Which artist makes the best hair and figures?
Illidanstorm
Posts: 655
in The Commons
I recently bought the plantinium membership hoping to find some good deals. I haven't bought all that much yet and just see all these figures and hairs. To save myself the troube which artist do you think makes the best hair and figures? I make clothes myself so I don't need those.
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There's really no one answer to that, as many different people have different preferences. I find myself partial to AprilYSH and OutOfTouch for hair, but I can't think of any current vendors of hair that I wouldn't use (okay, there are a couple, but that's because their hairs are system intensive and I've got an old system. So the problem's on my end, not theirs.)
Characters - again, it depends on what you mean by "best" - best morphs? most realistic? Most photoreal? (yes, these are actually different, though related, things) most options? I don't pick my characters by vendor that often, prefering to go with characters that don't strike me as generic pretty white girls, but that's just my preference.
There are many and I'm sure when I close my computer I'll remember that I didn't include such-and-such, but to get you started:
Hair: AprilYSH, EmmaAndJordi, Goldtassel
Figures: Fred Winkler/Sabby, Josh Crockett, RawArt, Hinkypunk
You could also use face morphs on the base Daz figures to make fantasy or ethnic characters: SickleYield for People of the Earth face morphs and Fantastical Features (I don't own any of the latter but they look good). Also Thorne and DarioFish for fantasy shapes.
Kudos to you for being able to make your own clothes. For specialized fantasy clothing when you don't have a lot of time to make them, I highly recommend IgnisSerpentus.
Have fun!
Hahaha...be prepared to get as many different opinions as there are people on the site, but here goes....
Hair: AprilYSH, OOT
Characters: Raiya, Saiyaness, Kayleyss; LadyLittlefox for toons; 3D Universe for toons and young teen and child characters
Worth mentioning: RedzStudio if you want great fibermesh eyebrows and hair; Fabiana, esha and Fisty for jewelry; Josh Crockett and Rawart for aliens and creepy characters; Herschel Hoffmeyer for dinos and alien creatures; midnight_stories for space suits, armor and wings; Stonemason, Faveral and Jack Tomalin for architectural sets, scenes and buildings; HowieFarkes for natural scenery.
Misc: Any of the morph packages by Zev0 like Aging morphs, Shape Shifter, Growing Up
My two cents of course ;)
Laurie
Thank you so far, those are great artists to check out
Hair: Outoftouch, RedzStudio, Toyen, AprilYSH, Neftis3D
Figures, Raiya, Bluejaunte, Saiyaness, Secondcircle, Sangriart, Godin, Mousso, Sithlordsims, Darwins Mishap(s)
Characters The gypsy boys (Gypsyangel)
Some of my favorites -
Hair:
Goldtassel
AprilYSH
OOT
Characters:
Whomever makes "The Girl" figures (Girl 6, Girl 7)
Kayleyss
Saiyaness
Chevybabe25
DemonicaEvilius
Raiya
Lady Littlefox
P3Design
whomever did Lilith 6, Lee 6, and Stephanie 6
Sarsa (though it looks like they probably don't make characters anymore)
That's just to name a few. FWSA has some great characters, as does Lyoness, Thorne, Darwinsmishap, and I know I'm missing some of my other favourites but I can't think of them right now. Apologies to any of my favourite PAs that I've missed!
Hair: AprilYSH, Out of Touch
Characters: Fred Winkler and/or Sabby, Lyoness, Male-M3dia
Lights: DimensionTheory, DestinysGarden
Shader Presets: Me, DestinysGarden (shameless plug)
Hair: SWAM, OutofTouch, AprilYSH
Characters: P3Design, Fred Winker, Sabby, Kayleyss, Raiya, bluejaunte
bluejaunte does not have a huge catalog like the other PAs but I really like Yara (G3F) and Lyra (G8F) figures.
Every render I've seen of bluejaunte's two characters makes me determined to get them both. They're on my wish list - just waiting for a good sale. Not that they're not worth the full price - it looks like they definitely are. I'm just on a tight budget. Those characters though - they look so good with a LOT of attention paid to creating resalistic skin textures! I'm definitely looking forward to getting them! :)
I think Lyoness and Silver make great characters.
They should do a collab!
Ahh Silver! I knew I'd forget at least one person (probably more). Yes, that's definitely one to add to the list.
And I agree, you guys should team up.
Would Silver do the textures and you do the morphs, or vice versa? :)
collabs are usually more involved and back/forth than just one person does textures and one does morphs. A true collab involves both people involved in all aspects.
Ah, cool. Sounds good. :) Here's hoping you guys team up then. I bet you'd make some lovely characters together!
For the me, the best characters (figures) come from FWSA, Raiya, and Saiyness.
The best hair(s)? AprilYSH, OOT (outoftouch), and SWAM.
Hair:
Goldtassel, Kool, AprilYSH, OOT (OutOfTouch),
Characters:
FWSA (Fred Winkler Art, Sabby), Virtual_World, bluejaunte, iSourceTextures, 3D Universe, Raiya, Saiyaness, Hinkypunk
and many, many others.
Oh geeze.. I forgot about Silver, her characters are delicious.. and I forgot about Darwin's Mishap, his boys are scruptious.
Honestly, i think everyone that has their niche does amazing. I cant think of one hair maker who does bad hair, or one character maker who doesnt make gorgeous guys/gals. Like we have a pretty talented damn bunch of artists here at Daz. Even things that come into the market that arent my style, like RawnArts creepy folks, are amazingly well made. As far as personal favorites, i love AprilYSH hairs, i probably use them the most, and if i purchased characters, i love Gypsyangel boys and Kayless does stunning everything.
I like a great many artists, but will limit my list for each category.
Hair
SWAM, AprilYSH, Naomi (note - Naomi's hair is dynamic strand based so not for everyone - there is a free plugin to convert it to prop but most Studio users won't want to deal with it).
Characters
Silver, Forbidden Whisper, Vyusur (note - Vyusur is new to PA status, but I just love her two current characters).
There's no "one best" hair maker or character maker or anything else maker because it entirely depends on your own preferences and what you consider "best". What you like and what you consider to excellent, may not be what I consider great, due to our personal opinions and likes and dislikes. :D Do you like beautiful women with contemporary makeups? Do you like creepy characters, like vampires or trolls or witches? Are you looking for teenage characters? Are you partial to very pale skinned redheads with ginger eyebrows? What are you looking for in hairs and characters? Male or female? Aliens? Creatures?
If you're looking for PC+ products only - as you said you're new to PC - you're looking for those vendors who do a lot of DAZ Originals at least. For instance, OutofTouch hairs are obviously a favourite as they have been mentioned many times - and rightly so, as they are always excellent quality and his/her iray shaders are among the best...but there aren't many of his/her current hairs being DAZ Originals. On the other hand, there are quite a few AprilYSH hairs that are daz originals, where PC members get at 30% off...and sometimes more in certain sales. AprilYSH hairs are a favourite of mine - the quality is excellent, the styles are great, and I know damn well that I am getting a brilliant product that I won't have any problems with at all.
If you want characters that are PC+, there actually aren't a great deal of vendors who have PC+ characters. Fred Wrinkler Art (FW) has a lot of PC+ characters, and he is always of excellent quality. Lyoness has some really wonderful face/body morphs in the PC+ that look and work great.
One thing I want to recommend that I think you may find helpful in discovering your own "best of", is the Daz Deals Browser add on, a free plugin by Ati and Overdrawn: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/106296/announcing-daz-deals-browser-add-on/p1 One of its most useful capabilities (for me, at least), is that once installed, you will see on a product page, links to gallery images that USE that product, along with any mentions of it in the forums. So if you're interested in something, you can click on the gallery links to see it being used by other customers, to help you decide if it's for you. And you can click on the forum mentions links to see what people are saying/asking about it in the forums - any problems, raving about how wonderful it is, showing off art with it, etc etc. I honestly think those two things alone, have helped me discover wonderful new vendors and products that I may not otherwise have thought about buying.
Hair vendors- When I think of hair with a lot of options, I think of EmmaAndJordi. SWAM and OOT also excellent.
Characters- Agree with the lists of vendors already mentioned. Lyoness was one of the first to give you brow options or no brow, be sure and read descriptions for characters who have that.
For people who vary in appearance the most, coming to my mind are Chevybabe25, GypsyAngel, (there's only 3 out of 44 that I don't have. Great products!) and Darwins Mishap(s). Check out his thread in Art Studio forum. You can chit chat and provide feedback for the in progress characters.
Vyktorhia has some great gals. Mihrelle has softer brows, regular features. Check out Willow.
For thicker brows (I don't really care for thin brows or ultra-penciled thin brows) it's going to be Godin or P3Design.
Toons are 3djoji and 3D Universe.
AprilYSH but I wish she'd get out of her little bubble and expand to different hair colors. We get the same colors on every single hair since the dawn of time. Time to branch out and offer more colors overall, and more variety.
SWAM and Goldtassel just cuz of the pure variety. Not always that crazy for their textures but I always have Slosh UHT.
Redz for sure. Awesome hairs for head and face.
*sigh* There are a number of hair shaders for Iray which make the issue of "great hair model, wrong colors" a non-issue. But no one seems to have made a realistic hair shader for 3Dlight. There are sparkle shaders, and 'Toon shaders, and fairy shaders, but nothing that would make it possible to put, say, a Neftis tail on a random hair cap and make it match. Or put colors that render the way I need them to on a hair model from a vendor whose colors always render too dark, or too red, or too grey, or whatever.
I do hope everyone here realizes that these are whole different lists than we would have got a few years ago. Back in the gen4 era there would have been a whole slew of other favorite vendors for just about everything, although some seem to be perennial.
For example: Fabiana. She did some of the loveliest gen4 characters and hair in the market. Always with a whole specrum of options for hair and eye colors and other such extras. Surrealitiy's characters were/are legendary, although rather too frequently the special effects materials were Poser-specific. And, of course SAV. The same can be said of clothing modelers. Some have carried over into Genesis, but not all, by a long shot.
Fabiana is still releasing awesome stuff. No idea what became of Surreality. SAV...
As far as figures go, I'm extremely picky about those. To me, almost 90% of them look the same -especially the females-, so I generally tend to turn my nose up at them and outside of Pro Bundles, I generally don't go out of my way to purchase them. That said, the two PAs who frequently make figures that I actually like/love are Saiyaness and RawArt. Saiyaness' tendency to make characters look like people you'd meet in real life -especially older folks and non-white people- is very striking and I love that she fills a sorely needing-to-be-filled niche. RawArt's creatures are absolutely amazing, and I love that his women look very "rough" as well.
Honorable mentions: the late, great StudioArtVartanian's characters for M4 and V4 are wonderful, even if most of them are blatantly based off of actors and actresses (i.e. Daniel Craig, Kirsten Dunst, Marilyn Monroe), which I'm not really fond of in general. Linday also has made some great characters (Satine!), but they don't have too many characters outside of Satine and Sybil at this point.
Hair? RedzStudio, Fabiana (a real shame she hasn't made updates to her older hairs, though they still hold up to this day), Lady Littlefox, StudioArtVartanian (*cries*), and Aeon Soul. AprilYSH is another one, but I kiiiiiiinda like some of her older hairs a smidge more (I'd really love to see a G3-G8 update to Kione and Zed hairs, but that's just me).
Be aware that some hair models take FOREVER to render. Don't ask me which artist or which hair. Also be aware that textures/shaders for characters skin are usually made for a specific render engine - such as Iray, Firefly, 3Delight, Reality, Cararra, etc. and if you try to render them with an engine they weren't made for, the results can be TERRIBLE. For example the SSS skin textures made for Poser are supurb, but in DAZ Studio they look awful. Also be aware that some artists sell characters with skin textures that they use on multiple characters (usually with some tweaking to the color, or a blemish or two) so you may be buying what is essentially the same texture over and over. Also be aware that sometimes a HUGE amount of time and effort is put into the models some artist sell, and that often the superior quality is worth the money!
Yes, but the last character she released was Exbarah, who is a V4. She did do a couple of nice characters for Dawn as well. But so far nothing in the Genesis series. She has updated a few of her classic hairs, but mostly still for V4 (and Dawn).
I'm enormously pleased to see that she has been doing her lovely jewelery for Genesis. It was a hassle and a half to get tiny items like that positioned properly for Genesis, when they load for V4.
Also, consider buying characters which are significantly different from each other. For instance, instead of buying 11 characters with a similar skin tone, maybe take a look at some of the very beautiful different skin tones some artists make, such as:
https://www.daz3d.com/fwsa-taia-hd-for-victoria-7
https://www.daz3d.com/p3d-aluna
Only $1.39 character and hair https://www.daz3d.com/wynter-snow-bundle
Only $2.10 https://www.daz3d.com/carissa-for-genesis-2-female-s
https://www.daz3d.com/nyarai-for-genesis-3-female
Only $7.11 https://www.daz3d.com/fw-honey-hd-for-victoria-7
https://www.daz3d.com/ceridwen-and-fantasy-skins-for-genesis-3-female
Only $3.99 https://www.daz3d.com/fwf-sumiko-for-mei-lin-6
I'd love to purchase her but she's still a Encrypted DAZ Connect product.
same here, on my wishlist for sure, can't wait to get her.
I don't have any fav artists, they all have products I like and ones I don't or have no need for. There are vendors I admire for the quality of their work though. I do have lots of fav/go to products though. My fav/most used skin texture for GF3 came from a vendor at Rendo, second is Frida from FWSA. I use hair from many vendors, Goldtassel, Redz, Ali, SWAM, AprilYSH, etc, etc. Really depends on what kind of hair I need.