu your scene.
I think its either your setting in daz is cpu and not gpu and if gpu is selected your scene might be too heavy for gpu and in that case gpu can disconnect and either continue with cpu or your scene will crash.

 

[eri]

Noise in daz is sort of normal. Can be from lightning or probably you need too let render for longer.

 

[eri]

Genesis 9 is harder for systems probably because its 8k some characters and there is also a option in parameter tab which is
subd level and under it another one. There you can see first option from 1-5 normal number for gen 8 and 8.1 is 1-2 and for gen9 they the authors of characters I saw they use 3.
These numbers are I think polygons of the characters or something so more means harder scene for your pc.

There are things like scene optimizer which can resize things inside your scene. Which helps a lot. Restart daz after you use that.
Or like HDRI camera thing at daz store which allows you to to add camera to scene which will let you add hdri light better because its hide everything behind camera. Has its cons and pros.

 

[Shairi 3D]

Not sure if anyone said it here but you said it takes cpu and not gpu your scene.
I think its either your setting in daz is cpu and not gpu and if gpu is selected your scene might be too heavy for gpu and in that case gpu can disconnect and either continue with cpu or your scene will crash.

The weird thing is i worked with 8k or 4k textured models in blender. Its never like this. I had a scene with too many poly counts and the render turned out blank but i could edit and move around in the scene in render mode regardless.
By the way these are settings i saw in YT tutorial so daz focuses on gpu but it doesnt. Gpu is always around 9-13%. Ive experimented with the settings but it doesnt work.
I am still fairly new to Daz so i find it a bit difficult to make it work also. More work means more time which i have little to pose, light, render etc

 

[MissFortune]

The weird thing is i worked with 8k or 4k textured models in blender. Its never like this. I had a scene with too many poly counts and the render turned out blank but i could edit and move around in the scene in render mode regardless.
By the way these are settings i saw in YT tutorial so daz focuses on gpu but it doesnt. Gpu is always around 9-13%. Ive experimented with the settings but it doesnt work.
I am still fairly new to Daz so i find it a bit difficult to make it work also. More work means more time which i have little to pose, light, render etc

You're settings are still a bit weird. Unless you want CPU fallback on, make sure everything mentioning CPU rendering is off. CPU fallback happens when you run out of VRAM and Daz kicks the scene rendering to your CPU and RAM, significantly slowing down the speed of rendering and sometimes adding more noise. Your settings should look something like this:



Here are my actual render settings (wouldn't recommend for lower end hardware, though):



Where eri is a bit wrong is that figures aren't 8K, not entirely. You'll some random 8K maps on legs every now and then, but you typically only really see them with normal maps on G9. Anything else is kind of overkill outside of extreme closeups, and even then, it's still overkill. For example, Van Helsing 9 with standard 4K maps (including 8K normal map):



This is what I saying earlier in the thread. If you're already experienced in Blender, there's no real need for Daz. Except for a character creator, but even something like CC4 could replace Daz for that soon. If I were you, I'd just stick with Blender for any serious rendering for your game and learning Daz and/or Diffeomorphic on the side.

 

[Shairi 3D]

You're settings are still a bit weird. Unless you want CPU fallback on, make sure everything mentioning CPU rendering is off. CPU fallback happens when you run out of VRAM and Daz kicks the scene rendering to your CPU and RAM, significantly slowing down the speed of rendering and sometimes adding more noise. Your settings should look something like this:

View attachment 3984382

Here are my actual render settings (wouldn't recommend for lower end hardware, though):

View attachment 3984385

Where eri is a bit wrong is that figures aren't 8K, not entirely. You'll some random 8K maps on legs every now and then, but you typically only really see them with normal maps on G9. Anything else is kind of overkill outside of extreme closeups, and even then, it's still overkill. For example, Van Helsing 9 with standard 4K maps (including 8K normal map):

View attachment 3984398

This is what I saying earlier in the thread. If you're already experienced in Blender, there's no real need for Daz. Except for a character creator, but even something like CC4 could replace Daz for that soon. If I were you, I'd just stick with Blender for any serious rendering for your game and learning Daz and/or Diffeomorphic on the side.

Oh ok, Thanks. ill try with the settings you suggested and see if it let me work with it. If it doesnt work out then maybe going for diffeomorphic is the only way left for me.