How did you start of learning

[ChocolateDouchebag]

I don't know if this is the most appropriate place to publish this thread but I'll try my luck. I just wanna know from people that are known or at least created a game with Daz studio and stuff... How did you start learning it? I have quite some experience with other 3d programmes but it's been a while since I used them, like quite a while and forgot some of it. Daz seems intuitive enough with its UI and stuff. I've briefly touched on some tutorials to get a feel of it and most of it are sliders and already built assets if I'm not wrong that you download from their store or here...(there are certainly more things to it for sure but I'm talking barebones minimum) I've definitely seen some wacky stuff about confusion in render settings and model casting outlines etc. My question is that if you have anything useful to recommend to start with learning tutorial or course-wise. Most of you would recommend youtube tutorials and I found some decent channels but compared to other software there aren't that many :/ I've also found that there are some at the daz3d store and some of them are uploaded here but I don't seem to find a general walkthrough for Daz. Also, any advice that you may have would be much appreciated.

 

[Philly_Games]

A lot of trial and error. My first game i just dove in. Had no clue what I was doing and just tried to make the best of it. I had good ideas on what i wanted things to look like and went from there. A decent understanding of photography is also a must for decent lighting, though iray has some strange caveats with indoor lighting so you need to use things like ghost lights and such. You will learn as you go. At least that is what I did. If you look at the start of my first game to the end and you can see a striking difference in render quality. This goes with most first time devs games that are out there.

 

[ChocolateDouchebag]

A lot of trial and error. My first game i just dove in. Had no clue what I was doing and just tried to make the best of it. I had good ideas on what i wanted things to look like and went from there. A decent understanding of photography is also a must for decent lighting, though iray has some strange caveats with indoor lighting so you need to use things like ghost lights and such. You will learn as you go. At least that is what I did. If you look at the start of my first game to the end and you can see a striking difference in render quality. This goes with most first time devs games that are out there.

I definitely know what you mean. I've certainly seen some huge changes from game devs especially at their ending such as Acting Lessons, The adventurous couple and including yours. I really envy the time you put in your craft because I've tasted some brief struggles that you encounter and when you try to come up with a solution and see the results it's really rewarding. Thanks for sharing this I'm much obliged and I definitely would take a course for some fundamentals either that's art related or photography which some things are the same such as perspective, composition/framing, lighting, color etc. I would like to keep it practical though...I've read in a post that you use Octane render and how that gave you a boost at your work... I want this to keep this thread somewhat practical related to tools that you find game-changing in your productivity and rendering process and maybe tutorials that helped you out... I know it's a little steep to go learn render engines but many things that the basic software has are not put into use and I don't want to waste time learning something that will not be used in the first place. Do you have any knowledge if Redshift is used with Daz? Also I want to add that there are far more courses for render engines than daz so it's somewhat easier to dive into it.

 

[mickydoo]

A lot of trial and error. My first game i just dove in. Had no clue what I was doing and just tried to make the best of it. I had good ideas on what i wanted things to look like and went from there. A decent understanding of photography is also a must for decent lighting, though iray has some strange caveats with indoor lighting so you need to use things like ghost lights and such. You will learn as you go. At least that is what I did. If you look at the start of my first game to the end and you can see a striking difference in render quality. This goes with most first time devs games that are out there.

The first line is exactly how I am now, I am treating this game as one year long giant learning process, my first renders are ok, but my last ones are getting way better, by the time I finish this game I want it to be as perfect as I can so the next game is more consistent.

 

[CurvyLinesEverywhere]

By following worse tutorials than you can find today, covering a worse interface and user experience than the modern versions of the programs, on a slower computer than the one I currently own.

Google how to do the stuff you want to do.

The Future is fucking amazing.

Just make sure you start with 'Deciding What To Make' and work your way down from there.

Oh, and if at all possible, (assuming the only computers you have access to are the bare minimum of one computer that acts as a dev workstation and one smartphone like most people have,) do your dev-related googling and article-reading and tutorial-watching on your actual rendering workstation. Don't search for anything else like entertainment or do social media on it, save that shit for your phone. The reason for this is because it's *vastly* easier to quickly parse large screens full of search results on a large vertical PC screen that doesn't move than on a phone. You may need to learn how to use a mouse, though. Once you develop muscle memory, going back to tapping and wiping on tiny screens will feel slow and clunky.