The art is the reason I haven't gone hard into VN. I also investigated DAZ3D and what you said about the expense and time to locate individual resources - mesh, skins, etc - to make them look high-quality and not all like the same person is completely true. I finally hired someone to do a few renders for one of my games, so I understand what a feat this is you are pulling off.
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I appreciate that! Yeah, I spent a lot of time making and remaking character models to try to get them as high quality as I can. Matt in particular went through at least a dozen iterations before I landed on one I liked. Most asset creators also focus on female figures/hair/clothes/etc , so creating a cast of 17 male characters without the sameness you mention has been a challenge for sure. But I think it's been worth the effort for this particular project.
Yeah, I needed two females and two males rendered. My straight artist friend had probably 30 variations of female nipples to offer, then I'm like, "can we put chest hair on one of the guys?" and he goes "uhhhh?" The next day he came up with a nicer one - I think he bought a new chest hair mesh to help me because what he had at first looked like someone drew it on with a sharpie!