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I forgot to add one thing several other posters mentioned - the fact that even most old products can still be used, many items can simply be given new shaders and look like new. This can reduce the cost of a scene significantly.
Sadly, the Gallery is still down, so I have to use an attachment. It is one of my own scenes I like the most. It contains a number of old "repainted" items. The droids (SKU as low as 973), their steam engines, their weapons, the helmet and the rifle of the poor skeleton. There is also the wheeled machine of war, which didn't even need a new paintob.
I love how so many products have not become obsolete, can still be used and still look great.
It was free when I was poor. It's the thing I'm used to now that I don't have the energy and drive to learn something new from scratch.
I think that goes for many of us. :)
And I'm still poor.
You mean there is something else..
J/K
I started with poser but daz renders look much better to me than poser, so that is what I stuck with. though i still poser now and then for things daz can't do . like being able to use videos for back grounds
Years ago, I never cared for DAZ Studio, I was a die hard Poser user with way over $3000 worth of stuff I bought from CP/Rendo/RDNA/DAZ. When Genesis came out and it didn't do much for me, it was only when G3 and 8 became popular they really made me look at Poser figures and I realized that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get the Poser figures to look as good or come close to realistic like the G3/G8 line seemed to be. Last year I literally booted up DAZ Studio for the second time, rendered the default G8 female and thought "wow her face looks like a real humans!" then it really hit me that Poser wasn't going to give me what I wanted in my renders. With LaFemme being the flagship Poser figure along with LaHomme, PE having almost no support at all from the community and (at that point) Poser 12 being a pipe dream, I left everything behind and dove into Studio.
There's so many things about Studio that I love, being able to simply dial in or out character morphs without having to apply the entire thing to G8 is probably the best thing for me. The ability to mix and match anything I want has allowed me to create unique and interesting features that would be impossible to do in Poser. I also prefer the way a lot of things are organized vs how they are in Poser, it took a while to figure out where certain catagories and menu items were but now that I've become a lot more familiar with Studio it just makes a lot more sense to me.
There are certain things I still miss, like the cloth room being more flexible with draping against multiple objects and the morph brush (Mesh grabber is nice but it's not even close to being a replacement for the morph brush). I've been keeping an eye on the P12 forums looking for a reason to upgrade from P11 to P12 but so far I haven't seen a single render that has impressed me or motivated me to consider buying P12. I know it's still in beta but when I can use the default Studio HDRI with almost any recent figure and get (to me) a more impressive image than anything I've seen so far in P12, I have to wonder why I didn't switch earlier.
...as mentioned in several replies here, initially it was the cost of entry and rather intuitive setup. I also wasn't sure at the outset if I'd like this (particularly coming from a traditional art background), so plunking down 250$ (the price for Poser) or multiple hundreds/thousands for one of the pro grade programmes up front on a very limited income didn't seem like a sound idea (kind of like all those expensive exercise machines advertised on television that wind up in the attic or garage to become dust collectors after a few uses).
Daz on the other hand was free, and was the full base programme, not a hamstrung demo that lasted only a limited time and/or you couldn't save what you did in it. It came with a bundle of free content (the old 3D Bridge Pack which had the LE versions of Aiko 3 and a few animals as well as some props) and there were more freebies available not just on teh site here, but on others like Rendo, Content Paradise, and ShareCG. This was enough to get a good feel for the software before actually putting down the zlotys for content in the store. Yeah there was also Blender (2.4) but at the time I found the UI was rather cumbersome (keyboard driven and coming from a lifetime of working with traditional art media it seemed rather counter intuitive). To create a scene in Blender one also had to pretty much create everything in it from scratch, a fairly daunting process (I actually dabbled a bit with CG in the 80s back when everything needed to be coded, debugged, and compiled).
I also worked with the other programmes Daz offered (Bryce Carrara and Hexagon, the latter which was rather unstable at the time) as well as looked into Vue, Sketchup, Wings3D, and eventually bought Poser 6 (at a discount when 7 was in the wings) for its materials and cloth room. However Daz became my primary software, particularly as it began to grow. Yeah it isn't designed for creating large environments like Bryce and Carrara, but I learned to "fake it" back in the days before HDRs. Granted it is very limited in modelling potential having only primitives, grouping and basic surfacing to work with, however the Polygon Editor makes kitbashing much easier. With the Genesis concept and Iray, it evolved into something more powerful. I could now design my own custom characters by mixing different figure morphs and shapes which was not possible beforehand. As I find it to now be superb for character design, much of my content purchasing has gravitated towards merchant, morph, and shader resources along with plugins like GenX2 Skin Builder, LAMH, Garibaldi Express (now the built in Strand Hair Creator), and Ultimate Pose Master.
In short, I have seen this quirky little programme I installed thirteen years ago has grown immensely. over the years I've bene working with it (I still have the installer for ver. 1.8 as well as those for all subsequent updates).
Since Blender reworked it's UI and set-up, I have finally adopted it primarily for modelling purposes as it is not only more powerful but very stable. However,with the new Daz bridge, I am curious about exploring it for rendering as well since Cycles also has an out of core process like Octane (albeit being a path tracing rather than of PBR engine).
So, I guess to address the original question, I've used Daz for along time, know my way around it pretty well, understand it's potentials and limitations (along with ways to get around the latter), have a hefty investment in it built over the years, it is not subscription based software (yet), and it basically does what I need for my illustration work. As long as it doesn't change the minimum OS requirement to W10 I'm good (and even then I'll just stay with the whatever last version supports W7). A Linux version would be nice but I also understand the can of worms that would open up (even some of the big software developers don't support it).
If you want a happy medium between pure creation and ease-of-use, I/you/we can all benefit from a *ZBrush+Genesis marriage, as if you look to excellent creators such as Rawart, Herschel Hoffmeyer and the like, you can make your genesis characters unrecognizable to the original genesis, and more your own; and with the excellent ready-made rigging that comes with genesis characters it means sky's the limit one what you can create, pose and animate!
Even if it's coming up with small morphs to integrate into your character, you'll still feel the same satisfaction in making the pre-made genesis character truly your own!
*Note: Even though the full ZBrush program is expensive, the stream-lined ZBrush core will easily fit into our budgets, mostly costing around the same as a genesis pro package!
As far as I remember, a Genesis 8 figure Pro Package usually cost me around USD 30. Daz Studio is free. I can use the wagonload of morphs and dials from other characters or sets I bought to easily change the looks of any character I want.
ZBrushCore 2021 shows as USD 9.95/month or USD 179.95 for a single user perpetual license. What if they revoke the perpetual license for future upgrades much like Marvellous Designer? No, thanks.
As a mere hobbyist, ZBrush is definitely not for me.
For absolute free, these days, Blender sculpt tools are surprisingly excellent. And there is an abundance of helpful how-to videos on YT. The interface is much improved in recent versions. If you're put off by hotkeys, there is a fork version that has an actual button for everything.
I started with RayDream5.5, then Carrara2.0, then Poser4, Then Bryce (very old version), then MojoWorld1.0, then after running out of curse words for Poser, I tried working with DAZ Studio (DS) when it was first introduced. And despite the necessity of increasing my curse vocabulary for the early versions of DS, I stuck with DS as I weaned myself from Poser and the others and haven't looked back at all. Lost interest in modeling. I just like like the instant gratificaiton of staging, posing, lighting & rendering of DS. Bing, bang, boom... next.
I don't use Daz "instead of something else" nor have I put my hard-earned time into DS and not something else. Daz is a tool, just like Blender, Maya and ect., to be utilized. Before using Daz I was using Blender and dabbling in other software. Now using Daz, I still use Blender, and I still dabble in other software. Nothing has changed outside of acquiring a new tool. What I do like about Daz over Blender, is the speed in which I can set up a scene and begin rendering. What I like about Blender, is I can directly modify mesh, create my own morphs in seconds, and do a whole host of other things that Daz can't do. And while you can do everything in Blender, sometimes you just don't need to.
It's not really a profound reason, DS is free and works pretty well, most of the time, and I'm too lazy to learn another modeling/rendering program.
Free.
Cause I was using Poser and was dissatisfied with my choice of figures (never liked V4 or M4). DS was free, so I had nothing to lose by trying it. About the time I was learning it, Iray came out, so I stuck with it. And I was a die-hard Poser user - used it for nearly 20 years, since before Daz was Daz and was instead, Zygote ;).
Laurie
I started on poser like everyone else, and while I figgled around with it, I always found the interface clumsy and liken it to playing guitar with mittens, sure I can still make music but the mittens made it impossible for nuance as the interface was too simplistic and not very useful, but it was when I was quitting smoking that it truly started to infuriate me, I then fired up an old install of Daz studio 1.0 and everything clicked, and I never looked back, I even bought the Daz studio 3 advanced/pro version!
Perfect example: for the longest if you wanted to pose an arm/hand or other body part you had to use a body/face camera and the slowly position it to view the arm/hand etc... with Daz studio, all you need to do is highlight the body part, and hit the center button and voila! You're not only centered on the body part, but you can zoom in, and rotate on that part's axis with the mouse, unlike with poser at that time (They ended up using an updated interface after decades of the movement widget, or whatever you want to call it) where you could not even zoom in/move the scene with the mouse, you had to use that infernal movement button!
No it may not be for you, but there are plenty of Daz users that swear by it; but you do you, that's what makes this community so diverse!
However, ever since its founding Zbrush has been consistently including major updates to their program for free, much like Daz, so I doubt that they would snatch the perpetual licence out from under us, as they're an industry leader just as 3DS/Maya/etc, and they haven't gone the dark road of exclusive rentware like with adobe and the like...
But the moment that they do, I'll quit them faster than cheetah on ice!
Greetings,
A long, long time ago I wanted to get images from my head into a more...permanent form. I have fine motor coordination issues, so drawing is difficult for me. Both quality wise, and after a short period of time, it starts to hurt.
I knew about computer graphics, because my mother worked at NYIT (and I eventually went there), and I spent time at their Computer Graphics Lab, soaking in the early CGI world.
I found PoV-Ray not long after it was initially released, but I wanted to do people, not spheres and boxes...it was cool, though. I found a program that was named something like 'Humanoid' for DOS that did some of it, but it was clunky, and I wasn't happy with it, plus it really was only the character, nothing else. I found 3D Studio (before there was Max) and it was _amazing_, but I had to model everything that I wanted to render. The same for Caligari Truespace (introduced me to CSG), Yonowat's Amapi, and others. (I really liked patch-based/NURBS modeling, as I wanted to do organics.) I found Viewpoint Datalabs, and their collection of models was amazing, but _VERY_ expensive, and 3D Studio didn't have an IK solver yet, nor did the Viewpoint models have rigging. Later, 3D Studio Max had Character Studio, which was pretty astounding, but my career had really kicked in, and I didn't have a lot of time. Plus I still didn't know where to get good models of people.
I kept putting those tools and things aside, as they always took vastly more 'tool time' than 'goal time'. That is, I had to think too much about the interface, and wasn't able to focus on the illustration I was trying to create.
I remember that when I first encountered it, Poser had a UI that was based on the same Kai Krause UI toolset as the Kai's Power Tools, and that was really impressive since I used Kai's Power Tools and liked them. I liked Poser; it was unstable, and the slightest mistake left arms in weird pretzel-y shapes that I could never seem to undo, but there was real promise there. I liked it across multiple companies that have owned it, but their business model was killing me. The upgrade prices were more than I paid for almost anything else, and I'd go long periods of time between being able to use it, and find that I had to buy a new version... I tried to keep up for a while, even though I really wasn't getting a lot of value from it. But a lack of time, and just...not getting what I wanted out of the program, plus needing to stay on the upgrade treadmill killed my willingness to use it.
Then, in early 2012, I was out of work, mostly just job-hunting, with a lot of spare time on my hands in between interviews. Mid-February, roughly, I decided to poke around and see what was out there for my long-running search for human modeling software. I wasn't thrilled at getting back on the Poser train, and I hadn't heard of DAZ Studio before. It had _just_ recently become free, and Genesis had come out. Folks were still raging on the forums about having paid for it, and now it was free...and the company was refunding people's money, and being...really decent about it. So I downloaded it, and a few free pieces of content. And it just clicked.
It worked.
I was able to put together a scene...not a great one, but the bones were there, and I knew that it wasn't a problem with the software, it was my own ability that limited me.
I own a better camera than I am a photographer, but it has automatic modes that you can partially disable. My first car was a better car than I was a driver, but as long as my instinct was right, the car would back my play. My belief is that if I want to get into a hobby, I should have tools that are better than me, so there's always something to learn...something to grow into. At the same time, the tools should let me manage to express myself to the best of my ability, without having to fight the tools. That if my instincts are right, the tool will back my play.
DAZ Studio does that. Literally nothing else I've used does that as well, and in response I've spent tens of thousands of dollars here, on content to do that. Because as much fun as dipping into Silo (my preferred modeler) is, I really still prefer taking an image from my mind and putting it into a more permanent form.
I'm no artist; at best I'm an illustrator of the stories that my mind spews out, but I am very, very grateful to DAZ Studio for providing me that outlet. I'm willing to spend money because their tool provides that, and because their customer service has been exceptional.
They keep making it better, and it's still a tool that's much, MUCH better than my mediocre skill. I have never exceeded its capabilities, nor do I expect that I will. I've found little features that I use other tools for (Silo for modeling geegaws that nobody else makes, Hexagon for fixing/smoothing weird bridging problems and making custom morphs), but they're all ultimately for use in DAZ Studio.
tl;dr - It just meshes with the way I think and work, and I spend vastly more time building my scene, and perfecting it, than paying any attention to the UI, or 'tool time'. I've tried a lot of tools, over several decades, in pursuit of this, and this is where I've landed, and I'm happy with that.
-- Morgan
...3DS Max and Maya have been subscription only for a few years now. Cinema 4D still offers a perpetual licence as do Modo and Lightwave andof course Zbrush.
Very disappointed about Marvelous Designer going the subscription route. Was saving up for the current version (have an old version that unfortunatly no longer qualifies for an upgrade discount) but I feel the same about "rentware".
Who says that only DS?
I have AND use: Cinema4D, Unreal Engine, Modo, Silo, Keyshot, Cascadeur (french software for animation)
now back to the question: Because Turbosquid is sooo expensive!
Unfortunately C4D has now degenerated into rentware... I really despise adobe for setting this rotten precedence of forcing rentware to the industry!
I boycotted them, and have since bought Affinity Photo/Paintshop and also use krita!
EDIT: My mistake, I didn't note the perpetual licence at the bottom of the page!
I started with Bryce & then Poser when MetaCreations owned both of them. I took a break from Poser after Poser 9. When I came back to 3d I figured I'd try DS for free before shelling out money for a new version of Poser. Stayed with it beause it did what I needed. In which case there was no point in paying for Poser.
I am extremely non-visual and have so little artistic skill that I say 'Wow, stick figures! I wish I could draw those!" I'd seen someone use Poser to create an RPG character, but I wasn't going to shell out hundreds of dollars without knowing if i could make anything with it. So I googled and discovered DS was free.
It clicked immediately, even if I was so ignorant I didn't realize you had to render and not just screenshot the viewport. I eventually picked up Poser, Bryce, and Carrara cheap, and discovered that Kai Krause interfaces and I do not get along. I prefer menus to toolbars, and DS allowed me to remove all the toolbars. I was able to accomplish things in DS starting with zero knowledge of the concepts, whereas even with what I know now I couldn't wrap my head around Blender. DS is already capable of far more than I'm capable of, so there isn't much point in learning another tool, Besides, I barely have time to do any art as it is, so why spend the time learning a completely different tool? I use what little learning time I have trying to get better at GIMP. Modelling is completely outside my skill set.
..I just keep using Gimp and PSP. Could never afford PS when there was a perpetual licence
I did buy Poser 10 some years back. At the time I was in conversation with someone online who insisted that Poser was far more intuitive than DAZ Studio. I found the opposite and Poser turned out to be a complete waste of money.
I do use Blender for some things but I find it cumbersome compared to DAZ Studio when it comes to posing. I admit that I have not honed my Blender skills and that if I spent the necessary time, I could probably cope with Blender but I can't see the point. DAZ Studio is very good for posing and clothing with autofit. I should use Marvelous Designer more instead of dForce (I have MD8) but I'm reluctant to leave the single interface of DAZ Studio.
At the time I got into Daz, two major problems were tanking my creative output: I developed carpal tunnel issues in my right hand, and I have ADHD. The former makes drawing for any length of time very painful, especially since the kind of linework I used to do needs a steady hand. The latter makes developing alternative skillsets an ordeal, because my brain refuses to retain information if I'm bored.
The programs I do best with are ones where you can pick up lots of skills by basically following recipes and experimenting. If I can google "How to _____" and at least get started, there's a good chance it'll click with me; if I can skip ahead by modifying or taking apart what other people have done it's even easier. If I have a cool, ambitious idea I need a Photoshop effect for, I can often learn to do it by watching a short YouTube tutorial. If I want special effects for a Twine story, I can Frankenstein code bits and figure it out.
Daz is very, very much this. I've learned everything I know about 3D from tinkering with assets made by other people, I've picked up lingo based on what I need to know, and it's hard to get totally blocked by clicking around and experimenting. Even though my first render was awful, I was so fascinated by being able to pose a figure in what looked like a real environment that I barrelled ahead full speed. It took me a long time to do anything I thought was good, but the entire time I could see it, and that made it realistically achievable.
My experience with other 3D modeling software is that if I click around and try stuff out without at least dedicating some real effort to starting from square one, I'll get lost and frustrated really fast. Unfortunately, no matter how I approach something as simple as the Blender donut tutorial my brain hates every second of it. "I don't want to make a donut!" it starts wailing the second I start up the playlist. "I want to convert Batsuit models from FBX to fit on Genesis 8!" The process of doing simple things and then building toward what I want to do feels like work, so I have to force myself to do it, so I put it off forever.
Community atmosphere also counts for a lot, and Daz is pretty laid back. People here get attached to their figures, 3D objects are toys to play with and collect, and if I futz around doing weird stuff nobody's going to come and scold me about industry best practices or amateurish shader application. It doesn't matter if I learn things "wrong" or get results that aren't super realistic. Nobody cares, and as a thwarted perfectionist that's extremely freeing!
Concept artists are actually some of the few pros I've seen talk openly about using Daz! Most of my postwork style comes from concept and production art, where photobashing, model paintovers, and compositing are all used to speed up the content pipeline.
Since concept art is used to explore ideas quickly and translate mood, story, and setting into visual language, it's very close to what I use art for. It baffles some of the concept artists I know when video game fans go wild over the kind of material that's basically intended to be disposable, but there's something very dreamlike about the mix of photorealistic detail, layered textures, and loose abstract brushstrokes found in many concept paintings. Key art and other marketing/commercial assets are sometimes produced in the same way, because it's a very evocative and compelling style but quick to turn around as needed.
This is my favorite channel demonstrating that kind of process with Daz models, including use of the Nik Collection filters which are my main texturing tool, and this tutorial is another great example of a graphic artist using DS and photobashing. Some comic book artists also trace over Daz models, which makes sense given how fast they need to work and how much they have to draw.
I like Daz very much and I will continue Daz as long as I can afford it.
Now the logical part...
I am using most of the time Daz Studio and Blender and combination of both software is more than I can handle. Daz Studio is fast and easy due to ready contents. I can render any kind of scenes without spending a lot or spending plenty of time for modelling.
It's mostly about time saving for me. My main work is in non-photorealistic rendering, and DS allows me to quickly setup scenes to render with my NPR algorithms. The content management is key for me, too (DIM works great for my needs). The scripting capabilities in DS are also a necessity for me.
The community (although it has definitely changed over the years) factors in as well.
- Greg
Because there is nothing else like DAZ Studio?
Apples and oranges.
I also use other stuff, but only DS does what DS does.
DS is stupid-people friendly.
Indeed. I am a prime example.
No, no, no, currently Filament is not friendly with hair etc. However somehow Wendyluvscatz makes her people Filament friendly along with their fur. Now her people are smarter than Filament, those people are smart and can make sounds like meow! hence smart-people are friendly with DS Filament.