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Yes, on nights with a full moon...
Oh wait, you meant while working in Studio. Most of my primary figures are modified, whether it's a couple of tweaks or spinning dozens of dials. There are some characters that I like out of the box, but most I buy to add to the variety of morphs and textures. Background or secondary characters are much more likely to be unmodified.
I have a ton of morph sets and yet... I quite often use out-of-the-box characters. The only time I don't is when I have a very specific appearance I want to duplicate. I even have a couple of characters in an ongoing series of renders as 'out of the box': P3D Toby because I love how he looks, and Tamara because I didn't really have much of an idea of her appearance other than 'teen'. I dunno. I mostly only buy characters if I love how they look (though I guess I have a number that came as 'extras' in bundles). And I don't mind the idea of using non-unique faces because, well, they're like actors, right?
in recent months I have used less and less pure "canned" characters (not counting initinal test renders when I get a new character)
Here are a couple of dial spins that I've come up with recently that have developed past the single render phase and into the named character phase.
Clara, is mainly based on DE Alice with a little Charlote 8 and a bunch of other adjustment morphs
Astrid is a extensively modified Sunny 7
All my G2 & G3 girls are custom mixes.
If I'm using a preset character, I'm probably not using the skin that comes with the morph at least. And such a character is almost definately incidental to the scene in a scene I want/need to finish setting up quickly.
Otherwise I always spin away, mixing character skins with morphs that didn't come with it. Have more or less since I started.
I'm a tweaker as well. I rarely load a character and render him as is unless I'm testing the product. GenX opened the doors to be able to mix even more characters, which is why I'm sticking with Gen3.
Aside from some older V4 and M4 characters by Mortem Vetus and P3Design, I very rarely dial up any character 100%.
I've always enjoyed people watching as well as sketching from life in public places, and I find it very relaxing and theraputic to come back home after a busy day and try and dial up some of the people I may have seen on the street earlier. Purchasing the head/body morphs for each new Genesis generation is always a big deal for me because it allows me to do that with the figures of my choice. I also like to buy the legacy shapes for the previous generations so I can mix and match some more. I generate some faces using FaceGen. And there are some character textures I prefer to use over others, so I will use them atop other morphs. This means I don't often buy the latest character bundles, because I usually prefer creating my own characters with all these resources.
I'll use some creature characters out of the box as-is (such as Aurora) but as a rule I will even customize creatures by using Creature Creator morphs or some of Dariofish's packages.
I have to say I'm a shapshifter. Like many, if the characters are secondary (or less) to the image I'll get lazy and drop some unmodified figures in. Creating unique characters is how I DAZ when my muse is at the hairdresser (or on vacation/strike/revolt). At the very least it's height, weight, and chest size (I mean come on, with some of those figures). Some of the most interesting R/L people I meet have short legs and a long torso, or are long and lanky, zaftiq etc.
I usually only render out a base character once or twice to see how they render unless I really like the character. There have been a few characters with incredible morphs that I love and will render more than often. For the most part, I'm creating my own characters by either mixing characters or more than likely mixing together morphs from merchant resources or morph packs that I own. I like creating my own characters. I also use Simtenero's Randomizer to get me close to a character that looks good and then I'll fine tune by sliding dials with additional morphs.
So, I guess that all means that I'm mostly a shapeshifter. I'm a sucker for morph packs and I have a lot of them.
Interesting
Generally, i'm stick to idea that characters are "models" for photoshoot, so i treat them as "vendor's original design is canonical" (this is also why i prefer when vendor credits choice of hair and clothes from promos! and especially happy when vendor makes full pack char + clothes + hair in bundle) so i rarely decide to alter those shapes. However, when Genesis appeared, i was at least looking what i can get with mixing shapes together. You may remember those receipts like "take 40% of this char, 60% of v5, etc.etc."
Anyway, i had plans to try out making some chars myself through sliders, just need to get all those evolution, handspan and dietrying (oh, these are free) morphs :) Though i was a bit discouraged when heard general thought "you'll never get worthwile results unless you instead export to Zbrush/Sculptris/Modo and do custom sculpting instead", ahem... (honestly i like "hundreds of sliders" system more than zbrush-style sculpting)
An older post ressurrected!
I never use any character or set or prop without modifying in some way. My characters are always altered significantly faces, bodies, skins, eye coloring and everything else gets altered including height, muscularity, weight, age --- if I can change it, it will be changed.
Extreme shapeshifter. I don't think I've ever used a Victoria straight out of the box. I don't change faces but I do tend to make my ladies more amazonian and curvier. It's my firm belief that a fantasy character should look like a fantasy character and not like someone you see in the office.
Cheers,
Alex.
Frank Fazetta style?
And then some!
Cheers,
Alex.
I mostly buy characters for their skins... if I use their morph, I nearly always change it (I say nearly to hedge my bets... pretty sure the word is 'always', though) and never use the skin with the morph. Sometimes a character morph will inspire me to buy, but I don't actually use it. Now I feel bad because someone out there spent a lot of time creating the morph, but - I make my own characters. I just need to borrow your skin... :-D
Wait, I thought of one (face, anyway) I used pretty much out of the box - Thorne's Pabu! Changed the skin, iirc. It was for a contest, though, not a character.
For my main characters in a scene, I almost always fiddle with them. I may start with one of the pre-defined characters that is close to what I want, but I often tweak nose, chin, and jawline settings. Likewise surface settings for things like hair and eyes. Less so with the rest of the body shape. For "supporting" characters, I rarely take the extra time as they're just there to help set the scene for my main ones.
depends how big my lunch is.
shape definitely shifts.
Without knowing exactly what the context was, this sounds like gatekeeping--someone putting down one way of doing things to feel better about their skill level or make it sound more prestigious. If you don't like sculpting and have no desire to learn it, you won't get good results. The main reason to learn something like that is either because you just have a desire to develop the skill, or because there's no existing product that does what you want it to. If you're satisfied with the results you get from dial spinning (and lots of people are) there's no reason not to do it.
I always change textures and morphs; I may render a vanilla character to see what they look like.
Unmorphed is someone elses vision, I constantly seek my own... And am still seeking.
I will speak up as someone who does sometimes use default (or near default) morphs; there's some models I like much the way they are, and I'm prepared to see them as actors rather than necessarily characters. Sticking with the default formula has the advantage that I don't end up in an endless yo-yoing cycle of adjusting their chin shape to be just right or redeciding how wide their shoulders should be every time I reuse them.
I mostly only use such characters for one-off ideas though; anyone I intend to be a serious character for extended use will usually be more heavily customised (usually mixed from two to five characters with a heap more customisation sliders on top).
(The major exception is "Jinx", who I use very heavily, but who just uses the default G8F head shape with just a slightly tweaked jawline - it means facial controls that don't have to work through however many layers of not-necessarily-agreeing-or-completely-rigorously-tested corrective morphs, so she's wonderfully expressive. However, given some custom materials, the default shape isn't all that blatantly obvious).
If I eat too much my shape shifts.