My Daz questions: As I learn it

[Hamfist]

I'm working on creating all kinds of poses just to get used to moving things in daz and not making the characters look like they are having a seizure

 

[Hamfist]

I realized by the time I went to bed yesterday I had been in front of my computer for almost 20 hours straight.... crazy 4:15 am to 11:45pm... definitely becoming more comfortable navigating daz, also got a pile of coding done for the game which is nice.

 

[KiaAzad]

daz have recently added dforce, it's used to drape clothing and hair, however, not all hair or clothing is made for Cforce and for older assets the more likely case that might happen is the hair to fall off or go completely nuts

 

[Hamfist]

Another positive note I picked out my new video card and ram chipset, should be able to order them soon got permission from the boss (wife) to order them. so my board will have a way better card and maxed out ram.

I have already upgraded my cooling system so that's no worries, I went from just one case fan to a massive liquid CPU cooler with fan, 2 front case fans drawing in and one rear case fan running exhaust, that paired with the full open top venting should keep things cool enough. I'm going to have to run stress tests once the new vid card and ram is in to keep an eye on things. I almost went full liquid cooled but with my luck I'd spring a leak. and of course I had to have the fully controllable RGB led fans and strip lights, because everyone knows LEDs make everything run faster (just like a flame paint job makes a car faster)

 

[Hamfist]

not to jump tracks but I cracked open blender today and went through the tutorial for how to build a doughnut, I can see why people make their own resources in blender holy crap, it's not insanely hard. with a couple weeks of practice I should be able to make or get my hands on all the nonsense props or surfaces and objects I need kitchen bathroom (even if they are low quality by comparison it wont hurt my story any as long as they are close enough.) have to start somewhere. blender is actually what I thought daz was supposed to be when I downloaded it. between these two programs I should be able to do some neat things (even if only poorly)

 

[KiaAzad]

and I'm rendering on a five+ years old laptop

 

[Hamfist]

no judgement here, my last computer was 12 years old before the hard drive failed. I've been building this once since last year. so technically at this point it's outdated too. it's funny with computer technology, one it hits the store shelves its obsolete....lol

 

[Hamfist]

I just made sure when I got this one I got a good mother board and cpu, and the case I wanted nice clean all black with excellent mounting options and fully vented face, top and back, with a glass wall. then minimal extras , no cdrom (who needs it) and have slowly been upgrading the rest. though my last upgrade was the monitor that doesn't help much with the computers performance but damn I love me a high refresh rate 4k curve screen (though I generally run at 1080p just because the extra detail isnt needed in 99% of programs) . lots of people will crank their boxes up and overclock and load them with power sucking equipment and not pay enough attention to keeping their box cool. so that was one of my first steps was to ensure no matter what I put in here it's not going to cook. We wont even discuss how many people don't clean their fans and computers insides regularly.... I like video games and movies so decent performance is a must from my machine. and i'm hoping this one will go for 12 years like the last one did. Though with the rate technology is improving it probably wont. my kid will wind up with this one and I'll build another one through the same process.

 

[Hamfist]

after spending the better part of the day working with blender and learning some of the starting steps, I can see a fair balance of creating only what I can't find, and utilizing what I can find. There's tons of things I could potentially create quickly and fairly easily (room layouts, even streets and alleys, or other open scenes) as long as they arent too taxing on my lack of skill. again like daz theres tons of prefab "items" you can buy to reduce creation time easier to buy a faucet than make one.

Sorry mental fatigue. I also understand why people go to school for 3d design (I did standard drafting classes for blue prints but never got into CAD, man did I miss out on a head start). each program I look at or try has advantages and disadvantages. the biggest pit fall for me personally (not that you asked) is trying to remember all the 42000 tools and settings and quick keys among which piece of software. I know that's an exaggeration but I'm tired...

 

[KiaAzad]

well, you don't really need to learn all of the tools, you only use a handful of them constantly, for the rest, you just need to know such a tool exist for occasional use.

 

[Hamfist]

very true. it just seems like a lot at first, of course I knew this going into it. Or rather, I knew that I didn't know anything about what I was about to try to learn, which makes it a fun challenge. Definitely gaining comfort working in daz if not much competence.

 

[Hamfist]

it's like blender guru said in his tutorial 20/80 you only need to really know 20% of the stuff 80% of the time, (I did manage to get through level one of his turorial and make a doughnut) which was pretty cool since that probably would have taken me months to muddle my way through without step by step instructions.

 

[Saki_Sliz]

anyone have tips for making her face a little more youthful that early 20's glow

The two easiest is to make the eyes a bit larger (relative to the size of the head's proportion), make the head a bit bigger relative to the body (thus the character may need to be a bit smaller so the head looks to be normal size) and make the cheek bone less pronounced and puff up the cheeks so they are not so thin, try to remove laugh lines (usually, partial face morphs aren't good enough for this, you need full-on character head morphs), other tricks (which I can't remember the name for but there is a science behind this) might want to ever so slightly shorten the legs.

this render took 31 minutes for JUST the two models

I use blender for many reasons, and optimization is one of them. I don't like renders to take longer than 2 minutes, I won't tolerate anything longer than 7 minutes (each minute per render = how many days it would take to render a 1 minute animation rendered at 24fps) I'm trying to get into EEVEE rendering which takes about 40 seconds with complex scenes and lighting, at a possible loss of realism.

now please critique does the body shape look to you like she's actively in the middle of a cartwheel? if not what would you suggest I move to make it look like a more natural motion.

I find it is not often a question of, does this look convincing, but rather, since most of the time players only really glance at an image, if you learn how to exaggerate a motion (which is often not realistic) it easily makes it clear what is going on and ofter viewers don't further critique the image. With that said if I made the pose myself, I would actually do it differently. I could still do the one hand on the ground, but I would try to make it look more like she is walking on her hands than an active cartwheel. The difference and the trick is to make her look balanced and locking some joints. it looks like her head is still forward while looking up, I would actually bring her head back before rotating her head to look anywhere, this would be part of a bid to bend the whole spine as if to say the upper half where her legs are, are trying to fall flat on her back but by curling she keeps balanced. kinda hard to explain, and naturally unless you are above average in flexbiilty and trying to look good while cartwheeling (such as how a performer would do), doing it with more curve as I would would be more of an exageration and not natural, the issue with truly natural is too often we are ridged in how we perform some tasks, but often bad art is due to ridged poses, so it can be a no win situation sometimes. Learning the art of exaggeration is the skill I have been chasing after the longest and will probably be one of those things I never trully settle on a final solution or technique or definition, and I think it is one of those things not taught but something each person should define for themselves.

 

[Saki_Sliz]

I cracked open blender today and went through the tutorial for how to build a doughnut, I can see why people make their own resources in blender holy crap, it's not insanely hard.

Ah, welcome the blender community then , hopefully it is better than what it was in the past for new users, as the main problem with learning blender in the past was that all the functionality used to be hidden behind hot keys, now the tools are much more visual and interactive.

you can find a tone of free safe for work assets at blendswap.com such as stuff for homes, I would really recommend finding lightbulbs, the shader for a light bulb is simple, but clever, I recommend finding a model that shows what the bulbs look like when on. you can find sinks and other things, but yet the selection isn't fully encompassing, so it can inspire you but not be exactly what you need, so you'll have to make your own or modify something you find still.

I also recommend trying out rooms and windows, because again they have clever simple tricks with shaders to make the materials look dope realistic (ie you can optimize renders by applying certain operations based on what kind of ray trace light is trying to pass through glass). EEVEE is still relatively new, so most shaders are built for Cycles and don't translate well to EEVEE despite the two are using the same nodes most of the time.

I'd love to talk computer specs, I consider my computer to be a 'Zen Class Battle Rig' which is a dead silent gaming computer.

 

[Hamfist]

I'd love to talk computer specs, I consider my computer to be a 'Zen Class Battle Rig' which is a dead silent gaming computer.

At this point my computer is a bass fishing boat (better than a canoe but no zen class battle cruiser, somewhere in the middle).... Its almost completely silent except for the multitude of fans which all run quiet but no fan is ever totally silent. or if I access something in storage on the hdd (which is used as a back up drive for important stuff in case one drive or another craps out.

Front back and top vented simple black case with glass sidewall

mother board is a GA-78LMT-USB3 R2 (I could have gotten a better one but maybe someday i'll upgrade that)

I have two SSD at 1tb each and one HDD at 1tb (for seldom used programs and storage).

Right now only 16g ram (that will be doubled shortly), 18g of virtuial memory,

six core processor running stock at 3.5, though I could easily clock it up to 3.7 or 3.9 I just don't see the need. the marginal increase for extra heat and power consumption isn't worth it right now though that may change later. Liquid cooled with independent fan.

As I mentioned before two intake fan one exhaust fan(I think I wrote that backwards earlier) plus the fan on the CPU cooler (all rgb led)., and obligatory LED lighting (just for chuckles), all LED and fans are hook to the same controller for color patterns and settings. except the CPU cooling fan is always red I don't know why but I always leave it red.

the video card is an radeon rx560 w/2g ram for now (that's changing later this month to a
GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER GAMING OC 3X 8G Graphics Card, 3 x WINDFORCE Fans, 8GB 256-Bit GDDR6, (most likely)
).

the monitor is a 26" 4k curve screen (I generally keep it set at 1080 though) I have a standard flat monitor that I can hook up for a second screen if I need it but my desk is pretty crowded so most times it sits out back unhooked.

cerebus back lit keyboard and 5 button mouse (I like to keep my mouse controllers simple I hate 52 button mouse)

surround sound external speakers and 7.2 (I think) headset with mic.

 

[Hamfist]

can't get my doors to appear in my walls in blender they just appear at center, the tutorial says they will appear in selected wall. wtf am I doing wrong?

 

[Hamfist]

every tutorial has all different versions of blender because none of the displays look anything like mine.

 

[Hamfist]

this is what my blender looks like,

 

[Hamfist]

ok just as a blender starter tip for anyone wondering, vodka drinks and free range blender attempts don't mix. fun and entertaining as it is.

 

[KiaAzad]

Blender had a big update recently and most of the key bindings have changed, you need to keep that in mind watching older videos.