Daz Advice on using Daz3D for a rookie

[Heisenberg867]

Hi all,

I'm a guy who had no technical knowledge past how to unzip a compressed folder, but who decided to start modding Family Matters as a project - the renders are incredibly sexy, the plot has potential, but I wanted to mess with some of the dialogue.

Now it's a few weeks later, I've learned how to use Atom to tear apart a Renpy game and put it back together again, I figured out how to use GIMP to create and install my own GUI, I'm 2,000 lines of code into the script file, and I've made so many changes to both the narrative and the gameplay that it's essentially a new thing that happens to use the same renders.

So now I'm looking at all the work I'm doing and beginning to think about taking the last step towards dev-dom and learning to create my own renders. I won't lie, I'm extremely intimidated: my artistic history is word-oriented, not visually-oriented. I've downloaded a copy of Daz3D, I've learned enough to understand that (correct me if I'm wrong) most devs start with one of about a couple dozen Genesis 3 or 8 "dolls", modify them, and then use libraries of pre-built costumes, poses, props, and landscapes to create the folder full of sexy .pngs I see in the game images folder. I've even downloaded the Genesis 8 starter pack that Daz3D supplies.

So now I'm staring at a faceless, hairless A-posed Genesis 8 female mannequin floating in an empty gray gridworld and I've never felt more lost. Can anyone give me some advice on how to get from that wasteland to a single sexy, clothed, posed render of, e.g., Caroline from Milfy City?

P.S. I'm aware that the last question kind of resembles "how do I, a fatass who can barely climb off the couch, summit Mount Everest?" But once you've stopped laughing, I'm hoping one of the pirate angels who inhabit this site will be able to give me advice along the lines of "this is the way ICSTOR went about creating Caroline, these are the libraries he used to dress and pose her, this is where he found the backgrounds, etc."

P.P.S. Although anyone who laughs their way directly to the "back" button without responding at all is well within their rights.

 

[polywog]

 

[Rich]

P.S. I'm aware that the last question kind of resembles "how do I, a fatass who can barely climb off the couch, summit Mount Everest?" But once you've stopped laughing, I'm hoping one of the pirate angels who inhabit this site will be able to give me advice along the lines of "this is the way ICSTOR went about creating Caroline, these are the libraries he used to dress and pose her, this is where he found the backgrounds, etc."

P.P.S. Although anyone who laughs their way directly to the "back" button without responding at all is well within their rights.

Hey, you've demonstrated a willingness to dive in and learn, so...

As you've discovered, much of Daz Studio is acquiring the assets you need to make fully-usable renders. As far as "places you can find such other than the official stores," there is the "Asset Releases" forum on this site, plus sites like zonegfx.com, dazposer.net and 3d-load.net. (Not that I'm advocating piracy, to all the NSA personnel listening... LOL)

If you're going for realism, then I assume you're probably looking at the Genesis 3 and Genesis 8 series of characters and the iRay renderer, since those are substantially more photorealistic than the earlier generations of characters and the 3Delight renderer. (Not that you can't make good stuff with the older generations, and the 3Delight renderer is sometimes better for people that don't have NVidia GPU's, since CPU-based iRay is painful.)

So, yes, you'll be looking for characters, hair, clothing and sets. If you want to just use stock characters, that's perfectly fine. If you're looking to customize your characters, there are packages out there that offer lots and lots of morphs that can be used to reshape stock characters to your heart's content. I will warn you that trying to reverse engineer what a game author has done to create a custom character is a daunting task, because there are so many options for morph packages, and so many dials and knobs that could possibly have been used. Some games have threads here devoted to fan art in which people have made valiant attempts at such (I was among those that was trying to reverse engineer the daughter in Dating My Daughter, for example - we got something close, but never 100% matched it.)

Hairs and clothing aren't necessarily all that hard to work out. There's a pretty active community in the Commons forum on Daz3d.com with sharp eyes who can usually identify such. Of course, with clothing, the artist may have used a top from one outfit, pants from another, etc. But if you're doing your own scenes, having the characters be dressed differently isn't necessarily a problem, since people (outside of games, at least) DO wear different things on different days. LOL Hair is rarely seriously modified, although there ARE "style dials" associated with most that can adjust the shaping somewhat.

As to the "sets," again some authors use stock rooms available through Daz3d.com or Renderosity.com (the two biggest markets for Daz-compatible "stuff"), others piece together rooms using this bit of furniture and that bit of furniture. So, again, matching a given set might be complex.

The biggest thing that you're going to have to work at learning with iRay is lighting. Lighting is critical to iRay, but then it's also critical to commercial photography (which 3D rendering resembles) and to movie-making. So, learning to use HDRI's, spotlights, ghost lights, etc., to effectively light your scenes is going to take time, effort and practice. But if you're willing to put in the time, there are plenty of people here, and on the Daz forums, who will answer questions without laughing their way to the back button. We were all there once...

Best of luck!

 

[Heisenberg867]

Hey, you've demonstrated a willingness to dive in and learn, so...

But if you're willing to put in the time, there are plenty of people here, and on the Daz forums, who will answer questions without laughing their way to the back button. We were all there once...

Best of luck!

Thank you so, so much for your reply. It gave me exactly the morale boost I needed to get past the DAZ equivalent of a blank page, which was probably the most intimidating thing (artistically speaking) I've ever faced.

I was staring at a facelessfemale mannequin floating in an empty gray gridworld, asking how to get from that wasteland to a single sexy, clothed, posed render. Well, it took awhile to get everything figured out, but I did it. Behold - I have created porn.

 

[Rich]

LOL. So you have. Now then, if you'll pardon the constructive criticism, a few things to think about improving in this render (which is a great start!).

You might try rotating the light clockwise just a bit so that her face (and other fun parts) are a bit more illuminated. Right now the light is almost directly from her side, which obviously puts those parts almost in shadow. Shadows are very important, but you do want to make sure that the parts that should be the "center of attention" are illuminated.

Also, her right foot is hovering oddly. So you probably have to move her right thigh out just a bit, and possibly rotate the shin and ankle a bit.

Finally, the helicopter needs to come down just a smidge - if you look at the left strut, you'll see that it's hovering. Having it sink into the sand a bit wouldn't be a problem - that would be realistic.

Once you've done those little bits of tweaking, you've got a great ad for a helicopter service... LOL

 

[justhoneyselect]

How did you do it? I'm currently staring down the exact same blank page, and I have no idea where I would even start. There's just so many questions I have: Where can I get more morphs that'll let me adjust the breasts and butt of the character? How do I adjust the facial features? Just things like that. If you could hit me up about how you got all that done I would really appreciate it.

 

[Porcus Dev]

How did you do it? I'm currently staring down the exact same blank page, and I have no idea where I would even start. There's just so many questions I have: Where can I get more morphs that'll let me adjust the breasts and butt of the character? How do I adjust the facial features? Just things like that. If you could hit me up about how you got all that done I would really appreciate it.

Here is a list of the basic and essential morphs; install these as a minimum:
https://f95zone.to/threads/3d-software-help-and-assistance-ask-away.11702/page-37#post-1940031

Then there are many others:

You must be registered to see the links

 

[Heisenberg867]

How did you do it? I'm currently staring down the exact same blank page, and I have no idea where I would even start. There's just so many questions I have: Where can I get more morphs that'll let me adjust the breasts and butt of the character? How do I adjust the facial features? Just things like that. If you could hit me up about how you got all that done I would really appreciate it.

The initial learning curve for DAZ is obscene, mostly because every single thing you want to do with it involves downloads, copious, mammoth asset downloads. Basically for every individual thing you want to do, assume it's going to involve downloading an asset, from facial expressions to lighting to posing to boob morphs.

The actual mechanics of the program are mildly finicky but not particularly complicated. I just can't emphasize enough how much of this involves finding and downloading what you need, not working some kind of magic inside of DAZ. Make extensive use of

You must be registered to see the links

for that, it's an extraordinary resource. I usually used the main DAZ website to search for what I wanted, then used 3D-LOAD to download it.

The good news, though, is that once you've got all the assets you need and you've worked your way through about a couple dozen technical questions- a process you should assume will take you a couple weeks of googling - the learning curve basically goes flat. After that, you'll begin to see how it all comes together, and the time required will drop significantly.

 

[deusexvagina]

That's already miles ahead of the renders some people create after a year in Daz, so congrats! I'm in the same boat, Daz is indeed a little finicky at times and it takes a lot of money upfront to get a bunch of good assets, but then it starts to be real fun.

Couple tips I can come up with:
- For outdoor grab some (free and awesome) hdri maps from hdrihaven.com.
- The denoiser in the render settings can be amazing in terms of render speed
- so can limiting the ray length from unlimited to 5 or so. (these two make an hour-long render on a 2070 a five-ten minute job)
- If you grab the batch renderer plugin you can create scenes and have them all render over night, very convenient. I just started using that myself today.

You put it nicely about the learning curve, at a certain point you start creating renders at rapid pace. Congrats again on the nice job!

 

[Heisenberg867]

To build on this, the render I posted above required downloading the following 11 assets:

1. Basic Genesis 8 female figure.
2. "Victoria" blueprint for that basic template.
3. "Libby" mod of the Victoria blueprint.
4. A specific hair.
5. A package of poses that included that particular lean.
6. A boob morph mod.
7. A package of piercings.
8. Bikini bottoms.
9. Heels.
10. Helicopter.
11. Desert backdrop.

Figuring out what I needed and then finding all that took many hours.
Figuring out how to combine and assemble all that in DAZ took some time too, but less.
Creating a similar scene again would take 10% of the time.