Tons of characters - do they all play in your renders?
daveso
Posts: 7,793
There are tons of charaqxcters for each generation of DAZ figure. I know I have tons of them ... then all the clothes.
How many of them do you actually use in your renders? Is it really necessary when they are mostly covered in clothing? Cant we just morph the faces and create our own character?
The reason I ask, I qwas just going to buy the pro version of Alexandra 8 ...plus the 3 adds ..then get the 3 free bundles .... its a great deal...but then I'm like, geez, I have 50 other characters, and ?I only use 4 or 5 ever ... and with G3 I use some other morph packages and stuff and create my own..how many do I NEED?
But, I will more than likely jump on this deal, I think ... but I think about this quite a bit.
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I mainly use self-made characters in my renders. That said, I buy the DAZ character bundles for the clothing, hair, skins, etc. Many of my creations are the base G(x) character with morphs to get the shape I want, then I find a skin from a bundle with the properties I want (makeup, body hair, etc.) to apply to the shape.
If I need an "extra," I may use an unaltered DAZ character, especially if they are going to be obscured by clothing.
So many. Nearly every character I render is a combination of a whole bunch of other characters.
Do I actually need all of them? Not really (not at all, I have ZBrush). But it's kind of nice to have all the premade skins.
I haven't used all of them. But I've probably flipped through at least 90% at least once while getting to a final character I'm happy with.
The clothes part is the key for me. Most of my renders have some degree of nudity, When I create a character for a scene using the variour morphs and characters i have installed, it's all done nude before anything with clothing as an after thought. If for some reason i need a fully clothed figure in a scene, it really doesn't matter too much what the character looks like with the focus being on how the clothing fits more than anything..
I don't buy that many, but every so often I just load them all up and do test renders to get an idea what I have for future scenes.
I always use a combination of my own dial spins and character morphs. I also do a lot of gaming art for my group, so I like to have a variety of character skin textures available so that I'm not using the same skin for five different characters. and when I work on writing projects, I like to "cast" my characters, and again I don't want to use the same two skins for seven different characters when they're supposed to be part of a set. I actually make an effort to use a different skin for each character unless the characters are supposed to be blood relations.
That said, there are a couple of character morphs and skins I tend to use more frequently than others when doing something for my own amusement.
1) Mostly they are used for DNA and mixed and matched. I don't like seeing an EXACT clone of my character in Daz promos or other artists' renders.
At first, it felt very cool to be like "Hey, I used that person too!!!!!!" but eventually when you begin to assign personality to your characters... nah, not so much- any more.
2) Although I do not create my art for other artists, there's still a little thing there. But some PAs create such incredible characters - that they inspire. They MAKE YOU WANT TO DO SOMETHING WITH THEM and those get dumped in the cart. Whole stories can be built around a face. lol.
3) Some characters just speak to you. "This one made for you [insert demographic]." And you want the vendor rewarded for stepping out the box. A purchase is the greatest way to show appreciation.
4) Some renders are not about the character, some even have the face obscured. In those instances, it doesn't matter and I'll use the first character that shows up in the Smart Content tab under Figures.
5) And last, if I don't think up any more, it depends on how many characters you have. When you feel like you have a ton, you don't mind using them- as is since the library is so vast. What are the chances - my intended audience is also cruising other Daz artists' galleries and seeing the same character doing something else, and looking slightly different.
6) (One more) The point might be to render/create something using the ICONIC character- and that becomes the point. Using the classic Victoria, Michael...etc makes a different kind of statement. Just as valid.
I'm using mostly G1-G3, with G2 being the "workhorse". As I also use Iray, every character that hasn't a skin matching the look I need for the webcomic will get his or her own skin shading session, including desaturating of maps. I also have a lot of V4/M4 stuff, but as it loads a bit more complicated, I don't use them that often on their original base.
the shapes, I use as base, with spin-dialling them into my own characters. I also often use a different skin on a base, which often makes a huge difference in looks. And then, therr are the background characters, the scene fillers, which aren't customized that much, so they are usually the "characters" more or less out of the box, depending on how much time I have, and how many characters. Things like clothing and hair becomes a much bigger concern with those guys and girls.
so, I am glad to have a good gene pool of characters, and some tools to tweak them into individuals.
I agree, may never use them all, but I do look through what I have to come up with my final render. Usually don't use anything straight out the box
Of course "we" can but not every one is inclined towards creating different character looks with slider manipulation of installed morphs.
This IMHO, not surprising as the Daz business model
depends on continuous purchasing of the newly released content to support the loss leader strategy that keeps Daz Studio Free.
You only "Need"as many as your personal creative objectives require.
However Daz "Needs" to sell newly released content to stay in business
that is the economic reality.
Imagine a scenario
where every Daz user did as I have done.
The being setteling on one generation ( G2 in my case).
Aquiring every morph including the freebies.
Use GenX2 to bring any favorite legacy Millenium Shapes over to G2.
Use products like skinbuilder for Skins along with the many excellent skins from the millenuim4 generation via UV switching.
Learn to model your own clothing making PA support or your "Old" figure rather moot.
And learn to model custom morphs, as I did for my CG Self avatar, in addtion to using Face gen artist pro for even more unique faces.
This scenario would be a truly unmitigated disaster for Daz inc. as there would be no metaphorical
Hamsters to keep the wheels of the Daz content store spinning.
The most interesting part in more characters is the skin for me, plus dialing in some sidestory character from the "genepool" makes the process faster than dialing, but for the central characters is morph dialing
I have 'tons' of characters & non-character models too and just use a same subset of them. A lot of that is it's not easy to find things in DAZ Studio when you want to do something as a period peice or whatnot. For as long as DAZ Studio and Poser have been around the catalogueing of content in these programs is haphazard and primitive. And I buy them knowing I won't use most of them in in storytelling. They or their look don't speak to me either not ethically or otherwise as another poster stated. That would change a little if I wan't CPU rendering but GPU rendering but not a lot as I don't intend to even do much storytelling or art work that is pseudo-realistic in nature other than for simple learning exercises. The toon characters I have bought from DAZ is another matter altogether though. Where I might 'ewww' and 'ahhh' a new upping of tasteful realism like the Alexandra 8 character, it is the toon characters that make me smile.