VN Ren'Py The Harem Garage - Development thread

[panscraper]

" You're not handsome, you're not book smart. Your family don't have money, and you're never gonna be a sports star. Not knowing what to do you drifted into University, but that hasn't exactly worked out. But there's one thing you're damn good at: driving cars. That's your dream, to become a professional race driver. All you need is a chance to make a name for yourself, to be a winner for the first time in your life. And the first step is to break into the local underground scene... and then become the fastest street racer around. Strap in, bucko, we're going for a ride! "

Planned tags:
3dcg, anal sex, animated, BDSM, cosplay, creampie, dating sim, drugs, exhibitionism, foot job, groping, group sex, handjob, harem, humor, incest, interracial, kinetic novel, lesbian, male protagonist, masturbation, milf, oral, pov, pregnancy, romance, sex toys, spanking, stripping, titfuck, twins, urination, virgin, voyeurism (lactation is planned in sequel).

Prologue (v 0.2) includes: 3dcg, animated, creampie, dating sim, exhibitionism, humor, incest, kinetic novel, male progagonist, milf, oral, pov, romance, virgin.


Many of you expressed your support for my story in my introductory thread. The positive feedback was great, and I don't want to disappoint anyone, so as I promised, this is where the development thread starts.
The last few months have been spent in preparation. I wrote the first part of the trilogy (~ 450 pages), and the project finally got a name: The Harem Garage. My original idea was to call it "Midnight Purple", but too few people know it (the name of Nissan's iconic factory color), and I wanted a name that everyone would know what to expect at first glance. In this case, a harem and cars.

I had to invest in a new PC, because with the old one I could only make very simple scenes, and even those were very slow. And that's not good when you're planning 12+ LI's. After the new PC and the hundreds of assets, I don't think the project will ever make any profit, but that's not the point for now. I want to see my vision come to life.
I also had to build countless locations which took a lot of time. The story takes place in Budapest, but of course there is no such 3D asset available. The closest would be the Paris asset, but its road surface is cobblestone and it has a rather "small town" look. For this reason, I chose Urban Sprawl 2 and 3, which is New York, so it doesn't really resemble Budapest, or any European city at all. I replaced the posters and billboards with Hungarian ones, the bus stop has a Hungarian sign and advertisements too. I tried to remove all the metal external stairs and water tanks from the roofs, as they almost do not exist around here. However, not all buildings can remove them, so it is possible that they will appear in the pictures here and there. Most of the time these stuff won't be even visible, because I use DoF, so it'll be blurry.

Of course, there will be discord, patreon, and all the usual (later), but the prologue will be completely free (v 0.2). Since this is a kinetic novel, I plan to dictate a relatively fast pace with the updates, since I don't have to go through multiple story lines. However, I'm trying to maximize the visual presentation as much as possible. Right now, it looks like I can put the prologue together by the end of January/beginning of February. So far, I've been progressing very slowly, but now it looks like I've managed to optimize everything, for now an average render is done in about 30-40 minutes, which is quite a good time considering the many HD textures, and huge sets.

And these are fresh, raw renders from the first day. They're still waiting for post-processing, so they're not final, I'll fix minor errors with PS. I'm not satisfied yet, I want to improve a lot of things as time goes on, but I've only spent about 2-3 months in front of DAZ, so I still have a lot to learn.

 

[JennaJJ]

... welcum to the zone and good speed <3 ...

 

[planktonngorok]

Keep going man. Nice work

 

[panscraper]

Okay let's see the fun stuff... (Ending of day 1)

 

[panscraper]

Hey everyone!

Although I haven't posted in a while, I don't abandoned my project. However, I have some problems, that makes my progression slower than expected.

First of all, before everyhing started, I gathered a huge collection of assets for my story. I had a lot of cosmetical and creative ideas, for example hairstyles for certain characters and so on... I have about 7-800 assets. Everything you'd need: locations, characters, clothes, accessories, props, etc. but there are a lot of issues with them, especially with hairs. I understand, that hair is especially difficult to make, but most of them are completely unuseable. It's quite hard to make a scene with a 13 girl harem when DAZ crashes after you load in more than 3 characters. So it is extremely annoying, and makes my progression slower, but I'm still determined. I had to slice up some scenes, not the way Iwanted but it is what it is...

There's a character in the story called Stefan. As the story progresses Stefan will become one of the MC's main rival. Maybe even more, like an enemy bc Stefan's girlfriend will become part of the harem. So I needed a character for this role, but I cannot find any good hair for him. I tried dozens of hair assets. There are 2 main groups: hilariously unoptimized, therefore unusable (bc the scenes are already stacked with everything), or similar style than MC's hair (short, brown, spikey or mohawk stlye...) which makes Stefan's outlook similar to MC's. So after days of brain melting mental breakdowns with basically zero progression, I said: fuck it... Stefan will be bald.



The other problems are the massive night racing scenes. Again: lot of assets, mostly unoptimized, so I had to do it for myself to make them useable. And I have to learn how to properly set up the night shots, because I'm really not satistfied with these results. But for now, it'll be ok.

The first release will cover the first 8 days of the story. It'll be labeled as version 0.2 so it is just the start of everything. The MC is just a regular guy, he doesn't even know most of the girls so it's kinda like a prologue. You'll get to know the MC's background, his family and closest friend. That means these first days will have less sexual content. After the prologue, basically every day will contain lewd scenes, and not just one.

But this does not mean the prologue won't have any sexual content. You 'll have 3 lewd scenes with different girls plus some showering scenes aswell. So I try to make it as exciting as possible, but this is a prologue, so the pacing will be a bit slower.

Currently I have about 280 finished, but raw renders (I'll do the finishing touches in PS). That's not really a huge number if you compare it to other VN-s, but this is a kinetic novel, so I only have one storyline to cover. However that setup is much more complicated than a college setup for exaple. I want you to feel like you are in a middle of a big city when MC is in the middle of a big city. And I want every enviroment to be like this.

 

[Echoesinthedarkness]

tbf making main antagonist bald seems like an easy choice even if we arent taking in mind hair performance hit.
and how far along are you from release btw? cant wait to try it

 

[panscraper]

tbf making main antagonist bald seems like an easy choice even if we arent taking in mind hair performance hit.
and how far along are you from release btw? cant wait to try it

Yes, I completely agree, its a cheap trick but I dont have any other assets left to use. I only have one render now with that character (the one with the green porsche), so if I find a good one in a few days I can use that.


Today I already rendered 11 scenes, but sometimes I cant even make one that isnt trash. So it's quite hard to make an accurate prediction, but I think about a month will be enough...

 

[osanaiko]

Dual underglow. love it.

My take on your headline text:

"You're not handsome, you're not book smart. Your parents don't have money, and you're never gonna be a sports star. Not knowing what to do you drifted into University, but that hasn't exactly worked out. But there's one thing you're damn good at: driving cars. That's your dream, to become a professional race driver. All you need is a chance to make a name for yourself, to be a winner for the first time in your life. And the first step is to break into the local underground scene... and then become the fastest street racer around. Strap in, bucko, we're going for a ride!"

 

[panscraper]

View attachment 4472063

Dual underglow. love it.

My take on your headline text:

"You're not handsome, you're not book smart. Your parents don't have money, and you're never gonna be a sports star. Not knowing what to do you drifted into University, but that hasn't exactly worked out. But there's one thing you're damn good at: driving cars. That's your dream, to become a professional race driver. All you need is a chance to make a name for yourself, to be a winner for the first time in your life. And the first step is to break into the local underground scene... and then become the fastest street racer around. Strap in, bucko, we're going for a ride!"

Thx, yes this sounds much better. But I had to change the parent part, because MC is literally inheriting money from his (real) parents on the first day of the story. This is the reason why he can buy a car and a small house for himself. MC was raised by his stepmother to avoid monetization problems later. However this whole background thing is about 4 lines in the script, so no one is talking about this during the story and MC is calling his stepmom and stepsister as mom and sis. So I had to use this to avoid problems but a simple incest patch can help. I have an idea for that aswell.

 

[panscraper]

So I have some new hair assets, I'll try them for Stefan, one of them should work... fingers crossed

meanwhile renders with the other characters are coming:

 

[panscraper]

Stefan with hair. Also some small beard, his skin looks much better with it.

 

[Echoesinthedarkness]

Stefan with hair. Also some small beard, his skin looks much better with it.

View attachment 4476456

honestly that lego crowd is a little bit too noticeable. I saw other devs tried to render backgrounds and main scene separately, maybe its possible to render figures one by one and then place them together in ps, since they are not interacting with anything anyway?

 

[panscraper]

honestly that lego crowd is a little bit too noticeable. I saw other devs tried to render backgrounds and main scene separately, maybe its possible to render figures one by one and then place them together in ps, since they are not interacting with anything anyway?

That'd be so much slower. I mean for a pro creator that's not a big deal, but I'm learning everything on the fly with this stuff. I don't like how they look but I need them, however I can try to blur the background more. And there are renders like this, with 100+ individual people and a dozen+ vehicles...

Proper composition, positioning and scene building using DOF is the key I think.

 

[Echoesinthedarkness]

That'd be so much slower. I mean for a pro creator that's not a big deal, but I'm learning everything on the fly with this stuff. I don't like how they look but I need them, however I can try to blur the background more. And there are renders like this, with 100+ individual people and a dozen+ vehicles...

View attachment 4476845 Proper composition, positioning and scene building using DOF is the key I think.

yeah placing them out of focus was my second suggestion

 

[panscraper]

Okay, I made a basic excel document where I can see my progress, because I'm just rendering and rendering and rendering and I feel like I cannot get closer to the finish. Before I started the project, I thougt the prologue will be about 2-300 renders maybe 4-500 maximum, but now I counted them based on the script and I need more than 920 renders just for this 0.2 version.

Let's start with the bad news. I reached 300 renders yesterday, so that sounds really few. But things aren't looking so bad actually. And this is the good news. Today I already have 350+ renders, because most of the sets and scenes are done. I only have to make 1 day out of scratch. So renders will come much faster.

With this pace, I think the renders will be finished by mid february. So a late february early release is plausible now.

 

[Echoesinthedarkness]

Okay, I made a basic excel document where I can see my progress, because I'm just rendering and rendering and rendering and I feel like I cannot get closer to the finish. Before I started the project, I thougt the prologue will be about 2-300 renders maybe 4-500 maximum, but now I counted them based on the script and I need more than 920 renders just for this 0.2 version.

Let's start with the bad news. I reached 300 renders yesterday, so that sounds really few. But things aren't looking so bad actually. And this is the good news. Today I already have 350+ renders, because most of the sets and scenes are done. I only have to make 1 day out of scratch. So renders will come much faster.

With this pace, I think the renders will be finished by mid february. So a late february early release is plausible now.

View attachment 4492695	View attachment 4492699	View attachment 4492701
View attachment 4492703	View attachment 4492708	View attachment 4492705

well thats 300 renders + all models and sets done, so its much better than just 300 renders

 

[panscraper]

well thats 300 renders + all models and sets done, so its much better than just 300 renders

I wouldn't say all sets are done, because there will be a lot of locations, and I cannot reuse most of these early locations later.
For example, MC inherits money on the first day, so he'll buy his new home with the money. The pictures with the characters carrying boxes and stuff are from day 4, the day MC moves to his new home. (Yes, there will be some time jumps, but not much.)

So I had to make a bedroom for MC as his childhood bedroom, now he's moving to an other house, but that's too tiny for a whole harem so he will move again later, he'll have an other bedroom again. Same thing with the garages and workshops. Tommy's (MC's friend, the blonde guy) family owns a workshop, they'll build MC's first car there, but then they'll open their own workshop with the girls, so that will be a lot of workshops and locations and so on.

Same with the night racing locations. I cannot make every race look like the same, so there are 2 sets. One with an urban environment and an other one with industrial enviroment. This is the price of wanting something else, because I'm sure I wouldnt have these issues with a simple school/college/dorm setup...

(And I don't even wanna spoiler too much, but I have some badass luxury assets, so there will be some crazy locations later.)

 

[osanaiko]

Proper composition, positioning and scene building using DOF is the key I think.

Nice image compostion and use of the low poly crowd figures!

however it feels very much like a daytime shot, with that "classic" low contrast Daz look.

Therefore a couple of advices:

- the underbody lights of all the cars are much too strong - i.e. the blue underglow is so much brighter than the taillights of the other car, it wipes out all details and makes it look like that car is floating

- what's that big rectangular patch of non-reflective road surface in the foreground?

- if you can turn down the brightness of the street light (or is that another light source?) further down the street they will race down, it would look even better. perhaps even add some spotlights in front of the cars to represent headlights instead.

- I'm no photoshop expert, but with even a little post work with a levels tool to add contrast it will look much more like a real night shot...

 

[panscraper]

Nice image compostion and use of the low poly crowd figures!

however it feels very much like a daytime shot, with that "classic" low contrast Daz look.

Therefore a couple of advices:

- the underbody lights of all the cars are much too strong - i.e. the blue underglow is so much brighter than the taillights of the other car, it wipes out all details and makes it look like that car is floating

- what's that big rectangular patch of non-reflective road surface in the foreground?

- if you can turn down the brightness of the street light (or is that another light source?) further down the street they will race down, it would look even better. perhaps even add some spotlights in front of the cars to represent headlights instead.

- I'm no photoshop expert, but with even a little post work with a levels tool to add contrast it will look much more like a real night shot...

View attachment 4496268

Yes, I agree, the underglow is too much, but it's because of the road surface (I have the same settings for every car underglow, and without the extra reflections, its fine). This city asset has this shiny road texture. It looks like after rain or something like that. But yeah, I need to tone that down.

The rectangular stuff is the burnout tyre marks. I tried scaling, placing higher/lower, but it's still visible. It has one on the right side aswell and they are 2 different assets, so I just have to use the right one.

Enviromental lightning is almost zero, but I placed some point lights to light up some parts. I tried to make it look like somewhat realistic, because as you probably know these asset lights are unusable. My original render looks like a toy car display, but adding contrast really helps a lot. However I think I have to rethink/rebuild this render... maybe I'll break it up into different parts. We'll see...

But medium and close shots are I think much better. Same method. Almost zero enviromental lights, with added point lights, plus spotlights for the characters.

Btw I played with spotlight for car headlights earlier and it is really hard to make it realistic. I'm struggling with it because the spotlight's light doesnt "travel" far enugh to be realistic no matter how I set it up.

 

[panscraper]

some planned soundtracks for the night racing scenes:

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