Install Daz Studio without Daz Central

[3D Novelist]

Hi,

I would like to know if it's possible to install Daz Studio without Daz Central.

I'm not talking about installing assets but the Studio itself.

I heared it would be possible with the Daz Install Manager. The DIM shows me all the Starter Essentials and free assets from Daz in the "Ready to Download" Section, but I couldn't figure out how to install the Studio itself with it yet.

Is it possible and if it is, how would I do that?

 

[3D Novelist]

Ok, problem solved. Normally the DIM shows all necessary installations for Daz Studio directly after starting, but my Daz Studio was not uninstalled correctly. For that reason IM didn't show me the installation stuff for it.

 

[clero]

I tried Daz studio. But I don't understand how it works. It allows you to select a mesh and there is a pose library and you can also add some hair shapes. Then you have a choice for the materials, but it's all limited to the very few options you have in the software.

So if you want to expand the options, you have to open blender/maya or another software and create new meshes. So what's the advantage of using Daz if you have to use other softwares anyway?

Also, Daz has very limited options to use "toon" shaders and hentai-like materials. Instead with blender you can use both cycles and evee and have an unlimited amount of hentai materials.

At the end of the day you will be forced to create your own meshes, so why not using blender or maya or whatever? Why using daz? I downloaded this software yesterday because you users discuss it often, but franky I don't even understand the purpose. It appears you have to pay for everything that you could do for free on Blender or paying a little fee with Maya.

 

[Rich]

I tried Daz studio. But I don't understand how it works. It allows you to select a mesh and there is a pose library and you can also add some hair shapes. Then you have a choice for the materials, but it's all limited to the very few options you have in the software.

So if you want to expand the options, you have to open blender/maya or another software and create new meshes. So what's the advantage of using Daz if you have to use other softwares anyway?

I think I need to disagree with this statement - at least the part about having to create your own meshes. There is a WEALTH of assets out there spread across multiple sites. (Daz3d.com, Renderosity.com, Renderotica.com and RenderHub.com, just to name a few.)

You are in no way limited to the existing pose libraries - you can design your own poses via any number of ways (dragging body parts, twiddling dials, etc.)

Materials in Daz Studio can be updated as easily as in Blender. If you can't get what you want by "knob-twiddling" the material that comes with the asset, you can apply any number of pre-built shaders for it. Or simply replace one of the textures with one of your own design. Or overlay modifications using the Layered Image Editor.

Also, Daz has very limited options to use "toon" shaders and hentai-like materials. Instead with blender you can use both cycles and evee and have an unlimited amount of hentai materials.

Actually, if you use the 3Delight renderer, there are a number of different "toon shader" options. I grant you that the iRay shader doesn't support these well, but iRay was specifically designed for photorealistic rendering, so asking it to do non-photorealistic renders is kind of counter intuitive.

With Daz Studio, you have the option of the 3Delight renderer, iRay (which is similar to cycles) and Filament (which is similar to EEVEE). Each has its purpose.

At the end of the day you will be forced to create your own meshes, so why not using blender or maya or whatever? Why using daz? I downloaded this software yesterday because you users discuss it often, but franky I don't even understand the purpose. It appears you have to pay for everything that you could do for free on Blender or paying a little fee with Maya.

There are literally hundreds of devs here that have produced entire games without ever creating a mesh of their own, using pre-prepared (or slightly modified) Daz Studio assets. So, I think they would all disagree with "you will be forced to create your own meshes."

I'm not saying that you can't produce good - or even great - content with Blender, however not everybody is comfortable with the amount of time required to create assets from scratch. I mean, you have to learn sculpting, rigging, shaders and materials before you even have something visual. That's a lot of effort. And then you're still left with the same issues you have in Daz Studio - posing, lighting, composition, etc. So the from-scratch "Blender" or "Maya" approach has just too much of a learning curve.

Perhaps you're already an expert in Blender or Maya. If so, kudos to you. But how many months or years did it take you to achieve your current degree of skill. Now compare that to however many minutes you've spent learning Daz Studio. Not really a fair comparison, IMHO.

All that being said, what is right for me or another reader may not be right for you, or vice versa. Different artisans use different tools - there's room for all of them to co-exist.

 

[clero]

All that being said, what is right for me or another reader may not be right for you

Yes I agree it's always good to discover new softwares. Who knows maybe Daz has some usecases that may be useful. One more tool to use is always good. I literally discovered it inside this forum because people were talking about it. I admit I am not an expert with that software maybe it's a good piece of software. Who knows, I will cope more with this product and see if I can do something with it.

 

[Rich]

maybe it's a good piece of software.

Personally, I think it is, provided you use it for what it's intended. But that's true of all tools - a hammer is a poor tool for driving screws. It doesn't attempt to do everything - there aren't any real modeling tools, for example, and its animation support isn't as good at Blender. But (IMHO) its "sweet spot" is static, photorealistic renders for non-technical people. I think that's why it's used across so many games here.

There's no question in my mind that Blender isn't more powerful - you can absolutely do things with Blender you can't do with Daz Studio. It's more a question of the learning curve - part of Blender's power is that it is so... "low level." It lets you do everything, but it also makes you do just about everything.

Also, I think there's far more ready-to-use content natively available for Daz Studio than natively available for Blender. (Not that there isn't a fair amount of content for Blender, but what I know of isn't as broad, since it targets a different audience.)

Again, all just my opinion. Your mileage may vary.

 

[clero]

There's no question in my mind that Blender isn't more powerful - you can absolutely do things with Blender you can't do with Daz Studio. It's more a question of the learning curve - part of Blender's power is that it is so... "low level." It lets you do everything, but it also makes you do just about everything.

Yes I tend to use blender in combo with at least another software, depending on the workflow I choose. Sometimes I start on zbrush, other times on blender and then I switch to zbrush. It's evident that Blender cannot sculpt meshes as good as zbrush does. And for texture painting, blender is too basilar, if you need only 1 layer then blender is OK, but if you need more features you have to pick something like substance painter. I am currently following the armorypainter, but the point is that blender for texture painting is not super advanced.

There are also people that compare houdini to blender nodes, even if there is no comparison to be made, because houdini is simply much more advanced. But what I like about blender is that it lets you create a workflow that is extra efficient, switching from 1 tab to another lets you build meshes with a great efficiency.

Also, there are some tools on blender to do "hard surface" modeling, but I never used them. I always prefer to open fusion360 because it achieves the best results. Maybe I do little modifications to the meshes on Blender, but I always want to start with fusion360.

But I do not think blender is low level. It's simply the best for non realistic render, probably if you're trying to achieve realistic things I would choose another software. And this is why it's always better to learn more tools, and therefore Daz may have a purpose in the future.

As you said, depends... on what you have to do. For example when I have to do quick retopology I never use blender, because all the retopo tools are not as good as the ones you find on zbrush for example. Yes there is retopoflow for blender, it's sure good, but come on, better to use zbrush optoins. All the pros use zbrush. And Maya has better tools too, you can get maya for cheap so it's totally worth it.

What I think blender is good at is uv editing, that is very good. It's also amazing to have the greasepencil tool, that in my opinion is one of the best features. Even if I am not expert in greasepencil, I already found that it is a huge advantage, allows literally to draw on 3D space that is simply awesome.

 

[8InchFloppyDick]

clero - I think you may have misunderstood the purpose of Daz studio.... It's a front-end to the Daz3D shop where you buy assets that you can then kitbash, pose and light in the fabulous jankiness that is Daz studio.

Its audience is also different from the one that a 'proper' 3D tool like Blender/Maya/Zbrush targets. Daz users are either less proficient in modelling/texturing /rigging etc. or they _choose_ to forgo sinking the amount of time needed into producing high quality 3D models themselves.

In the end, it's simply much quicker to get to the fapping stage by using Off-The-Shelf assets like the ones that originate from the Daz store and Renderotica. Which is exacly what you want when you are writing a l3wd VN.

 

[Deleted member 1121028]

they _choose_ to forgo sinking the amount of time needed into producing high quality 3D models themselves.

It's not even making 3D models themselves, most one-man-army amateur dev will grab assets here and there (VN or not). Most won't make their asset, even more so when we talk about a full PBR environement. And price for quality PBR assets is on another level of the Daz shop pricing -_-!. Even professional themselves take clear shortcut, mostly nobody today create a skin from

You must be registered to see the links

.

There is reason you don't see (even ~semi) realistic VNs popping left and right made Cycle/Vray/Arnold/Octane/whatev, it's absolutely chronophagous & expensive, and when one pop, it's 9 out of 10 subpar of what could be done simply with Daz/Iray with 1/10th time. I would add Iray/UberShader is way more forgiving as pseudo PBR than what you could come across in a full PBR environement, making texture painting/edit less punishing/taxing (which is great for amateur).

As making VNs, imho assets are your bread & butter. Time spend looking for that free wood PBR texture for that chair you made in just 2 hours could be better spend on creating the game itself. You want to spend most of your time iterating your render shots/scenes and nothing else (maybe outside coding the game itself) with a library deep enough that give you a bit of freedom.

I guess it's not really true for a real studio, or at least people working as team with fonctional pipeline (pre prod locked concept/design/asset etc). But most of the time you don't have that opportunity. For all Daz jankiness, its simple framework make actually things happening.