Ren'Py Daz Some help on creating animations in DAZ

[SecretSinStudios]

Hello everyone! To start off I apologize if this is a commonly asked question! I am a new AVN developer working on a new story that I am creating in Ren'Py and utilizing in DAZ3D. I have a pretty good handle on rendering scenes so far but something I don't want my game to lack in is when it gets to the good stuff (sex), I would like to be able to add in animations that I see other VN's have. One issue with this is that I don't really have an idea on how to do animations in DAZ. Is it just creating a loop of seamless still renders? I feel like it's more complicated than that. If anyone could advise me in the right direction of some threads or tutorials that give some good advice on the animations side of things, it would be greatly appreciated! Thank you all a ton

 

[dreamscometrue]

Yes it is a series of seamless still renders. The more renders you have the more smooth animation is. Learn how to use keyframe and timeline to set up. I remember a simple animation I did approximately 200 renders.
If it takes too long because high res background. You can render the background once, then render characters separately. After that, use PTS to put the background into each render. Don't forget to edit the color in each character render so it won't look fake. You can save the setting then apply to each render.

 

[SecretSinStudios]

Yes it is a series of seamless still renders. The more renders you have the more smooth animation is. Learn how to use keyframe and timeline to set up. I remember a simple animation I did approximately 200 renders.
If it takes too long because high res background. You can render the background once, then render characters separately. After that, use PTS to put the background into each render. Don't forget to edit the color in each character render so it won't look fake. You can save the setting then apply to each render.

Greatly appreciate the insight! I'll try looking up some tutorials to better understand key frame and timeline as well. Also just to understand, what exactly do you mean by edit the color so it won't look fake?

 

[dreamscometrue]

Greatly appreciate the insight! I'll try looking up some tutorials to better understand key frame and timeline as well. Also just to understand, what exactly do you mean by edit the color so it won't look fake?

Because you render separate background and characters so the lighting will look different between them. So you have to try to blend them together.
Set up the scene, hide characters to render the background, then hide the background to render characters. The characters render must set transparent background. You can use invisible light to improve lighting of characters render.

 

[SecretSinStudios]

Because you render separate background and characters so the lighting will look different between them. So you have to try to blend them together.
Set up the scene, hide characters to render the background, then hide the background to render characters. The characters render must set transparent background. You can use invisible light to improve lighting of characters render.

Appreciate the clarification! Thank you!

 

[Noegrets]

When I make a renpy animation with 50-100 frames my computer freezes up. (I have a 3090 and 68 gigs of ram). i had made both 1920 and 4K versions that I can’t seem to use. Are there size linitations? How did you get 200 frames?

 

[Osirian]

When I make a renpy animation with 50-100 frames my computer freezes up. (I have a 3090 and 68 gigs of ram). i had made both 1920 and 4K versions that I can’t seem to use. Are there size linitations? How did you get 200 frames?

I render individual images and am in the process of converting my game to webm using ffmpeg. Here's an example of the two pass command to convert those still images to webm.

ffmpeg -r 25 -start_number 00 -i ImageSeriesName%02d.webp -vcodec libvpx-vp9 -b:v 0 -crf 5 -pass 1 -f null \dev\null
ffmpeg -r 25 -start_number 00 -i ImageSeriesName%02d.webp -vcodec libvpx-vp9 -b:v 0 -crf 5 -pass 2 -c:a libopus OutputName.webm

The number after -r is the frames per second and the number after -crf is the final webm quality. The %02d is the number of digits in you image series, in this case 2.

I typically render 30 frames in an animation, sometimes 45 if I want to slow it down and keep it smooth.

 

[Hahah5555]

The number after -r is the frames per second and the number after -crf is the final webm quality. The %02d is the number of digits in you image series, in this case 2.

What is a good -crf value for 4k images -> animation? I know 0 is lossless but wondering if 4 or 5 would be a noticeable change

 

[Osirian]

What is a good -crf value for 4k images -> animation? I know 0 is lossless but wondering if 4 or 5 would be a noticeable change

I think the best way to settle on a crf is to look at it yourself and determine what an acceptable amount of compression is for you and the total size of the game you're willing to deal with. To do that, compress and multiple different crf values and pause videos on the same frame, then see just what's acceptable to you. I personally use crf 10 for my main downloadable games, and crf 39 for compressed versions for web and android. For my 1080p game, it keeps the ~300 animations down to 410mb at crf 10 and 50mb for crf 39.