Model, Render, Animate
Causam3D
Posts: 216
in The Commons
NOT..
1) Model - no. You can not work with a mesh in any meaningful way. You can prototype and then export.
2) Render - yes. With somebody else's renderer.
3) Animate - NO. Well, unless you're severely inhibited.
DAZ, PLEASE...
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2026 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
1. Model - not in DS, but DAZ 3D also owns Hexagon (modeler) which is now free, and Carrara (3d suite) which of course includes modeling tools.
2. Render - Well, this is quite common throughout the industry, to render using "someone elses" render engine. As long as it works, I've got no issues with it, and the price is pretty hard to beat, you could use Maya and pay $300 a year to render with Iray. (Carrara also has it's own internal render engine)
3. Animate - Not easy, and DS doesn't have most of the tools needed to make animation easier, but it can be done. The figure animation (and IIRC the rendering was done in DS/3Delight, and post was done in Blender) for short film Rosa by Jesús Orellana was done in DS, so obviously even with the rudimentary tools in DS, it the right hands, it can be done.
Soooo.......
I consider myself a truly critical person, and I hope a bit constructiive too. But I'd not blame the "model, animate, render" ad. Sure things can be improved but the basics are there.
1) Model. The main weakness I see in Hexagon is the lack of sculping tools to manage displacement maps.
2) Animate. There's not a IK target system for animation. It only works for posing. And the "effects" section is just at the first stage with dForce. So there's plenty to be done here. But if you are the kind who uses pre-made motion-captured animations, and you add effects in post with another software, then you can already go with DAZ Studio quite fine. That said, personally I'd never use DAZ Studio for animation at this stage unless forced.
3) Render. iRay is quite good. It only needs a denoiser filter. The actual one just doesn't work. But you can always denoise in post with another software of your choice.
On the matter of animation
The Best way to animate Characters in any program
with ,IK or not, is with an unclothed low res proxy figures.
You then save the finished motion to be retargeted to your hi res figures
wearing their mutliple hi res conformers and
ridiculous 4K textures for the final render.
This is how it is done in Maya,Max ,Lightwave, Houdini etc
This is quite easily done in Daz studio
If the character is interacting with props, load only those props or
primitive proxy quivalents.
Not an entire stonemason Med bay set and try to animate a fully dressed
SubD level 3 HD morphed genesis 8 figure
interacting with some prop in the scene.
Carrarators is devoted to animation. http://bond3d.wixsite.com/carrarators
Daz3D owns Carrara. Carrara can model. Carrara can render. Carrara can animate.
For an example of Carrara animation, go to IMDB and take a look at Dinner for Few by Nassos.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3788934/
and website http://dinnerforfew.com/
Please distinguish between Daz3D the company and just one of its programs, Studio.
Please distinguish between animation the medium which includes many styles and hyper-realism animation which is just a subset.
Not sure i understand the issue. Daz Studio is a free app used to pose, render and animate. It is not a full feature commercial app like max or maya AND IT'S FREE!
Hexagon is a free modeling app, so together you have a 3D suite, no problem
Now if a user has extremely high expectations and needs, then they should probably go with a high end commercial app like Max or Maya.
Not sure i understand the issue. Daz Studio is a free app used to pose, render and animate. It is not a full feature commercial app like max or maya AND IT'S FREE!
Hexagon is a free modeling app, so together you have a 3D suite, no problem
Now if a user has extremely high expectations and needs, then they should probably go with a high end commercial app like Max or Maya.
It's better to go with Blender for a one stop solution. Just export models to Blender from DAZ until DAZ fixes DAZ Studio.
There is nothing to fix, it does what it is designed to do
Definitely been having a love-hate relationship with Daz3D (and other 3D packages such as Strata Design 3D and Poser Pro) over the past few years. I'm so close to dropping cash on either Modo or Cinema4D and be done with it.
In my case, I really want an all-in-one. And while there are elements of Daz3D I really love, there's an almost equal-sized list of those I hate. I do lots of work compositing 3D imagery to real-life photographs. To this day, things like the depth-of-field value are still not fixed. So you resort to workarounds by using a DOF calculator, placing a plane of the appropriate size and manually lining up the DOF guides to that plane. In Poser, you just type the f-stop and set the focal point. Done. But there's a whole list then of things I hate in Poser that I can do in Daz3D.
For modeling, I often use Adobe Illustrator since working with splines is awesome. Import an EPS into Strata 3D (which has poor spline tools) and then extrude, etc. Finally, import an OBJ into DAZ while not messing up the unit conversions. This is really becoming taxing and not a fun way to work.
Of course I'm still miffed at the utter lack of Bryce on macOS. I still have many assets that I use in some software titles that I can no longer render :(
And while IRay seems great, all the Macs I've had for well over a decade all use AMD. Poser, DAZ3D and Strata only use my CPUs.
Strata is also 32-bit only and support refuses to answer me as to if they are moving to 64-bit. So I have to assume that application is dead.
In summary, I'm strongly leaning to and all-in-one, even if a high cost. Some solutions have fully embraced OpenCL or even have both nVidia and AMD GPU solutions. Trying to use different apps from different companies is like herding cats. And ultimately my enjoyment of 3D goes out the window. I have even thought of giving up on 3D and just using Illustrator and Photoshop to fake some simple cartoonish 3D scenes.
It's funny. The first time I saw Poser (way back in the dark ages when they had just launched Poser 5), I remember being astounded at how good the animation and modeling looked straight out of the box when compared to what was considered acceptable for TV shows that were currently on the air... like the CGI Spiderman series
Once I got into it, however, I quickly learned that most of the "real" animators looked down their noses at Poser (and DAZ Studio, once it came along,) for a lot of technical reasons... and yet, that hasn't stopped those programs from being used around the world for many sucessful commercial projects and films. Just like a lot of filmakers used to mock consumer camcorders and cameras... until suddenly those same cameras were being used to produce sucessful TV series and feature films. In the end, it's not all about the tools you have; it's about figuring out how to use what you have to create your vision. If you want more functionallity for a specific reason, then, sure, you need to move up a tier to Lightwave or Cinema 4d, but there's no doubt that you can do all of the things that DAZ advertises, to at least some extent, even within DS, and it's by far one of the easiest ways for newcomers to 3D to enter the animation world.
I would love to see some of your animation work, I bet you have a ton of awesome ones that you made. :)
I animate with daz. I do it for a hobby mostly it works just fine for my needs. there is not many people that would choose daz for their pro animation suite. it does lack a lot, But i have made a few simple commissioned animation for people, they were simple toon music animation & I didn't have to charge the customers $12000 to make their animations either, because the software i used didn't cost me $6000 a year subscription price to make their animations with .
"Model Render Animate"
It's a prophecy. Scoffers shall weep torrents of bitter tears when they behold the Hexagon updates, lipsync & IK surpassing iClone. It cometh. Verily. And soon.
I largely agree with this. My original post was made in a fit of pique. I'll quote here what I said in another thread earlier today:
It's important to remember what DS is, and is not, intended to be. I view it as a prototyping tool, no more and no less. I once heard it described as "a useful program for dressing dolls" and that is pretty accurate, though not in any perjorative sense. I'm not a renderer, it is simply not what I do with my time although it's fun to put one out every now and then. If I want to be serious about the render, I prototype the elemenst in DS and export them to another program where I can fine tune. For instance, rather than mucking around with dForce to arrive at a final fit and look for a garment, I'll fit the garment in DS once I have arrived at a final pose, then export the garment and the posed model to Blender, run simulations such as fluid or cloth or soft body, then export THAT back into DS or simply use Cycles in Blender. DS is a very useful program to save enormous work on the front end but IN the end, other tools will have to be brought to use in gaining a final image.
Seen in that light, it's easier to gain the proper perspective when evaluating AutoFit and other DS tools which are properly the purview of more powerful programs for those specific tasks.
I'm a renderer. I would find it utterly meaningless spending time in DS with no intention to output a rendered image or animation.
Really? I think DS doesn't always do what it's designed to do, unfortunally. I'm pretty sure I could come up with a rather extensive list of things that almost work or sometimes work or should work. Sorry but I think there are always things to fix.
I've and others have given them bugs they can reproduce along with the HW & SW specs and scene(s) needed to do it as well as a detailed explanation(s) but personally I get responses that prove to me they are working more or ticket closure throughput than resolving bugs.
I've never got a bug resolved that was DAZ Studio SW related just bugs that resulted in overcharges from the DAZ Store webstite and such and they were resolved via refunds, not actually fixing of the DAZ Store website bugs that make those refunds needed.