Behind the Scenes #1: Creating a Character Model (Patreon)

Welcome to the first of my behind-the-scenes posts! Each month via these lengthy posts I'll be sharing some of what I learned since I began Freshmen: Physical Education. The aim is to help aspiring creators get started on their own works and to satisfy the curiosity of anyone who wants to know the specific details of my process. 

This first post will cover how I create a character model for the game. Reference images are interspersed below but bigger versions can be seen in the gallery.

To begin with, let's talk about Daz 3D.

What's Daz?

While browsing visual novels on Steam or Itch.io, you may have noticed a lot of the VNs with 3D renders have a similar look - sometimes even the exact same character models or sets.

This is because many creators are using a free program called Daz 3D to create the images for their game and are buying assets from the same place. If you look through the Daz 3D shop, you'll likely stumble upon characters, clothes, hair, or sets that you recognize from the games you've played.

Daz 3D is a relatively simple program to get started with, but it also has lots of advanced features to play with as you get used to working with it. It's not a be-all-end-all product, but it's free to download and mess around with using just the base figures that come with the program. 

Why Daz?

A visual novel requires three things of a creator - that you can write, that you can code, and that you can create art. The biggest barrier of entry if you're a writer is usually art - if you're not a digital or traditional artist yourself and can't afford to hire one, you're either not going to have visuals or have very low quality visuals. Which isn't great for a visual novel.

Daz is a program that helps remove that barrier. You still need artistic talent and skill to create your images, but there are a large variety of assets available to use in making your scenes. That means that for someone like me who doesn't currently have sculpting a 3D character as a skillset, I can still make cinematic visuals with the help of assets sold by the very talented artists who can do that work.

Starring Roy as Julian

A very straightforward example of this is Julian. He's one of the few characters where I essentially used the figure as-is - you'll see below that I typically do a lot more editing.

The asset for Julian is Roy HD for Genesis 8 Male by product artist PedroFurtadoArts. The sculpt and skin textures for this figure were so good that I didn't feel the need to make many changes. To create Julian, I changed "Roy's" height, lightened his skin tone, added a hair asset, adjusted his eyes, and gave him a dick, and then he was good to go.

Here's the base "Roy" figure side-by-side with the final Julian model:

The only downside to Julian is that you may see him pop up in different contexts, whether it be other games or even just promo pics for other Daz assets. It's not a super big deal, but I do generally prefer my guys to be unique to my game. That's why I do kitbashing.

What's Kitbashing?

"Kitbashing" is what the name implies - taking parts of different kits and bashing them together to create something unique. When it comes to characters, that means combining a few or many different figure assets to create a new person.

Daz has different generations of figures, with new versions introduced as technology advances. When I first started making Freshmen, the new hotness was Genesis 8.1, which was compatible with assets from the prior version, Genesis 8. The base Genesis 8/8.1 figure is a mesh that artists can adjust by sculpting "morphs" to that base mesh using programs like ZBrush or Blender.

The fun thing about morphs is that you can combine them together by dialing them in at different degrees, blending together entire faces or bodies or specific body parts. You can even buy morphs that let you get so granular you can adjust things like the rotation of an earlobe or the distance between nostrils. 

This is where kitbashing comes in. Daz and third party sellers have a lot of complete figures available. They come with the figure model and textures, and sometimes also with body hair. Over the past few years, I've amassed a decently-sized library of figures, often waiting for good sales to get them cheap. This means I have a lot of figures (kits) I can meld together (bash!) to make a new character.

However, not all assets are created equal, as you'll see below. Although "Roy"/Julian looked great out of the box, there are a lot of poorly-textured or sculpted figures out there. So it's not quite as easy as dialing two figures in at 50% each and calling it a day.

Making Connor

A good example of how this works is the recent Connor redesign.

To begin with, let's look at his body. I didn't want to reuse the same body as the original Connor because it wasn't as high-def as I wanted and I found some of the shapes awkward when posing him. My original vision for Connor was a lean, toned twunk, so I scrolled through all the body morphs I have until I decided that Sebastian for Genesis 8 Male was a good starting point. (Fun fact - "Sebastian" was an early consideration for Riley's head/face.)

Here's the base Genesis 8.1 figure next to the "Sebastian" figure, and then Connor's final body.

You can see I didn't just load in "Sebastian's" body and consider it done. The most obvious difference is that I made the figure shorter ("Sebastian" is nearly 6'1"/185 cm vs Connor at 5'11"/180 cm), but there are many more morph adjustments as well, including: 

• Changing the shape of his ass to get the perfect bubble butt
• Slimming his thighs and making them less toned
• Reducing the overall scale of the shoulders while also making them broader
• Narrowed his torso and waist
• Reduced the musculature of his stomach

And of course the skin texture is different, which I'll get into below.

Next up was creating Connor's head. When I start on a character's head, I mostly just dial in different head morphs at different percentages, doing trial and error until I find something I like. In this case I had a starting point by using some head morphs I previously used to create Connor's brother. I also of course had Connor's original head. Here are all the full head morphs that were combined to create the starting point for the final Connor head and at what percentage they were dialed in:

• Head 1 (Brody) from Captivating HD Faced and Bodies for Genesis 8 Male at 25%
• CC Jack for Holt 8 at 25%
• Vernon HD for Genesis 8 Male at 10%
• Michael 8.1 at 15%

This image is a great example of just how stark the differences can be between assets. The most photo-realistic head here is Michael 8.1, and his skin texture is ultimately what I used for the final Connor model (with some freckles layered on from a different product). Daz has two flagship figures they release with the launch of each new generation, Michael and his female counterpart, Victoria. These figures tend to be really high quality, so I've used Michael 8.1's head in several other figures as well, most notably Evan and Owen.

But the other heads have their merits, too, offering features that I found blended together well to get to a shape I wanted. Most notably, if you played the test scene you may recognize "Vernon" as the basis for Original Connor - I wanted some aspects of the original head dialed in.

But my work wasn't done yet! I spent a lot of time adjusting New Connor's features to bring together the final look. The changes included:

• Adding a slightly more prominent Adam's apple
• Adjusting the length, depth, and overall size of the neck
• Dialing in a youthful cheek morph
• Skewed the nose to make it slightly angled, and also adjusted the nose width
• Made his lower lip fuller
• Combined multiple ear morphs to get the shape and angle I was looking for

I don't necessarily go this granular with all the guys, but Connor is the main character - he was worth the time and effort!

At this point his body and head are morphed in the way I want and textured the way I want - with the exception of his eyes. Michael 8.1 and some other figures come with great eye textures, but as you can see from the other heads, often the eyes look doll-like and empty. 

Luckily there's a great product to help with that called Natural Eyes II for Genesis 8.1 Females and Males. This not just applies high quality textures scanned from actual eyes, but adds detailed morphs to the iris and pupil that give them lifelike depth. It's ultimately a subtle change since you don't often see faces up close, but the way these eyes reflect light really pulls a figure together.

Next we need to de-Ken-doll him! There is an official genitalia asset you can get for Genesis 8/8.1 figures by purchasing a "pro" figure bundle, but this asset - sometimes referred to as anatomy or gens in product descriptions - is really basic and limited. You can essentially just set it to flaccid or erect, circumcised or with foreskin.

Because of this, many creators of adult art need to turn to third party sources. I'm going to give the link to the main shop I and other creators use, but be aware that there are a lot of graphic images on this site. Primarily you'll see the equivalent of gonzo straight porn since most of the products are geared towards female figures that will be used in games made by straight men, but there are also assets showing some extreme violence. The latter is hidden in its own category, so be careful where you click. If any of this seems uncomfortable to you, I wouldn't recommend going here at all.

With that warning out of the way, the site is called Renderotica, and you can browse through their male assets to get things you can't find on the official Daz store like detailed dick attachments.

The penis asset I primarily use is XY 1.5. I chose this one because it seemed the most realistic of the options that were available when I started making the game. It has separate add-on products to add more skin colors plus more vascular textures and shape morphs. I'm happy with this asset overall, but I will say I find trying to get a realistic-looking flaccid or semi-flaccid state isn't easy, so there may be better products available.

Now we have a body, a head, and a dick - all we're missing is hair! I gave Connor the eyebrows from the figure Kento 8.1, who you may recognize as the figure I used for Blaze. Connor's hair is actually two hair assets, dForce Thadeus Hair for Genesis 3 & 8 Male(s) for the hair we mainly see, and then LI Crew Cut Hair for Genesis 8.1 Male(s) underneath to fill in the scalp a bit more.

Like with eyes, I pretty much always change the hair texture by applying new shaders - shaders being a mix of textures and settings that create the final look. The product I use for this is called ColorWerks Hair Shaders for Iray, which has a ton of different colors that tend to be more high quality than the textures that come with many hair assets.

Lastly we need body hair - with the exception of Julian, the guys in my game don't shave everything off. There are more or less two different ways to add body hair. One is using a geoshell - basically an invisible "shell" around the figure on top of which you can apply a flat texture. I've only used geoshell body hair on a few characters, namely Jordi and Parker. Typically I use the second type, 3D meshes, which look better to my eye but are much more resource intensive.

For Connor I used CC Shave This - Body Hair for Genesis 8 Male(s) for his pubes, which is the same product I used on OG Connor. It lets you dial in certain levels of thickness, length, and other details, but is ultimately a bit sparse in coverage. To fill it out more, I layered on pube assets that came with two other figures, CC Puck for Genesis 8.1 Male and Zak HD for Genesis 8.1 Male. ("Puck" is the figure I used to make David, Isaiah's rival that you can meet in the Club Update.) I used ColorWerks shaders to make all three assets the same color so they would blend together.

For his pit hair I used a product found on Renderotica, Hairy Armpits for Genesis 8 Male, which I like because it offers different amounts of coverage and looks more realistic than some of the other body hair products available.

And now Connor is done!

You can see now the two extremes of character creation using Daz - Julian, who was very simple to put together, and Connor, who took a lot more time and effort. You don't really need to go as deep as I did with Connor, especially when first getting started. There are plenty of great figures out there if you browse a bit. But I will say that most of the game's main characters are customized to some degree, especially popular guys like Matt, Riley, and Will.

Let's Make A Daddy!

So now we know all the nitty gritty specifics of how characters can be made by combining different purchasable assets. I want to end this post by creating a new character that has some customization, but not anywhere near the level of Connor. Let's make Evan's dad, Edwin Baron.

I always start with a character concept but am open to evolving that concept as I mess around with morphs and textures. I have a figure picked out for Evan's mom who looks to be in her late 50s/early 60s. I thought it'd be fun to make her a bit of a cougar and go mid-40s for Evan's dad.

We already have a starting point in Evan himself - short in stature, a thick body, and golden blond, curly hair. We also know Evan's dad is a world-famous novelist. I don't really have anything beyond that - so the design will influence his final personality!

To begin with, let's browse through my collection of assets to see what sort of options I have for daddy characters. I'm looking for some level of ruggedness, and luckily I have a good number of choices to pick from. I'm settling on a figure named Assassin 8.1.

Now obviously this guy looks nothing like Evan. But what I think makes him a good starting point are his features that read as middle-aged, like his forehead wrinkles, furrowed brow, and nasolabial folds - the cheek folds that begin at his nose and go down the sides of his mouth. I also like his body shape, which is thick but not too muscular. 

The first thing we need to change is his textures. There is a way to lighten the skin tone, but I think I'd be better off applying the textures from a different figure that was designed to have pale and freckled skin. After some searching through my assets, I'm settling on the textures from Taurus HD for Genesis 8.1 Male. I didn't use the figure as a basis for Edwin since I don't really like his facial features and the body is a bit too stylized. But the textures are well-made with a lot of realistic details that I like.

Many figures come with two different face textures - one with eyebrows painted onto the texture itself and one without. I don't necessarily like the painted on brows, so I'm going to remove them and apply 3D mesh eyebrows from another figure. This involves me trying out all sorts of eyebrows until I see one that looks right, since how the eyebrows look on a figure depends on the shape of their brow bone. I'm choosing the eyebrows from a figure called Ryker HD for Vladimir 8. I like these because they aren't at as severe an angle as either Assassin's or Taurus's brows.

Next, let's change his height - I want him to be a similar height to Evan. To do this, I'm going to use a tool called Measure Metrics that will help me scale him by showing me in inches and centimeters how his height compares to other figures. Assassin's starting height is 5'11" / 180 cm. I know from previous measurements that Evan is 5'8" / 173 cm, so I'll aim for something around there.

The figure itself is looking pretty good, so now I'm moving on to hair - including lots of body hair. It's clear Evan's gonna become a hairy fellow as he gets older, and he inherited his fuzziness from his dad!

I try to only use a head hair asset once, but I often pick up hair when it's on sale for cheap, so I still have a lot of options. The key thing I'm looking for is the hair being at least somewhat curly or wavy. I'm deciding on Morley Hair for Genesis 3 & 8 Male(s), which isn't super curled like Evan's hair but has enough waves to see a connection. 

I have far fewer assets for body hair than I do head hair due to availability of products, so I'm using the same body hair set I used for Will, M3D Fiber Body Hair Set for Genesis 8.1 Male. This is the asset I go to when I want someone to be very furry, including Evan. Since Evan is perpetually scruffy at 18, it makes sense to also give his dad a beard. I'm going with a beard that came with the figure Harrison HD for Michael 8, which I think fits his face shape well.

Lastly, his hair needs to be the right color! I'm applying the same shaders I used for Evan to Edwin's head hair, beard, and body hair.

At this point I'm realizing he looks a little younger than I wanted for a mid-to-late 40s character. Let's age him up a bit by making some subtle changes using facial feature morphs - crows feet, slightly sunken cheeks, some slack to his jaw, and more prominent forehead wrinkles. I'm also making him paler, both to better match Evan and because tanner skin tends to read as younger. These are subtle changes that individually you may not notice but as a whole make him look more his correct age.

While we're here, I'm also going to change some other features to better match Evan, like giving him thinner lips. Lastly, I'm changing his eyes a bit. The eye texture from the Taurus materials is actually pretty good, but I'd like his irises to better match Evan. I'm also applying the HD eye morphs I talked about above.

Normally at this point I'd be done with my side characters since it's not really worth the time to give them a dick if we'll never see it. But since we're here... 

I'm not going with the exact same dick shape as Evan, but I did make adjustments to give it similar vibes.

Now let's go through a bunch of different outfits to get a sense of a style that seems right for him. This western fit looks good on him, and I think some glasses do, too. Edwin's kind of stern-looking in his final appearance, and that along with how he's dressed will help inform how I write him whenever I get to that point. 

And there we have it - a customized character made using the tools within Daz to adjust and combine purchased assets. This isn't necessarily his final appearance, but as of now I'm happy with how he looks.

That's it for this time. If you have any questions, leave a comment below - I'm always happy to answer!