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Ren'py now has something called Interactive Director, which lets you insert and adjust visuals (and soon, music) as you play through the script. Not exacty a drag and drop interface (you use a console-like menu) but it still feels like some kind of forbidden magic.
I am, honestly, still waiting for Degica's Visual Novel Maker. Using Ren'py for anything more than scripting out a very basic CYOA or kinetic novel vaguely irritates me. I might get over it, I might not. Same experience with TB.
I think TB lets you publish to a webpage and Ren'py doesn't, so there's that in its favor for a weekly serial.
Another picture! A (probably discarded yet perfectly rendered) background. Thank you Ghost Lights!
Maybe someone can form a list of visual novel software? Tyrano and Ren'Py seem to be the heavy hitters but there are more coming soon?
I'd be very interested in your experiments with Sketchy, as I also think it has untapped potential (I was thinking about jury-rigging it for geometry shells so that it could be used with other specialty shaders, but haven't gotten around to it--it should be easy to use the brush as an opacity map). And I would love to be able to use the styles you are referencing--the only visual novel I can think of that comes even close is one of those fanservice things that aren't even proper erotica (I can understand people liking porn without plot, but porn without plot nor porn is completely beyond me), but I think it's a very fun and dynamic art style and would be very suited to light-hearted adventures.
Another interesting VN with its own style is VA-11 HALL-A. It wears its anime roots in its sleeve, but it has a very charming presentation and brings you right back to 80's videogames and their talking busts, which is a very good style for a cyberpunk story that doesn't take itself too seriously. I have yet to finish it, but, from what I played, I would recomend it.
But the original poster posited some really interesting questions that I would like to discuss: the problem of consistency, for instance. Of course, choosing a general palette of colors (or at least a general range of saturation values and tones) is a must. Stylized characters may not grok with realistic backgrounds or props, though, in the case of backgrounds, it doesn't seem as important: I have seen watercolor backgrounds used to great effect with conventional sprites, but anything that interacts directly with the characte must be consistent in style. Beyond these very basic tennets, though, I am a bit at a loss. Having the same portrait set-up for all sprites seems a bit self-evident, yet not all materials react the same way to light and allowances should be made. The lighting in the background should affect the sprite somehow, yet in illustration it is hardly an issue because the line-art helps the player differentiate the foreground as a distinct object (maybe softly blurring all backgrounds can help create the same effect, but sharp images also have their place in a narrative). I mean, there are so many aspects to consider just in this topic that each could have their own dedicated thread. "Consistent lighting in a serial narrative" sounds almost like a college course.
As an aside, and seeing as I am more of a writer than a graphic artist, branching narratives present their own challeges, but, as most everyone, game writers have our own secrets: we cheat. We cheat like we developed a grave case of retrograde amnesia just before finals. Mostly, branching narratives have a solid storyline with some events that are inmutable and beyond the player's control, with choices affecting details around the situation. Telltale games (which I regard as animated visual novels, more than anything else) present masterful examples of this, with plenty of false choices (that is, events that give the player the illusion that they are choosing things while the game ignores them completely--what did you have for breakfast?--that, nonetheless, may add some character and immersion to a scene) cosmetic choices (you saved John and left Sarah to die and agonised over it for twenty mnutes; half an hour later, aliens attack and John/Sarah dies anyway) and actual choices that lead the story to one of the very few branches it has (for some games, that is exactly one branch).
Multiple endings are easier to manage, as you can have a perfectly linear narrative that lead you to a tipping point right before the climax where you can choose how the story ends. When done properly, each ending will reflect previous choices and the player will feel a sense of flowing narrative, but it is very easy to disrupt this if the flags are improperly managed. As always, taking notes and planning things in advance (and remembering that players bring their own perspective to the table and will never play according to plan) are requirements when writing an interactive text.
I have read a fair bit on the creation of the original Choose Your Own Adventure Series, and it seemed like I read that the authors normally wrote the story through from start to ideal completion, then worked backwards to create the side loops, bad endings, and less than perfect endings. A big whiteboard is necessary for this project in my opinion! And lots of colored sticky notes. Googling cyoa visual maps is interesting so that you can see the actual layout of the books themselves.
Argghhh consistency in lighting! While still looking good, thus not just using flat headlamps! Those drawing-type artists do have an advantage in being able to cater to what people are already trained to.... hey, there's an idea. Finding another visual style and emulating it so people are better trained to ignore its flaws.... Hmmm....
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One of the interesting things that lots of visual novels do is the idea of 'routes'. Ostensibly these exist so you can focus on a different character on each playthrough but the best of them end up producing heavily layered stories that reveal more and more of the setting and overarching story as you progress. But at the same time there's still a lot of choice and endings based on those choices. I think one of the things the ChoiceOfgames article I linked to above mentions is the idea of stats being used to help handle branching: each choice mostly affects the scene you're in or maybe a single line of dialogue, but as the story deepens it branches based on internal values calculated from those choices, and eventually you're locked into a path, and then an ending (and perhaps there are lots of Bad Ends and only two Good Ends per route).
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On the software front, I'm not sure I'd say TyranoBuilder is a heavy hitter, but it's on Steam which gives it a lot of visibility, and it's very graphical, which was refreshing to all the people intimidated by even simple scripting (and I'm not knocking that. Visual editors are just more FUN.) I know there's also something called Novelty, and that Unity add-on mentioned at the top of the thread; I've never used those. And those are just the ones focused on the VN style. There's also ChoiceScript (which I've worked in some) which isn't usually graphical but is GREAT for modern CYOA, and Twine, the HTML branching narrative thing I mentioned previously. And I'm going to toss Comic Life in the ring because while it's not an engine, it's a layout program, it's FABULOUS for Daz renders.
Agreed on Comic Life...the text balloon technology is extremely elegant. I need to try to do an export to pdf from comic life to see if the word balloons are vector...hmmm.
PMd you dreamfarmer!
Does anyone know if there is a book devoted to Ren'py?
There's an extended feature demo as well as a quickstart and a manual that is useful but spotty (I still haven't figured out how to switch from NVL (full screen text) to ADV (text below pictures) mode and back again easily.) I'm using this thread as motivation to get together a sort of demo of my current project, which I'd love to share here, along with 'making of' screenshots/walkthrough. I could even insert a fake choice to demonstrate how that works.... Motivation! This thread provides it! Maybe it can beat this headache...
DO IT! Create a proof of concept! I saw a great tutorial where the guy was inserting .png of objects and the character had to choose which item to use to complete the task. I think there was a rope, a knife, and a key...i have no idea what the context was, but visually it was awesome, and made me think about more than just text buttons!
Hello, this thread is very interesting. I am on the road to make a visual novel with a pure iray 3d aesthetic and with Tyrano Builder. I want to avoid going cartoon until my first visual novel fails as I want it to be. I dont care of market expectatives on visual novels to start with. My preference is iray photorealistic 3d visual novel with no animations at all but every picture should be amazing to dare at while reading.
We are a team of three, there's a writer, a multilanguage translator and I'll just do the worldbuilding universe inspired by story genre and my stock library of 3d content, I'll do the game in tyrano management with minimal variables or complexity and also will render anything on writer's demand.
I don't care we fail, it's something we want, and we want to do this way.
I am sorry if I can't explain details on story or bring examples until we are done but I encourage others to try the same and create an habit of this type of photorealistic visual novels :)
Wow this stuff is very interesting. How easy is it to get started with just Comic Life to do a short 4 page (obviously linear) test story?
If anyone is still interested in making a visual novel. Fungus for Unity.. it's damn awesome. Plus it's easy to learn.
Getting started with Comic Life is a piece of cake, but you do need to acquire the art from elsewhere (like Daz). The majority of the time I spent on my two pages (linked previously) was in the renders. The rest of it was a snap.
As for photorealistic 3d Visual novels, I TOTALLY support others doing them, but my current project is a fairy tale and I don't think it would suit. But I'd love to see bits of what you're working on, EquisVoid.
Gardenguyvictor: Everytime I go poke at the Unity base I kind of back away slowly. I took a brief look at Vinoma and it didn't seem to offer anything worth grappling with Unity for, but I can go peer at the Fungus page, too. Maybe we can put together a comprehensive list of tools.
Thanks! I can do the art finally. Curious how well the new filters might work. Maybe I will give it a test drive next week.
This is one of the things I like, for example on one vn prototype I was working I had a map of the town which you can click/touch the building you wanted to visit.
Okay had to try Comic Life today... really excited about test page!
I was surprised when I saw this thread! I've been working on a first proof of concept myself!
I got Tyranobuilder, and am trying that. It was pretty cheap.
Here it is: Proof of Concept (seems to take a minute to load, it just ends abruptly after a few dialogs)
Once I added the character, I realized that I went to far on the "drawing" look of the background, so I'll need to dial that back.
My goal is just to make some humoruous "shorts", versus a full novel. Baby steps! If I enjoy doing it, then I may take it further. It's always about having fun!
As you can tell from my stuff, I like anime style, so this is geared in that direction, pretty typical for these. All art is Daz renders, background has postwork.
Thanks! :) I'll repost back when the first short is done.
No secrets here, hope this helps. Be nice to see what others are making!
Items Used:
...then clothes, hair etc...
Background is one of the Ship Elements B by 3DC, and I use the Simplify filter (by TopazLabs) in Paint.Net to Anime-ify it.
(I layered a pencil sketch on it, which to me is where I went a little-bit too strong)
Nice shameless plug there - if I didn't already own AnimeDoll for G2F it would have worked too!!
Hmmm...I was looking for something for Unity, and totally missed this :( Thanks for the tip, I need to take a look :)
Looks good. Middle panels are a little crowded but that's good to see in a test format!
I liked this proof of concept too. Yay words with pictures!
I had the brainwave late last night that instead of speculating on whether this or that character would look good via my preferred filters, i could actually copy a promo image into Photoshop and TEST it. So I'm going to pick up VYK Stella today (and I regret not picking her up sooner). I'm also interested in your anime doll, 3dOutlaw, especially the Convert To Boy aspects. As far as I can tell you have one of the only games in town. Maybe the only one? (Kenji is so laughably un-anime.) But I have two important questions, which I will pester you with since you DID blurb.... The first one is about eye-shape morphs-- how adjustable is that shape? What ARE the 60+ morphs? And, er, the second one is.... do you ever have any sales?
I'm currently thinking that while I shouldn't readjust my fairy-tale look yet AGAIN (I spent all weekend tweaking a Mika/Aliyah combo) it'd be useful for various reasons (for me) to also produce a more traditionally styled VN. But, well, anime boys are the Endless Quest at this point... (and well, really, I mean 'anime men' because I am not really into the younger teenage boy look.)
Glad I stumbled upon this! I'm also working on a Visual Novel Demo. I started doing the entire artwork by hand, but it was taking incredibly long. Since we're a small team, I started looking into Daz and how to mix it up with Photoshop to achieve a "hand painted look". Though I haven't been able to manage something with only using DazStudio, it has sped up the art process. I still do massive postwork in photoshop, but it gives me a great base to start with. If anyone's interesting, I created a thread sharing tips and tricks for photoshop postwork here.
In there, I expand on the process below (one way to help create sprites). I find that hair doesn't translate well when it's rendered and filtered through photoshop (that's a dead giveaway that something was 3D and got filtered). So face (and all of it's expressions) as well as hair I draw & paint from scratch. I also fill in the linework (especially adding wrinkles to clothes) to make it feel more organic. Then add a coat of highlights/shadows to the body (and adding a little bit of blush on cheeks, nose and joints).
There is a readme link on the product page (right side, scroll down), which lists out all morphs, and then the freebies I added on my site have more. I've found I can make quite a few different looks with them, for example: Jacket, Bedtime, Textbook, Country (last one is basically the default) ...but I am biased, and maybe these are not that different, lol! A lot of Anime's actually seem to me the faces are exactly the same, and the outfit/hair is the only difference sometime, that you can tell, which defines the figure.
The Male moprhs (7 of them) are more extreme, depending on how much you dial-in, and may require eye repositioning. "Maybe", a Male morph for Deco is a another male one.
RE: Sales...apparently I need to have more, lol. Someone else recently asked me that. I actually just had a 30% off, during a toon/coupon sale...which made it almost 50%.
Darn! I'm sorry I missed it.
My experience is that there are a lot of different styles to anime, which can come out in 1.) the eyes and 2.) the angularity-roundness spectrum of the art. I really like the Textbook image.
Here's a cast collection from the VN Ozmafia. Only one of the characters is a girl. You can see that mostly the guys have much narrower eyes (except for the two younger characters, one of whom is regularly mistaken for a girl in-story.) Faces vary only slightly and noses hardly at all, but the width, shape and highlights in the male eyes contribute just as much as their hair to identifying them. This is one of the looks I wish I could achieve with a Genesis 3 male.
This is the other style I find myself looking at a lot and wishing I could achieve. The eyes aren't QUITE as distinctive but that may be because it's an anime. And there's still definitely some distinction. Some of it ends up being pupil size (or the 'closed eyes' look) and it's subtle, but there.
My theory is that visual novels benefit from a lot of focus on good eyes, since there's not a lot of action to otherwise help define the character.
Oh! I didn't quite parse what you said about "Maybe"? A morph for Deco?
And returning to sales-- while I'm sorry I missed the almost-50% off, I'd be delighted with a 30% off sale. The main problem is that I tend not to spend more than $12 on a new-to-me character model here at Daz--and I know w/ Daz I can return stuff that doesn't work for me.
Yep, good points!
I like the multi-panel look/idea. Reminds me of RWBY. I am gonna use that style for the Title screen, I think. (4 girls, 2 boys, maybe...).
I will see what I can do about a sale this week...