[R>Artist 3D] Paid looking for experienced environmental artist/teacher, $30/hour, max 20h, for now.

[Panda007]

Project:
private, for now

Developer:
me, nothing public/official yet

Looking for:
experienced Blender/Daz Studio environmental artist who likes to, and is good at teaching others.

Employment Type:
Paid, fixed price of $30/hour, amount of hours depends on the success of our initial sessions.

We won't do any of the time-consuming rendering during our sessions (other than the occasional run to teach me about them).

If you are highly experienced, and a great teacher, we can discuss a higher fee, and even future collaborations based on revenue sharing (but this teaching job won't include revenue sharing, and I'm paying you either way, regardless of what the future brings).

Work commitment:
One off project, short to medium term (within the next two months), maximum of 20 hours.

Preferred method of contact:
DM, leave me your email address and I will get back to you within a week.

Job Description:
I'm an experienced programmer and competent writer. I have an idea, and a first chapter/prologue of a story I would like to tell. I have dabbled in 2D graphics using PS/Illustrator before, and have played around with some 3D graphics before, but nothing too serious. I am looking for an experienced 3D environmental artist to get my feet wet and familiarise myself with the world of 3D modelling, textures, depth maps, posing, lighting and other relevant topics. I realise that 20 hours of teaching won't make a professional, but I want to be able to at least start playing around and bringing some life to the story.

Additional comments:

• I would like to use screen sharing to collaborate while learning
• Alternatively, or simultaneously, pre-recorded sessions are also a possibility, depending on the quality and the availability to ask questions later (if you want, you can redistribute these videos, or make them publicly available for others to learn as well).
• I am mostly interested in modelling and staging environments, model poses, applying materials to models, and working with camera's and lighting
• Right now I am looking at building environments in Blender, importing them into Daz Studio, and modelling the characters there, but I'm open to suggestions for other workflows
• I am also interested in creating unique models, although I realise this might be a topic on its own, so let's at least discuss the topic, and see where we go from there
• I've watched all the
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  , so we'll have to go deeper than that, I've also gone through a few basic Blender tutorials
• I have an initial single scene we could work on (short description: large industrial freezer unit, pieces of meat hanging on hooks, a big fan in one wall to create a nice lighting/shadow effect, it's misty inside due to the cold, in the middle two characters are hanging upside down, each on their own hook, one male, one female, they have been hanging there for a while, they are cold, freezing, they look exhausted, their arms and hair need to look realistic (i.e. downwards due to gravity)), it is okay if we use/buy prefab models/props, but we'll probably have to add some custom props as well, but this is TBD
• It is important to me to create interactions between the environment and the characters, not just pose them in front of a backdrop
• I'm not particularly interested in lewd/naked scenes at the moment. That will come at some point, but my main focus is on learning the ropes, and most of my story will be about the build-up/relationship building/suspense/imagination/teasing anyway, so sex scenes are less of a priority for me at the moment

 

[KiaAzad]

Daz3D doesn't really have much to learn, it's all about finding or creating the models you need and bringing them to daz to render.
for your initial scene, you can model the freezer, mean and hooks in a 3D software (blender is free), texture them (you can do it in blender but substance painter is easier, more powerful and looks awesome), then import them to daz to pose your characters in it.
The arms wouldn't be much of problem however the hair might give you some grief since not all hair models are made for DForce and draping.
Then you'll find out that daz doesn't have soft-body simulation and collisions, the models skin is a paper thin layer that ropes go right through, you'll need to fake those, not that much of atmospheric effects either. at least not in the assets I own.
Render goes relatively smooth, but you'll have lots of post processing to do in something like Photoshop.

Daz is just a small part of the bigger skill set you'll need.

it ultimately comes back to a choice of which one do you have to spend on it.

• time, to spend on searching tons of free assets on the internet.
• money, to pay someone else to create the models for you.
• skill, to create them yourself.

 

[Panda007]

Thank you for your input KiaAzad.

it ultimately comes back to a choice of which one do you have to spend on it.

• time, to spend on searching tons of free assets on the internet.
• money, to pay someone else to create the models for you.
• skill, to create them yourself.

I agree. I'm a sucker for learning new things, but I'm also limited for time, so I'm hoping to find some middle ground between the three. I don't mind paying for existing assets, but do like to avoid creating complete cookie-cutter scenes with the same male/female shapes and props found in dozens of other VNs. Similarly, I'd like to manipulate the scene myself, even if I pay someone else to do the groundwork.

Speaking of that, I know an hour of searching via Google/DDG would help me, but do you happen to have a list of top-quality asset stores/sites for Daz/Blender? For Daz I'm familiar with the Daz store itself, and recently found

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as well.

not that much of atmospheric effects either. at least not in the assets I own.

I did find the

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in the Daz store, which does show some

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.

The arms wouldn't be much of problem however the hair might give you some grief since not all hair models are made for DForce and draping.

Thank you for reminding me of dForce, that's definitely what would be needed here. It would seem like there are quite a few choices of hair (for example

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by

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) that I could use in this case (although not nearly as many as regular hair, probably due to the added complexity of making them, and the relatively newness of dForce). I should give one of the cheaper ones a go, to see how things look when turned upside down and rendered using the simulation.

 

[Powerline75]

Thank you for reminding me of dForce, that's definitely what would be needed here. It would seem like there are quite a few choices of hair (for example

You must be registered to see the links

by

You must be registered to see the links

) that I could use in this case (although not nearly as many as regular hair, probably due to the added complexity of making them, and the relatively newness of dForce). I should give one of the cheaper ones a go, to see how things look when turned upside down and rendered using the simulation.

That's only half the reason. Hair, by nature, is even more complicated than a base figure, either alpha textured strands, or fibermesh alike. Now, dForce is running on your CUDA cores, just like the rendering, except, it can be far more tasking for your GPU than the rendering itself. Take a 2 Gigs GPU, pascal architecture, like the GT 1030, or the pre-ti versions of the 1050, and try to run a dforce simulation with more than 2 dynamic items, and more than 2 figures, and, chances are, the simulation will fail (at best) with an error warning, or, at worst, will crash DAZ, and, sometimes, generate a nice BSOD, leaving you hanging dry.

 

[sliveart777]

You can run Dforce simulations one at a time to avoid the problem of not enough memory. Every object that is Dforce compatible can have simulation participation turned off. Like you said, Dforce simulation of hair takes a lot of memory so for multiple characters who need their hair simulated you can have it run one at a time. With a modern video card, even a complex object in a complex scene shouldn't take any more than ten minutes. Then when one is done don't mess with it's posing after that, turn off simulation for it and then do the other figure's hair. Then you can do Dforce clothing pieces or whatever else you want to simulate. The only time this is an issue is when you want multiple Dforce objects interacting as part of a simulation, in which case you have to simulate them together.

 

[Panda007]

After having spent some more time in Daz Studio, and having dipped my toes in Blender, I think I get what you are saying KiaAzad.

To get some initial renders for my story I see two main hurdles right now:

1. Getting realistic (interactive) environments that fit the narrative of my story
2. Creating uniquely looking characters that you won't find in other VNs

Number two is (for starters) mostly a matter of playing around with all the parameters of the models, exporting them to Blender, morphing them some more there, and then using those final morphs to start with. I realise there are much more in-depth changes that can be made to make them more unique, but at least this will give me a place to start.

The first problem - getting realistic interactive environments - is a much broader and more difficult one to tackle. My story has specific environments (such as the one described in the OP) that I will have to create manually (potentially by buying existing 3D objects and textures, such as walls, etc). For this, I have a feeling that using Blender would be the most logical fit, and then import those environments into Daz Studio.

Posing the characters and giving them believable expressions is obviously also an art, but it's less of a problem right now compared to the two listed above.

Given this, I have updated the main post, as I think it matters that whoever contacts me is at least reasonably familiar with posing environments/scenes and building those scenes either from scratch in Blender (or any other tool), or building it from a mixture of self-made assets and off-the-shelf assets.

 

[KiaAzad]

There are few freebie websites, but they're a whole can of worms themselves:

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often you'll run into problem with unpacking, installing and finding them if you want to build up your library. it's like running into a candy shop as a kid, you'll start shoving more and more into your runtime and library directories an before you notice, days have past and you're left with tons of files that give you errors when you try to load them. closing and re opening daz to check every single one of them wasn't an acceptable option for me, therefore, I've given up on them all together.

as you mentioned getting a unique face that looks good can also be a challenge, you'll need quite a number of the same generation figures to have enough morphs to mix and match, but often combining two morphs will cause the face to look wonky, most of the times the nose shrinks too much.

posing I've found relatively easy, the skeleton is very jittery and will ruin your pose when you try to move a joint to it's limits but we have ctrl+z for that. once you get used to it's many problems, all you have to endure is the fact that the amount of work it need bores you to tears.

 

[Panda007]

you'll start shoving more and more into your runtime and library directories an before you notice, days have past and you're left with tons of files that give you errors when you try to load them.

Sounds like every modable PC game I've played in the past I couldn't help myself but adding more and more modifications, and once I was done, the game would constantly crash because one or more were unstable, and I didn't have the time or patience to find out which one was the culprit.

In any case, thank you for the link, I'm mostly interested in high-quality (usually paid) assets though, but I've found quite a list of nice asset stores already.

With some knowledge of Blender and DAZ Studio, I can at least start messing around with simple environments in Blender, import those into DAZ Studio, and then apply some pre-made poses, to get the ball rolling, until I'm able to find someone through this job offer post.

Having said that, importing assets from Blender to DAZ Studio doesn't seem as straightforward as I'd hope. It seems some details, such as UV mapping in Blender isn't automatically transferred over to DAZ Studio if I export as `obj` or `dae` files. I'll go and see if there's any decent tutorial I can find to help me out, but if you have any pointers, feel free to share (or do a recording for others to follow as well, and I'd be willing to pay for that).

 

[KiaAzad]

well, you need to unwrap everything in blender and bake>export the textures as images to re import them into daz, any shape you forget to unwrap can't be textured properly.
You can unwrap in other programs as well.