I have a few years in Blender, not much experience with animation (so I'll probably keep an eye on this thread myself.). If you've animated in Daz at all, it's not too different. There are tools that make your life easier (AnimationLayers, Simplicage, and many others.). But basic keyframing and Simplicage can do a lot.
Animations can and are done in several way, in varying levels of difficulty. In a Scent is probably one of the more easily accessible techniques I've seen. I'm 99% sure they are using Simplicage (which is a brilliant addon) and simple keyframing to get animations done. Basically like you would in Daz, just a bit more streamlined. Simplicage is, in simple terms (at least in a way I can explain
), a simplified process of creating deform cages. Which is probably one of the easier ways of introducing physics.
There's some animators that use several techniques, I believe. Someone like KisX, for example. I know my way around decently well with Blender, but they a few things that make my head spin a bit. Would love a full workflow tutorial from them.
The AnimeNyan/NSFWBlender Discord in a must-just. There's some Daz elitism here and there, but most really helpful people. Namely, there's a google drive link with a bunch of tutorials covering a lot of stuff that would be useful to any beginner. Here's a link I have on hand:
You must be registered to see the links
. It's probably a bit dated at this point, so I'd just join the Discord (you can find the links on his Pornhub/YT tutorials.)
Before you start worrying about animations, though. Get some tutorials under your belt. Getting used to Blender's UI is the hardest part, especially if you're somewhat experienced with Daz and how it's lighting works. There's obviously differences, but not as many you might think. If you're using Daz figures, Diffeomorphic is the only good way. If you're looking to do AVN stuff, I'd highly recommend Blenderkit (if you're willing to pay a bit) and the SketchFab importer for their free stuff when needed. Makes life easier for the small stuff, and gives you more time for modeling when needed.
As for VRAM/RAM? It's not any different than Daz. Optimization is going to play a big role in any of it. The same VRAM-killers in Daz (Greenery, water, etc.) are the same killers in Blender. Polygoniq's Memsaver is probably the closest we have to Scene Optimizer, but is largely better once you get a handle on it. Blender does render a lot faster than Daz does for me. A 4-minute 4K render I did early this morning:
But it's going to vary pretty heavily depending on your PC. This was from a decently non-standard PC (2 4090s, 128GB of RAM, 14700k), so it's not exactly indicative of practical real-world numbers.
