Blender vs Daz3D: What's Best for You?

Saki_Sliz

Well-Known Member
May 3, 2018
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990
Thread Note: Not sure if this is the best place to post this thread.
This Post is still in development.

Blender vs Daz3D
What's Best for You?


THIS POST IS STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Thanks to @MrBree who suggested I make this discussion post
Post Banner.png
Render and custom skin shader by Me, Free D.va Model by




Are You New to Making 3D Art? Have You Used Daz But Never Blender?

This is not about convincing you to use Blender.

This is meant to be an informative post as to why you may want to consider learning to use Blender now or in the future, as another digital tool to add to your collection, which could vastly expand your capabilities as 3D artists.



Who are you?

Most of you are likely to either be a new user who wants to get started making 3D NSFW art for your first game and looking for where to start or you're a veteran Daz3D user looking for how to get better, and anyone in between.

For those with experience with making 3d art and using Daz, you can skip the first talking point.


Talking Points

1. Why do we care about these programs?
2. What are Daz and Blender? How do they Compare?
3. What is it like to make NSFW 3d Art With Each?
4. Why use Blender?
5. Is Blender hard to learn? 2.79b vs 2.80 Beta?
6. What does it take to learn Blender?
7. Lastly, how to use Blender?








1. Why do we care about these programs?

First, talking to the new guys and gals. You're all probably here because you've been inspired to make your first game, most likely inspired by other games which were able to have great 3D art and was made by one person. Maybe you have noticed lots of games in recent years have been getting 3D art for their games, or maybe somewhere along the line, you heard that most of these game makers made their art using Daz, and how Daz makes it easy to make your own 3D art; so you want to try!

If you are here under similar circumstances, then let's say we can summarize our goals and needs like this.


The Problem: We want to make 3D NSFW Art

The Goal: To Solve the Problem

The Solution: A tool or skill that lets us solve the problem

Blender and Daz3d: Both are software tools which are capable of solving our problem

We care about Blender and Daz3D because they are both software tools that you can learn to use to make 3D art with. You may have a limit of how much time you are willing to invest in learning how to use the tool of your choice, how much effort, money (while both are free, you can still use money to... make things magically happen faster), or it may depend on just how you want to work, or what you want/need to be able to do with your art. Whatever it is you need to consider, this tries to be your one-stop shop for any important information you may need to make the best choice possible to find the program and the work flow that works for you. Be it you're a new user or veteran indie 3D artist in this ever-growing NSFW community of ours.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION
At this point, I need to go study for two midterms. So to save time, for now, I will just cut and paste parts of my conversation with MrBree. I plan to return and edit this post at a later time to help make this post easy for users to read and cite.

TO DO:

I have never actually tried to use Daz, so some of the discussion points about Daz could be wrong, so please let me know. I plan to, in the future, try daz so I can give more accurate reports.

This all started when I suggested trying to port Daz models to Blender to render as a workaround solution in a where a user couldn't use Daz with their AMD GPU.


Copy paste time bois!


TO DO:

Clean the following sections up 2 through 7.

2. What are Daz and Blender? How do they Compare?

Blender ≠ Daz

I think people think of the two as being similar, trying to do the same thing, but I think they are different, because how we use them is fundamentally different.

I have done some research in the past about daz, but since I have never used it, anything I say about daz is more or less off the top of my head.

Lets say, you the user, start with a problem. You want to create NSFW art for a game since that seems to be the focus of these forums and the DAZ talk.

The solution: Simply being able to create this art, one way or another.

Daz: it is a solution. Its design makes it so as if, its focus is just to make the art.

Daz makes this easy, providing a large range of high quality assets, which are easy to modify, to swap out parts, and to quick to start using with no extra steps.

Think of the problem being like rust on a steel beam. Daz is like an angle grinder, it works perfect for removing the rust, just by the right grinding wheel, learn how to use it (how to hold it right and apply pressure), turn it on, and the rust is gone!

It is built to solve our problem.

Blender is NOT A SOLUTION. It is a tool.

What's the difference between a Tool and a Solution? You can think of a solution as being a special tool, made to solve a few problems. As a result, You can only use this special tool for these special problems. You can't use an angle grinder to read a CD. A tool on the other hand, think of it as more as a generic, all-purpose tool. It can solve many problems, but it depends on how you use it.

How do you use a generic tool? Before you can use it to fix something, that something can be any kind of problem, You first have to understand how the tool works, what it can and can not do, then after you understand the tool, you can then think of how to use it to solve your specific problem.

An example. Programming. if you can program, you can solve all sorts of problems using code. The issue is, you first have to understand how to code before you can start solving problems using coding.

If daz is like an angle grinder, ready to remove rust, then think of Blender like a Lazer. Depending on how you use lasers, you could read delicate information off of a CD, or you can use .

So what is it I am, and am not saying blender is or can do.
~ Blender is a tool, which can be used to enhance your work, going beyond what daz can do.
~ Blender, because it is general purpose, can be a replacement for Daz if you know what you are doing.

So I think the best way to compare blender and daz is first said that they are not the same, they do not try to be the same. Daz is a product a ready-made solution, a tool made for a specific job. Blender is a tool, it is not made for any one job, it is made to solve almost any job (I've simulated robots in blender for example, researchers use it to graph data). It just so happens that Blender can do just about anything Daz can do... almost.

That concludes the first Part, What is Blender.




3. What is it like to make NSFW 3d Art With Each?

An important part of this is that Daz and Blender are just the tools, but these tools work with assets, so assets and more importantly, getting assets is an important part of the process to being able to make NSFW stuff.

Daz, being made for this kind of stuff (almost) has the advantage for most users, for both beginners and veterans users. I think the main selling point for why most people should start with Daz is as you pointed out, is
~ A huges story to buy from
~ a large option of models and assets to choose from
~ Assets can be customizable, being able to change shapes and ages to your needs
~ Assets are cross-compatible, you can easily combine assets together, such as hair and clothes, without extra work to shape the clothes to fit.
~ Assets are cross-compatible, if you change the shape/age of your characters, their clothes and hair change as well, so again no extra work

Daz, the tool itself, was made for this kind of stuff, so using it is simpler. it is more focused to what you need. making it more intuitive to pose characters.

From what I understand, if you want to make NSFW models, you first want to start with . From what I understand, Daz is SFW. You need to get mods and models from Renderotica if you want to do anything NSFW. Or at least anything with privates. This is where one can get other assets they may need that are typical for NSFW art, such as bodily fluids not found on the Daz store. We start here because if you find a model you like or want to focus on, the model you pick limits you. That is because Daz models come in different versions and generations. The benefits I listed above about Assets being Cross compatible only works between assets designed for the same character versions and generations. so picking a NSFW model limits your options on what you can get from the store (but this is not that big of an issue just beacuse there will still be tones of options to choose from after this step).

[side note, now that I am double checking, it is good to see there are finally a good collection of NSFW assets for the Genesis 8 series now]

After finding a good Sexy asset you want to start from , say for example this (these types of assets are about picking the body shape you want, they are more like morphs and not actually models), you will know what model you will need, in this case this body is for a Genesis 8 Female. So your next step would be to go to the Daz store and get any Gen 8 assets you want (since I believe the free Daz only comes with 1 body, a few mophs, a shirt, a jacket, and some jeans and that's it). This includes more hair options, more cloth options, eyes, teeth, skin textures (for things like freckles or tans).

After that, and maybe repeating the same process for other characters, such as for a male partner, the next step would be to get assets for the enviorment. things like props and locations, terrain, etc.

Then you would actually use these assets in Daz to make the art you want.


Blender
Blender requires a bit more technical know how, since not everything works after you get it.
I have about 5 sites I go for free and not free stuff, to get basically the same things, NSFW stuff, body morphs, textures, propes, clothes, etc.

The thing with blender is, you can create anything from scratch. I have sculpted and made custom characters, which I usually do if I am going to make a Real time 3D game, but this is work and takes some skill.

Most of the time, what is going to happen is, where in daz, you have the planning/buying phase and then the art phase (where you try to make art), Blender tends to have an extra step inbetween, called Technical art.

Since Blender does not have a dedicated company promoting a blender store (ignoring that it has 2 Blender only stores and 2 free to distribute blender only sites, as well as I have 3 other favorite stores for more professional stuff for any program), there are no standards. there is no Genesis 3 or 8 models that most assets are based on. Most models and assets are made by the people who made them, using their own techniques and philosophies. So as a result there is very little cross-compatability between assets. So you could get a shirt and a character, then either have to shape the shirt to fit the character, or attatch a cloth simulator modifier to the cloth to get it to fit, then bake in the new shape or just keep simulating for animations and poses. And depending on how you get the asset, it may not be 100% working with blender. For examples, I always try to get assets, if not in .blend format, either in .fbx, or .obj. an FBX imports easy into blender. A dot .obj is universally supported by every 3d modeling program, but .obj's are limited. Characters have no textures, they have no rigs either. meaning you have to make a custom skeleton for the characers, and all the work involved with that part of character making.

So Blender has an extra middle step of technical art, where you have to do the work to get the assets you have to be easy and ready to use before you can move on to making art.



Here is an example. The body and the head in this image are two different objects (whoops, it looks like you can not see the seam, but trust me, the head is not connected). The body is my favorite model, not made by me, but it is my favorite because it has tons of body morphs to allow me to easily shape the body to what I want, and then I lock everything into place, so I can cut off the old head and stitch on the new one.






so that is a simplified review of the process of making NSFW stuff in both, and the difference. Because of this middle step, the technical art, it takes skill, understanding the tool (blender) and time. Time is probably the biggest issue with blender. not because it takes a lot of time, but because most people want immediate results, the slower it is to see results, the more likely people are going to give ut. it is for this reason that I would encourage people to start with daz, then move to blender when they want to upgrade.




4. Why use Blender?

Since Blender is not trying to be like daz, I will not make this a case of why one should use blender over daz.

Because blender is flexible enough, it can be used to replace daz, but only if you know what you are going. If you know what you are doing in blender, I do not need to make a case since such people would already be using blender over daz.

On to my case: Blender is a tool to allow you to do more.

Since Daz is a special tool, meant for a special job, it can be rather limited.

Blender, because it is a generic tool, means it can do a lot of things, but maybe not well. For example, Blender has a denoiser, Daz only recently got one and it is still in their preview builds, not ready for public release. Blender has physics an cloth simulation support, since near the beginning. I think daz only this summer started to have Dforce for cloth simulation. Blender has various other tools and features way out of the scope of what daz was meant for, Blender has had them longer and they are more refined.

These on not just features someone just programmed some time ago that worked good enough. Things such as the new hair shader, is based on a 2018 research paper by Disney Reseach, this tech/feature is literally the bleeding edge of innovation. So Blender isn't behind the times or slow to grow because there isn't a company paying people to develop it, the community is quite active, and is starting to become quite the enterprise.

Because Blender is more generic, it has more tools and features, and allows user to be very detailed and control everything (if I think there is an odd shape in the mesh of my character, like a glitch in how it was made, I can just go in and change things, reshape things), nothing is off limits! This means you can go beyond what daz can.

Here is an example. For my character, I am trying to make her seem a bit more real, and have some cute moments with her. So one situation that mixes both is noticing the small invisible hair on her body when she is cold. So I added full body hair to my character, and then connected a driver to it, so that it only turns on if the camera is close enough to the character for the hair to be noticeable. So I get improved art quality without lose in performance.



You can't do that in daz (but you can add pubic hair mods)
And notice the skin texture? It doesn't get blurry when you zoom in. Not because I am swapping the skin texture with a higher resolution one when you get close (which you can do automatically, in fact, there are ton's of tricks you can do to speed render times which you can not do in daz because you can't have such direct control over how things work), but actually, I am not using a texture at all, this is procedurally generated by my own custom made Skin shader which is available for (not really, this is verion two I am using which I have not yet released)

[side note, now that I look at the hair this close, the are all the same height and rotation, I need to make it more random, good thing there is a simple slider value for that, it's not as hard as people think it is to use blender]

So the main reason to go from Daz to Blender, well simply put, it's like going from hobbiest to professional in terms of what you can do and work with. that blender is trying to be , but it certainly is being used at an , and level.



5. Is Blender hard to learn? 2.79b vs 2.80 Beta?

so why is blender hard to learn?

this is for 2.79, 2.8 tries to solve all of these issues

people say it is because of how all the commands are hidden by the focus on using hotkeys.

I say it is because blender tries to do everything at once, it has no focus so it is easy to make mistakes, it takes a lot to know what you are doing just to do something simple.

Blender is not obvious, it is not direct or focused.

Blender 2.8 solves this by, making all the commands and everything else more graphically, using widgets and visualizing the tools.

You can still use hotkeys (I will) because hotkeys are faster than using the mouse and widgets, but the graphics really help with new users.

Blender 2.8 also does a better job at organizing itself, having different modes, from Normal, to editing, sculpting, painting, etc.

Each mode helps make it much more focused so all the tools are available for a particular focus (should have a DAZ mode, jk), hiding the other complex tools away for other things so you can't mess something up that is hidden that will screw you up down the line, etc.

Basically, lots of people see blender 2.8 as the holy grail.

Blender 2.8 is still in development, it is 2.8 Beta and still has some issues which I talked about . 2.79 is more useable right now, but it works very differently from 2.8, so if you are just getting started, you may want to wait a year or so, so hopefully 2.8 is fully out, that way you don't have to learn 2.79 only to have to relearn how to use blender 2.8.

We don't actually know when 2.8 will be ready, it could be another 5 years. But it is being used professionally already, such as the Next Gen series by Netflix, and some movies.




6. What does it take to learn Blender?

To be honest, I self-taught my self Electronics, programming, physics, algebra, linear algebra and calculus all before highschool, all of which were tough things. I was never an artist, so when I got free time in college I taught myself art, I started Blender about A year ago I think? and here is what I noticed about learning tough things, and maybe anything really.

What makes something hard, is not knowing how to do something. What makes something easy is that you already know how to do it.

Blender is a complex tool, and skill, and just like other tough skills like electronics and programming, if you want to be able to solve a problem using these tools, you first have to know the tool and how it works, so you can have an idea of how you can apply it to your problem as a solution.

that meas you must first know, before you use the tool, blender in this case.

But I find that is not how we actually learn. We do not study, study, study, and then we jump overboard and start solving problems. Instead, this is what works.

Do the opposite!

start with knowing nothing
then start with a goal, I want to make a block with a hole in it.
ask your self, how do I do this, what do I need to do.
well I need to add a block, how do I get a block.
then make your question more generic
how do I add 'an object' into my scene (a scene is the code name for the 3D environment) an object can be anything.
google your generic question, look for answers and videos, see what other people did.
then you do it, or try to, repeat till you get what you want.
then do the next step. think of a new question and rephrase it to be generic so that it finds similar questions and video titles online. what will happen is that you will find that often you will need to do the same step over and over again. such as adding in primitive shapes is probably the most basic thing to do, besides just move around your view. the more you end up doing things, the more you realize you should remember something, and so you start to remember the important stuff.

basically, doing projects, and just learning 'how' along the way is the best way I think to learn quickly. it will suck though. don't try to do a serious project, because this techinque is nothing more than beating your head against a wall till you smash through is basically what is happening.

the reason you want to focus on smaller projects and different kinds is, if you try to do a big project, you may get stuck, and nothing you search for helps. This is because a lot of the time the issue is, in your previous research, you never learned some keyword or term or trick, so it is like you missed the secret room in a video game. I have been doing electronics for over 10 years, and I only recently learned 4 years ago of node based analysis and current based analysis techniques. Basically, you are going to miss some keyword and without it, it is like part of the internet is hidden from you. by doing different kinds of projects, you are more likely to stumble across these keywords. this is because if you do one big project, you only start going at it in one direction. if you try to do different kinds of project, that require you to do different things or come at the solution from different directions, you end up learning all these different tricks and hidden small groups of ideas. such as retopology, the art/science of making clean meshes is a whole field of sub sciences on its own.





7. Lastly, how to use Blender?

I don't know if you actually wanted me to get into detail about actually getting started with blender for new people, so I will skip this since I am late for bed, but I will leave some links

Absolutely by everyone (This may be scary at is a very hard crash into blender, he talks about a lot of blender things you have yet to be familiar with, but as you get started, a lot of the issues you will have will seem familiar and are covered in this video so you can just check back as you begin to understand more and more)
if you just want

if you actually want to start learning, the best way is just to watch videos of other people working while you work, because that is the best way to learn all the hidden secrets, since most of these details are not posted online or documented.

Why?

The issue with blender being a generic tool is that, because generic tools are generic, these tools can be used for anything. meaning it is not possible to describe all possible usage of the tool. So in order to actually get good at blender, it is like getting good with art, where you find the cheap tricks you like and just use them as your default. Basically figure out the few tools you need, such as hotkeys to add an object, which you will use all the time, and only learn more along the way as you use them more and more.
 

fitgirlbestgirl

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Jul 27, 2017
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May I ask what brings you to your conclusion?
Well, I'm not retarded, but I didn't self-teach myself "electronics, programming, physics, algebra, linear algebra and calculus all before highschool," so I think you might be underselling the learning curve a bit here. But you still make it sound way harder than Daz so I have to assume it would be actually twice as hard for me.
 
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polywog

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May 19, 2017
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Blender vs Daz3D
Apples and Oranges there's no comparison
Daz3D is a very proprietary, extremely limited capability, thing for making pictures.
Blender makes, pictures, animations, movies, and even has a game engine.

The Daz community is all about "buy my shit"
Blender is open source, has a massive community of helpful users, and tons of assets.


 

recreation

pure evil!
Respected User
Game Developer
Jun 10, 2018
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I think I have to step in here before it's too late and the hate train starts rolling.^^

There are a few things you obviously don't know about daz.

Yes, blender is generally more versatile but daz has a lot of hidden options and settings most people don't even know about. I'm far away from knowing everything myself but here are a few examples:

It's not true that you can only use assets for a specific generation of figures, you can even use gen1 cloth on gen8 nowadays with auto-fit.
You can create simple shapes like planes, cubes, spheres, etc. in daz and bone rig them, morph them, add texture maps and so on. I created a whole apartment including the interior without unsing a single asset like this.
You can code and use scripts in daz for almost everything.
You can use and create custom shader and shader presets.
You can create push and wheight nodes, your own morphs and shapes.
You can do animations and movies.
You can use fibre mesh hair and many many more.
You can even get the daz api and create your own mods if you wanted to.

There is still a lot I don't know yet, but I think you underestimate daz here. As I said, It's true that blender is more versatile, but that's simply because it's made for a different purpose. At first glance daz might be a simple program for a simple purpose and a lot of people even use it just for that, but if you take your time and delve a bit deeper into daz, you'll see that it can do way more than just fulfill it's purpose.

If you want to create a nice scene in blender and you don't know anything about it, you have to learn, you have to learn a lot before you are even able to get a halfway decent render.
In daz you can render nice scenes almost immediately without learning much. It's just the better tool for exactly that.
You cant really compare them.
 

Saki_Sliz

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May 3, 2018
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Yay, discussions! (too bad I'm gonna go to bed after this, hopefully, there won't be any fires while I am gone)

@fitgirlbestgirl I could go into an essay about the perception of 'what is hard' and why things are not that fun. All I will say is, try writing a song, try learning a skill, try doing homework. 90% of the work (depending on who you ask) is just trying to get yourself started. Once you get started doing something (for example, thinking of words to write a song) you start to build momentum, so it gets easier as you keep going. Am I underselling the learning curve? Well, I do not wish to deceive you, there is a learning curve, and I admit it was steep for me (trust me, I am not a smart person, trying to get A's in school was almost impossible, C's and B's. People just think I am smart because I actually try to learn things and like using knowledge). But one thing I noticed while in high school, people fear learning, it seems that the current way education is taught, leads to people thinking of learning as suffering and work, not fun or creativity. Given your user icon, I assume you've learned daz. If you have, then that is something to be proud of and I would hope being able to make stuff with it is satisfying when you complete each work. this is the same with blender, just 'what' you can do and 'how' is different. So if you want to go beyond daz, blender will be there waiting.


@polywog I too am very much a supporter of blender, bringing it up in just about any post, but I am trying to be fair to users who want an unbiased collection of information such that they can make a choice on their own. I am aware the two are very different programs, and the way I try to compare them is to say daz is a dedicated special tool, while blender is a more general purpose tool able to do more, but not as effective as what daz is specialized to do. Yeah each have pro's and con's, but I try to cover all the details that matter so that new users understand the raw experience so they themselves can make the choice, not get roped into something only to learn it was much harder than they could handle.

and I quote
Blender ≠ Daz
This signifies how the two are so different, that they can not truly be compared as equals rivaling to be the best.

@recreation muchly appreciated for bringing these details to my attention, it is apparent that there is much I don't know, and the details I miss could surely lead to my post being biased against Daz, so I will make sure to revise my post accordingly and add these corrections when I return to make my first revision. Thank you again, I guess I have underestimated daz. But I would say that you can compare them, and even more so with the additional details you have added. It certainly brings the daz abilities more on par with that of blender.
 
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polywog

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The choice of words... Versus means "to pit against" Daz and Blender are not enemies. Blender creators can sell their work through the Daz store, converted as ready to use Daz assets, and make a lot of money. Blender users can import and use Daz character in their work.

Players often complain about developers over using generic off the shelf Daz assets. That's where Blender comes in. Instead of buying a house from Daz, you can use Blender to generate a whole village of unique houses with 10 clicks and it's royalty free. Render in blender, use them in games or export them to be used in Daz studio images.

Daz Studio is geared more towards those who are indoctrinated into consumerism, and just want to make pictures. There's nothing wrong with that. Not to say Daz is a simple to use child's toy compared to the colossal capabilities of Blender by any means, the two work quite nicely together. Daz does tend to choke a little on importing, they prefer that you buy assets, but with the help of blender, and or other tools you can get them in.
 

lancelotdulak

Active Member
Nov 7, 2018
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I would suggest if you want to make renpy games .. and can either spend a little or find.. sources... just use daz.

If you move beyond that i suggest NOT using blender. And frankly probably not ever touching zbrush. They are tools whos creators wanted to do their own thing and force their userbase to develop their mindset. Like UE4 they have horrific ui's because.. the devs could give a fuck. To learn Blender or Zbrush you literally have to make it a field of study. Forget creating for the next 6 months. UE4 is the same.. for a slightly different reason.

3dsmax was the standard back in the day and has a HUGE following . Maya is pro software. You can get both with a student license. There are some things about both that are weird and non intuitive.. but they are both logical, both MUCH more powerful than zbrush,blender,daz etc. I actually find Maya more intuitive and logical than cinema4d.

The advantage of Daz: the best human models in existence. Period. Load assets and use simple tools to make scenes. if you just want to build a VN and can find the assets that fit your story prebuilt thats the way to go.

Blender: blender is free, has stunning amounts of assets and is an all in one app. It is NOT 3dsmax etc.. but you can do almost anything in it (big on the Almost) and you'll be able to use it for the rest of your life.

3dsmax: It's a crossover between hardcore 3d engineering programs like autocad and Rhino and Artistic 3d. It's far easier to learn than blender and more capable. IT is the predecessor of every artistic 3d program out there (maya, cinema4d etc).

Maya: literally professional level software. It has a reputation for being hard to learn but i dont get that at all. Like DAZ it isn't modelling software.. it's graphics creation software. To build models you need 3dsmax, blender,zbrush,hexagon or whatever.It has some downsides but .. welll if youve watched a movie with cgi in it.. youve seen maya at work

Cinema4d: Like maya but theoretically more user friendly. Frankly i got annoyed at c4d's weird way of doing things, installed Maya and havent looked back.

all the other: as you go deeper youre going to find that high end 3d software caters to niches. Procedural modellers etc. Unless you own a server farm or can afford to spend $$$ with AWS etc... .....

If you just want to pump out an awesome VN: learn python (it's a scripting language loosely modelled around C.. very loosely) and use daz. Daz doesnt do everythign but it is Stunningly powerful.

Of you want an incredibly logical modeller id suggest Rhino. If you want the industry standard artistic modeller id suggest zbrush (good luck ot you).

If you want One program that does it all id suggest 3dsmax followed by blender.

If you want 2 programs that combined will literally make hollywood movies id suggest maya combined with blender , zbrush or 3dsmax.


Please note: i program in 10+ languages. I got my first computer around 1982. I learned to use 3dsmax and Rhino for engineering modelling.. not art (a LONG time ago) and POV-ray. And ive spent the last month or so learning/relearing just 3d software.. i havent even had time to delve very deep into ue4 (and unity). So expact a deep dive down the rabbit hole even if you choose to just plop models into daz and apply poses. But it will be worth it.
 

lancelotdulak

Active Member
Nov 7, 2018
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...
Players often complain about developers over using generic off the shelf Daz assets.
Here's the problem. Theyre right. 100% right. I have 3 stunning models prepared for a game ( i need another female and.. hardest of all to find.. 2 males who dont look like garbage).. and i havent touched the characters outside daz. I used morphs and multiple characters morphs combined to create entirely original characters. A lot of these guys saw DMD etc and just grabbed that character and made a new game with it. And lets dont forget how godawful a lot of the models are in a lot of these games. literally ugly. It's lazyness. If someones doing it for fun.. fine. But it's literally childsplay to make original models in Daz.

ps @recreation ... youre just wrong. Daz is by no stretch of the imagination modelling software nor all in one software. Blender is. Daz cant do what blender can, on the other hand daz is 1000 times better at what it does than blender is. The ideal is to use each piece of software for what it is best at. Which is why it's so annoying everyone has proprietary file formats and seemingly zero desire to make their software capable of importing or exporting other softwares file formats (fbx, obj.. and 100 other formats were intended to bridge this..and didnt because devs didnt give a damn)
 
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MrBree

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Jun 9, 2017
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Ugh. I'm not happy that this immediate devolved into a Blender vs Daz comparison. While @Saki_Sliz admits he doesn't do Daz, he has some very good points about each of these programs.

Daz is obviously more popular here and has it's place. But Blender has it's own benefits and advantages. It is always useful for people to understand more tools to see how they can fit within their needs and workflow.
And yes as @lancelotdulak said, we can easily go down the rabbit hole. There are plenty of tools, and much to learn about them. (I'm open to hearing more about other options). So we have to determine what works best for our situation. While some other tools might be even better, The problem is that most of these pro apps have prices to match. Most of us here are amateurs just dipping our toes into game creation. (At least I am!) So we have to rationally consider what is reasonable to use and allow us to move forward in a way that is within our both means and time.

I would honestly stick with Daz myself for the most part, since it is very good at allowing a quick workflow for 3d images. And as a focused tool, it is a good place to start without being overwhelming (like blender can be!) But when you want to do more, Blender might just be a good option. So I have a couple of questions in order to see how reasonable it is to consider using to expand my workflow:

Rendering: I understand that Blender has something called the Cycles renderer, and there is something new called EVVEE.
That's pretty much all I know. Can you tell us more about Blender renderers and their advantages?
Can these be useful to those who are stuck with Nvidia Iray renderers?

Animation:
My understanding is that Daz animation isn't very advanced. Blender has a whole range of tools for this. I'm assuming a book can be written to explain it, but perhaps helping us understand how it can be used for some quick adult animation clips..


There was a mention of hair shaders. Any other 'clever' Blender tools which might be useful for adult game renders?
 
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polywog

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May 19, 2017
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I'm not happy that this immediate devolved into a Blender vs Daz comparison.
Changing the thread title is a good Idea. Remove the versus and Daz, just call the thread "The Blender Project, Open Source 3D creation software. Free to use for any purpose, forever.". A lot of Daz stuff was made in Blender.

 
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Saki_Sliz

Well-Known Member
May 3, 2018
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@MrBree @polywog yes it does seem it has become a Daz vs Blender debate, but I expected as much from users who have already looked into the subject. Polywog makes a good point about the title.

Versus means "to pit against" Daz and Blender are not enemies.
True, but out of the two target audience I am aiming to reach, one group is that of new users who may be comparing Daz vs Blender for the first time and are trying to see which better meets their interests. The title was made with them in mind, as Daz vs Blender would be a common search term. I, however, will still edit this as perhaps the "why use blender" part would lead this to be biased or to try and convince people of one answer over another, which wasn't the point of the post.

Like UE4 they have horrific ui's because.. the devs could give a fuck.
XD I didn't know that this was an issue, but it makes sense. The way developers think can be vastly different from how the normal users of their product may think. I have heard plenty of stories where developers didn't have their product tested to see if it was easy to use or how people intend to use their product, and as a result, the project was a flop. However, this is not exactly true with Blender, as the way I read it, it sounded like you were trying to make the case that Blender's complexity issue was a result of it being made by developers with no input from their artist community. Actually, just the opposite is what happened. Blender was not always free, it did use to be an in house program made and developed by a studio. This studio employed both developers and 3D artist/animators. The main issue with 2.79 and older versions of Blender is because a lot of their functionality was hidden behind hotkeys. And this happened because when Blender was being developed in a way where, the artist team of the company would ask for X feature, the company would have the Dev team make it, and the artist would report back what they want change or what new things they wanted. To help improve their workflow, the artist of this company specifically requested most of the fundamental features of blender, such as the focus on hotkeys, and as a result Blender has always been hard to use because it was never made for new users, it was made for the people who asked for it to be made for them. It was made not for all artists, but a small specific group of artists who needed to do a job and this was the tool they were designing for that job. Hence, I could argue that blender's issues are not because the developers are forcing their users to adapt to how they operate, but rather the current user base and the developers have suffered because blender was designed as an in house program, not meant to be public. 2.8 tries to resolve a lot of these issues by redesigning blender with a focus on their current community and reaching new users.

fun fact, since you mentioned server farms, there is a free blender server farm, my computer is one of them. Look into if you are interested to learn more.

want an incredibly logical modeller id suggest Rhino.
I couldn't agree with you more! I love rhino, but I am moving to blender for all my CAD needs (currently working on a prosthetic hand for manufacturing) but neither programs are a standard for engineering. That's where autocad and solid works dominate, and I don't feel like learning either right now.


The ideal is to use each piece of software for what it is best at. Which is why it's so annoying everyone has proprietary file formats and seemingly zero desire to make their software capable of importing or exporting other softwares file formats (fbx, obj.. and 100 other formats were intended to bridge this..and didnt because devs didnt give a damn)
Oh most certainly, I couldn't agree more!

@MrBree getting back to your questions.

Yes animating in blender is much more powerful and flexible, and yes there are books on this. Here is what I can say, I don't think I am an artist. I don't want to make art because I like art. Sure I can be creative but I like to make art because I like the MAKING part of making art. knowing how to do it. It has helped with a few classes as I can make presentations that are way beyond my peers. I am more of a Technical Artist. The reason I point this out is to emphasize what you can do in blender.

With blender animations tools, it is possible to animate in a way that most of the professional world already does. Using bones/rigs/armatures/skeletons (all the same things just different names depending on what program you use) you can animate characters. Physics simulations are another thing you can do with blender and daz (I think it used dForce but this is just for the clothes. Most of the time, in blender, if you want to make a shirt or dress, you make a basic shape, an ugly t shirt cut out, and using the cloth simulation you make the cloth fit the body, then you save the shape and now you have a new shirt or dress, it is quite simple surprisingly). But because of the flexibility of blender, you can choose not to do something that is standard. For example in my case, because I am more interested in making, not the final work per say, I have tried non-standard things. My favorite way to animate in blender is a combination of physics, optimization techniques, normal bones, and math!

using physics is one way to animate almost for free, since it does the work for you (but this needs some fine tuning). I use optimization techniques to help speed up the physics calculations so they don't slow down the renders and also to correct for how inaccurate simulations can be at times. These can be combined with normal bones to allow for artistic control over your model as you animate. Lastly math. In blender, you have drivers. that means, anything can be controlled by anything. such a case is, having body hair not render if the camera isn't close enough to see it. anything you can click and edit can either be connected by a driver or drive something else. Like, people draw 3D panels in blender to represent the face, so you can animate the panel and it will animate the face for you. Where the math comes in, I have been doing robotics for +10 years, mostly working with math, so I use math to drive a lot of things. So what basically happens when I animate in blender is, animating is fast, fairly realistic, and aesthetically pleasing, and this is because I can design custom rigs which for the most part have one job, take the task of animating (which can be quite complex and is its own skill) and simplify it, in fact, automate as much as possible for me. An example of math is how hips move, used to distribute our weight, where I can do a little math and basically automate the hip movements, or simplify hip movement controls as to allow for some nice sexy walking without having to save more than 4 keyframes per walk cycle. In the future, I plan to share my automated rig. In daz, because it doesn't automate anything for you (I think?) so it is up to your skill as an animator since you have to input every detail by hand. In both daz and blender, you can code custom control panels. that may be going a bit beyond, but I am trying to teach myself how for blender to make my future projects more easily available to new users.

as for cycle vs iray. from what I understand, Cycles is > Iray.
basically, cycles, eevee, iray, or 'blender internal' are just the program inside the programe. these are render engines, the program that does the work of determining what your project will look like. For blender, you can switch between Cycles, EEVEE (only in 2.8beta) and blender internal. not sure abotu daz

for cycles vs iray
Both take about the same amount of time to compute.
Cycles can do what Iray does, but better (less noise and artifacts)
the professional industry is starting to adopt Iray more and more as a PBR (that means, physics-based rendering, which is a technique to try and get more realistic results by handling data based on properties similar to how substances work in real life, such as metals vs dielectrics. This can be done in real time, it is like a mathematical short cut. Basically, it just means, video games rendering looks more accurate, and a PBR system supports the assets needed for PBR. Iray and cycles just happens to improve on PBR systems by doing ray tracing to better simulate lighting), meaning you will see iray in programs like, substance painter, and other tools and programs in the future. Basically, Iray is more likely to be found in a video game as NVidias RTX cards start to take off.

Cycles is able to do the same thing, and from what I have found online, it does a better job without being slower. If you wanted to make a movie, you would either use cycles over iray, or if you were professional, you may be able to afford the more higher grade programs like renderman which takes forever to render but looks better.

so what is Cycles and EEVEE? Well there is actually 3 program,s cycles, eevee and blender internal. Blender internal is a very basic shading program, which I think uses open gl, similar to browser-based games, and most older video games. It is not PBR, and since PBR has taken over everything in the past to 3 years, I don't think anyone uses this anymore. Cycles was introduced to allow blender to compete with professional CGI, as it allowed for accurate simulation of lighting. Basically, cycles is a box of magic that makes art look good. Daz has something similar (not sure if they bought a ray trace program like iray or are using their own). The issue with ray tracing (the technique just about most programs use to simulate light, but there are others that may be better, like ) is that it is slow, which is why it is not used in games for real-time rendering.

so PBR and ray/path tracing are different things. PBR is texture maps, property maps, and it does the work that calculates the color of light hitting the object. Ray/Path tracing is how the camera chooses to see the scene, how it calculates how the light hits objects. so you calculate how the scene is illuminated using ray tracing, then PBR tells you how everything reacts to the light. and then ray tracing bounces the light and we recalculate all over again.

Nvidia RTX uses a bit of normal PBR game engines, some ray tracying, and some special hardware to try to make the noisy raytracing look better so that it takes less time et render, and combines them.

EEVEE I do not think uses any raytracing, but somehow it still does an amazing job. Basically, EEVEE is cycles, but it is a real time engine. Meaning renders are super fast. not sure what magic this is. EEVEE and Cycles are both PBR systems, so basically you can make everything in EEVEE, so you can see changes as fast as you make them, moving lights around to see what look better, but to make your final render look even better, you switch to cycle which mostly just brings everything to life by allowing for better global illuminations and softer shadows.

sorry for the rushed response.
 
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recreation

pure evil!
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Jun 10, 2018
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For blender, you can switch between Cycles, EEVEE (only in 2.8beta) and blender internal. not sure abotu daz
You can switch between open gl, 3dlight and iray. There are also addons for other render engines like octane or reality.

Cycles was introduced to allow blender to compete with professional CGI, as it allowed for accurate simulation of lighting. Basically, cycles is a box of magic that makes art look good. Daz has something similar (not sure if they bought a ray trace program like iray or are using their own).
Daz has OptiX Prime which was developed by Nvidia for their cuda cards, so its limited, but it does a good job. I have also noticed lesser noise when it's activated.
Iray also has a photoreal and interactive mode.

I have heard good things about EEVEE and seen some awesome images rendered with it. Let's see what the future holds^^

For the animation part. I don't know about animating in blender and I'm sure it has more options, but it has everything nessessary to do good animations and it's relatively easy to do. Though it's a bit different to animate in daz then in almost every other program I've used. If you want to change something, you have to move to the specific point in the timeline and then change what you want to change in the scene editor...
 

Egglock

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Oct 17, 2017
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I think a lot of users are misunderstanding the purpose of these two software. Each one is design for a specific task and aim towards different users.

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As far as animations goes, from what information I have gather, it seems to be the bare bones. What do I mean by this, most of it is just posing and adding keyframes at the appropriate frame. As far as manipulation goes, it doesn't look like Daz3d animation tools allows much, besides replacing keyframes. (anyone who knows Daz3d animation, you're welcome to prove me wrong here.) In Blender there are 2 editor's (of course that's if you set up your rig and morph targets correctly) called NLA editor and the Dope sheet. These two editor allows the fine tuning of the animation data, ranging any where from the animation curve to copy and paste a sequence of animations to be reused if needed. I mean there's a whole bunch more complex stuff but that's the small scope of what I mean by manipulation.

These software are aim at different users and workflow. Neither one is inferior to another. They both serve as tools to help people create things. It's up to us on what tools fit our belt and what we use these tools for.
 
Nov 2, 2018
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@Egglock
most devs know python today.
if you dont then what the hell you doing go learn it, you'll shit tears of joy cause of how easy it is.
all the complications you describe can mostly be sorted with python script cause of blenders fully scriptable api. you do the "tough" stuff once meanwhile you write script to deal with it in the future and you're set, just minor tweaks every time as with any 3d software.
there's also public addons/scripts, you just gotta find the ones you need.

open source always prevail!
you dont have to wait for the development team to update, you go do it yourself then commit your work to git.
 
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