Daz Character creation Help.

[pezo]

Hey,

I'm using daz studio for only 2 weeks, and I conider myself a newbie although i have years of experience with 3d. Daz is a different type.


So here is the my question:
how do you make your charcters?
I understood the concept of morphs, poses etc.

do you create your own characters ,
or do you mix them, like hair from a different g8f model,body is from a different one?

 

[Saki_Sliz]

It depends on what you mean my "your own character."

1 if you want to make a character for a piece of art
2 if you want to make a character to share and sell

if you want to design a custom character, from the assets you have collected, here is what I recommend. Starting with the Actor section, you can find morphs that apply to the whole body, play around with those and mix and match them to get a rough body type. then from their it will be easier to start playing around with the shapes of specific body parts in the other tabs. the G8M for example tends to be naturally bulky so no matter what you change your character will still be bulky until you use a character morph that changes the whole body drastically.

Often you can share these body shapes with others by describing the recipe you used to creat it, list out what morphs and %'s.

now if you mean "make a character" like the characters you buy on the daz store, that is something different. Those characters are created by porting over the base G8 mesh, taking it into z brush or some other sculpting program, and sculpting by hand the new body shape, porting it back over to daz to recalculate the skeleton, and from what I have seen they also make custom skin textures.

sometimes what you can do, or what I do, is there is some detail I can't get with my assets, meaning I have to sculpt it in. so I'll port over both my character and the base G8 mesh over to blender using .obj, I'll sculpt in the detail I'll need, I'll add a shape key to make the G8 character be able to morph into the character shape I want, then I'll add another shape key where I sculpt the detail I want, I'll then turn off the shape key for my character, leaving the sculpt on the base G8 body, and I can port that into daz and save it as a morph that I can use for all my other characters. But most of the time you don't need to do that.

 

[pezo]

It depends on what you mean my "your own character."

1 if you want to make a character for a piece of art
2 if you want to make a character to share and sell

if you want to design a custom character, from the assets you have collected, here is what I recommend. Starting with the Actor section, you can find morphs that apply to the whole body, play around with those and mix and match them to get a rough body type. then from their it will be easier to start playing around with the shapes of specific body parts in the other tabs. the G8M for example tends to be naturally bulky so no matter what you change your character will still be bulky until you use a character morph that changes the whole body drastically.

Often you can share these body shapes with others by describing the recipe you used to creat it, list out what morphs and %'s.

now if you mean "make a character" like the characters you buy on the daz store, that is something different. Those characters are created by porting over the base G8 mesh, taking it into z brush or some other sculpting program, and sculpting by hand the new body shape, porting it back over to daz to recalculate the skeleton, and from what I have seen they also make custom skin textures.

sometimes what you can do, or what I do, is there is some detail I can't get with my assets, meaning I have to sculpt it in. so I'll port over both my character and the base G8 mesh over to blender using .obj, I'll sculpt in the detail I'll need, I'll add a shape key to make the G8 character be able to morph into the character shape I want, then I'll add another shape key where I sculpt the detail I want, I'll then turn off the shape key for my character, leaving the sculpt on the base G8 body, and I can port that into daz and save it as a morph that I can use for all my other characters. But most of the time you don't need to do that.

okay, I think I got it. I dont need a very complex model, so probably I will fiddle around with the assets I downloaded. I want unique assets, not similar to their base asset. Maybe a little mesh editing with blender can be useful.

by the way, thanks for your reply.

 

[recreation]

now if you mean "make a character" like the characters you buy on the daz store, that is something different. Those characters are created by porting over the base G8 mesh, taking it into z brush or some other sculpting program, and sculpting by hand the new body shape, porting it back over to daz to recalculate the skeleton, and from what I have seen they also make custom skin textures.

That's the official way, but nobody stops you from using morphs to create a character and export it to make your own morph from it. You could even sell it that way, nobody will be able to tell if you made the morph in zbrush or in daz.

 

[Rich]

That's the official way, but nobody stops you from using morphs to create a character and export it to make your own morph from it. You could even sell it that way, nobody will be able to tell if you made the morph in zbrush or in daz.

Actually, there's nothing "illegal" about creating characters using some of the morphs that are sold through Daz Studio as long as they're listed as "required," and as long as the morphs are merchant resources. There are quite a few characters that have been built up out of other morph products and are so listed.

 

[rev2020]

and export it to make your own morph from it.

how do i export and create my own morph?

 

[recreation]

Actually, there's nothing "illegal" about creating characters using some of the morphs that are sold through Daz Studio as long as they're listed as "required," and as long as the morphs are merchant resources. There are quite a few characters that have been built up out of other morph products and are so listed.

True, but how many merchant resource morphs are there and how many of us actually use them? Also if you're like me and use hundreths of morphs for a single character, would you want to list them all as "required" (if you even remember them all)? And who would want such a product?

how do i export and create my own morph?

Export is in the main menu, export the figure with resolution set to base and as .obj with the standard settings, then load a new base figure, set it to base as well, go to edit -> figure -> morph loader pro, select your morph (.obj file) and hit load (or whatever that button was called).
There are a few extra steps you have to do to make the figure posable with that morph. Something with the "bones to figure" or such, and then you have to use "IRC freeze", but I don't remember that step to a 100% at the moment. I'll look it up later.

 

[Rich]

True, but how many merchant resource morphs are there and how many of us actually use them? Also if you're like me and use hundreths of morphs for a single character, would you want to list them all as "required" (if you even remember them all)? And who would want such a product?

More accurately, you'd have to list the morph package, not necessarily each individual morph. That being said, I'm not arguing with you in the slightest - I've also done the "dozens and dozens of little tweaks" bit with characters. And you're correct - there's virtually no way they'd know that you hadn't done it in ZBrush.

I actually asked about this very thing (for non-commercial use) on the Daz forums some years ago. Main thing about "publishing" a character isn't getting the initial shape right, it's getting all the JCM's to work nicely - virtually all of the quality characters have JCM's to make the various joint bends look good based on the changes from the base character. And, of course, the skin - again, you're either into the very laborious process of creating one from scratch, or else using a merchant resource such as the various skin builder products.

There are a few extra steps you have to do to make the figure posable with that morph. Something with the "bones to figure" or such, and then you have to use "IRC freeze", but I don't remember that step to a 100% at the moment. I'll look it up later.

Adjusting the bones deals with cases where you've scaled the figure - made them taller or shorter, or made the arms longer or shorter. This extra step (and getting it exactly right) might be one of the reasons that so many of the characters are the same height as the ridiculously tall characters (female, I mean) that Daz publishes - by not changing their height, etc., character makers don't have to do this step.

Anyway, there's a pretty complete tutorial here:

You must be registered to see the links

 

[lancelotdulak]

IF you go to the daz store you'll notice someone makes a brilliant popular character then there are shortly after a LOT of very slightly different characters that are damned near clones. Im sure they didnt just morph them, export, reimport and then put them up for sale..