Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
You could try one of Xara's programs, they're used by many professional graphics and web designers. The also have a free cloud version.
http://www.xara.com/eu/products/
There’s Paint Shop Pro for drawing etc. I use it for texturing my freebies. It has lots of features similar to PS, plus you can use PS brushes as well. Much cheaper too.
I've still not bought MD8. I'm seriously thinking of getting it through Steam, if they discount it in "late November." But the thought occurred to me, will I need to already be signed up with Steam to get the offer? Or will the sale price show up on the site, so that I can sign up and buy at the same time? Anyone know for sure?
You will need to have a Steam, account to buy, I would assume the price shows up withotu needing to be logged in or have an account (I'm prettu sure it did when I went to buy MD6). Note that the bit about late-November is a guess, though it's notable that the upgrade discount expires early on "Cyber Monday".
Thank you.
The big advantage Steam has over buying direct from MD is the discounted price. Seems reasonable they'd want to discount it further with MD selling at only $240. I'm not convinced it's worth the savings, though, to buy through Steam. And I've been waiting months for the Black Friday pricing. Waiting a few more days is much harder than one might think… argh!
I was one of the early adopters of Xara, still have the disks from way back then. I stopped using it for the most part as when I go to the community for help they are nasty and very clickish. For all the time I've been using it off and on I should be respected not treated the way I was treated there so that really really put me off as a user. I don't use vector's much any more and I'm not crazy about the cloud edition. Perhaps when it matures some more I'll look into using it. I do have Affinity Designer which is pretty nice and offers allot more instant vector shapes to design with, that I will give to Serif Affinity, they did a bang up job on that program!
I do use vectors a lot, and definitely have to second that for Affinity Designer - lovely to use, nice features, and only costs around $60 to own forever (on sale for Black Friday for cheaper, numbers not exact.) For the price, it's amazing that it can do most of what Illustrator does as well as the raster basics of what Photoshop does. After Blender, it's easily my second most used piece of software (then DS, which is usually the starting point, then MD.) All four are programs I'd always recommend and can be reasonably obtained to own.
You mean TalkGraphics forums? In any case, they have always been friendly and helpful to me there.
I've been using Xara's programs from the very beginning too, at some point they started to integrate WYSIWYG web design tools into them and these have become pretty advanced now. Currently I'm using Designer Pro for web tutorials and stuff, it has both vector and bitmap tools and the bitmap tools are quite sufficient for most web design IMO. Their Web Designer programs are lite versions of Designer Pro, mostly aimed at websign only, haven't tried them though.
I've never used their Cloud service, just gave it a try and I'm pretty disappointed too. Considering how well their desktop tools work I had expected something far better.
I have Affinity Designer too, not that different from Xara Designer Pro but not as fast in my experience, and it lacks the web design tools. But in general it's a great program, not least considering the price.
I think the reasoning for the Web based tools is that, I THINK, they can be used on any platform so those that have been asking for a Linux based version of Xara probably have that now if they can't get it running on WINE.
I used to have some friends on TalkGraphics but most if not all have moved on or passed away. There was one guy there that never liked me and then he became a moderator on their forums and when he sees me there his answers are often rude or curt. Life's too short to treat others unkindly so I just don't go there!
...I just need a good intuitive clothing design programme that will work on W7 Pro. MD so far has been the best as I used to work in theatrical costume design, but the DX12 requirement means moving to W10 and that is like making me eat liver and oinions when I was a kid (still don't like it to this day).
If you wait a little longer, I'm sure someone will release a clothing design program for Windows 7.
...yeah don't think that will happen. Everythign pretty much has gone to 10 these days. Even cusom build houses rarely offer W7 Pro as an option any more.
Looked at the system requirements and while it includes W7, I remember reading somewhere where DX12 is needed or at least "preferable" which W7 does not support..
MD8 require Win10? It says it works on W7 on their site...
...yes but as mentioned above I read somewhere that DX12 was needed and neither my Titan X or W7 support the API. Also I don't have a 3.0 or better GHz CPU that supports AVX
Just found this posted on the Steam site here:
So unless one is willing to wait a few more months, looks like the $240 from MD directly is still the best price.
I'm so tempted to buy MD8 but even at the low price of $240 it is somewhat extravagant on my meagre income. I have a long-standing aversion to Steam so, no matter how often I am told it is safe and genuine, I just don't trust it. I'll see how expensive Christmas is this year and try to justify the $240 in the New Year.
One of the reasons I hesitate - apart from price - is I'm not sure how useful it will be with DAZ Studio and dForce or is it an alternative to dForce? If so, is it a matter of exporting figures from the scene and re-importing draped clothing as morphs? I', not at all clear on that process.
I'd say if you're not a PA or willing to invest considerable amount of time to learn MD8, textruing, rigging and setting up dForce, there is no need to spend money on it. It's another content creation tool just like zBrush, Maya, Substance etc., just for clothes.
They charged $343 during the sale last year so $240 is a great price in comparison.
Thanks - just the kind of advice I needed. I did have the trial version for a month and enjoyed what it could do but never got to the point of integrating the workflow with DAZ Studio. Even at $240, one can buy quite a lot of ready made dForce items for that amount.
Dave, you have until the middle of February to take advantage of that price. You don't have to decide now.
I picked MD8 up shortly after posting the bit from Steam. (I'm not a vendor, nor do I expect to become one.) I will be using this to help clothes I already have fit better, as well as creating my own for my characters. It's going to take a bit of time to learn the program, but before long, I won't be dependent on the vendors for clothing for my guys. Or my gals, for that matter. Not to mention the outfits I already have for the gals that I can now adjust to something less… um… skimpy!
...for myself the issue is finding the clothing I actually need for some of my projects, particularly my SF storyline where there are styles which are so unique (which I designed decades ago) I will never find them in any 3D store.
Many thanks for your perspective too. I get what you are saying, however, with the advent of dForce, isn't the process of creating clothing for DAZ Studio significantly more complex? I have spent much more than a couple of hundred on conforming clothing over the years and it would be great to be able to make them myself but now that I have started draping realistically with dForce, going back to conforming is not so attractive.
I use Blender for morphing clothes so that they fit better and have been doing so for years. It is practically the only thing I know how to do in Blender. The fact that it is free and can do that job for me has prevented me from splashing out on MD (or ZBrush) in the past.
For vendors, Daz requires dForce complaint clothing also be conforming. That makes sense, as not every customer is going to use dForce. Even those who do may want to use conforming in some situations. So I can see where clothing creation can be more complex for the PAs.
For personal use, I can use MD to create a morph for the clothing to match the figure and it's pose on a scene by scene basis, and just parent the item to the figure. That may not be the best approach for the long run, but I'll be able to use the clothing in scenes long before I learn all that other stuff.
The big difference (for me at least) between Blender's cloth simulation and MD is that Blender you just sort of set it up and then hit go and pray the clothing doesn't explode. In MD you can interfere as the simulation is ongoing to make adjustments or even tug bits of clothing until it goes where you want, etc.
Mind you with hi res clothing this might get too slow for your computer, but it's usually fairly realtime for me (at 10mm particle distance it's smooth; 5mm becomes a bit of a slideshow.)
Sorry, my post was a little misleading. When I said I use Blender, I mean for tweaking poke through or adjusting a skirt so that it rests on a thigh rather than sticking up like it was made of tin. I have never used the cloth sim in Blender although I have seen some proposals for developments in the Blender cloth engine which might take it much closer to MD.
I think I would have been more keen on MD if I were to rely on L'Adair's method of draping around a posed figure in MD and then creating a scene-specific morph from that. But now I'm getting used to dForce I am finding that, at least with commercial dForce clothing, I am getting fewer explosions than when I first tried it. Ideally, it will become stable enough to make conversion of much of my existing wardrobe feasible.
Too many offers for today, so I have just tried to create a conforming cloth for Genesis 8 with Marvelous Designer 2.
For my first try, I have used the default cloth, that came with MD2.
Below is an iray render of it conformed to the mixed morphs Genesis 8 female character .
... and one more render with different pose ...
I must have upgraded my perpetual licence to 8 at a good time; I got it right at launch for $122.50.
And I had upgraded to 7 for $75 back in June. I probably wouldn't get the product from steam because you miss out on these discounts they'll offer direct from their site.
For those concerned about running MD8 on Windows 7 I can say I'm not having any problems with it.
..even withoiut DX12?