How do you use DAZ Studio?

I work as an illustrator. My style is highly polished and very realistic which I developed while working as a video game marketing artist. Working at a video game production house, I always had a full team of 3D artists at my back. I would use their in-game 3D characters to develop the marketing art for the various video games on which I worked. Whenever I had an illustration to do I'd sketch a few thumbnails on paper, then grab the in-game assets and start to pose them in 3DS Max. This was a super-fast way to work. I also liked this virtual process because I could come up with creative lighting situations and manipulate the characters into impossible action poses.

However, last year I changed industries, and I no longer had a team of 3D artist to support me. For a while I was perplexed. How could I achieve the highly polished look in the very short painting time to which I had become accustomed? My answer was DAZ Studio.

Even though I spent 5 years as a character animator posing characters, I still find it beneficial to grab the new poses that DAZ 3D offers.

Why do you use DAZ Studio?

I now work in the slot machine industry as well as a freelance illustrator. When I have an illustration due, with one or multiple figures I like to thumbnail out several ideas. Then I break open DAZ Studio and load up Michael or Victoria. DAZ Studio allows me to pose and light my figures anyway I want. Even though I spent 5 years as a character animator posing characters, I still find it beneficial to grab the new poses that DAZ 3D offers. With a pose preset, I can instantaneously give my character some life. I've found the poses sold on DAZ 3D's site to be very good and helpful, saving me time and research. Of course, I tweak the pose to suit the needs of the illustration, but by trying several poses that someone else has created allows me to experiment very quickly and to come up with new and possibly more dramatic poses than I had originally penciled.

What DAZ 3D Figures do you use most and why?

I think both Michael 4 and Victoria 4 are very good looking models, and I would use them just the way they are for the purposes mentioned above. What really amazed me as I got started was how many morph settings DAZ 3D offers for these 2 characters. I have had a lot of fun tweaking the character settings. It's very important to me, since I paint a lot of muscle men to be able to set up a big muscled character in the right pose. These tools allow me to do just that. With its sliders and muscle morphs I can quickly look at "the Hulk" from an angle that just would be impossible for me to find anywhere else.

It's very important to me, since I paint a lot of muscle men to be able to set up a big muscled character in the right pose. These tools allow me to do just that.

When you have the proper pose and angle set up in the scene what do you do next?

Once I nail the pose, lighting and body shape then I render out a high resolution image. I save it out as a PNG which automatically creates an alpha channel (transparent background) for it. I then take that into Photoshop and begin to paint right over top of the image. Sometimes I will allow the original render to show through, it just depends on the image.