My Daz questions: As I learn it

[Saki_Sliz]

Yeah, Blender 2.4, 2.6 and 2.7 all had slightly different looking UI but were the top 3 version of blender that had many old tutorials made using them.
Now 2.8 is out (after 3to 5 years of no updates or so) and it has a drastically new UI. Good to see your trying to use some architect tools. I have thought about it, but I am lazy and stubborn and prefer to do it more manually.

(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)
).

oh the windforce fans are pretty cool. I think the 8G VRAM is definitely going to help, as about 30% of all computation time is spent on data movement, if your running out of vram and your computer is compensating using its own ram or virtual ram, then that number jumps to the majority of render time spend is fetching data, so this should drastically help, plus a faster gpu is always nice. I myself never made the jump to water cooling or AIO cooling, instead I focus on large heat sinks and bequiet! products. a fan that runs at a bout 24dB is near silent, where room ambience is 23dB, and I have fans rated at as low as 22dB, so people can walk in while i am sleeping, try to be quite and look for stuff at my desk, and get scared when the screen flashes on because they couldn't hear anything was turned on it is that quite. But now that I think about it, it is time to dust it again XP

 

[Hamfist]

if I can figure out the architect tools I can build my rooms and scenes pretty easy because they dont have to be top notch photo-real for my game, in fact I would almost prefer they weren't so the focus is on the characters and the story not how much time I put into the background brick wall (or whatever is in the background.)

 

[Hamfist]

I'll have to watch some more of blend gurus videos but most of his stuff is far advanced past what I am trying to learn. but he's working on 2.8 so it's my best chance of learning it right. it took me 20 minutes of googling just to figure out how to get the architect add on activated and loaded. because it says it's included (it is) but it never tells you you have to turn it on and load the thumbnails.

 

[Saki_Sliz]

Since I haven't used architect, I don't know if it does things like have a collection of ready to use shaders or not. I believe another mod (that needs to be turned on) allows you to simple look at a menu and click to add things like desks, lamps, etc. which those I know have materials with them.

If you don't have materials, I recommend looking for procedural textures. Textures that are generated mathmatically. The best ones are 3D textures, however most of the community have not caught onto using the term 3D to describe textures yet. a 3D texture is a texture that exist in 3D space, so when you apply it to an object, it acts like the object is cut out of what ever material was assigned to it, the best example being 3D wood textures, these are my top 3 wood textures, I also thrown in a draw wall shader so you can set a base color for a room.
good for

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, some of these may need to be fixed in order to work with 2.8 but other than that they should still be good. To use these, you need to learn how to append materials and node trees to an existing project (starting with your project being open, go to file/append, and browse for these blend files with the material you want, go into the blend file and pick out the material you want, and accept, assign that matterial to an object before saving (else blender will auto delet unused materials), if they have dumb names, then you're going have to close everything and open the file to see what object have what materials and what names they have been given.)

 

[lancelotdulak]

Hamfist you can literally do anything cg in blender. Daz is better with people.. far better for a host of reasons. For what we do on this site blender doesnt compare. And blender has a STEEP lending curve (i just dont want to memorise the keyboard shortcuts mostly heh.. there are a bajillion of them). So if you want to create This kind of game etc id strongly suggest you stick to learning Daz. You can open it up and drop in assets and render them.. but it is FAR more powerful than that. Id suggest you work in daz until you get burned out for the day then.. pop open blender and play.

There are a crazy number of tools out there.. C4d, maya, rhino, blender, houdini etc. That rabbithole is DEEP. And a lot of us here have jumped deep. Id really suggest you focus on one thing and expand later. I started programming in basic and program in 10+ languages (and am very rusty) by doing that. The alternative is being halfassed at a lot of stuff.... you can see the fantastic daz artists in the games here and the ones who.. well... they opened it i guess.

 

[lancelotdulak]

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

blender changing keybindings is a nightmare. My biggest criticism of blender is its insistance on focusing on memorised key bindings (and a giant printout of them laying on your desk)

 

[Hamfist]

Id suggest you work in daz until you get burned out for the day then.. pop open blender and play.

that's basically what I have done only. I waited several days before digging into blender.

between learning python for renpy, and daz it was a lot for the first week, but i'm also learning the limitations of (or rather some of my limitations in) daz basically if I want stupid props or scenery i'll have to pay out the nose. unless I can make them myself. I have no problem spending money on things I need, but I'm not how do you say, rich. by any stretch of the imagination. so if I have to spend thousands just to buy the stuff for the environments for the game it's going to come to a screeching halt really fast.

but I also don't want to use pirated assets, If I ever publish a game I don't want to wind up sued for something stupid like a pirated background. So everything I am moving into daz for use has that commercial 2d or open license. and if I build stuff myself in blender I can leave it as open license for everyone to use.

I still have a ton to learn on all aspects of this from the coding to moving things from blender to daz or back the other way from daz to blender, to just the basic how to's in the programs.

I have no problem exploring a rabbit hole, Winter is quite long and cold here so I have months to gain basic competence. I don't have a patreon so I don't have to worry about dead lines or meeting anyone's expectations other than my own (which are high enough).

I do want to say I appreciate everyone's advice as I make this journey it's been a load of fun so far.

 

[lancelotdulak]

that's basically what I have done only. I waited several days before digging into blender.

between learning python for renpy, and daz it was a lot for the first week, but i'm also learning the limitations of (or rather some of my limitations in) daz basically if I want stupid props or scenery i'll have to pay out the nose. unless I can make them myself. I have no problem spending money on things I need, but I'm not how do you say, rich. by any stretch of the imagination. so if I have to spend thousands just to buy the stuff for the environments for the game it's going to come to a screeching halt really fast.

but I also don't want to use pirated assets, If I ever publish a game I don't want to wind up sued for something stupid like a pirated background. So everything I am moving into daz for use has that commercial 2d or open license. and if I build stuff myself in blender I can leave it as open license for everyone to use.

I still have a ton to learn on all aspects of this from the coding to moving things from blender to daz or back the other way from daz to blender, to just the basic how to's in the programs.

I have no problem exploring a rabbit hole, Winter is quite long and cold here so I have months to gain basic competence. I don't have a patreon so I don't have to worry about dead lines or meeting anyone's expectations other than my own (which are high enough).

I do want to say I appreciate everyone's advice as I make this journey it's been a load of fun so far.

you dont have to pay shit. you can import any format into daz. and if not well look where you are..and 3d-load.net. props are never a problem. Landscapes and humans... harder. But props you can do in blender or find for free in minutes

 

[recreation]

Alright, I just rushed through a few posts here, but seeing Mr Biased-Saki here (no offense, mate ), I can already see where this is going, so...

First of all: You can do a lot more in Daz than you can imagine, or as some people might want you to think. I made many of the assets I use in my game myself, and I didn't use anything other than Daz and photoshop. That's interiors and exteriors.

Second, there are shitloads of free assets out there that are made for Poser and Daz, free to use and directly compatible, you just have to look for them, there is even a thread here in the forum dedicated to free Daz assets.

Then there is also the fact that you can import assets that are not made for Daz. Daz can handle all sorts of 3d assets. You might have to fix a few things, like the scale, position, or have to add textures manually if it's an .obj file, but that's still by far easier than learning how to use Blender, or Maya, or whatever and than have to go through all the import/export stuff that never fully works.

For most people Daz is just a basic Character creator, and yes, it's designed that way, but it can do way more than that, you just have to "explore the rabbit hole".

Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with blender or other 3D programs, they are more powerfull than Daz and have their purpose, but you haven't even touched the limitations of Daz, and starting out with Blender will get you nowhere but into developement hell. There is a reason why so many people use Daz, it's quick and easy to get good results out of the box, though, that's sadly also the reason why many daz games/render look similiar and mediocre, many people simply use bought (or pirated) presets and assets instead of digging deeper and learn what Daz is actually capable of...

Anyway, that's just my two cents, I won't stop you if you want to go on with blender, I just want to to warn you, that you possibly took the wrong turn.
We have more than enough failed dev's who underestimated the workload of creating even a simple game, it's not any easy job, and with blender, you'll make it way harder for yourself, by far!

Saki_Sliz Sorry man, but I really don't understand you here. Why would you recommend someone who has never even touched a 3D program (as stated in OP) to use blender for their very first game project?
You work with blender for years and didn't get anywhere near to developing a game, the only thing I've seen from you is a shader and one chacter made in blender AND you started using Daz yourself recently, so why would you do that? I don't get it, it's almost as if you want him to fail!

PS: I just remembered that one post about not being able to work in iray preview mode: Iray has an interactive render mode that you can use in the preview window, it's still not realtime, but it's way faster than the photoreal render mode. You can find it under draw settings.

 

[lancelotdulak]

you dont have to pay shit. you can import any format into daz. and if not well look where you are..and 3d-load.net. props are never a problem. Landscapes and humans... harder. But props you can do in blender or find for free in minutes

btw if you are REALLY into cgi... sign up and install the student version of c4d.. you dont have to focus on it.. its good if you want to make movies.. or do quick anims.. or.. you know.. make star wars 10..

 

[lancelotdulak]

Alright, I just rushed through a few posts here, but seeing Mr Biased-Saki here (no offense, mate ), I can already see where this is going, so...

First of all: You can do a lot more in Daz than you can imagine, or as some people might want you to think. I made many of the

Alright, I just rushed through a few posts here, but seeing Mr Biased-Saki here (no offense, mate ), I can already see where this is going, so...

You just reiterated my post but .. in a nonnice way. He gets it read his last post

 

[recreation]

You messed something up there with you quotes lol

 

[lancelotdulak]

You messed something up there with you quotes lol

pfft i mess up things FAR more important

 

[Hamfist]

btw if you are REALLY into cgi... sign up and install the student version of c4d.. you dont have to focus on it.. its good if you want to make movies.. or do quick anims.. or.. you know.. make star wars 10..

Right now im going ro avoid animations in the game and stick with stills. But maybe in the future. For now i want to nail the basics. And see if i can produce a functional project.

 

[Hamfist]

Alright, I just rushed through a few posts here, but seeing Mr Biased-Saki here (no offense, mate ), I can already see where this is going, so...

First of all: You can do a lot more in Daz than you can imagine, or as some people might want you to think. I made many of the assets I use in my game myself, and I didn't use anything other than Daz and photoshop. That's interiors and exteriors.

Second, there are shitloads of free assets out there that are made for Poser and Daz, free to use and directly compatible, you just have to look for them, there is even a thread here in the forum dedicated to free Daz assets.

Then there is also the fact that you can import assets that are not made for Daz. Daz can handle all sorts of 3d assets. You might have to fix a few things, like the scale, position, or have to add textures manually if it's an .obj file, but that's still by far easier than learning how to use Blender, or Maya, or whatever and than have to go through all the import/export stuff that never fully works.

For most people Daz is just a basic Character creator, and yes, it's designed that way, but it can do way more than that, you just have to "explore the rabbit hole".

Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with blender or other 3D programs, they are more powerfull than Daz and have their purpose, but you haven't even touched the limitations of Daz, and starting out with Blender will get you nowhere but into developement hell. There is a reason why so many people use Daz, it's quick and easy to get good results out of the box, though, that's sadly also the reason why many daz games/render look similiar and mediocre, many people simply use bought (or pirated) presets and assets instead of digging deeper and learn what Daz is actually capable of...

Anyway, that's just my two cents, I won't stop you if you want to go on with blender, I just want to to warn you, that you possibly took the wrong turn.
We have more than enough failed dev's who underestimated the workload of creating even a simple game, it's not any easy job, and with blender, you'll make it way harder for yourself, by far!

Saki_Sliz Sorry man, but I really don't understand you here. Why would you recommend someone who has never even touched a 3D program (as stated in OP) to use blender for their very first game project?
You work with blender for years and didn't get anywhere near to developing a game, the only thing I've seen from you is a shader and one chacter made in blender AND you started using Daz yourself recently, so why would you do that? I don't get it, it's almost as if you want him to fail!

PS: I just remembered that one post about not being able to work in iray preview mode: Iray has an interactive render mode that you can use in the preview window, it's still not realtime, but it's way faster than the photoreal render mode. You can find it under draw settings.

Thank you for the insight, im very aware i have barely touched the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what can be done in daz. I plan on expanding my comprehension of the program exponentially. But i also dont want to limit myself. As i gain competence with all the programs i will be able to best determine my final route for the images in this game. As i have said before im in no rush and am doing this simply to challenge myself and learn something new.

I have learned so much so far, and will continue to, and i take everyones advices under consideration.

 

[lancelotdulak]

theres nothing wrong with trying multiple things at once

 

[Hamfist]

posing practice (no clue who the martial artist is in the photo I just googled some images and picked one at random.

 

[Hamfist]

adjusted the body positions its hard to see exactly how much she live person is leaning front back and hip angle, but the limits of posing the daz model meant I had to actually tilt the whole model to get the pelvis angled right then move my way up through the core of the body. the second one is definitely more accurate

 

[Hamfist]

is there (there must be) a way to save pose subsets? I dont care about the model or clothes, I want to be able to save just the poses to apply them to any gen8f (or whatever gen i'm working with) all of the free poses suck for the most part and I dont want to have to recreate every pose I do if I can save them.

 

[Hamfist]

another thing i'm running into is stupid stuff like this there is no scale option for this item to make it fit even though its for gen8 and already "fit to"