I'm new to daz3D and I'd like your opinion on my renders.
cicerodennys2
Posts: 0
Good evening! I'm relatively new to Daz 3D, so I started experimenting. These past few days I've been creating my own characters and posting renders of them on social media, each with its own individual profile. The first point here is that I wanted to share some of these renders and ask for your feedback on whether I'm doing well and what I need to improve.Okay, and the second point I wanted to know is if it would be possible to monetize with the level of renders? If so, I would like some tips and also ways to engage.
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Hello cicerodennys2
Your renders looks good.
What kind of figure are these, Genesis 1, 2, 3, 8 or 9?
Never tried to make money with the things I do.
I have been using Daz Studio for more than 3 years, still I believe I need to improve.
Maybe other members can tell you about their experiences.
I am dedicated to create renders for special ocasions for my relatives.
Greetings cards maybe good idea, but I am afraid it could be a waste of time, as the birthdays or festive seasons come and goes, is better to create a long lasting impression with renders that will be hanged on a picture frame,
I wanted to make digital scrapbooking png images 20 years ago. I thought I would make a lot of money and get to quit my job. Nope, that didn't happen.
There are many who do make digital scrapbooking kits and did well with them, however.
I Googled "how to make money with daz studio images," and found some interesting answers :)
Try it yourself, create a great product and submit it to Daz Store, Renderosity, RenderHub, or any other marketplace site.
Don't get your hopes up too high; it's difficult to carve out a niche in a market that's slowing down (mainly due to people's enthusiasm for artificial intelligence).
I myself have nine products on the Renderosity marketplace, and this year I've earned $163 (including $8 today).
So, I wish you good luck and have a great day!
Edit: Now I get more enjoyment from creating freebies.
Thanks for the compliment and feedback, they are all based on Genesis 8 female.
I have to say that initially it was just a hobby because I had a lot of fun creating these renders, and then someone told me I should try to monetize it, especially in the NSFW area. Thanks for the advice.
I think they are very good renders. I especially like the first one, the composition is great and I like the expression of the character on the right. But I can't give you any advice on monetization.
No problem, your compliment alone was worth it, thank you!
Are you creating characters to sell or renders to sell?
Well, I still don't know. I'm researching which of these I'll find useful. That's why I'm accepting tips and constructive criticism.
I know nothing about making actual characters to sell. I do know that selling renders is not as easy as one might think. I think my art is pretty decent and its not easy at all to sell it. Feel free to have a look at my gallery although the nsfw is on deviant art for obvious reasons. https://www.daz3d.com/gallery/user/4841167711633408#gallery=newest&page=1. ; I spent a year just learinging the basics of Daz Studio, then started adding photoshop. I did promotional art for Sympatico Studio for a couple of years (and love it, but life happened and I didn't really have time anymore).
Keep in mind I don't sell the images I make with DAZ products, though I have done a few commissions (not something I typically enjoy doing). I hesitate to give any critique on work/renders done by anyone else when I don't know what style/look they are trying to achieve. There are people on DA (DeviantArt) that appear to be successfully selling their "art" that I definitely would never pay for (or even press the like button for). So I would say you should do a bit of research at any venues you might want to sell at, compare your images to those that sell very well, and see if you are able to produce something of equivalent quality/interest.
For making characters to sell for DAZ, the quality of your product promos must be top notch in order to entice people to purchase your work. Seldom have I purchased something and found the quality of the product to be better than the product promos. Of course the quality of your character must also be very good as well if you want repeat customers. I have purchased content with great promos that fell far short of my expectation based on the promos. When this happens, I don't buy from that vendor again.
As mentioned above, AI is definitely taken people away from the 3D market for both content sales and images. That being said, I think there is still room for outstanding work. Comparing your work to very popular AI generated images is a good way to push yourself to be able to catch the eye of the general public. Also understanding the limitations of 3D art vs AI art can help you to work toward better artistic expression and visual interest. Many 3D artist just get upset at AI generated art, rather than embrace it and try to produce work that can "compete" with it. If you are selling images, I think the idea of creating work that can compete with AI generate art is extremely important. There are people who will prefer 3D art to AI art, even when the AI might be better (more visually compelling), but the general population doesn't seem to really care. On DA, there are people who have liked my images that only "like" 3D work, but there are more that seem to "like" AI images more often than 3D and other forms of art. So the reality is, unless you can find a market where AI art isn't allowed, you will be competing with AI art when trying to sell images and/or generate general interest in your work
As a side note, I have made AI assisted and AI generated works. There are things that can be achieved with AI generated images that could only be achieved with 3D if you create your own content. So if you are only using pre-made content, that does put you at a slight creative disadvantage when compared to AI.
If you would like some specific help to achieve a certain look/style with your renders, stating what you would like to improve on will help the community to give you more directed advise/assistance (or link to a render with a style you would like to mimic). I have a certain style I've developed over the years. I'm not the best, but if there are any images in my gallery that interest you, I can give you a few recommendations on how to mimic the work (I'm sure others that have responded would do the same).
That first point of yours is absolutely true; in fact, selling only the renders was the first thing I ruled out. I've been discovering some viable options through NSFW content, like comics and AVNs, or even erotic animations (well, I'm still refining that part).
And since you brought up AI, I've been sharing the renders saying they were 3D, but I've come across some people claiming they were AI-generated.
Well, I'd like your particular opinion on whether these two renders here seem to have used AI.
Although I have a lot of fun creating these renders, I've given up on the idea of selling them, but I've kind of found some other ways to make this hobby worthwhile, and now it's a matter of seeing if it works out or not.
(I loved your art!)
So in the interest of constructive feedback.. in my opinion you will need to work on:
- Render quality. What render engine is that? Is it actually Iray, it looks like filament or 3delight? Iray is what you should be using in Daz for more realistic renders.
- Lighting. The subject isn't lit properly in any of the examples. Maybe some you could argue they are lit okay. Of course, there are 10 million ways to light a scene, and good lighting is subjective obviously, but note that I am not saying blow out the subject with one big large harsh intense light, but rather suggesting you can look at photography or film lighting techniques, or just use your innate artistic intuition to do it. At the moment in all your renders the lighting is flat and not enhancing the renders.
-Skin textures and skin shaders . Again, these look dull and flat. They look like old videogame quality. Where did you get your shaders? They look worse than the default materials that come with characters on Daz store, and seem to be missing SSS and other qualities of skin? Again, is this just because you arent using iray?
- Background asset quality. These look like quality of video games from PS3 era. Please look at using high quality assets from marketplace ecosystems (Daz3d.com being obvious, but there are other places)
- Hair. The hair in your renders is not rendering properly. Again, may be because you are using iray assets while not rendering in iray, or assets you chose are bad quality.
If you intend to sell renders, your competition is people on the front page of Daz gallery, front page of Artstation, etc and increasingly AI. So anything short of that quality wise is not going to be competitive in the marketplace, if there even is one? And I think if you dont have exceptional artistic intuition, then it will take a lot of youtubing and a lot of learning theory to supplement your current render level?
Thanks for the feedback, as I'm a beginner I hadn't paid attention to these bigger issues.
Well, in those renders above I used 3Dlight for my first tests, but I intend to improve, especially in those hair and lighting details you mentioned!
Thanks for the feedback, boss!
Asking people to give you feedback, in my experience, is rarely productive because very few people will ever be honest with you. Everyone is too nice.
The fact nobody in this thread even questioned the render engine you are using is quite telling.
Unfortunately you cannot rely on constructive criticism, even if you demand people to be ruthless, they never are. If you submit your work to an experienced artist who you look up to, then maybe you can get valuable feedback, if theyre willing to take the time to do this. But generally, you need to be your own critic.
One thing that artists can do is flip canvas so they can see their renders with fresh eyes to try to see faults with it. Many people without much of an art background seem to assume what theyre creating is a masterpiece, so by forcing themselves to look at it in a new way can be valuable.
Nobly honest! Thank you again for the observation.
Thanks! I am also exploring some nsfw options. We shall see how it turns out lol.
Well ..... uumm .... no they don't look like AI to me. Keep in mind that the general population has no idea what a 3D render/image is, or what an AI image is. With the prominence of discussions about AI on social media and the news, for many people who see an image that looks computer generated they will default to saying it's "AI".
Here are two AI generated images sort of inspired by one of your examples to use for comparison. AI is notorious for having issues with hands/fingers (the second image shows more hand/fingers issues than the first). Unlike what most people think, you typically don't just type in a prompt and immediately get the image you want. Even though these are just a "quick examples", it took about an hour of tweaking the prompt to get the image I wanted (using Flux), then refining the image using an SXDL checkpoint to improve the realism (Flux is good, especially for getting good hands, but it creates images that are a bit to over saturated and high contrast for me, so I refined the flux image with SDXL which looks better to my eyes). If I was trying to make a "good" image, there would be additional work to change the pose a bit, and improve the fingers (I would probably end up doing in painting and hand editing to fix some elements). Then I used the first image to generate the second image using an SDXL checkpoint optimized to generate images that mimic a digital drawing style. I think this one looks a lot more like a 3D render, but IMHO it's still a lot different than your examples.
I think you should be able to easily see the differences between these AI generated images and the one you posted. I don't think anyone who is truly familiar with AI image generation would mistake your examples for AI.
Well no, this is very demographic dependent. Not to sterotype, but your average "Facebook user" quite evidently has not been very discerning about this historically, even while AI was in its infancy. See clickfarms etc using AI as a tool for engagement farming on that population.
On the other hand, your typical Millennial and Zoomer have good AI detectors (and also know what CGI is!). With AI getting harder to detect, it remains to be seen whether this will hold true much longer but for now it is a fair assumption
Anyway, never once when posting a render (thousands of followers on twitter) has someone asked if my renders are AI. So the fact that this question has been posed after mere days of publishing images makes me wonder who this audience that thinks very obvious CGI is AI? My hunch is either children or the elderly, or an otherwise very technologically naive audience, or perhaps someone who has personal knowledge of your experience which is coloring their perception.
The vast majority of tech literatre people will be able to discern between distinctive Ai render qualities and a 3delight render (which typically render out like a screenshot of The Sims or another old video game).
One thing that you should watch for in your renders is poke-through/clipping. In the first image, on the figure in the back, the glasses are behind the cheeks. You see the arms and part of the frame, as well as the nose bridge, but the left lens and most of the right lens are behind the cheek. In the third image, the hair pokes through in several places, but that is harder to pick out
...and the glass surfaces could do with looking a bit more "glassy". In this outtake the shadowed eye on the right side looks a bit patchy. And there are more subtle qualities in the blast of light in the background on the left, than there are in the entire image. I'm not an expert on hair but the texture here is a bit flat and repetitive.
Of possible interest - I fed an outtake from your samples to Google Gemini 3 Nano-banana or whatever they are calling it, citing the "patches" and suggesting that the hair could use some variety. I also said to make it less "orange". Gemini has obviously changed changed the lighting on the face but for sure the hair is more interesting.
In real life, if we are in a photo studio session with a live model it's perfectly all right to ask your assistant to unpin the model's hair and tousle it a bit. From here we could also darken the "Levels" in an image editor, and it's okay to use a feathered lasso to darken the area of the eyes.