Blender Particles vs. Daz prop instances - tips?

[novabeaver]

Hi!

I'm trying to create a forest scene in Daz. I've tried painstakingly placing grass/bushes/trees instances manually in Daz... It takes forever!
I recently learnt how to place props as particles/hair in Blender, then import that into Daz. It seems much faster, but I'm wondering if there is a catch...

Is this a viable solution or should I be concerned about performance issues, if i'm importing one giant model instead of x props + instances?
Would one be more of a pain to update than the other, if I need to make changes to it later?
Is there a similar way to place props semi-randomly on a plane in Daz? (I saw the post here for faking grass with hair, but what about bushes/trees?)

Would love to know how you approach this kind of stuff, if there's a feature/plugin I failed to discover etc.

 

[Baka_Energy_studios]

I'm using this

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for forest stuff and grass

 

[novabeaver]

Oh wow that is exactly like what I was looking for! Thanks so much

 

[Baka_Energy_studios]

You're welcome, now go and have fun.

 

[Deleted member 1121028]

As said there is Ultra scatter for general instances uses, but there is also Ultra scenery from the same author. It's based mostly on Ultra scatter but focused on landscape/natural scene (you can use custom/generated greyscale weightmap and use mask for each props instances). Ones of few legit plugins imo.

There is also Materia MeshMaker for snow setup, should work with instances iirc.

 

[FilthySloth]

I know I'm biased against Daz... and reading these forums has illuminated me to fact that it is not quite as useless as I once thought...

...but still this sort of functionality really should be baked into Daz to make it functional rather than it being a rather pricey addon.

Right taking my soapbox elsewhere now

 

[rainbowpunfz]

...but still this sort of functionality really should be baked into Daz to make it functional rather than it being a rather pricey addon.

Maybe DAZ is just less far along/complete in its development. The open film project seems to be a huge boon for the development of blender, directly translating into roadmaps and new features that are brought into blender. The everything nodes project getting into geometry this year was pretty huge, (although there was the Sverchok addon before this). Correct me if I'm wrong, but DAZ doesn't really have something driving its development forwards like that.

Though there are still plenty of areas where you'd likely have to resort to (paid) addons in blender. For instance, NPR rendering and retopology are 2 areas, on the top of my head, in which blender is kinda lacking, even though both are quite big.

I think i might have stolen your soapbox..

 

[FilthySloth]

Give me that back I need it


IMO Daz is just has other priorities, DAZ is the minimal effort tool for maintaining the DAZ library which is where they make the money... which is fine honestly. I just wish they would make integrations with other software packages actually viable... or just sell their assets for other software.

I can't think of any paid mods to Blender which are necessary to make it feature complete. Most paid mods are quality of life improvements imo.

Your two examples aren't great, you can do some really nice NPR with Eevee although not all techniques are possible at present. Even cycles has a toon shader, but that is much more limited (but can still look really nice with enough tweaking).

And whilst the out of box automatic retopo options aren't good, there are pretty good free options, although personally I enjoy the zen of doing retopo work manually myself anyway.

 

[rainbowpunfz]

Feature completeness kind of depends on your scope I guess.

blender's NPR capabilities still don't support real time edge tracing. Freestyle is dope and super powerful, but post processing. You can trick things with an inverted hull and backface culling, but that will only give you outlines. Toonkit comes with real time edge tracing.

As for retopo, I was specifically aiming at the manual retopo workflow in blender. Yes it is possible but lacks so much functionality and results in quite some time loss. Compare that to the addon retopoflow for instance.

Both of these things are entirely doable out of the box, just like building a forest in DAZ out of props is doable out of the box. That's not to say that i dislike where blender is at atm, I actually think it's in a really healthy spot.

 

[FilthySloth]

True... by feature complete I mean sufficient to undertake most common tasks for 3d art, but that is ofc a subjective list.

Regarding NPR you are correct about the limitations for outlining, however there are number of methods you can use for outlining (I actually use freestyle the least), you can certain more than get the job done without Toonkit. I did play with BEER the other day too, but that needs more time in the oven right now.

There are a number of good free retopo addons, which I have played with from time to time... but I always end up going back to doing it by hand, perhaps that is just me... I'm too cheap to even try retopoflow

 

[Deleted member 1121028]

Are people sniffing their own fart?
Tough question.

 

[novabeaver]

...but still this sort of functionality really should be baked into Daz to make it functional rather than it being a rather pricey addon.

Unfortunately, baking features like that directly into Daz seems incompatible with their business model (can't sell content and plug-ins if everything's included or super easy to make...). I always get this weird feeling about add-ons, where I tend to find them too pricey for what they do/are but also very cheap considering the amount of hours it probably took to create them (at least based on how long it would take me).

And whilst the out of box automatic retopo options aren't good, there are pretty good free options, although personally I enjoy the zen of doing retopo work manually myself anyway.

Super interested in what the pretty good free options are, if you can share them.
I like getting into the flow of doing things manually, until i remember how much I have left to do in my backlog...

Both of these things are entirely doable out of the box, just like building a forest in DAZ out of props is doable out of the box. That's not to say that i dislike where blender is at atm, I actually think it's in a really healthy spot.

Agreed. I was actually surprised by how easy to use and comprehensive Blender is now. I learnt modeling on maya in the late 90s, and could never get into Blender's workflow so I used to be really biased against Blender until i gave it another try last year.

So I've played around with Ultrascatterpro now, and getting pretty cool results. It saves me a bit of time, but increases the quality/variety by a lot I think. I did a quick comparison of my last 3 scenes (very biased due to different "locations" but similar scale, same render settings, removed scene-specific objects like characters/car/water that would impact render times greatly)

• scene 1: 334 instances of 12 props placed manually in Daz. Took 12h to build. Renders in 2min 31s.
• scene 2: terrain made in blender with 6 plant props baked in from particle system (hundreds of each), then manually added 118 instances of 6 props in Daz. Took 8h to build. Renders in 1min 18s.
• scene 3: 10847 instances of 24 props placed with ultra scatter in Daz, and 10 placed manually. Took 5h to build. Renders in 1min 13s.

So, thanks again! I expect that as I get more used to working with it, the time savings will be even greater.

there is also Ultra scenery from the same author. It's based mostly on Ultra scatter but focused on landscape/natural scene (you can use custom/generated greyscale weightmap and use mask for each props instances). Ones of few legit plugins imo.

There is also Materia MeshMaker for snow setup, should work with instances iirc.

Going to look into ultra scenery too at some point, especially if it's the same author I expect it'll be as useful.
Materia also seems interesting, not sure I have a use case for it just yet, but i'll keep it in mind. Maybe it'd be nice for foam or moss.
But I think I already have lots to play with / figure out for a while now.

 

[rainbowpunfz]

I did play with BEER the other day too, but that needs more time in the oven right now.

I've heard about / seen some of BEER, my main gripe with it (last time i looked) is that it doesn't seem to be very modular/flexible and as a result appears to be rather clunky to work with.

There are a number of good free retopo addons, which I have played with from time to time... but I always end up going back to doing it by hand, perhaps that is just me... I'm too cheap to even try retopoflow

retopoflow is actually pretty nice and i'd really love to see some of it being integrated into blender. The main problem is that it isn't 60$ kind of nice, which is roughly what they're asking for it.

 

[FilthySloth]

I've heard about / seen some of BEER, my main gripe with it (last time i looked) is that it doesn't seem to be very modular/flexible and as a result appears to be rather clunky to work with.



retopoflow is actually pretty nice and i'd really love to see some of it being integrated into blender. The main problem is that it isn't 60$ kind of nice, which is roughly what they're asking for it.

Yeah, BEER is interesting, but it is still early development... here is hoping it turns into something good!

I sort of figured that was the case with Retopoflow... it seemed too expensive for what it was... shame.

I'm sort of interested to know if you have any paid addons you think are must have... always looking for something good to try out!

 

[rainbowpunfz]

I'm sort of interested to know if you have any paid addons you think are must have... always looking for something good to try out!

There actually aren't that many paid addons that I've come across, tried and had the impression that you really aught to have them. I've already said that retopoflow is really good, but not for that price point. and that's really the only thing in a "normal" workflow that I am missing in native blender right now. I don't know any free alternatives to the real time edge tracing Toonkit provides, but I wouldn't really consider that part of the normal workflow.

• There is
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  , but I prefer rigify, especially now that I'm comfortable with writing my own templates.
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  seems nice (haven't tried) but creating procedural shaders is like half the fun for me in blender :')
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  is a feature that would be really nice to have in native blender, but not a must.
• And then there is
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  which I haven't tried just yet, but intent to buy, because it looks like a really nice feature to have.

A lot of the really interesting/useful stuff is actually free (

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,

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,

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,

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,

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(not ready yet but looks promising)). And fixes to minor gripes / small missing features can usually also be found in small free addons (

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,

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).

 

[FilthySloth]

Cool thanks RBF is new to me and looks really interesting!