Daz Newb question: Making/buying unique but attractive figures?

[Selek]

I've spent many hours messing with the Genesis 8 Female trying to make an attractive, unique female figure. But even my best efforts aren't particularly hot, lol. I also find hair infernally difficult. I do own ZBrush, but I'm not a great hair stylist for women. (I find it easier to design male hair and male characters.) Daz's own 3D hair generator crashes my PC constantly.

Anyway, I'm debating whether to throw in the towel and buy one or more figures to use in a Ren'py game I'd like to make. But if I do buy something, how can I ensure that she won't look like a hundred other characters from other games? I see that some figures come with varying hairstyles, makeup, lashes, etc. Are there some in particular you'd recommend (particularly for MILF characters)?

I worry that purchasing one character will take me down a rabbit hole of other purchases: clothes, environments, etc. Should I just tough it out and try to produce my own stuff? What do most game creators do?

I know this is a very general question, but I'd appreciate any advice. Thanks in advance.

 

[CocoVC]

Try before you buy. Sail the seas, loot some booty; if you like it, then buy it. If you don't, then discard it.
There are a handful of morphs that can age the 20-something look most DAZ characters come with. But if those morphs aren't to your liking, then import the figure into Z-Brush and sculpt the changes yourself.

 

[probably_dave]

I would say most games on here use purchased (or maybe pirated) assets. This is the quickest and easiest way for most people to create their games. It's fairly rare for games to use fully self-created assets.

The key for me is to then customize what you've bought through morphs/textures/shaders. This applies to pretty much everything, not just characters. There's an on-going joke in this forum for repeated use of certain assets (like the clothes store). Moving things about and repainting the surfaces can easily avoid this.

The learning curve on Daz is quite steep, but each render you do will improve your skills. It will take many, many, many hours to generate 'hot' renders as it isn't only just the model, but also the scene, lighting, etc.

If money is limited, I would recommend you plan out what you'll need for your project. Downloading from this website is an option (as mentioned by CocoVC) to 'try' before you buy. Remember though, it will take some skill to match the preview renders you see.

As for morphs, I tend to mainly stick to two morph packs for my female models:

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(or here)
This is what I use for general customization to give each character an unique look from the standard purchased models

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(or here)
I use this (but not to the extreme) for aging characters. It's not brilliant, but does remove that 'perfect' look from some characters. Also, if you want to age characters, the skin will also need to be aged. I have a few older models from the Daz store which I reuse their skin on other models. You can also use

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(or here) but I find the result vary and it's a bit awkward to use with Genesis 8.1 models.

One thing I would recommend however, is to check out IT Roy on YouTube (

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). He's made some really good tutorials for beginners. In particular, he walks you through the Daz Store and suggest what to look out for when shopping (

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) plus he covers other asset sites too. I also has a lot of general guides of how to create characters, setting up a scene, lighting, etc. and is even working through a full project of creating a VN from scratch (Ren'py + Daz).

I hope this helps, but just remember, it does take time and a lot of practice to make fully beautiful renders. Stick at it and you'll notice the improvements.

 

[Deleted member 1121028]

If you own Zbrush, you can send your base mesh to it, push subD level 1 or 2 times, scult & rebake normal(s), and resend your base mesh as a morph. That way you can make your own unique model/face.

Daz stranded hair is weird, as they got mostly technical aspect right. You can pull correct hair density, iirc around 100k/150k, and the shader is alright. But let's say clamping hair with that UI and lack of option is quite a disaster (ain't no Xgen lol).

There should be dForce hair also, but Daz decided it was better to lock the tool for assets creator (as well as high subD morphs) so they can take their 50% cut on it when they sold them.

I worry that purchasing one character will take me down a rabbit hole of other purchases: clothes, environments, etc. Should I just tough it out and try to produce my own stuff?

There is a whole galaxy between tweaking/transforming few assets and making your own from scratch. Those 2 options doesn't weight the same at all.

 

[Selek]

probably_dave Thanks for all that thoughtful advice, and thanks in particular for the links to that YouTube series and the various Daz assets. The Youtube resource seems superb. As you mentioned, he even has a series on how to make a VN. That, and his beginner tutorials, will keep me busy for a while. I can afford to invest some money into a project, but I want to know what I'm doing before I start buying stuff.

No_Name Thanks for your thoughts on ZBrush. Yes, I've spent some time importing the Daz G8 model into ZBrush and modifying it there. I've had some success doing that, but as you say the hair is a real obstacle. And yeah, I can see that it's not feasible for a solo developer to do everything from scratch.

Thanks again for all your help.

 

[hansolocambo]

"Should I buy"?

Buying on the DAZ store, stuff made by random unknown and very very amateur John Doe(s) is a really terrible idea.

Go on a pirate DAZ website, download 10 random environment DAZ bundles. Open the props in ZBrush (GoZ) and check the wireframe : it goes from utterly terrible to ... just barely acceptable. People selling on DAZ stores have, for the huge majority, no idea about what's a polygon. They certainly don't know what optimization means.
Planning to make a game with assets bought on such a store is suicidal.

"What do most game creators do" : As it's modeling you talk about, they do it all from scratch.
Except very very specialized 3D modelers working only on clothes or armors might eventually use male/female basemeshes to work on. But most if not all artists I met along the years do everything from scratch. It takes a bit longer but two major advantages :
- Doing the same thing more than once, you gradually improve the end result and your skills.
- Working on assets from scratch is the only way to end up with an original looking style.

 

[Selek]

Buying on the DAZ store, stuff made by random unknown and very very amateur John Doe(s) is a really terrible idea.
...People selling on DAZ stores have, for the huge majority, no idea about what's a polygon. They certainly don't know what optimization means.... Planning to make a game with assets bought on such a store is suicidal.

...most if not all artists I met along the years do everything from scratch. It takes a bit longer but two major advantages :
- Doing the same thing more than once, you gradually improve the end result and your skills.
- Working on assets from scratch is the only way to end up with an original looking style.

Thanks for this really useful reply. I've spent the past few days making stuff from scratch, and the results aren't too bad -- and they are original-looking. I've been making my own hair, my own ZBrush morphs for the G8 model, my own makeup (editing skin textures in Photoshop), my own poses. OK, my makeup is kinda scary, like an 8 year old playing with eye shadow, but I imagine I can improve. I'm now thinking about trying the Marvelous Designer free trial to take a crack at clothing, which I see as the big enchilada. (I have made some clothing in ZBrush but it's slow going. MD looks much easier.) Environments worry me less, as I do have some experience making hard-edged models in ZBrush and Blender. I've got lots of experience posing and animating.

Regardless of what assets I make myself, a looming issue is my hardware. I've got a GTX980, just 4G of VRAM. So far it's performed surprisingly well making renders in Daz, but right now I'm just rendering single figures with a simple background. But my system is 12 years old now and needs to be replaced anyway. I just wish nVidia cards weren't so expensive right now.

 

[Deleted member 1121028]

Buying on the DAZ store, stuff made by random unknown and very very amateur John Doe(s) is a really terrible idea.
Go on a pirate DAZ website, download 10 random environment DAZ bundles. Open the props in ZBrush (GoZ) and check the wireframe : it goes from utterly terrible to ... just barely acceptable.

El famoso

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You must be a beast bruh.