I want to say this was an incredible post and highly informative. I truly appreciate it! And it's solid advice.
Since we're talking about the journey, I'll share with you some of the stuff that's been going through my head since I discovered I would be responsible for the visuals (and pretty much everything) going forward.
First off, it's important to understand that I'm the type of personality that likes to "go big or go home". But that isn't my sole draw to Maya. The biggest draw is animation. This is one of Maya's greatest strengths and I would love it if I could produce fast, high-quality animation one day. It can be done with Daz, but it's really not configured for it and it's glitchy as hell (disappearing key-frames, etc). But tangent to animating is the absolute control of the pipe line from start to finish. Full blown development in Maya is of course the end goal. The non-desctructive work-flow means I can always go back and make any required adjustments.
Of course, there are several steps I plan to take over the next year or so to get there.
I've made it no secret that I want to do this kind of work full time. I find it very fulfilling and I love telling stories. On top of that, I love creating the art. But when I do something, I want to be the best that I can. I want to sit down, write my story, and know that no matter what I come up with, I will be able to create all the necessary visuals I need to tell that story the way I want to without being constrained to the Daz store or available online assets. Total Creative Liberty.
I've paid for a couple of months of Maya to play with it and get my feet wet, and holy shit, I think it's the most amazing piece of software I've gotten to toy with in a long time. I've done some modelling, rigging, and short animations, and I love it. It's a work of art. But I'm a long way from being good enough to start making my game with it. Oh, and the Hypershade! I loooooove the Hypershade!
My plan roughly is thus. First I plan to tackle and master zBrush. I want to use zBrush to enhance my existing models and update all of the hair assets to fibermesh so that I am free from these static, stiff, unlife-like facsimiles of hair. It can be used on my Daz models and can be used to enhance and improve models in Maya. So that's a no brainer. So there is immediate and long term application.
Next I intend to master Substance Painter/Designer. This too will be good for immediate Daz application as well as long term Maya work. I so frequently use Adobe Bridge to tweak and update the Daz materials I'm currently using that being able to create surfaces from scratch is a huge benefit.
After that I think I want to learn the ins and outs of Marvellous Designer and free myself up from using the same old stiff, static clothes that are available in the online stores. Being able to outfit my characters according to their own personal style is a huge draw to me and having that freedom of design just opens up a whole world of possibilities. Also Daz and Maya compatible.
Ideally, as I'm working on mastering all of those tools, I'll be steadily building up my Maya skills on the side to the point that they can be implemented in time for the next game.
Very much a long term goal. But thought out in a way that there can be immediate application of the acquired skills. I won't get any of this done tomorrow. But in two or three years, totally possible. Total creative liberty. That's what I'm striving for.
However, I would also be remiss if I failed to mention, the journey excites me. I love learning to do this stuff. Every new piece of software I learn, every new skill, just opens up so much possibility. I know it will take time to accomplish, but it's not like I'm trying to get anywhere soon. I'm in it for the long haul. And I can handle a slow steady climb to the top if that's what it takes.
I know there are a lot of options, and I've done as much research as one can reasonably do. But I've seen Maya in action and I love the results. There is definitely a learning curve. But so far my playing around and following tutorials has left me confident I can build the necessary skills to get what I want out of it. Time of course will tell the tale.
If anyone else has opinions on 3D software or if there is more you'd like to chime in with on the subject, I'd definitely like to hear it. It's a topic that fascinates me to no end.
Salute!
Well, it's certainly an admirable path and set of general goals, so if Maya has you by the horns right now . . . I was actually experimenting with animating Daz-based figures in Maya earlier this year and it was definitely a longer route via the export/import and trying to re-rig the skeleton, etc. path compared to using the DaztoMaya bridge, which makes much of that far easier and faster, I feel. You always need tweaks, especially in materials and lighting, but I did get Blender working pretty well with a Genesis 3 figure via the Diffeomorphic script and that didn't take much doing. Coincidentally, I was working with a Maya -> Blender conversion script that was quite neat and made bringing in a more complex scene (that I got from Evermotion, I believe) to compare how Cycles could handle something originally made with V-Ray in mind.
We know that Autodesk is now pushing Arnold as the renderer-of-the-moment and it's a fine choice, though I also know people who have just as many pluses and minuses with it as Mental Ray, strangely enough - and, it doesn't allow for unwatermarked batch processing out of the box (may not matter to you, of course.) There are alternatives to consider, such as the obvious V-Ray (which may not be ideal for your needs right now - it's nice for archviz, of course), but I know a lot of folks also using/trying Redshift and Octane with Maya these days.
I have a Pluralsight subscription and it's been well worth the cost, IMHO - there are other venues with similar offerings, but I've been with them since they were Digital-Tutors and feel that my areas of interest remain covered. So, I have smatterings of other tutorial offerings from other providers where gaps were needed to fill (very little, though).
BTW, I own the 2012 version of the Autodesk "Creative Suite" 3D products - I think 2013 was the final year in which they sold bundles of the their 3D suite with a standalone license. So, if I need a more recent Maya version for importing a newer scene and/or to handle Arnold materials (an example), I rent for a month and save as the older version, convert materials, etc. Those go on sale periodically on eBay and other online venues.
Although I only glossed over my ZBrush use, it's very easy to build real-world practice with it by making Daz morphs via the "Send to Zbrush" -> GoZ route, I feel. You can't change the mesh resolution in such a case, but that flow forces you to understand the finer points of the unique ZBrush UI, using primary brushes such as Move, Flatten and Smooth, managing sub-tools and masking, working with Symmetry, etc. Although Maya can subdivide quite well, I tend to bring existing objects into ZBrush and wrangle them into shape with ZRemesher (and related Geometry tools), define groups, update or generate base UVs, etc. because it's ridiculously good and fast at doing all of those things quickly + well. For manual retopology, that's either some ZBrush, Maya or - increasingly for me - Blender (used to be Silo, but Blender has become so improved as of late).
Some people swear by 3DCoat for much of what I've mentioned above - it's sort of like a rich toolbox these days and the price tag is amazingly low for its capabilities - but if you have ZBrush already I think there is a lot of overlap. And, its UI is also unique: so you have to decide if the learning curve is worth it compared to your time on other tools you may or may not favor.
Substance Painter is super easy to start with and has some nice tutorials for adding details thought previously difficult to integrate without finding or paying for high-quality textures. Designer is just a playground and only needed if you are looking for ideas that nobody else has come up with yet (and which can be manually tweaked, I feel). It also can handle creating tilable materials quite nicely.
Yeah, Marvelous Designer is the growing standard for consumer-grade clothing creation and augmentation in 3D work, though ZBrush is actually easy to use for basic clothing/coverings meshes, too. If I'm not tweaking Daz-related clothing or fabrics via dFormers or dForce limited physics+properties (which is most of the time, btw) or augmenting their fit/shape via Send to ZBrush/GoZ, MD is a nice backup for things that I need to add which are not readily available from a site already or to test out dynamics more holistically than dForce enables.
Obviously Houdini wasn't mentioned when you talked about generating effects even though it's the KING of 3D special effects via simulations because, again, $$ and lots of hours needed to get comfortable with it - you're already pretty busy right now, I'd offer
. However, effects can also come from After Effects-like programs and the Nuke-like Natron (which is free) actually can allow for some cool stuff in this area despite it being a compositor first and effects enabler second (again, similar to Nuke).
It is a super fun, technical world in 3D-like work and will be interesting to see how this goes for you + your continued interests in related spaces over time, even beyond this particular VN.
