New guy full of questions
Hey there !
I'm Sandro from France and I'm just getting into 3-D characters, Daz3 seems like one of the good (and cheap) options to me (in conjunction with Blender probably).
I have some questions that will probably seem silly to the vets but hey you gotta start somewhere right ! :)
- First off, what is the difference between the Content Library and the Smart Content tabs ?
- What are the various Genesis models ? Are Gen3 better than Gen2 ? Why does it jump to Gen8 ?
- Lots of props and options seem to be for Mark4 or Victoria4, why ? They are presets that must be bought separately, are they "must-have" ?
- And last but not least, how do I know which is compatible with whom when I'm in the library explorer ?
Aside from the tutos I'm getting into that would be very helpful, thanks in advance.
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Content Library is an old clunky way of organising your content with a search that doesn't work, and a folder structure that will make you pull your hair our. Smart content is a new clunky way of organising your content, with a search that doesn't work and a folder structure that will make you want to pull your hair out. Smart content tries to group products together with bigger pictures to help you find what content you're looking for.
You have Victoria 4/michael 4 , then Genesis 1, Genesis 2, Genesis 3. Each one of the base genesis figures also has victoria and michael attached, which is basically just a better model with higher quality textures. So you can get M5/v5 for Genesis, M6/V6 for G2 and M7/V7 for G3. When they moved onto G4, I guess they decided the 4 would conflict with the earlier products, so they decided to push the genesis numbering up to match with the victoria / michael numbering.
Yes, each generation offers a slight improvement of the previous ones.
Previous generation items can often be used with newer generation fgures using autofit, which comes built into Daz, or 3rd party plugins on the site
The clothing / poses / skins should all say which item they are intended for. Environments and props can be used with any figure. You get the genesis base figures free, so I usually just buy whichever clothes I want and just use which ever base model it needs. With all the sales etc you can usually pick up the various characters for really good prices, especially if you are on platinum club.
If you are starting out I would highly recommend that you buy a plainum club membership. You will get double your money back in vouchers and really good prices on various items. October is platinum month, so you'll probably be able to pick up a yearly membership for 40% off even.
Smart Content and the Content library are two different ways to find your content. Everyone has their own preferences. Many people love Smart Content, many people don't lol. I, personally, won't touch Smart Content and prefer to download everything via DIM or manually and then organize my content in custom categories so I only have to find it once. Once I have it in my own custom categories I know where it is and don't have to hunt for it. Keep in mind that you can make custom categories using Smart Content as well. I just happen to prefer the Content Library way of doing things. My best suggestion is to try both of them out and see which suits you best.
And I totally second or third joining the Platinum club especially right now with two of the biggest sales months coming up, one of which is the Platinum + sale. Crazy good deals!
Daz have been developing the Genesis figures so higher numbers should be better than lower numbers. Genesis 3 introduced a new rigging system to make limbs bend more naturally. I still use the earlier figures a lot, I'm happy with the way they look.
When you say Mark 4 I think you probably mean Micheal 4. This goes back to the history of Daz. Before Daz Studio was invented Daz made content for a program called Poser. Their frst figures were Victoria and Michael. These went through improvements up to Victoria 4 and Michael 4 and then they introduced Genesis. They made morphs and textures for Genesis to make them like the older figures and these are Victoria 5 and Michael 5. This went on so Genesis 4 would have had a Victoria 8 and a Michael 8, I suppose they jumped to Genesis 8 so Genesis, Victoria and Michael would have the same numbers.
The older figures still work in Daz Studio. I'm an old time Poser user and I still use Victoria and Michael 4, sometimes version 3. You can use autofit to fit older generation clothing onto the new figures but it doesn't work between all generations. Some conversions are included with the figures and you can buy autofit clones to enable other conversions. Autofit is mainly useful for people like me who have built up a collection of stuff. It's less usefull for new users unless you see an old item that you really like, but autofit can be a bit unpredicatable and older items will usually have lower resolution textures than newer items and won't have Iray materials. On the other hand you can often get older generation stuff in sales at low prices and if you join the Platinum Club there's a lot of Generation 4 and 3 stuff you can buy very cheap.
I don't use smart content but I do use categories. I find this the best way to organise things. You can setup categories any way you want and organise you stuff in a way that makes sense to you.
Well thanks a lot guys. that helps a lots, I'm still a bit confused about some issues so if you don't mind I'd like one more pass at it :
"Content Library is an old clunky way of organising your content with a search that doesn't work, and a folder structure that will make you pull your hair our. Smart content is a new clunky way of organising your content, with a search that doesn't work and a folder structure that will make you want to pull your hair out."
Ahahah ok, it's just not me who's an idiot then. It didn't seem intuitive at all. Still, from what I've been comparing in the last days, Daz seems to be the best choice for my buck (Iclone looks great if you have, well, at least 1000 bucks to spend...). So we just have to hope that the Content Libraries will get better with time ?
So if I have the choice I should use mainly Gen3 and Gen8 figures (yes Peter I meant Michael, sorry bout that) ? But there's less compatible props for them right ? And less included in the software.
I got a few V4 and M4 add-ons, which versions will they be compatible with ? Also, I still see M4 and V4 being sold for 30 bucks, strange if they are older versions, that I don't get..
"If you are starting out I would highly recommend that you buy a plainum club membership. You will get double your money back in vouchers and really good prices on various items. October is platinum month, so you'll probably be able to pick up a yearly membership for 40% off even."
I'll definitely do that if by october I have decided for sure that Daz3D will be my go-to tool and if I have made the progress I hope.
From what you guys are saying it looks like buying stuff is the one way to go. I suppose it's because what it gains in time is worth it ? Is it still possible to customize the clothes to the point where it doesn't look like the basic stuff ? BTW that stuff is made, what, in Blender and the like using polygons ? Is the stuff you buy useable in commercial releases ?
Yeah I know, lots of questions, I'm eager to get things done and want to do them the right way. ;-)
For scene building do you guys just buy too, or do you use apps like Bryce / Vue ? And for houses / architecture / inside rooms what would you recommend (compatible with Daz3 / Blender / Unity of course) ?
Thanks again to you 3 ! ;-)
I suppose it depends on what you want to do with it. Daz is great for buying ready made items at really competative prices and creating still images. It's probably not the best for animations as that's not its primary purpose.
I've ended up buying all the characters, so that I can use whatever props I want. Yes the prices are expensive for the older generation stuff, but Daz has a sale every day, and mega sales at least once a month. If you buy platinum membership you will automatically and alway get 30% discount on any Daz original product, including michael / victoria as well as many other items for between 1.99 and around 4.99.
On top of that daz often discounts the M4/v4 items by a further 80%, gen 1 by 70%, gen 2 by 60% gen 3 by 50%.
Right now for example they're running a clearence sale. if you buy 3 new items, you will get 70% off any daz original. So you add 3x$2 plat club items into your cart, use your $6 voucher for those, and then in effect it hasn't cost you anything. You then add michel 4 into your cart- $29. After the automatic 30% discount it's $21. take off the 70% discount and it's now $6.30.
Other times you wont have to buy a new release to qualify for the discount, so you can use your voucher on m4 and get it much cheaper.
So yes, the base price is $30 but you can always get it much cheaper if you're willing to wait. In fact the other day they gave the M4 bundle away for free.
Because you can export any of the items as an OBJ file, it is possible to take it into blender and customize it any way you like. I do it all the time.
You can use the rendered image commercially, but you can't use the 3d object itself. So if you are creating an image of a knight standing in front of a castle, using the props that you bought in Daz, you will be able to use that image as a commercial book cover. If you want to export the 3d model into the unreal engine and use it as a character in a game, then you won't be allowed to do that unless you buy a game license first, and the game license only covers daz original items.
That would be more Blender's role ?
The older generation is more expensive ? I don't get that...
That's great to know ! What is the detail of that voucher ?
Wow ! So maybe I should wait in case that happens again ?
Thanks a lot for this advice man, it helps tremendously !
And just to be clear : you can't morph a character as simply and extensively as you can with Make Human ?
So you get a $6 voucher once a month that you can only use on Daz originals. (Not platinum club items.)
You get a $6 voucher once a month that you can use on anything, so long as you spend over $18.
Plus then of course you always get 30% off daz originals, and thousands of Platclub items for between $1.99 and around $4.99
Yes the best thing to do is to stick to one generation at first, and then slowly build up the rest of them as they come up. Just to be clear though, the genesis base figures are all free, (M4/v4 doesn't have a base model though, and those aren't free.) so if you need to buy a cool looking outfit, you can use them on the base models without a problem,
I've never used Make human, but Daz has an extensive morphing system. Out the box it's a little limited to body builder, emaciated, and fat. You'll have to buy some additional tools to get the most out of it like genesis 3/2/1 face morphs / body morphs. with that you can fine tune the features from heart shaped face to brow width depth and eye height inner etc, you can even add in the creature creator and morph them into monsters, and it's as easy as dragging a slider from left to right. You can get dietrying's morphs for free on sharecg which will give you 182 additional morphs as well.
Ok so I guess with a few plugs it does about the same...
So if I had to buld just one gen, should I start with the oldest (V4, M4, who seem to have lots of free add-ons) or G8 (which must have better qualities but less add-ons) or G3 for middle-ground ?
(edit : post to be deleted, I found the answer to what I posted here)
Click on the tiny button on the left to open your directory pane. I think you've just opened a blank folder somewhere, and then shut the pane by accident.
It depends on what your goals are, what you're hoping to use it for, your timeline for creating goods, what your budget is, which render engine you're going to use etc.
M4 ends up being the cheapest, but the clothing etc probably isn't as nice, and the textures are lower resolution. The hair also isn't great for that generaion. The muscles don't deform as nicely either.
That all gets better as the generations progress.
The hair for Gen 3 is a huge step up over the others and the character / clothing textures are made with the iray render engine in mind. The problem is though that most new items that are being released are going to support G8, but everything is going to be more expensive, and will take a while for all the content to build up/
something that G8 introduced was an easy way to change the characters expressions, which apparently is really powerful and easy to use. (I'm still using gen2, so I haven't played around with it yet) so if you want more realistic facial features then that's something to consider.
When they released Victoria 8 they had an offer where if you bought it you got victoria 5,6,7 free. Same with the victoria standard and pro bundles. Michael 8 should be released soon, so they may just repeat that offer. That will solve your dilema as far as Michael goes at least.
Thanks a lot Bradrg, you're making it all clearer, and it isn't simple to get into such a complex software, with all its evolutions and compatibilities / incompabilities... You and the others have been a tremendous help ! :)
So most of the Victoria 4 props should be usable on all Gen2, 3 and 8 figures, although they might not fit well, right ?
No Problem, glad to help. It really is a lot to wrap your head around when you're just starting out. Gen 1,2,3,8 are all free models, and daz come with a few outfits. If you keep an eye on the free section you can probably pick up a few more there. Plus there are sites like wilmaps that has tons of free outfits. You should load them up and play around with it a bit and get a feel for how things work.
I've had mixed results with using older items on newer figures. You can get some of them to work, usually one generation back but V4 is usually too old to work on the newer models. If you know blender you can always take the clothes into blender, adjust them, and then save them back into daz as a new morph, which is probably the best solution.
Sickleyield has a brilliant tutorial on youtube explaining the process:
Excellent.
And when I see clothes / Morphs for a specific expansion (not base V4 etc) it will only work with this one ? Hard to know when you're in the program, isn't it ?
I really like some instances of Make Human and some from Daz, looks like I can't import from one to the other, but both work in Blender. Should it be possible, with the rigging etc, to adapt one to the other in Blender too ?
They should work for the base character as well. For example I bought clothing that was modelled for one of the teen characters and used it on the base genesis 2.
As far as I know the rigging doesn't export very well to Blender, so you'll have to redo it, but I may be wrong about that. I tend to use blender for modeling / morphing, and then Daz for rendering, so I don't know too much about that.
Ah, I was under the impression that most people did the opposite. Daz seems perfect for creating and posing characters...
[Edit] I had a "newbie" promo for 70% on Vic or Mic 7, and 90% on some propos for Gen3. Used it for Vic7 and some stuff. :)
Vic8 looks much better but is expensive for now and I guess she has less props.
Can the models (of same generation I guess ?à be mixed together, like take the lips from that one to the other etc ? Or is one enough with the right morphing add-ons (or skills in Blender) ?
Oh, and why is Victoria always cited, Olympia is less popular for some reason ?
And you mentionned two sales months, that would be october and... ?
September = PA Sale month
October = PC anniversary month and big sale (usually a good time to get nice deals on DAZ Originals).
Daz Studio isn't great for modeling. You can pose and import, and do some basic manipulation but it's best to model in another program.
For Daz artists it's a bit of a hack to export every character, every item of clothing, then rig them, add weight maps etc. Far easier just to render them in Daz Studio. Iray is an amazing renderer, so you aren't losing anything by skipping cycles.
Awesome, M/V 7 are great ones to start with. The great thing about the store, you can always get the stuff at discount prices, but the problem is because you can get them at great prices, you end up spending far more than you intended. Side note:If you get PC+ membership within a month, you can probably contact support and get your additional 30% discount on them as well. They'll refund it as store credits. They have a price match policy.
I'm not sure if you can take a mouth morph from one character actually. Never tried that. I will play around with it and see. I usually just use the morph bundle and tweak the lips to suit whatever character I'm going for
I think it's September and October. Septemper is the PA (published artists) sale. Honestly, I'm not crazy about their sales. they're usually based on the asumption that you are going to be buying a lot of new product, so they have stacking discounts that grow depending on how many new things you buy etc, Those of us who don't have a huge budget end up sitting on the sidelines for most of it,
The October one is the PC sale- platinum club. That's only good if you're part of the platinum club. You can usually pick up great bundles and even cheaper PC items, which is always fun for filling up your library.
I'm not too sure why the other models aren't as popular, because some of them are much better looking that V/M... good question
Ok for stills, so you would like : make a character in Daz, export in Blender for morphing (what do you call modeling exactly please ?), then back into Daz for posing and rendering ? And if you want to animate into 3D, no choice then it's Blender last, right ?
Ahah I hear ya ! :D
Why am I owned that ? I did subcribe to P+ before buying. :)
So I ought to buy that, the Morph Bundle for a generation of characters ?
Ok. :)
V7 looks much better than base Gen3, is that because of skin ?
The jair sometimes looks transparent, is that normal ?
Also, I applied the clothes from an add-on (Dask Whispers) to a Gen3 character, they're supposed to be compatible, but when I change poses the character / clothes don't always moev together, is that normal ? Should I post it in a separate subject ?
Thanks a lot again, sorry if I ask too many questions but well, it was in the title. ;)
PA - Published Artist, this is what DAZ3D calls the people/vendors/arfists that sell here. In addition to selling their own items, they serve as a brokerage for independant artists who make content to go with their products.
PC - Platinum Club, a sort of subscription membership that gives you significant discounts on DAZ3D owned content.
Each year there are two big sales (in addition to all of the other continual sales), one for the PA specific items, and the other is for PC (DAZ3D owned) items.
To help answer the Victoria question. Victoria was the name of the first stand-alone character that DAZ3D made (actually, was Zygote at the time, not DAZ). The original Victoia(s) (and Michael) was designed for use in Poser, another application similar to DS (DAZ Studio). DAZ3D created DS when there was an issue with licensing figures for use in Poser 5 (which was "fixed" in a few months). The Victoria's were designed around "Poser technology" (i.e. to be used primarily in Poser) up through Victoria 4. With the introduction of the Genesis line, DAZ had to break Poser compatibility to implement the new tech in Genesis (but that was later fixed with an add-on for Poser). With the Genesis line, DAZ kept the Victoria name for their "primary", or first Genesis figure.
If you want to use DAZ figures in Blender, the best option would be to use one of the Genesis figures, not Victoria 4 or earlier (if you want to animate in Blender). The Genesis figures are a bit easier to convert than the earlier figures due to the way they are constructed (not that the earlier figures can't work, it just requires a lot more work and jumping through hoops to do it). If your primary goal is animation, there are some plugins available here for DS that make animation easier. Animate 2, Graphmate, and Keymate will extend the animation capabilities of DS a great deal. There is no true strand based dynamic hair for DS like there is in Blender, but there is a plugin called Virtual World Dynamics (VWD) available at Renderosity that can use dynamics on many transmaped hair models, as well as create dynamic cloth from many (most?) of the clothing models available here and else where (you will need the base product, which was designed for Poser, and the DS Plugin for it). There is also a dynamic cloth plugin available here, but it has rather limited use and can only be used on clothing items (there is a script available at Renderosity that can be used to make other clothing items work with the Optitex plugin here, but I think it broke with the latest version of DS).
Another option that might be worth investigating is Carrara (another product owned by DAZ3D and sold here). It has better animation tools than DS, but can only natively use DAZ figures up to Genesis 2 (though there is a utility at Renderosity that will let you use Genesis 3 figures in Carrara). Carrara is a general 3D "suite" type software like Blender, and has many features that DS doesn't, but not as many as Blender. Unfortunately it seems that DAZ has decided to stop development on Carrara, so this might make it a less attractive option compared to Blender. But, unlike Blender, you can use most DAZ figures and content natively in Carrara, which vastly streamlines the process compared to Blender.
Hope all this helps, and makes sense.
Ok, but the "named" characters are a bit better than the "base" ones ? Or just they have skins etc ? Because now I own Victoria 7 but also have Gen8 base female, so is there an advantage at chosing one rather than the other ?
Are the props / add-ons for, say, Victoria, Olympia and Gen3 female normally compatible or uncompatible ?
If I get some props for Gen3 they might not work with Gen8 if it isn't specified, right ? And Gen8 won't work with Gen3 for sure ?
If it says : Supported Shapes: Olympia 8, Victoria 8 ; does it mean it won't work with Gen8 base ?
This seems like some kind of jigsaw puzzle...
Yes and no (great answer huh). If you are talking about props specifically (meaning things like swords, guns, crowns, etc), they "parent" or attach to a specific body part on a character. Due to the changes in the base pose from G3F and G8F (from a "T" pose to an "A" pose), hand held props don't end up in the proper location, but props for the head like hats don't have that problem. However, just because they don't end up in the right place autmagically, doesn't mean they aren't usable, you just need to manually move them to the right location, then they will work with no problems.
Clothes can be used from one generation to the next, as long as you have an autofit clone for them. G8F comes with clones for G3F and G2F, so autofit will work to fit clothing from G3F and G2F to G8F (shoes can be problematic though). However, G8F doesn't come with autofit clones to fit G8F clothing to any other Genessis generation. Thankfully, there are some great tutorials that will help you do this on your own. They are:
Redz's Tutorial for Adding Clones to G8F
Sickleyield's Tutorial to Convert Clothing from G3 to G8 and G8 to G3
Plus, here is a good thread to read and download an pre made "A" pose for the above tutorials for G3F :https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/189366/resolved-dragon-tamer-outfit-for-g8f-on-g3f
When you read in a description for a product something like "Supported Shapes: Olympia 8, Victoria 8", that means the clothing comes with morphs specific to those shapes, so the fit will be "better" than just using autofit. Typically though, unless the character shape is extreme, autofit will do quite a good job with minimal distortions. So the short answer is yes, those cloths will work on other G8F characters, not only those mentioned.
Typically, the named characters will have better texture maps and shaders than the base G8f ot G3F (though with a little work on the part of the end user, these texture maps can look quite good). I like V7 alot, and she has great shaders/texture maps. It really comes down to which characters you like best, both for their shape and their textures/shaders. The one thing to watch for though is what UV set a character uses. with G2 and G3 most (all??) of the DAZ numbered figures like V6, V7, Olympia 7, Gia 7 used unique UV mapping (how the texture is place on the figure) to minimize distortion (so far I don't think DAZ has done this with V8 or Olympia 8). So you need to make sure that you have the UV set that a character was designed for. This is not a problem if you are buy one of the DAZ numbered figures, as it comes with the UV set, but something to watch out for if you are getting a character from a PA that says something like "Jossette for the Girl 7" (made up name), you just want to make sure you have the proper base figure ofr the character to work properly (it's always listed in the product description what base figure is required).
I hope all this helps, and didn't just confuse you even more
Is it normal that I prefer both Victoria7 and Genesis8 female to Victoria 8 ? :D She looks very realistic but I just don't like her features...
I prefer this version for instance : https://www.daz3d.com/fw-rebekah-hd-for-victoria-8 or her : https://www.daz3d.com/fwhp-eris-hd-for-genesis-8-female
When it says :
Compatible Figures: Genesis 8 Female ; Required Products: Victoria 8
Does it mean that I can use it with Genesis 8 Female even if I don't own V8 or not ?
Abnd if it says :
Required Products:
Do I need ALL of those for it to work ?
Speaking of which, the Body Morphs, Head Morphs and maybe the one below too seem pretty essential if you really want to personalize your characters, except if you do it in Blender or such, am I right ?
https://www.daz3d.com/easy-shape-master-age-control-and-body-tuning-for-genesis-8-female
I like V7 more than V8 as well. I really like Rebekah though. Yes, if you want your character to look like what you see in the prmotional images, you need the "required" products. I always get the base head and body morphs because I seldom leave a figure "untouched", and they are a quick and easy way to make the modifications I want. They are also often used for figures you buy in the store, so having them is generally a very good idea. Of course yuo can always use something like blender to make your own morphs too, it really depends on what your interests are, and what you feel comfortable doing.
If you do see a figure/character you like, but it requires something you don't have, you can ask in the commons for someone to render the figure without the other morphs to see what she/he would look like. I've seen several requests for this type of help, and people are usually quite quick to respond with the requested render.