3D-Daz My progress tracker for learning Daz3d from scratch

[Mike145]

I'm starting this thread to keep track of my progress with DAZ 3D and 3D rendering in general. My goal is to be able to look back in about six months or a year and see a steady improvement in my renders, plus hopefully a drop in the time it takes to set up scenes. I’m also keeping track of the time I spend learning and researching as a way to measure progress. I'm counting the time learning or researching anything 3D Graphics related.

I work as a software engineer, but I’ve never done 3D graphics before. Just learned a bit of Blender in college a few years ago. So yeah, this is pretty much "from scratch" for me, though I guess that's up for debate.

I’d like to keep this thread mostly to my own posts, but any tips or feedback are welcome. If you notice me doing something wrong or know of a better way to do things, please don’t hesitate to let me know, even if you’re not 100% sure.

I’ll post new renders when I feel like it or when I feel I’ve leveled up in some way. I'm still just starting out, but even from my limited research, it’s clear I’ll need to get deep into lighting and other photography basics to make real progress.

 

[Mike145]

Approximate time spent learning: 10 hours

I've been playing with the software for the past 3–4 days while also watching the DAZ 3D course on the official DAZ channel. I’ve nearly finished the beginner section. There’s just one lesson left where the guy makes a render from start to finish. I wanted to try making a render myself before watching that final lesson so I can see how I might improve it afterward.

Right now, I set up a basic scene using some assets in about 10 minutes and fiddled with the render settings. Here’s the result. Later I'll post the same render with improvements based on what I learn in the video.

First render with default settings

Spoiler: img

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

The same image but using denoiser

Spoiler: img

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

I didn't like how the denoiser removed some details from the reflections on her lips so I put denoiser iteration start at 4950/5000 instead of 4500/5000. I think it's a little bit better now

Spoiler: img

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

I'm not a fan of how the text looks on the machine behind her, but not sure how to fix it right now.

 

[Mike145]

Approximate time spent learning: 13 hours

I didn't learn as many new things as I expected from the start-to-finish render video, but just implementing depth of field made a noticeable difference.

I also added Mesh Smoothing to the dress to reduce how much the dress mesh penetrates the hand. The basic 3 collision iterations weren't enough, so I increased it to 10. It looks better now, especially from the front, though it still clips through a finger, which is visible from the back no matter the setting. Overall, it seems like a useful feature for handling simple mesh clipping. (Edit => Object => Geometry => Add Smoothing Modifier).

Spoiler: dof + mesh smoothing

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

I think I'll stick with this shot until the end of the course for comparison. I saw that post-processing is covered near the end, and I believe using the same shot will make it the easiest to notice the differences.

 

[Mike145]

Approximate time spent learning: 22 hours

I've been taking it easy and spending most of my learning time on other things, like exploring Ren'Py. It was a nice change. As a programmer, I found it quite easy and straightforward, at least compared to other engines like Unreal, which is incomparably more complex and requires you to grasp many more concepts, but is also much more powerful.

Returning to 3D, I mainly focused on learning about lighting and a bit of post-processing. I also briefly explored some photography basics, like composition but it was only a quick overview.

In previous versions of this shot, the lighting was set to Sun-Sky only, so you could say it was configured automatically. I must admit, I was pretty lucky with the character's positioning, it looked good right from the start.

This time, I turned off the Sun-Sky setting and created my own lighting using the three-point lighting principle. Here's how it looked in Daz.

Spoiler: lighting workspace

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

This is how the render turned out.

Spoiler: 3 point lighting

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

I also played around with the tone mapping settings because I preferred the warm lighting in the previous render.

Spoiler: tone mapping

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

Instead of using tone mapping for adjustments, I did basic post-processing in Photoshop. This is probably the best approach since it allows you to preserve the render's details and ensures you have something to go back to without needing to render it again. The results were very similar.

Spoiler: post process

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

I think at this point I’ll leave this scene alone and focus on practicing other skills.