Dumping Poser for DAZ
shg0816_13461e8196
Posts: 351
I am just now getting back into DAZ, thanks to these huge sales, and the one on tutorials...
My main question is when you buy something, what is your final determining factor? Case in point, I really love Urban Future 6, but I don't know how often I might use the buildings (same with Urban Sprawl 3), but there's more to it that a vendor...do you look at quality, how often you would use said product, etc.
Having come from Poser, and running into issues with the libraries(and memory leaks), I don't want to dump everything (going back to 2003), but if I can free up a ton of space, I'd rather have 1 application than 3, and something that is stable, but I also don't want to redownload everything...(is there a way to port an entire runtime (geometries, textures, pythons) from one app to another)
I'm really starting from the ground up, at this point, but if something can same me time, money, sanity without a D100*6 roll, would be apprciated)
One final question, what's DAZ's ability to import 3rd party products into the application? There are things I see on cgtrader and turbosquid that I'd love to have(specifically WW2 armor)
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Comments
Sure, you can do it. Just link your Poser directorie(s) inside Daz Studio and the content will show up under "Poser Formats"
Most figures will work if made for Poser 8 and before. Poser weight mapped figures may not behave correctly. Most other things "should" work tho, but you will have to tweak some shaders of course as Firefly and 3Delight aren't the same and neither is Superfly/Iray.
As for 3rd party stuff, if you mean as props, you should be able to import them and save them to the library just the same as you did in Poser.
Welcome, long time poser user myself (ver 5 to current) Your rumtimes can stay were they are, just need to point DS to their location to use them. (edit - preferences - content tab - content directory manager). If you are rendering in Iray, you will probably have to adjust the surfaces with poser content, but for the most part they all work fine. Poser native shaders won't work at all, so if the object uses them specifically, you have use an iray specific shader instead (lots in the store)
As for what I purchase, I tend to know what my needs are from trial and error and experience. I know what kind of renders I tend to make and the subject matter. I also look for items that have higher kitbashing potential so I can mix and match parts of outfits. One thing to watch out for are addons that are way to resource intensive which is becoming more of a problem lately depending on your system and GPU. Quality doesn't always mean going overboard with 4K textures and super dense mesh. Great thing is, DAZ has a 30 day refund policy, so you are never stuck with something that isn't working for you. I am not a vendor fanboy and as such, stick with what I need more than who makes it, but I do take notice of workmanship for future purchases. that being said, there are a couple I no longer buy from due to the resource hogging mentioned earlier.
I import .OBJs from TS, CGTrader, Humster3d, my games and ones I create myself all the time. Once you get the textures/shaders/scale set up then save it as a figure/prop asset for future use.
hope that helps
Thank you so much!! My other question, with regards to 3rd party sites, do you have criteria as to what you spend $$ on?
I would think that would be up to "you" based on your projects. I also model and make my own models so I can alter things if they are lacking or not what I expected.
Content... I know what I need for my project and buy that, but I sometimes succumb to the "bling" of things. I also buy things that I consider "resource". That means sets that look like you can combine them with other sets (i.e. true for room sets that have the decoration as single object option), shaders, a certain type of character.
When I say "certain type" it means either a unique shape (George) or spectacular skin. I often swap skins between characters, mix the presets, etc, and then mess around with the result by detail morphs.
There's always the trap of sales, though. When I was still a noob, I bought quite a few things without really understanding what worked with what (Genesis generations, for example), so back then, the money seemed lost. With more experience, I can use that 'lost' stuff.
In regards to third party sites, I am applying the same criteria that I use when buying in the DAZ store. Quality and versatility of the product, experience I have with the PA/vendor and/or products and their customer support, and finally, the price. There are some PAs/vendors that I am very hesitantly to buy from, and others that I do buy without hesitation even if the price is slightly higher than comparatible things at other stores, because I know they think things through, have support (either personally in the forum, or fast support through Customer Support) and deliver products that give me the miles for the money.
i dont use poser anymore although i held out for a long time even though i knew the writing was on the wall - over a decade and a half ago the thing i loved was the compatabillity and promised continuation of that compatability between the two companies. the cost of poser was not the problem, the instability of ownership and content of poser was the issue. i felt betrayed by daz but in the end why should daz take the low road ? there are many things i miss about poser but not enough to make me want to go back
Long, LONG time Poser user here as well (nearly 20 years).
I use a lot of my old Poser content without issues, not so much figures (I really love the Genesis figures enough to use only those), but a lot of my old props like Traveller's Naturalz and stuff from RDNA, old sets and buildings, etc. They all work fine and I can't remember the last thing I tried to use that didn't work, actually. I've only been using DS for a smidge over 3 years and still don't know my elbow from my kneecap, but if you need any help, feel free to ask. The folks here are pretty helpful :). You'll have it down in no time.
Laurie
I don't think anybody addressed the python part of your question. To the best of my knowledge that does not work in DAZ, which uses a different scripting language. Newer rigged figures can be a problem, Shaders need changing, but aside from that I still buy content made for Poser today that works just fine in DAZ. Others have already mentioned how you can link the libraries. Poser content will not have database entries, you have to use the content manager to find them, but they will be exactly where you expect them to be. Camera Presets translate a little off, and none of the lighting presets work in Iray, though most of them do in 3Delight with some tweaking in some cases.
The only thing that occasionally annoys me is that you can't inject PMDs in DAZ. If you have a character or morph that was packaged for Poser with PMD files, you'll need to do a little fiddling to make them work.
I changed over about 2 years ago. The only thing I miss is the absence of a morph brush in DS. Before anyone says I could use deformers, the two are not the same. The Poser morph brush is/was a very simple tool to use to make slight corrections (fits and creases) to clothing and to apply pressure indents to skin surfaces. DS deformes might as well be magic to me.... have never got them to work the way I want.
Yeah -- that, too. You can get something close-ish with dformers and weight maps, but it's cumbersome.
I changed from Poser to DAZ Studio way before Poser 10 was released. I had been with Poser since version 4. DAZ has always been my first choice for content, I stopped shopping at other stores over a decade ago.
My main question is when you buy something, what is your final determining factor?
I have 5 questions when buying an item
Can I use this?
When can I use this?
How can it be modified?
Where would it be useful?
is it something I can use more then once, while still being unique?
My 5 questions generally are:
Will I still be able to eat if I buy this?
Do I ONLY have seven of these already?
Can I hide it from my husband?
Will it fit on the hard drive?
Where's my wallet?
what determines what i buy ?
well when i put my cursor up to click "ADD TO CART" if it says "PURCHASED" instead then i dont buy it, seriously i do not know what the heck i own anymore
You main question has nothing to do with software used, which the title doesn't indicate.
There is one caveat to my above statement; first, there will be various reasons/questions to ask oneself as others have stated.
... But with regards to software, or what software would be used for preference? Can it be used in there? How easy is it to use with X software?
If it isn't easy, is the time I'll spend worth it?
My 5 questions as of late are:
How resource intensive is it?
How often will I be able to use it in scenes?/too distinctive?
How verastile is it for kitbashing?
The quality of the mesh/no distortion/clean lines
Is the vendor a butthead on the forums (there are a few I no longer buy from)
LOL!
It's about time! lol. (i'm from the early poser days). Take the time to learn Daz, I know learning hurts...but you wont regreat it!
i used Poser since v1. I was never fully fluent and just scratched the surface , but what I did I loved. I loved the program.
When DS came out, I tried every version. I did not like it at all. As time progressed, after the DAZ figures no longer worked in Poser, now Poser 11, I decided a couple of years ago to give it a try again. I viewed a lot of video tutorials. Asked a lot of questions, still do. I made it my goal to learn the program.
Daz Studio is deep deep. It renders really pretty, although it takes a long time on my system not having an nvidia graphics card. Every extra second is worth it. I'm hoping newer versions will not tax what little resources I have more. I went back to Poser just the other day ... it seemed like an alien artform.
I can so relate to that. I started using DS because I wanted to use Reality and Lux. After years of using only DS they came out with Reality for poser, so having the latest version of poser, even though I never used it, I thought I would give the poser version of Reality a go. Man, I felt like I was working with an alien app, nothing made sense and all the tools and shortcuts I had gotten used to in DS were not there and the UI felt really cumbersome. Needless to say after a month I had to stop using it as I felt I was going backwards on any creativity I had left, LOL. I realized then that would be the last version of poser I would purchase, which considering the state of affairs at SM is probably for the best anyway.
To the OP, enjoy your transition to DS and if you have any questions we are all here to help.
...I went the other way, started with Daz and then moved to Poser because of cloth dynamics and IBL lighting.
I agree, the UI seemed cumbersome, particularly compared to earlier versions of Daz (pre 3.0). Poser actually ran a bit smoother on my old notebook and rendered with fewer crashes (Daz had something of an issue with memory leaks in the rendering process). However scene setup posing and adjusting surfaces/shaders in Daz was more elegant than in Poser (never could quite grasp the "bowl of spaghetti" node system of the Materials Room which Daz also adopted later with the Shader Mixer). When Daz released 3.1 that is was a major advance for hobbyist 3D software as it not only had built in IBL (UE2) but 64 bit support. With no memory limits but what you had on the board, it meant a much lower incidence of render crashes. Daz 4.0 introduced a fully weight mapped figure which was much more versatile than the individual character models of older generations and what Poser still used. Autofit made third party clothing converters moot (one could even use Gen3 and Gen4 clothing on Genesis). Suddenly Poser caught in a game of catch up as versions 7 though 9 were still 32 bit, only the more expensive Pro version offered a 64 bit option.
I still have Poser Pro 2012 but rarely open it anymore. I kept it (and beforehand, Pro 2010) around because Daz's first dynamic cloth system was somewhat a disappointment as it was closed ended (it only worked on specific clothing content that used a dynamic system created by Optitex which markets clothing design software for the professional fashion industry with a five digit price tag). I have not yet tried dForce (need to finish a few hardware upgrades first).