Blender Am I wasting my time learning Blender to eventually create my own game?

[Noxusa]

Hey everyone

Last November I started a quest to one day create a game of my own. I started with 0 knowledge of 3D design, texturing and all of that stuff. I gave myself around 2 years to learn 3D design to such a point that I could start working on my own game. Many people recommend Daz studio, but I tried the software twice and just couldn't work with it. It was confusing and it also seemed expensive given you need so many packages to actually create something decent.

The alternative, although harder, was Blender. So I started learning that and actually like it. I set out to create everything myself: assets, characters and so forth. I realize it's a massive undertaking and not easy. I study anatomy and practice daily. Here are some things I've made so far:



But it seems everyone is using Daz to create their games. It makes me wonder if there's actually value to be found in using Blender. Yes, I learn pretty much how big studios do their production process, but it's massive for a single person. Am I on the right track or am I missing something? I've been doing 3D for about 5 months now. In maximum 19 more months I want to start production on my own game. But it seems that even then I won't be able to reach the standards of games like Milfy City, Being a DIK, WVM and so forth.

So... Am I wasting my time?

 

[79flavors]

No, you aren't wasting your time.

Blender is better than Daz, at least - so I'm told.

If I had to guess, the majority of Daz assets were originally created in other modelling software and then imported into Daz before being released onto the asset store.

My impression is it works the other way around too. You can take assets available through the asset store (or available for free here) and import them into Blender to rework them in some way.

One of the problems with a lot of games is that you see the same old environments using the same old characters over and over again if you play a lot of games. Blender solves a lot of that problem, if you know how to use it by allowing you to either create your own environments or edit existing ones.

That said, I think it's a lot easier to use characters from the Daz store within Daz. I don't think you're going to reach the level of perfection seen in faces and bodies by creating something from scratch in Blender. (Plus from what I understand, faces and such are usually created in other 3D modelling packages like

You must be registered to see the links

or packages which convert lots of 2D photos of real people into 3D models - again, which are then exported into Daz and sold through the asset store).

The Blender enthusiasts will also tell you that Blender is better for rendering (it probably is for animations, I'm unsure if it matches the ease of Daz for static images).

I once saw someone create a curtain for a window in Blender. Seeing the ability to open and close that curtain in real time and see it flutter around before settling really cemented my impression that Blender is better.

If it were me, and I knew both (I know neither)....

• I'd build my environments in Blender.
• Or at least, I'd import an existing environment into Blender to rework it - so it didn't look so generic/familiar.
• Then I'd export my environments into Daz, add my characters and any textures needed.
  • (the characters would be models bought/acquired from the Daz store or Renderosity.)
• I'd tweak the characters using the various morph wheels - so again, the characters didn't looks so generic/familiar.
• Then I'd render the resulting scene in Daz.

I say that, only because my impression that Daz is easier to arrange existing assets and there is a lot more people to ask when you want to tweak the render settings. I also admit a bias that I've played briefly with Daz and never tried Blender - so I assume Daz is easier to pick up once you've decided to use it as a arrangement tool rather than than a creation tool.

 

[Saki_Sliz]

The Blender enthusiasts will also tell you that Blender is better for rendering (it probably is for animations, I'm unsure if it matches the ease of Daz for static images).

yus! Indoubilitbly!
as for random poses that look good and adapt to the character (static poses) yeah daz wins.

I would say blender is not a waste of time, and I go more in-depth here (incomplete article, summarized below)

psuedo qualifications?
Been doing art (2D) for 6 years,
I'm a blender user (3D artist) of 4 years (example my profile picture)
I have only been using daz for half a year, but I work mostly with blender, and I only really use daz to prototype ideas quickly rather than doing actual work.
I consider myself a casual 'technical' artist, I make art/games for me, not really for sharing, and I do it for fun, while in real life I am an electrical engineer major on my last quarter of college.

To summarize, Daz is like a power tool, a drill that is really good at one job if used well/right/correctly. screwing and drilling, but not good for other things (like animating!)
Blender is like a tool box, having mostly just hand tools. you can do a lot more, but the work is slower and trickier.
Learning blender allows you to go beyond daz and beyond the limitations of most Softwares or tools.

for 5 months of work, I'd say you are going along pretty well. I started out wanting to make a character completely from scratch, and considering I have a big ego (I have had a history of self-teaching myself things), I thought I could learn or go through all the steps in about 3 weeks. It took two months instead just to have experienced every aspect of character making (sculpting, retopology, rigging, weight painting, texturing, shaders, animating) and I wasn't just testing, not making a character. I would say your environmental artwork (pool, hospital etc) stuff is looking pretty good! and if you are doing this on the side (in my case I may only spend 2 hours or so a week dabbling with blender if at all, so it's not like this is a job for me), than that's some pretty good progress you are making.

To be honest if I put my mind to something, say making a game, I think I could do some pretty good quality, however it would still take me 4 or so years before I get enough content out to call the game done. I have no attention span for that. In fact in the past 6 years since I decided I wanted to learn how to art, I have only focused on 3 things. I focus on characters only (I ignore working on the world/environment), perfecting my quality/honing my style (still working on it even as we speak), and trying to make art faster (testing different styles) so I don't lose interest in projects (the main issue I have been having in the past 4 years).

Most projects and teams I have seen loose steam/motivation after two weeks, so the fact that you've been dabling with blender for 5 months is great! I assume what you need is more motivation or inspiration to keep going, at that can come in the form of making a break through in art quality/speed/technique, or finding a new tool or asset to dable with. such as getting stuff from the sfw blendswap or blendermarket, or the nsfw smutba.se

I just finished my spring break, and I have done nothing in art because right now I want to be a lazy potato, but I just recently went on a spree of adult games and toon models to inspire and motivate me so idk, maybe I'll actually do something tomorrow. if you get tired of blender, it is perfectly alright to stop for a bit and dabble around until you crawl back to blender. If you want to talk more I am sure I could give other suggestions.

 

[Noxusa]

yus! Indoubilitbly!
as for random poses that look good and adapt to the character (static poses) yeah daz wins.

I would say blender is not a waste of time, and I go more in-depth here (incomplete article, summarized below)

psuedo qualifications?
Been doing art (2D) for 6 years,
I'm a blender user (3D artist) of 4 years (example my profile picture)
I have only been using daz for half a year, but I work mostly with blender, and I only really use daz to prototype ideas quickly rather than doing actual work.
I consider myself a casual 'technical' artist, I make art/games for me, not really for sharing, and I do it for fun, while in real life I am an electrical engineer major on my last quarter of college.

To summarize, Daz is like a power tool, a drill that is really good at one job if used well/right/correctly. screwing and drilling, but not good for other things (like animating!)
Blender is like a tool box, having mostly just hand tools. you can do a lot more, but the work is slower and trickier.
Learning blender allows you to go beyond daz and beyond the limitations of most Softwares or tools.

for 5 months of work, I'd say you are going along pretty well. I started out wanting to make a character completely from scratch, and considering I have a big ego (I have had a history of self-teaching myself things), I thought I could learn or go through all the steps in about 3 weeks. It took two months instead just to have experienced every aspect of character making (sculpting, retopology, rigging, weight painting, texturing, shaders, animating) and I wasn't just testing, not making a character. I would say your environmental artwork (pool, hospital etc) stuff is looking pretty good! and if you are doing this on the side (in my case I may only spend 2 hours or so a week dabbling with blender if at all, so it's not like this is a job for me), than that's some pretty good progress you are making.

To be honest if I put my mind to something, say making a game, I think I could do some pretty good quality, however it would still take me 4 or so years before I get enough content out to call the game done. I have no attention span for that. In fact in the past 6 years since I decided I wanted to learn how to art, I have only focused on 3 things. I focus on characters only (I ignore working on the world/environment), perfecting my quality/honing my style (still working on it even as we speak), and trying to make art faster (testing different styles) so I don't lose interest in projects (the main issue I have been having in the past 4 years).

Most projects and teams I have seen loose steam/motivation after two weeks, so the fact that you've been dabling with blender for 5 months is great! I assume what you need is more motivation or inspiration to keep going, at that can come in the form of making a break through in art quality/speed/technique, or finding a new tool or asset to dable with. such as getting stuff from the sfw blendswap or blendermarket, or the nsfw smutba.se

I just finished my spring break, and I have done nothing in art because right now I want to be a lazy potato, but I just recently went on a spree of adult games and toon models to inspire and motivate me so idk, maybe I'll actually do something tomorrow. if you get tired of blender, it is perfectly alright to stop for a bit and dabble around until you crawl back to blender. If you want to talk more I am sure I could give other suggestions.

Thank you for your input! Yeah so basically I graduated college in a field I didn't like. I have no debt either and I made an outlandish decision to throw myself at Blender for game development. I'm in a fortunate situation where I have no bills to pay or anything. I'm essentially taking a risk. I put most of my time into learning Blender, because I'm taking a gap year or two. If it fails, well then it means 2 wasted years without income. But as many people have told me "if you have the chance, try. You have to do in when you're young."

Motivation is indeed something I sometimes lack. The sculpting process especially is really overwhelming. I haven't done retopology or rigging yet. When I am motivated, I sink my teeth into something for hours and hours. At the moment I practice with Blender around 3-5 hours a day. It's just that creating characters is THE most important aspect when you're creating an erotic game. Environments are less important. I mean several games don't use normal maps or anything. A wall is just literally a plane with a brick texture on it without any depth or displacements.

I do think about the problems I'm facing passively. Like "why didn't the texture work out?", "How do I set up my nodes" and so forth. I already have a setting and everything for my game. But it's creating almost realistic-looking humans that's going to be the difficult element here.

 

[Noxusa]

No, you aren't wasting your time.

Blender is better than Daz, at least - so I'm told.

If I had to guess, the majority of Daz assets were originally created in other modelling software and then imported into Daz before being released onto the asset store.

My impression is it works the other way around too. You can take assets available through the asset store (or available for free here) and import them into Blender to rework them in some way.

One of the problems with a lot of games is that you see the same old environments using the same old characters over and over again if you play a lot of games. Blender solves a lot of that problem, if you know how to use it by allowing you to either create your own environments or edit existing ones.

That said, I think it's a lot easier to use characters from the Daz store within Daz. I don't think you're going to reach the level of perfection seen in faces and bodies by creating something from scratch in Blender. (Plus from what I understand, faces and such are usually created in other 3D modelling packages like

You must be registered to see the links

or packages which convert lots of 2D photos of real people into 3D models - again, which are then exported into Daz and sold through the asset store).

The Blender enthusiasts will also tell you that Blender is better for rendering (it probably is for animations, I'm unsure if it matches the ease of Daz for static images).

I once saw someone create a curtain for a window in Blender. Seeing the ability to open and close that curtain in real time and see it flutter around before settling really cemented my impression that Blender is better.

If it were me, and I knew both (I know neither)....

• I'd build my environments in Blender.
• Or at least, I'd import an existing environment into Blender to rework it - so it didn't look so generic/familiar.
• Then I'd export my environments into Daz, add my characters and any textures needed.
  • (the characters would be models bought/acquired from the Daz store or Renderosity.)
• I'd tweak the characters using the various morph wheels - so again, the characters didn't looks so generic/familiar.
• Then I'd render the resulting scene in Daz.

I say that, only because my impression that Daz is easier to arrange existing assets and there is a lot more people to ask when you want to tweak the render settings. I also admit a bias that I've played briefly with Daz and never tried Blender - so I assume Daz is easier to pick up once you've decided to use it as a arrangement tool rather than than a creation tool.

Thank you! People have indeed told me that Daz is relatively easy. Learning Blender is the long way, but if I semi-master it I can do so much more that Daz-exclusive users can't. It's just very confusing sometimes. But I'm happy to hear that I'm not wasting my time!

 

[mickydoo]

Just to post the other side of things. Blender users think blender is better than everything, it's not. If you want to make a 3d porn game use Daz, if you want to spend all day making a building use blender. I have 3d background and never use anything for my game except Daz as I don't need to. Yes blender is good to learn but it's massive pain in the ass.

 

[Noxusa]

Just to post the other side of things. Blender users think blender is better than everything, it's not. If you want to make a 3d porn game use Daz, if you want to spend all day making a building use blender. I have 3d background and never use anything for my game except Daz as I don't need to. Yes blender is good to learn but it's massive pain in the ass.

But isn't Daz very expensive?

 

[Saki_Sliz]

But isn't Daz very expensive?

I mean, I've spent nearly a thousand in assets (daz itself is free, the assets you buy) and probably pirated far far more (thanks F95zone community!)

as for making stuff from scratch
2d skills help but taking a 2D image (front and side view) and making it 3D looks terrifying, and trying to make 3D to 2D looks derpy. to be honest from what I have learned from most other artist is, good artist copy, great artist steal! And once you steel enough, you can combine things to make something unique and new. For example, I am fighting myself with quality vs stylized, figuring out what features I want to exaggerate or simplify, 2D(direct control over style) or 3D (quality? and speed) and recently I came across this image

the mesh topology is simpler than what I normally do, which I like because I have been trying to go simpler (I want to experiment with low poly) and I hate doing knees (drawing them) and this has a simple, sharp toonish style that I think I want to try so I am going to steal their typology to see how it makes my characters look (I like toony characters)

I, for the life of me, can. not. sculpt. I, however, do really well making up a mesh out of nothing (making each point one at a time and combining them into a mesh) very slow but I get exactly the control I want. Not to mention the bit of sculpting I do is to reshape the mesh, not to add details like mouth or facial features. people who actually sculpt I considered tiers above me in skill levels, kuz its way beyond me and my abilities.

there is no one right way to do things. my method may seem like madness to someone else. I really like experimentation but not everyone wants to spend years derping around not achieving anything. infact in the past two years I felt like crap because I wasn't getting any better, it felt like I had a good start but then after that to get even slightly better it took exponentially more time and effort to get good, and only spending maybe 2 hours a week with blender or drawing I certainly wasn't putting in my flight time. after some experimentation however (after two years of going no where), I have had a streak of new ideas, and they have had some promising results, so I keep marching forward, the same may happen for you. a whole lot of sadness, a whole lot of not touching blender, a whole lot of frustration, a moment of, let me try this, and a spree of new tests and work. something that can help is to listen to a video at the same time, where a youtube talks about some cool cheats they found out in blender to do some trick. tricks always are nice to learn.

 

[mickydoo]

But isn't Daz very expensive?

Daz is free. Most of the assets are not, but you can find them and other places, look in the asset section of the forum.

 

[Saki_Sliz]

free stuff, and easy asset previewing here.

 

[Egglock]

Comparing yourself to people who use Daz3d isn't a very good comparison btw. Daz3d and Blender are two completely different software that servers different purpose. People who use Daz3d aren't 3D modelers. They didn't create those models from scratch but borrowed a pre-made asset and made adjustments with the provided morph targets. That's why it isn't correct to compare yourself to Daz3d users. I'm willing to bet, if you asked the majority of Daz3d users to create a Daz3d quality model from scratch I doubt they would be able to.

To get the quality of Daz3d models does not take 5 months of learning how to sculpt and model. It takes years, I've been learning how to model along side learning how to use UE4 for 3 years, not necessary figure modeling but more so learning how to model props and architectural pieces. I.e weapons, vehicles, furniture ect. I'd say it would probably take me another 2+ years just to get a decent looking figure. Just like any other skills out there, if you really want to get good results, you'll have to be patience and keep honing it.

It makes me wonder if there's actually value to be found in using Blender

There's loads of value to learning Blender.

1. Being able to create your own assets
2. Blender is full of tools and features that I doubt even the most experience Blender user uses. A few examples are, being able to modify your assets on the fly if the asset looks odd after render. The compositing tab to do post-rendering enhancements, animation. With the improve grease pencil feature, the mixing of 2D+3D. Vertex grouping, so you can easily identify sections of your mesh. Texture painting. If you start digging into what Blender has to offer you'll soon find that you've only just scratch the surface of what this software has to offer.
3. The satisfaction of turning your ideas into 3D objects.

I do think about the problems I'm facing passively. Like "why didn't the texture work out?", "How do I set up my nodes" and so forth.

Understanding shaders and materials is a subject of it's own. This in itself is almost as complicated as making a model itself. A lot of math is involve I can say that much.

If you want to make a 3d porn game use Daz, if you want to spend all day making a building use blender.

I will have to disagree with you. Though I can understand your frustration with Blender users boasting about how good it is, and it is but in a different aspect of usage, the same can be said about Daz3d in that Daz3d has it's own merits with it's usage. It's not that one software should be chosen over another in terms of creating adult games but what workflows works best for each individual. Daz3d and Blender can equally create content for adult games.

2d skills help but taking a 2D image (front and side view) and making it 3D looks terrifying, and trying to make 3D to 2D looks derpy.

Eh? What do yo u mean it looks terrifying? You must be doing something wrong if that's your outcome. I've never had anything terrifying or derpy looking when going from 2D to 3D and vice versa, it just looks like shit because my skills are inadequate.

 

[OhWee]

Just noting that you can actually do quite a bit with just free assets using Daz3D, and you can import .objs and such as well, so you could use Blender to make something you need (I use Hexagon for this, but Blender is the more capable program) if you are comfortable with that program.

As for 'free free' Daz Studio assets, as opposed to assets acquired via other means, we have a thread here that covers a number of the free asset sites, etc, here:
https://f95zone.to/threads/free-stuff-for-daz-3d.22194/

The allure of the Daz store, of course, is that there are a LOT of cool assets available for purchase, covering hair, outfits, characters, locations, props, lighting, shaders, etc. So if you absolutely MUST have that particular outfit or hairstyle, well yeah it's buy it or acquire it via other means.

But a lot of the free stuff, including the Genesis base characters, does cover pretty much all the bases. I'm a Daz store addict, but I'm sure I could do a 3D porn game using just the 'free free' assets that are available, as long as I was a bit more flexible with my wardrobe choices and such. I'm sure a handful of the 3D games featured around here may have done exactly that with their games, but I don't know of any specific examples.

So you don't actually have to spend a dime on software and assets to get started with Daz, but yeah the stuff in the Daz, Renderosity, Renderotica, etc. stores sure is purdy...

The bigger issue is having a decent Nvidia card if you plan to go the Iray route to reduce Iray render times sigificantly, as the ones with a lot of VRAM are usually expensive... You can make do with lesser amounts of VRAM, but for more complex scenes more VRAM sure is nice! Blender can take advantage of GPU based rendering as well of course...

Genitals is the one area that's a bit harder to work around though. There are a couple of free ones out there, but for vaginas in particular you sorta kinda need either the 'Default' Pro bundle gens, New Genitals for V7/V8, Golden Palace, etc. if you want to have decent cock/vagina interactive pics... Of course, you could just not 'show' a gaping vagina, etc. with creative use of camera angles, 'faking it' in post with Photoshop, etc... but it's just easier to have gens that work.

Anyways, my point here is that there is absolutely nothing stopping you from using both Blender and Daz simultaneously as needed, if you want to take advantage of Daz's pose library, lighting, various free assets, etc.. Just be mindful of the usage rights for various assets if you worry about such things. Some are 'Personal Use Only', others allow commercial use, etc..

 

[Lewdpanda95]

I'd say it totally depends on what you want out of this. If you are just learning blender to make a game from scratch I think you will be disappointed. You'd need years of learning to achieve good quality and then you'd still have to learn how to make a good game. You could just deliver pizzas for a day and buy some head and shape morphs from the daz store and have plenty resources to make good distinguishable characters. It saves you a lot of time which you can use to make your game better.

If on the other hand you realized that you have a blast creating objects in blender keep at it. Maybe you'll realize that this was your passion all along.

I'd say you already have a good base to make simple objects and environments that you can import into your games, which is more than most developers can say about them, so at least in that aspect it was not wasted time.

 

[anne O'nymous]

I would say blender is not a waste of time, and I go more in-depth here (incomplete article, summarized below)

I agree. Even if in the end he finally decide to use Daz for the CGs, learning Blender will give him a lot of knowledge that too few devs have ; the most important one being the understanding of how 3D modeling works.

 

[RanliLabz]

If your plan is to eventually become a model vendor, then no.

If your plan is to be a solo game dev - then yes.

Since it sounds like you want to make a game, I'd suggest that you stop Blender and move into Daz. On your own, you're simply going to be unable to match the thousands of vendors making assets for Daz - each specialising in hair, or clothing, or OC or environments. You won't be able to match the depth of scenery that multiple stand-alone items can bring, or the quality of the characters being churned out on a daily basis. And you won't be able to continuously upgrade your entire collection the way Daz does. e.g. In 1.5yrs development, I've seen Gen8 come to replace the Gen3 I started with - in a few years time I'll be several models behind and have to start over or risk looking as outdated as a Genesis or HoneySelect model looks to us today.

This doesn't mean that the last year has been a bust - you'll have learned invaluable skills, and you'll be able to use them to adapt Daz assets and really stand out from the rest of the crowd. This will be stuff like retexturing, adapting daz assets to create fantastic new characters, or adding morphs to clothing that let you tear, unzip and pull off clothes in a way someone unfamiliar to modelling can't.

 

[Saki_Sliz]

I'm willing to bet, if you asked the majority of Daz3d users to create a Daz3d quality model from scratch I doubt they would be able to.

So I've done blender for 4 years, retopology is my favorite thing, and I thought I was pretty good at it, but when I ported over the gen8 figure to blender, and saw the 3 loop topology of the shoulder area and how well it was done, I bow down in respect because it is way better than anything I have seen much less done myself.

Eh? What do yo u mean it looks terrifying? You must be doing something wrong if that's your outcome. I've never had anything terrifying or derpy looking when going from 2D to 3D and vice versa, it just looks like shit because my skills are inadequate.

I mean mostly, 2D proportions look disturbing when made 3D. I want to make toony 3D art, and its taking me years to hone in on anything decent.

 

[Egglock]

So I've done blender for 4 years, retopology is my favorite thing, and I thought I was pretty good at it, but when I ported over the gen8 figure to blender, and saw the 3 loop topology of the shoulder area and how well it was done,

Retop is probably the next painful process one has to undertake from high poly to low poly. Let alone trying to find the right seams to make so the UV don't look like shit. But retop is needed even more if one is developing a game. Right next to retop is making sure the poly's are evenly distributed. I forget but doesn't Blender have a feature to evenly distribute the verts or smooth them out?

I mean mostly, 2D proportions look disturbing when made 3D. I want to make toony 3D art, and its taking me years to hone in on anything decent.

Gotcha. Why not find an artstyle that you like? Or are you still in limbo as to which stylized intrigues you?

 

[Saki_Sliz]

I forget but doesn't Blender have a feature to evenly distribute the verts or smooth them out?

it has quite a few automated tools, and there are some you can buy that can do even better (quadflow which is also used in z-brush is really good), but dedicated tool to do topology by hand is what i recommend when trying to make the final product. Even if you are not making low poly game characters, retopology should be done by hand for the best results, because it dictates how good poses look, and most importantly, animations, as topology can do amazing or horrible things. I learned a neat trick with doing the neck topology that allows proper stimulation of muscles without actually having to do a muscle and skinning simulation, and it all worked using topology tricks.

 

[lancelotdulak]

No, you aren't wasting your time.

Blender is better than Daz, at least - so I'm told.

Blender isnt better than daz. Thats like saying Houdini is better than maya. They have different purposes.

 

[lancelotdulak]

Theres quite a big of fanboyism and ignorance in these replies.
Youre not wasting your time. Blender is brilliant software. IT's >MODELLING< software. And more artistic modelling software (compared to things like rhino and 3ds max that are less artistic and more technical). Cant find a bamboo hut? Crack open blender. Cant find that hairbrush? Crack open blender. Want to cloth and model 3d humans.. maybe photorealistic? Crack open daz. Need that hut and hairbrush? Import it from blender.
You arent wasting your time learning ANY 3d software. I still prefer rhino a lot (because thats how my mind works and i hate blenders gui). But i like blender a lot. I also like C4d. If i had time and money id love to learn maya and houdini. I have the iclone sweet installed for multiple reasons.

Im a programmer from way back (though i dont do it much now). 10+ languages. You'll NEVER hear me say "this is the only language you need" or "this is THE language" . You wont hear ANY competant programmer say that, ever. If they do theyre fakes. IF you go to r/programming you'll find the people who dont know 3 , 4, 5 , 10 languages WANT to and those of us who do are always wanting to learn more (even if we dont have the time). Blender is brilliant at what it does. So is daz. And you wont find any software that can do what daz does better than it does full stop. USe tools for what they are good at. I rarely use my hammer to unscrew a screw...