How do published artists make characters? (part 2)

joseph06

Ok, so a while back, I had asked a question about how artists like Sabby make their custom characters that are then for sale in the store. I then answered my own question and other people gave me the same response that the artist takes a base Gen 3 character and then sculpts it to make morphs. There was one character that I noticed (and I'm willing to bet there's a lot more that I haven't noticed yet) that do not say anything about using Zbrush. Instead, it says under required products Girl 7 and Genesis 3 Body Morphs. (The character I'm talking about btw is Lauren for the Girl 7). I would imagine then that the artist who created this character took the basic Girl 7 character and then applied certain body morphs to it. However, when I load Lauren into Daz, the only morph that is not 0% is the Lauren morph. (None of the morphs such as thin, voluptuous, pear figure, etc are greater than 0%). Did they create this a different way then?

Rashad Carter

I'm not an expert at all, but hewre's what i think is going on.

1. Unless they are Merchant Resources, one is not allowed to use pre-existing morphs to create new characters that are meant to be made for sale.

2. Considering issue number 1, this means that any characters you intend to sell must be fully morphed by you from the base figure with no morph dials active.

3. You'll need to import a Genesis 3 female into DS in her base form with no additional morphs. You then need to export her to z-brush or whatever app you'll do your sculpting in. Once completed with sculpting you will reimport the Genesis 3 female into DS and assign the new mesh as a morph on the original Genesis 3 female.

4. So if you want a heavy looking character, you're going to have to manually produce that heaviness vertex by vertex without the benefit of the included "Heavy" morph. You'll need to move all those vertices around manually.

5. The good thing is that because of this workflow, all the included sliders still operate.

6. On second thought I think in some cases you might use included morphs or morphs from other packages, but they must be listed as "required products" such that if a  buyer doesn't own the particular pre-made morphs you've accessed, they will not be able to produce the character at 100% accuracy.

joseph06

Ok thank you Rashad

nicstt

You can create a character using morphs; you need to specify it is a required product; that way anyone buying your product would know they needed to have bought the other product too.

How folks feel about paying you to move the dials they purchased probably depends on what else you include, and how much morphing you do that doesn't include dials. :)

I've seen it in products, and it hasn't always stopped me from purchasing the item, it has stopped me some of the time though.

Richard Haseltine

A shaping preset will store the values but not the morphs. It is possible to create a master slider that will set the morphs. Both are aceptable, but both should then show the morphs as used. In this case i suspect that the Body Morphs may be needed for the nipple, nail, or navel morphs which are not on by default so wouldn't show.

nonesuch00

Well take the stock G3F and G3M characters and apply different texture sets and hairs to them and watch how different they can look so you could always create a texture and hair set for G3M and G3F alone and I imagine would be a pretty popular PA if you produced quality textures and hairs.

Hair is one of the most expensive things in the DAZ Store for how ultimately unflexible what you are buying is. I've not seen one product in the DAZ Store that is simply a texture and hair set with no included morphs.

Of course, I'm not a PA so take my advice with a grain of salt.

Quixotry

nonesuch00 said:

Well take the stock G3F and G3M characters and apply different texture sets and hairs to them and watch how different they can look so you could always create a texture and hair set for G3M and G3F alone and I imagine would be a pretty popular PA if you produced quality textures and hairs.

Hair is one of the most expensive things in the DAZ Store for how ultimately unflexible what you are buying is. I've not seen one product in the DAZ Store that is simply a texture and hair set with no included morphs.

Of course, I'm not a PA so take my advice with a grain of salt.

Since I usually buy characters more for their textures than the morphs (unless the morphs are very good-looking to me, of course), I would love to see good quality standalone texture sets for Genesis, Genesis 2, and Genesis 3. I imagine a lot of people would love to have such textures.

(I am a PA, but all I'm really familiar with is posing so also take my opinion as just that - I don't know most of the ins and outs and whys and why nots of character creation or texturing. )

marble

Mary Baker said:

nonesuch00 said:

Well take the stock G3F and G3M characters and apply different texture sets and hairs to them and watch how different they can look so you could always create a texture and hair set for G3M and G3F alone and I imagine would be a pretty popular PA if you produced quality textures and hairs.

Hair is one of the most expensive things in the DAZ Store for how ultimately unflexible what you are buying is. I've not seen one product in the DAZ Store that is simply a texture and hair set with no included morphs.

Of course, I'm not a PA so take my advice with a grain of salt.

Since I usually buy characters more for their textures than the morphs (unless the morphs are very good-looking to me, of course), I would love to see good quality standalone texture sets for Genesis, Genesis 2, and Genesis 3. I imagine a lot of people would love to have such textures.

(I am a PA, but all I'm really familiar with is posing so also take my opinion as just that - I don't know most of the ins and outs and whys and why nots of character creation or texturing. )

Absolutely agree. I too buy characters for the skins rather than the morphs. Indeed, much of the fun I derive from this hobby is from the morph dials. I buy all the morphing add-ons I can get for that reason. By the way, freckles, moles, scars, and blemishes of any sort would be most welcome.