User Stories

DAZ Studio, Adobe® Photoshop, 3DS Max®, Canon® DSLR

Genesis, Victoria 4, Michael 4, Ghost Agent for Michael 4, Michael 4 Muscle Morphs & Maps, Photo Realism Bundle, Millennium Gorilla

"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. 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 a highly polished look in the very short painting time to which I had become accustomed? My answer was Daz Studio.

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 pose presets I can instantaneously give my characters 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.

Another reason I like to work with Daz Studio is the virtual lighting. I don't have lights or studio space to correctly set up a live photo session to have someone stand there and wait while you try out different lights. It just isn't practical. Don't get me wrong, there's definitely good things that come from that. However, I have found that quick lighting solutions and the ease with which Daz Studio lights can be used are a tremendous value.

One of my assignments was to paint an alluring, dangerous vampiress. I played around with the lighting in a scene with Victoria 4. I discovered in about 5 minutes that pink under lighting served to make her stand out, give her a certain girlish appeal, and make her dangerous-looking without going over the top. I discovered that red light was too harsh for this type of picture and blue light lost too much femininity. I might have figured that out during the painting process but it would never have been as easy as tweaking a color slider. I never could have discovered that in a photo session.

Michael 4 and Victoria 4 are very good looking models and I use them just the way they are for the purposes mentioned above. What amazes me is how many morph settings Daz 3D offers for their 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 Daz 3D’s 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.

With Daz Studio's drag and drop features I can have my 3D reference done before the other guys have modeled out just a head. Also, Daz Studio is free! With no upfront cost to purchase the program and use its most fundamental features, how could anyone not try this software? With the pay-as-you-go system I can buy only what I need and just when I need it. The content that I can purchase is continually fresh and getting better. I am free to use not just my own creative mind and resources, but can also leverage the creativity and hard work of a lot of other great artists."