If you are not using the plug-in's that others have suggested, I recommend exporting a .fbx instead of a .obj, since it also comes with the animatable skeleton rig. I only use .obj when I need to port a character sculpt back into daz, and as far as I know, .obj does not come with the skeleton rig or weight paints, and it would be a pain to set that all up again and try to match how daz had it originally.
I can appreciate that, but at the moment I'm taking the long way around the block. My end goal is to be proficient with every stage of 3D modelling and animating. So I'm using .obj files since they are the most widely recognized across software types and exceptionally basic.
But you're right, they don't come with any kind of armature or rig. But I plan on using next weekend to begin learning rigging and weighting.
I'll eventually start using plug-ins and exporters between software. But my own experience has demonstrated that even the best plug-ins eventually fail with a future update. And I want to make sure that when that happens, my game doesn't get held up because I'm suddenly in a jam for a failed export, scrubbing the net for a solution or worse, waiting around for months while the plug-in maker updates things to work with all the latest versions.
It's also good insurance so that in the event of a failed plug-in, I'll have the body of knowledge I need to fix the problem myself. I'm also looking to make some improvements to the Daz models themselves. In general, I'm happy with Daz's rigging. But I have on occasion downloaded a character for which a small adjustment to this bone or that would lead to major improvements to the overall quality of the character.
So if at times it looks like I'm doing things the hard way, know that it's intentional. Big Challenges => Big Skills.
I wouldn't say it is destructive. Since if you change the art a bit, you can just load in the new image as a texture and swap it in the material node settings.
Ah, I'll leave it at that. I'm not going to invest to time into learning the software since Blender already offers much of what I want. It was all out of curiosity that I asked.
Why not go old school, and project the hair textures onto planes? That would probably give you more finite control over the texture's that run through the nodes? Or did I miss something here?
RomanHume Have you looked into rigify? If you haven't I highly encourage learning how to use that rig.
I did after you mentioned it. It looks like in the long run it'll be very useful, but yesterday I started in on a rigging course and I gotta say, I'm very excited to do my own rigging!
I fucking hate when people say "I'm detail oriented." But dammit, I'm detail oriented. One thing I've always wanted in my models is the ability to make the breathe. You know, those sharp intakes of breathe where the chest rises and expands and the stomach tightens. I've tried faking in in Daz with various shapes, but it's such a pain in the ass.
But as I watch this course, I'm already thinking of ways I can modify the skeleton to accommodate all those little nuances I've always wanted but could never get in a pre-built package. And so far, setting up the basic skeleton from scratch hasn't really been that challenging (we'll see if I change my tune when we get into the weighting aspect of the thing).
I gotta say, I'm enjoying this feeling of liberation.
I fucking hate when people say "I'm detail oriented." But dammit, I'm detail oriented. One thing I've always wanted in my models is the ability to make the breathe. You know, those sharp intakes of breathe where the chest rises and expands and the stomach tightens. I've tried faking in in Daz with various shapes, but it's such a pain in the ass.
Shape keys are better for stuff like that. They allow for more control in how the mesh is transformed. Just look for a tutorial about shape-keys for all the in an outs, but in short you create an altered morph of your character (in this case a slightly swelling chest from breathing), and with a slider you can slide the base position (exhaled), into the new position (inhaled), and back. You can link this to a bone as well with a directional modifier. Like if you move the bone forward you get the inhaled part.
Its something you most likely need to learn anyway, as that's the way most people create face animations, like winking, smiling, frowning etc. You create a bunch of shape keys that focus on transforming the face, and link them to bones in the face that control specific points, like your left mouth corner.
But as I watch this course, I'm already thinking of ways I can modify the skeleton to accommodate all those little nuances I've always wanted but could never get in a pre-built package. And so far, setting up the basic skeleton from scratch hasn't really been that challenging (we'll see if I change my tune when we get into the weighting aspect of the thing).
Rigify doesn't mean you cannot use a second skeleton, or other transforming/morphing methods. Al what rigiffy does is create a basic skeleton with pretty much all the bones you need, uses the auto-weight option (which you would use anyway. It does a lot of hefty lifting in weight-painting for you) and puts an overlay over your character for easier control.
Even if you go for your own rig (which isnt bad, I did it for my first character, but I realesed fast I prefered rigify) use the auto-weight painting for weight painting as starting point. As long as your skeleton matches a human one quite well, it does a pretty good job. And you can always chance parts you dont't like.
Why not go old school, and project the hair textures onto planes? That would probably give you more finite control over the texture's that run through the nodes? Or did I miss something here?
I'm not really familiar with that method, but I assume it means the hair consists out of planes, and not hair particles? I use the second one, and shaping/cutting/combing the hair is one of the parts I like the most and wouldn't really want to chance it. I will stick with Cycles rendering for now for that. Eevee support for the hair node is something they were working on for 2.8.1, but I dont know if its in there or being pushed back. Eevee works fine for dark hair, but the character im working on at the moment is blonde, which I just cant get to look decent outside of the using the hair node
Earlier last night I finished up a batch of renders for someone I am helping with on a project, these may be of interest to you @Synx since it tries to add life to the eyes as well.
Thanks for those renders, they look quit nice. But the eye command wasnt really for me, I just replaced them. I dont know why, but I just didnt liked the Daz eyes. As for the eyebrows I might just look into your way. Eyebrows are so frustrating to draw, I have literately spended 5-6 times longer on the eyebrows then their hair so far.
Will prob post a render tomorrow of the character i'm working on, to show more the points about the hair/eyes/eyebrows.
Nothing wrong with learning how to do your own. Allows you to explore the know-hows. Brace yourself though, as the initial rig setup can get pretty complex once you start diving in. IK, FK, facial morph controls, soft body physics and so forth.
Yeah, be it though going with the method I mention takes a bit more prep work, as you'll need a hair texture. But if what you're working with works for you by all means use what your comfortable with. This was something I came across when I couldn't use Blender's hair particle system in UE4. If you're interested to a more in-depth process take a look at the link, the tutorial pretty much sums up what I was talking about.
RomanHume as people have suggested, you can use bones for animating breathing, shape keys (blender's mesh only morphs), or any combination of the two. I won't tell you what you should do as I'm sure you'll explore everything and develop your own preferred methodology which I am sure will fit your needs and have many advantages. However, I'll give this suggestion for you to explore and play with in the future. As you get more experience with rigging, you will start to play with adding "constraints" to bones, which will allow you to do some automation and other tricks. This is key to many features of Blender's animation pipeline, such as the IK (inverse kinematics) which is fundamental to rigging and animating. I myself like to do tricks using the transform or custom functions/drivers to use math to automate some bodily behavior. As for breathing, I just wanted to note that there are 3 types of breathing (muscle groups) that generally show up in animation. The diaphragm, the chest (which doesn't expand through muscle but through posture, it is like a fail-safe), and the muscles that would raise the chest and shoulder (another fail-safe group). using one bone (I often use a bone's x location) you can control drivers and constraints modifier (I often use the transform as I mentioned) to control multiple bones (as you may learn, though you may want to look up a dedicated "how to do drivers in blender" video or something) where each one can control the breathing of each group, and then the animation of each can be saved and then connected to a set of bones for later so you can use bones to play back previously saved animations. I often find that these work great for mixing nonlinear situations (think of a character rolling their eyes, often needing strange shape keys, animating them works better than automating them with math or constraints). All things to have in the back of your mind for later consideration.
Since you guys are mentioning about the planes technique for hair, I have a bit to share.
I often prefer to use particles when I can, just because I feeeeel that it makes my work look better, but to be honest no one really notices the difference unless I zoom in. That's just my preference. However, the only time I have used planar hair was for pubes. I would prefer to try to do it with hair particals, but I would run into one of two issues. Either the hair would be too thin and it kinda looked creepy( fake like a doll's hair, pinned into place) or it would be too thick and start to look like a matt. i wanted pubs that match all the Azula (avatar last air bender) artwork, a time when shaving was not regular due to lack of convenience, but not so full it was a bush or mat of hair, it had to look both wispy and thick at the same time. But I couldn't get it just right with partial hairs. (I recently had a similar issue with eyebrows, but since my recent test use a texture that I can't get without an eyebrow texture with it, I think one solution would have been to make fairly think hair, but also paint the texture under neither to have hair as well to fake a fuller ness without making a matt of hair). At the time I tried planar hair techniques to try and solve the issue, and it actually worked pretty handily. My only issue is that to take the hair particles and flatten it to the ground to make a flat custom texture with (so I could generate normal maps to make the hair its best dispite being a texture) the code for the plug in that allowed to make any mesh texture ready (flat on the ground, or z 0 plane) was for the previous verions of blender, and since blender 2.8 change their api, most old plug ins don't work and I don't know if there is any work to bring the plug in up to date by the original authors.
Well this is my current char i'm working on. pretty happy with how she is looking, except those eyebrows. I just cannot get them right. I might try tomorrow putting something under it to maybe get them to look a bit better. There are some other parts that need a bit of love (the Lips could prob be a bit more shiny, the upper eyelids a bit darker, and I missed a part in front of the hairline)), and I got to do the rest of the body (I just did the face really), but for a couple days work I would say its not bad.
As for the hair, I just dont think you can get something like that easily with planes. Its to curly/wavy for that. And it wouldn't really solve my small easy, that the hair node used here doesn't work in Eevee. Trying to replicate that color in Eevee is just a nightmare I have giving up on.
As I mentioned before, I always get caught in the struggle of hair density.
Where it either isn't dense enough and looks fake or not as good as one would hope, then after trying to crank up the density to get something more realistic, it then seems too dense. Even playing with all possible settings, flatness and randomness for example, I can't seem to find a middle ground myself. But then again depending on the use case for a model it may not depend, such as if a model is moving, and not being stared at. That is where tricks like textures and planes can come in to help.
As far as I have been able to find out, you can do any hair type using planes, it just takes a lot of time and work, it is definitely a skill set to have.
If you are doing the eyebrows yourself, and doing it on the mesh, I find that sometimes to get the best results, you have to manually add in and place the hair in particle edit mode (lots of particles, very few children). And even then, having something under it, has yielded the best results for mo so far. Maybe you could do the same with the scalp (as many games do).
Hello! I am posting this topic so that it gets tagged on my profile and I can easily find the topic later.
In future projects I intend to use the models of Daz3D (Sakura8 or maybe The Girl 8), but I want to get the images in real time with Blender 2.8, since I find it unnecessary to make realistic renders for a more "anime" or "disney-like" style. "
Hello! I am posting this topic so that it gets tagged on my profile and I can easily find the topic later.
In future projects I intend to use the models of Daz3D (Sakura8 or maybe The Girl 8), but I want to get the images in real time with Blender 2.8, since I find it unnecessary to make realistic renders for a more "anime" or "disney-like" style. "
Cool to hear! Make sure to set your render engine to EEVEE as it will unlock more options in the material settings tab. To have transparency, or subsurface scattering work, you'll need to go to the render settings tab, after switching to Eevee their will a new section called Screen Space Reflections, turn that on, and then go inside of it to also turn on refractions, and that will let glass materials work for things like the eyes. In the Material tab in the Settings sub-tab, change the blend mode to Alpha blend, and this will enable transparency for things like the eyes so that they work right. This also turns on a new button that shows up below it called "Show Backface" this sometimes is a bit glitchy with some objects and you will see through them, you can turn this on and it will fix the issue. bellow that is the Screen Space Reflection box which will now be available, turn that on and the refraction depth to something like a foot or what have you, and that way eye lens shaders and skin shaders that use SSS will work properly. It took me a while to figure all that out. Other than that, you should be set to mess around and have fun.
I too have looked into a more Disney/Pixar like style (often going for a higher roughness of .7 to match their style), but its a lot of work to make a complete scene and to match their lighting style (10 bounces minim if you want to do something as recent as Big Hero 6 type style of lighting, branch path shading as well, if you use cycles). You can do pretty well with just trying to mimic 2D, but I have found that I'm rotating myself towards drawing 2D after the fact. If you want to focus on Anime like characters, I seriously recommend looking for the Tika 8 character, her head morph isn't the best, but her body morph is pretty ok, (not that much of a change, but it helps) and with these morph
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, you can generate of pretty convincing anime bodies that don't look as plain as the Sakura 8 bodies. I also find that Lara has one of the better head models, in terms of anime shape, but it is rather large in size. it can help with figuring out a rough shape for a character head. Tess has some of the better textures for cartoon-like characters if you don't want all those blemishes to show from the more realistic skin textures. Best of luck!
There's a lot to read through here, but for one, I've decided to mess around with blender, mostly because I plan to make sculpts for 3D printing, but doing porn stuff on the side sounds like a nice bonus.
My first question, though, are free tutorials on par/better than paid for courses? Udemy has a lot of courses there, but most of the time it's some dude with an ear-bleeding accent. I could use some directions for stuff and resources that can get me up and running with 2.80
And it works relatively well. For "normal" models, I got almost 100% perfect results (usually the problem is some materials and in the hair).
For more stylized models, like Sakura 8, I had some problems, as you can see in the attached image.
However, I think it's a matter of making minor adjustments only. The huge advantage of this is getting good quality images instantly with eevee. For games that don't try to be photorealistic, this is of extreme advantage, as you can make a multitude of renders and sprites in a fraction of the time you would need on DAZ3D.
EDIT: One big problem I had, which is particularly serious for erotic games, is that the genitalia model was totally broken when converting to Blender. But maybe it's just a matter of choosing the right model (I'm using female genitalia for Victoria 8).
I needed a new PC this summer. I was considering playing with Daz3D and although it's very Nvidia-centric - after looking into alternative rendering choices like Reality for LuxRender - I decided on an AMD card(*). I even splurged on a Radeon VII - in hindsight, perhaps a Radeon 580 and soon a 5800XT or 5900XT might've been better, but eh. Reality+LuxRender turns out to be unworkable for a newbie since there's no viewport version of it - and even the basic model had red skin with white eyes, a big lighting difference with viewport/iray, etc... (waste of $40... *sigh*) So I turned to Blender.
Considering I'm not an artist, my planned workflow is currently this: Combine Daz3D models and - if humanoid - pose (I think it's easier in Daz3D than Blender?). Export with diffeomorphic. In Blender add lighting and camera(s), and render with Cycles. Depending on tests I might render animations with Eevee, or perhaps simply less samples. I've run into some problems with the Daz3D->Blender conversion but so far I love blender 2.8. It's so smooth and intuitive. Also I hope Diffeomorphic's
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gets fixed soon. Since it's such a big visual change I'm kind of waiting on it...
Not to mention, you can use sites like sheep it, it is a free render farm. if you have lots to render, like an animation, and if it is safe for work, you can have lots of computers animate for you if you only have a laptop and it's not powerful enough. if you need to do nsfw renders, you'll have to find those (like me) who'll join a private group for you to render to.
I've looked all over sheep it (excluding forums and discord), but I can't find anywhere that it's only for SFW renders. Also, could you expand a bit on the 'private group' bit? It's unclear how you might go about finding one, for example.
There's a lot to read through here, but for one, I've decided to mess around with blender, mostly because I plan to make sculpts for 3D printing, but doing porn stuff on the side sounds like a nice bonus.
My first question, though, are free tutorials on par/better than paid for courses? Udemy has a lot of courses there, but most of the time it's some dude with an ear-bleeding accent. I could use some directions for stuff and resources that can get me up and running with 2.80
I'm learning from Youtube, a Udemy course, and an actual blender class. Yes, it's annoying to learn from an old source. I just wouldn't start there or even get my feet wet. Some very basic things have changed - at least the defaults - like right click now (more or less) being left click.
So my recommendations? (in reverse order of importance, perhaps)
(1) Start with a 2.8x tutorial for the basics.
(2) The buttons are nice, there's more of them in 2.8x, and they're probably more logically placed. That said, for common tasks learn the keyboard shortcuts. The time gain and convenience add up. I don't know where it was sourced exactly (I got it from my class) but get Blender Guru's Blender 2.8 Keyboard Shortcuts v1.0. I think it's his newsletter signup reward or some such. Guerillamail it if necessary but find it.
(3) Always keep in mind the keyboard shortcuts work on the editor (workspace, subwindow, whatever you call it) the mouse is hovering over. If you're working in the viewport, make sure your mouse is over the viewport (I think a selected text box is an exception to this rule, e.g. while renaming an item in the layout editor).
(4) Don't just follow a series that's 'good'. Follow a series that you feel good about.
I love
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videos on youtube - even if his donut series wasn't my ideal entry level. His various topical videos are excellent and the donut tutorial seems a great idea once I hit beginner-intermediate level.
I like the Ultimate Blender Guide over on Udemy ($20 currently). Find it
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($10 currently). Fair warning, this is on Blender 2.74. Also find a media player with speed adjusting. Personally I play it on 1.6x speed. He starts with a (simple) house and (the most basic of) animation.
Don't forget though. All that viewing is passive. The most crucial part is doing, doing, doing.
And it works relatively well. For "normal" models, I got almost 100% perfect results (usually the problem is some materials and in the hair).
For more stylized models, like Sakura 8, I had some problems, as you can see in the attached image.
However, I think it's a matter of making minor adjustments only. The huge advantage of this is getting good quality images instantly with eevee. For games that don't try to be photorealistic, this is of extreme advantage, as you can make a multitude of renders and sprites in a fraction of the time you would need on DAZ3D.
EDIT: One big problem I had, which is particularly serious for erotic games, is that the genitalia model was totally broken when converting to Blender. But maybe it's just a matter of choosing the right model (I'm using female genitalia for Victoria 8).
I've found it as well, and my first two tests were nigh-perfect so I was ready to go all-in. But as I wrote above I've hit some snags. Hope I'll be able to work it out; There's other options like
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but diffeomorphic seems the most user friendly of them. Most useful to a beginner like me.
Eevee is great for speed, but still has a few issues. Some of these will be
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though. I just wanted to add that even Cycles (CPU: 16x16, GPU: 256x256 - don't use the default 64x64 tiles) is much faster than Daz3D Iray if you don't have Nvidia hardware.
I'd apologize for the wall of text but that's pretty par for the course in this thread
And here's my problem, having any free time. I wish there was a port of blender for android tablets, then I would have a good 2 hours of practice everyday during commute. Maybe with the new 2.8 interface this can become a reality, despite the lack of keyboard shortcuts? One thing I've found is that you can run a debian virtual machine on android and then compile-run blender, gonna try that.
And here's my problem, having any free time. I wish there was a port of blender for android tablets, then I would have a good 2 hours of practice everyday during commute. Maybe with the new 2.8 interface this can become a reality, despite the lack of keyboard shortcuts? One thing I've found is that you can run a debian virtual machine on android and then compile-run blender, gonna try that.
And here's my problem, having any free time. I wish there was a port of blender for android tablets, then I would have a good 2 hours of practice everyday during commute. Maybe with the new 2.8 interface this can become a reality, despite the lack of keyboard shortcuts? One thing I've found is that you can run a debian virtual machine on android and then compile-run blender, gonna try that.
Oof. Without keyboard shortcuts even the simplest things take more time. 2.8 comes with extra gizmos and settings to help ease lack of a 3 button mouse and even somewhat a lack of a 2 button mouse. A new gizmo eases the lack of a numpad - though a numpad's still faster. ... I'm still a beginner but I'm fairly sure you don't want to try blender on a tablet unless you have a (bluetooth?) keyboard - preferably with numpad - with a trackball - or better yet a mouse as well.
More easily said than done, and quite an investment for a hobby. Plus I can't see any 12 or 13" laptops having a numpad. That said, a laptop - preferably with numpad and mouse - sounds ideal for the situation, if it's an option.
Physical numpad will be tough to find if not impossible for < 17 inch. Usually these are reserved for 17 inch laptops, some 15 do have it.
But still it's more realistic alternative then working with tablet even without numpad.
As for money You don't need RTX and 8 core CPU there. To do some lightweight works any U CPU should do the job, not fast but it will work at least.
), which is why we're getting a whole slew of copy/paste crappola games nowadays.
As a player and potential patron (yeah, I know, but even on these boards I like to support talent), I am way more forgiving towards promising authors who just started with high-quality tools and a solid workflow, because I know that will actually lead us somewhere.
Most authors on DAZ show 0 creativity, throw out a quick v0.0x version which barely qualifies as prototype and discover 6 months later that lighting or bones actually matter. At that time, the gullible crowd will have been milked, and the author either does a "redo" of their whole work, becomes "sick" or just disappears into oblivion.
I'm so sick of DAZ (and newbie authors). Quality > Quantity, always.
You said "ultra laptop" which I took to mean Intel's 'ultra portable' brand. Looking on newegg (New, ignoring 10" and smaller, ignoring over 13.5", Windows 10 only, Ultra portable only) and ignoring an anomaly at $200, the cheapest one is $850. That said, even $300 is a lot to some people, especially for a hobby. Personally I hope Zen 3 (Ryzen 4000) brings some competition to the laptop space. Anyway, getting off-topic.
), which is why we're getting a whole slew of copy/paste crappola games nowadays.
As a player and potential patron (yeah, I know, but even on these boards I like to support talent), I am way more forgiving towards promising authors who just started with high-quality tools and a solid workflow, because I know that will actually lead us somewhere.
Most authors on DAZ show 0 creativity, throw out a quick v0.0x version which barely qualifies as prototype and discover 6 months later that lighting or bones actually matter. At that time, the gullible crowd will have been milked, and the author either does a "redo" of their whole work, becomes "sick" or just disappears into oblivion.
I'm so sick of DAZ (and newbie authors). Quality > Quantity, always.
This reads a bit like you need to vent so I'll leave most of it be. Just that the Daz shop is a handy resource for those too inexperienced or untalented - or busy - for greatness from scratch with Blender. Also we've all got to start somewhere, and although amazing graphics quality is always appreciated other aspects like music or story can make up for a lot.
So if at times it looks like I'm doing things the hard way, know that it's intentional. Big Challenges => Big Skills.
