Secret Gems
Toonces
Posts: 919
What Daz Studio product do you consider a secret gem -- something you couldn't do without, or something that packs a ton of value for the price? And why. The previous thread we had similar to this was awesome. I learned a bunch of cool software. This one I'd like to focus on stuff that can be used inside Daz...stuff that I can add to my wishlist at Daz or rendo.
Here are mine:
Mec4d PBS Shaders vol.2 for Iray - 450 shaders! What? Insane. I'd have bought it for the wet fabric shader alone, which is great for making any hair wet (in my opinion). I hope this author publishes something new this year.
Anagenessis 2 - Quirky, but once you read the commercial thread and learn it, it's 1 click beautification. Plus it converts old stuff (back to V4) to IRAY. Plus it reduces skins to a single texture map, great for moving maps across the generations. Plus...just buy it already.
UHT2 and OOT hair shaders - tie. I use both. UHT2 is far more powerful with multi-color looks. Drawback is it takes more time to get a good look (sometimes it appears a bit dry). OOT is simpler and get a good look almost immediately. This is just one guy's opinion. With either of these and some patience with hair fitting, you open an entire library of inexpensive older hairs (including free ones) for use in iray/g3.
Urban Sprawl 3 - Honorable mention. I have no idea how long it took the author to create this. But it's massive. I think I got it in a big sale. Not something I use everyday, but it's a ton of value at a low price (especially if you can get a sale which happens).
This really only touches on some of my favorites, but I had to start the list somewhere. :)
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Comments
That combining hairstyles looks like the winner. The only gem I got (from the new guy) is the iray studio that comes with rendering presets so I can test my scenes quickly.
Ghost Lights - instant lighting fix
Facegen
Everything by Zev0
Everything by Sickleyield
Wear them All
Any body products by AliveSheCried -- its too hard to make heavy characters without it. All of those body morphs are must haves!
Growing up morphs
Aging morphs
Hansdpan/Thorne morphs
So many shaders
FaceGen
Genevieve
Mika 7
OOT hair shaders (and UHT2 but looks a bit dry)
Almost all OOT hair
Several IRay shaders to update all the characters
Having the ability to mix so many characters in small increments while still adding your own morphs.
Least liked: ridiculous render times if you don't have an NVIDIA capable machine...
BOSS Lighting System
All lights and shaders by SVEVA
Andrey's Forest pack, the full bundle. It's huge, plenty of room for many different scenes. And the bundle gives you multiple seasons and modular utility. Same wishlist th Urban Sprawl 3 mentioned above.
Diane's Fabtex sets and Khory's fabric shaders.
Hinata dress with its huge pose library. Just wish it had a more kid-friendly neckline.
Always A Lady pose set from Aave. Great set of sedate, non-sexy poses, included as morphs in all her dresses.
Painters Lights.
Mech4D PBS Shaders volume 2, used daily. My number one product too - I've a feeling it will show up in a lot of lists here! I love anything that lets me put my own slant on a product, and resurface practically everything, even if it was good to start with. I've yet to find anything these shaders didn't make look better, and they're brilliant for making ancient products look like they just showed up in the store yesterday.
iRadiance Light Probes, all three sets, used daily. Great lighting and an endless array of subtle backdrops which complement the subject of the render rather than compete with it. It's for this reason that I'll often use them instead of iRay skies, many of which are so busy with clouds that the subject has to fight them for attention.
Facegen. As many morphs and shapes as you want, ethnic and otherwise (we're all ethnic to someone, aren't we?), young and old, whether you're talking Genesis, G2F & G2M or G3F & G3M. I'm not wild about the skin textures, but they can be interesting with a bit of work. I'm expecting this product to really come into it's own and see a lot more use once Zev0 (and Draagonstorm)'s Skin Builder 3 makes an appearance.
Formations for Rock Collection, an addon for Rock Collection - Real World Stones. I've lost count of the amount of renders I've dumped because the rocks looked like a pile of brains. For some reason it seems they're really hard for PAs to recreate convincingly, but these are just so realistic. An added bonus are the low-poly versions, which look almost as good as the high-poly ones. I haven't had them long and waited until I could get the bundle in a sale, but have already used them a fair bit and will be using them a lot in the future.
Stonemason's Streets of Old London. Plenty of interesting little spots and camera angles, and not just good for Victorian renders - it takes very little to make it look like an older part of any modern British city.
Honorable mentions to Zev0's entire output, Taia Hair for G3F (probably used almost daily too), UHT2 Hair Shaders, Painter's Lights and the Batch Render for Daz Studio 4 and RIB. And oh, so many more!
Nice idea for a thread.
I usally find morphs and shader sets to be the most valuable resources as they are the most used from render to render.
Ah, I should've mentioned iRadiance Light Probes too. Ever since I bought it on sale, I use the 'direct' lighting as my go to one-click lighting solution. It creates highlights, reflections, not-too-hard (but not-too-soft) looking shadows, etc.
I added it to script actions so I can setup my lights in a single click (though sometimes I have to click the dome rotation options depending on where my walls are).
Lighting is so important, but often I don't want to mess with it, so it provides an easy answer for newbies. Unlike other HDR packs, it has a TON of colors. So you can click through all the direct one-click setup options to find one that looks good if you want (though I have my fav saved in script options). I only have the specific set you linked to.
I guess these aren't considered so hidden but:
Genesis 3 Head & Body morph bundles for G3M & G3F
The Guy 7 / Girl 7 / Aiko 7 / Kenji 7
Toon Generations 2 Mega Bundle
Facegen
Mech4D's vol 2 of iRay shaders
everything else...despite my very large DAZ & Poser product libraries (1804 and counting)...I often still wind up buy a product or two when I make a render.
I am surprised no one has mentioned https://www.daz3d.com/genesis-generation-x2 plus all its various addons. Incredibly useful to move all your morphs from numerous older figure generations onto the latest figures.
A lot of the same. These are the ones I use most:
Lately I've been using Victoria 3 and LOVE the characters and clothing made for her. Many translate well into Iray (see my art thread.) Totally fun to discover the incredible work put into some of these items over a decade ago. The amount of morphs in some of them compete with much of what's made today. Very nice stuff.
Want to try it. Scared of all the help threads I see posted. I feel burned by LAMH which is NOT on my gems list as much as I'd like it to be.
Interesting. I don't have any DG fabric shaders. Which is your favorite among them?
Also how does one go about loading up on inexpensive V3 clothing? From memory, the $1 ish daz sales tend to have mostly V4 stuff, not V3. Then again, maybe I just glossed over the V3 stuff when shopping.
I like to combine https://www.daz3d.com/painter-s-lights
With any of Dimension Theory's iRadiance - Light Probe HDR Lighting for Iray.
DG has some great shaders- I love her Bling It!, Sequins and Scales, and her emissive shaders. There are still quite a few on my wishlist I'm hoping to pick up. Her stuff is great.
I forgot to add- Fabiana's shaders are the bomb- the satin ones are especially good. And ParrotDolphin's are excellent as well.
On V3- There's usually a ton of V3 on sale if you go back far enough. What I did was put everything I could possibly want on my wishlist by poring over the catalog one day. I use Ati and Overdrawn's Wishlistify tool to sort the sale items by what's on my wishlist and have picked up amazing deals there. A lot of older RDNA stuff is for V3 and M3 as well. What originally sucked me in were the beautiful textures for "The Dress" for V3 and SP3. They are stunning, and not duplicated for newer generations. Blue Moods is gorgeous. You can see my Iray converions of it on my arthread here.
I'll be rendering a lot more Generation 3 stuff as I find time. They're fun to work with.
Cool! Thanks!
I'm hoping someone mentions their favorite pose pack. I'm always looking for a pose pack that's not tied to any scene, preferrably unsexy. Folks post stuff about having a set of favorite poses they use a lot...so I'm curious where they're from.
My current favorite is Daily Poses. Here's why:
I've had issues with that one too and need to dive back into it. I picked up Garibaldi very cheaply as well, but that looks like it has its own learning curve too.
Garibaldi and GenX2 are my biggest regret buys. I had to delete everything I did with GenX2 because the transferred morphs somehow "infected" the base G3F figure and left her strangely disfigured (someone mentioned that the culprit might be the Beautiful Bends morph set but I haven't dared try it again since I deleted all the transfers).
On the plus side, I get a lot of use from:
Love IDG Iray FX Shaders!
IDG Hair Essentials Iray shaders also rock.
Elianeck Iray light sets 1 and 3. I use set one for every test render.
Hinky Punk's Build-a-Babe for those of you into texture tweaking. It's a super handy Photoshop setup.
Facegen Pro. I now make way more characters than I buy.
Stonemason's Fern Lake bundle - just a really awesome outdoor woodland scene.
DZFire's Last Stand. - If you need urban Apocalypse...here ya go...great set with lots of good angles.
I totally agree about Mec4D shader pack 2. This is my go to for most anything architectural and for most metals as well.
NGS2 - It's rare that I render without it. I also have Anagenessis 3 for G3F. But, it is not nearly as easy to use. It will work and get good results. But normally, I just use NGS2.
Goldtassel's Dragonfly hair might be my favorite of all time. But, there are many that I use.
Zev's Breast Control is a must have if you want to create your own saleable characters and don't want to rely on the standard G3F body morphs.
Just a few that I use regularly...of course there are many many more!
A note about outdoor scenes in general:
Most PA's that make this sort of set want to make interesting and unique environments. I totally get that. And, I own a lot of them.
That said, I have to applaud what some PAs are doing by making more universal HDRI domes and sets (aka Flipmode). I often find that what I really need is a grassy plain with a tree or mountain line and a distant horizon where I can put my building(s) and character(s) in whatever sort of arrangement fits the story I'm trying to tell. So, I've been finding myself using mostly the very basic parts of extensive sets.
One hidden gem set that has proven very useful is the Tangy Apple Orchard by Tango Alpha. I don't often need an orchard set. But this set has a really nice grassy ground and road, and a nice tree line. So aside from any apple picking, it makes a great "construction site" for whatever else I want to place there.
This might be something worth developing by the landscape gifted PA's - a series of construction sites: "woodland with clearing," "castle motte with moat (iray version - I know an older one already exists)," "modern suburban lot," etc. Just an idea for developers. A lot of the time I want a very simple ground site and end up hiding a lot of the great work that the PA put into the model.
I do like Terradome 3 and use it often. But, it does take some time to set up plant life on it and make it look a less forbidding environment.
Anyway, just my picks and some thoughts!