Daz inc. innovating,imitating or stagnating??
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Me too. I find Blender's interface MUCH easier to use. If I actually had any artistic skills, I probably wouldn't use Daz at all, but I don't and therefore Daz is as indespensible to me as Blender is. That's why I whine incessantly that the two don't play nice together.
I know what a well of knowledge you are, and everything you say is true. But the fact that Blender is Open Source matters to some people as a principle.
It's easier. I got one by saying I just wanted to learn 3D.
Actually DAZ is very innovative if you use DAZ content in DAZ Studio. You can't deny that. And that's why I hope animation is also innovatively feature expanded for novices like myself. Softbody physics and all that jazz can comes to DAZ Studio. I'd like it. I'd even like a multiplatform game engine.
As mentioned above, if one has the imagination and properly motivated, they can always find a way to get from A to B without breaking any rules. Certainly, don't need to pay that absurd amount to acquire a Maya educational license.
Umm....No. I went to the official Autodesk website, filled out the official forms on their webpage to apply for the license. There was a place on the form to choose from one of the schools. The school that offered my course wasn't on the list but Autodesk allowed me to add my school as "other". After filling out the form, they then approved my application for a student account and issued me a three year, three workstation license. I continue using that license today and I even downloaded Maya 2019 and installed it a couple of months ago. Yeah, I think I'm clear of any fraud charges. They approved me after I entered my student info, bro. I continue to take courses here and there as needed, but not by any single school curriculum.
Regarding the spirit of the agreement according to the terms: Basically, its, you must be an active student learning their software for educational purposes and not using it for profit. Sounds about right to me.
Yes, it's pretty easy to get educational license for Autodesk SW. Full Sail & other '3D Interactive' curricula universities are never going to meet the need let alone find enough students that can pay the tuition. There are probably some abusing the concept to make their Unity and UE4 amateur games while trying to catch lighting in a bottle. Those amateurs could never have afforded to buy Maya and such in the 1st place so they wind up being free beta testers & UI usability testers. Also, don't discount that they collect usage metrics & see most installations are barely touched, even a somewhat active hobbyist with a job will only be messing 16 hours and usually less with it in a good week.
I think that is quite enough on the Maya Educational licensing, thank you.
I'm pretty satified with Daz. If I could have one wish, I would love Daz to imitate Poser's "Comic Style Render" feature and have it built in. I get good results using PW toon and LineRender9000, but the Poser feature allows for real-time viewing of the line art and real-time adjustments. I have both Poser 11 and Daz, but I like Daz better because it's what I'm trained in and has superior models IMHO (I like doing photoreal and comic book style art).
The only other issue I have is with Daz3D artists (don't get me wrong, I love you all), i.e. PA's not making exactly what I want. I have niche interests (i.e. ,mecha madness). Although Daz has a whole lot of options available, they aren't always exactly what I want/need. I don't want to spend $18-$35 on just ok (I'm thinking of that comerial right now). I would love to learn modeling in Hexagon and rigging in DAZ, but I don't have the time right now.
I don't have pwToon or Linerender9000, but maybe it's possible to use IPR in the aux viewport? (Interactive Progressive Rendering)
LineRender can't be previewed. It creates line and shadow layers that you can composite in an art program such as Photoshop or GIMP. I use PWToon (or Visual Style Shaders) for a cartoon look and LineRender for linework and shadows (don't always use though). I put it all together in Photoshop, then I may use Clip Paint Studio to clean up the linework. Something like Poser's real time comicbook render would save me a lot of time in post-work. It's a minor thing.
Easier said than done. Next year I may be able to free some time up for it. The question I still haven't answered is whether to use Hexagon (free) or Blender (free). I've used Hexagon for a little project and it has a user-friendly interface, much like Daz. I tried Blender about 2 years ago for 2D art and I found it complicated and intimidating. However, there are more tutorials and training videos/on-line courses for Blender. I would primarly like to make spaceships and Mecha. Rigging mecha for Daz intimidates me.
+1
Now that I've read the whole thread, I didn't know you could get a free Maya student license. My kids may end up learning Maya, so I might sign up for a self-paced online couse and use Maya. Man, I really do need to free up some time.
I think it's better compare Hexagon to Wings3D, Silo , kHED (and, maybe, Metasequoia 3D) as they are almost purely modelling tools, while Blender is more like "complete package" like Maya, Carrara etc.
Btw, if your main interest will be mecha and spaceships, i think you might be interested to know that there is so called "hard surface" modelling approach which is often chosen for such projects.
https://conceptartempire.com/hard-surface-organic-modeling/
maybe in the past people didnt differentiate though
Thanks for the info.
Yet people do write pulg-ins succesfully.
I do think expecting one of the developers tot ake time to answer a PM is a little optimistic - they have a lot to do, and would rapidly get buried if they tried to provide one-on-one help.
I am grateful to you, Richard, as you were the only one that actually behaved as if my project was important, even if it's only important to me, and if only out of courtesy to say "I don't know the answer to your question.".
But I think a dev being "too busy" to help a user who is passionate and trying to enhance the product to better suit his needs is probably the best example of why Daz Studio will eventually no longer be able to compete. Not an outdated version of Qt.
I really see a lot of potential to something like this:
As you can see in the video you don't have to be an expert in Blender to take advantage of it. As a matter of fact the interface for the end user is very similar to what they already have in DAZ Studio. But you also have all the advantages of Blender for free. Real time render with EEVEE. Photorealistic render with Cycles. Better rigging with proper Inverse Kinematics.
And for the more advanced user you can take advantage of all the super powerful modeling tools inside Blender. You can also use the sculpting capabilities to create morphs. You can create and edit you UVs and you can 3D paint your textures directly over the 3D geometry. You can use professional animation tools. You can run simulations and dynamics. All within the same interface.
But you don't have to be an expert in Blender to start using it at the same level that you use DAZ Studio right now. What is wrong with that?
And this is how the viewport looks realtime in Blender compared to how it looks in DAZ:
...I'd really like it as then I can do more custom sculpting for my characters without the need to scrape up 700$ for ZBrush.
Yes, people do write plug-ins successfully. But how much harder is it to do so because Daz does not really help? How many more cool plug-ins would Daz have if every reasonably skilled developer with a certain amount of initiative could actually write a non-trivial one before he gives up in frustration because he knows that he is simply missing something simple but essential, that should really be written down somewhere instead of left for each individual to waste the few hours a week he has for his hobby, and rediscover for himself every single time?
Speaking of Maya and Max, I just got a 3 year Education license from them due to my school email address. Haven't installed them yet, but I will later today. I think I will only use them to learn more as far as cinematic properties but as long as I have Daz content, I'm not going to worry about reinventing the wheel while I have tons of content but I will model the props I need going forward. My main MAIN 3D app is Cinema 4D (use to be Carrara but...well...you know).
Thank you for posting this. Looks like it's time to learn Blender.
This is an unreasonable sentiment. Developers need to be allowed to focus on their development activities. How many times have you taken "just a minute" to respond to an email or a forum thread, and found out that you blew an hour or more just composing your response, and then responding to the next six followup messages, IMs, or phone calls?
Just four emails or forum threads like that and you've lost 10% of your dev's productivity for that whole week! We all like to think we know how business is supposed to work, but I assure you, you really have zero idea until you've done it. And you only have a small inkling of an idea if you've been a dev. True understanding doesn't even begin to enter your mind until you have actually had to manage, pay, and get deliverables out of a team of people, all with their little 10% and 20% distractions throughout the week constantly killing productivity. And when productivity falls, so does morale.
A huge part of any manager's time is spent keeping people not on the team from overtaxing the team. Too many distractions hurt the project. And a failed (or even mixed-success) project always impacts morale. That is super dangerous, so I surely wouldn't ask my devs to come to the company forum and respond to people who may or may not be actual paying customers. Even if I wanted to be entrepreneurial and allow them to do it as an option, I'd probably have to establish a policy with limits on time spent on such activities not directly associated with the deliverables.
If you've never been involved in an open source project, I can see why it would seem "unreasonable" to you that which is just the baseline expectation to those that have. Maybe that's my problem. But believe me, once you've had it, you'll want it everywhere you go.