To buy or make yourself, that is the question...
Wonderland
Posts: 7,133
So often I kick myself for buying a product or having purchased something when I first started to learn DS that I now realize I could do myself. So I thought, hey I can do these G3 to G8 characters myself, or these cool textures for Big Afro Hair now on sale. So I followed L'Adair's wonderful tutorial to get V7 skins to work on G8 and after an hour, I was only part way done (partly due to doing it on a slow laptop) and then I tried to recreate (successfully!) the neon pink texture for Big Afro Hair. But that took about a half hour to get it exactly like the promo. One color. The product comes with 120 textures and is now on sale for $5.08 with two new items in cart. Now I see why people buy stuff they can create on their own. TIME.
That said, do I need 120 color's for one hair? No. And I was able to recreate it as a shader without materials, so maybe I can use this on other hair or on clothes, objects... Anyway, it's a fine balance of time/money over DIY, but when you DIY, you actually learn something useful... If you have the TIME..
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Comments
Yikes. Believe me when I say you will get faster.
I spent a long time playing with it before I realized it was a 3DL hair (I have the G2/G1 version) and I was rendering it in IRay LOL. Also, I was really trying to get it EXACTLY like the promo, if I were creating my own color, it wouldn't have taken as long...
And it works pretty well as a nail polish LOL..
The biggest issue I see whenever I bring up making something yourself is "my time is valuable". I get convienace and I also get return on investment when doing something commercially as your time is actually valuable when working on a commercial project. I come from a modeling background and also view this whole process as being creative, so it makes all the sense in the world to me to try and create every aspect in my renders if possible. I do most of my additional textures sets. I make lots of my own poses, I model tons of props I need, I create many of my light setups, I create my own characters either from MRs or parts of other packages. Heck, if I could rig, I would be spending a whole lot less than I do now. If I could be bothered to package up freebies, I would have a ton of threads in the freebie section, LOL
I would feel uncreative and uninspired if all I did was click to load everything I didn't create and then hit render
I modify everything but don't know how to model--yet. And the main reason I buy characters and morph packs is to mix and match and create something unique. But things like character UVs and moving shapes over generations or creating clones seems like a PITA to me, so those I would rather purchase... I rarely buy hair textures but that product seemed so cool, I almost bought it but realized I could do that myself and working with shaders is fun for me. So I guess there's also fun vs tedium in the mix..
I love creating my own stuff, and I modify everything I buy too. I do enjoy buying products, definitely, especially complicated sets and scripts. I suppose it's a bit like cooking in a way. Sometimes I'll cook something a bit more time-consuming than usual, other times I'll just open a can (I'm incapable of doing that without modifying the contents in some way by adding something to it too!). Other times, I'll get a takeaway or maybe go out to eat. It all depends on the budget and the needs and mood of the moment. Where it stops being like cooking is that I get to use my 3D model or shader repeatedly, but will have to slave over a hot stove again if I want another fancy casserole or whatever once it's gone. Like they say, time is money, but the time you invest in creating an asset for yourself might end up being next to nothing in cost-per-use terms if it's something you'll use a lot.
Learning how to do things yourself means it won't matter as much as it once did if that brilliant new product in the store would be perfect for you if it didn't lack that single feature. Just add it yourself, sighing gratefully that you didn't have to do the rest of the work on it as well. There are times too when you only need a bit of something, maybe a rustic-looking doorway in a country setting, but don't need or can't afford an entire rustic country village set. Just model and texture your own doorway scene. It won't take long. The best thing about being able to make your own things though is that it gets you the things you want that aren't in the store, perhaps because no-one has thought of them yet, but most likely because they won't appeal to the masses. It doesn't matter if you're the only person on earth that could find a use for something if you've the ability to make it yourself.
All of this is likely to make you more enthusiastic about 3D than ever and should save you lots of money. Which will then be spent in the store on more stuff you can modify, or on stuff you want to use but have no interest in making. Being able to do stuff for yourself just makes your spend go further, it doesn't reduce it. As far as I know, there is no known cure :)
All I like doing is creating my own stuff. I don't even really use it much, but when I was a kid I loved making model kits and kit bashing them and I wanted to be a fashion designer but never learned how to sew. Now I make clothes and model props for fun and share them on ShareCG.
I love textures and I love editing them. I spent so much time playing with clothing textures, I was not doing many renders at all. I like making my own character morphs and using Skin Builder or another skin set on them. When I started to try to do renders of my characters, I didn't have poses, lights, at first I didn't have places to stand them. Ooops. I had tons of hair and outfits though.
Both.
I like making stuff myself. I also like being inspired by and using the stuff offered for sale here, sold elsewhere, and various freebies.
I model and rig my own characters, the props they are using, and the environments they are set in.
I also render scenes in which I modeled nothing. Instead, I use Daz's figures with PA character presets in settings sold in the store.
It is all good. For me, one workflow does not crowd out the other.
Enjoy.
You've made some great stuff, Ghastly, and I thank you for it!
You described a trajectory that I can identify with. When starting any hobby or past-time we all start off using stock products we can purchase in the store. Then we tentatively customize in minor ways, maybe as minor as just glung some torn cotton to the roof of a model house to make it fit in with a Christmas diorama. Then we kitbash and DIY and gradually start making our own stuff. Some of it won't be as good as what you might buy at the store - my homemade fisheye lens looks laughable and takes lo-fi pictures - but it's ours.
We start off singing other people's songs, then we change some words of those songs to better match how we feel, and then some of us will go on to write our own songs.
I think that once your interests start to wander from the mainstream, going the DIY route is the only option. Want to render a copy of the exact same plastic ray-gun you played with as a kid? Want a virtual model of the tribal mask you photographed on vacation two years ago? Want to create some 3-D fan art for an obscure anime? DIY is the way to go.
I've learned Sculptris because I wanted to create certain types of abstract sculpture that I knew I'd never see in the store . . . because they were only in my mind.
Not me. I use other people's models. I will buy a texture pack and make shaders from it and recolor other people's stuff, but sculpting is not my thing. I bought morh packs, makeup packs, and Skin-builder, Pose converter, and a light set with add-ons and few sky products. I got some free poses, and Pose converter and I might chop them up and see if I can make a few poses that way. I am looking into learning more 2d and traditional art with Krita, Gimp and photoshop brushes and figure its my 2d skills that will help improve things if I improve them.
I feel plenty creative loading and working with uncustomized models. Despite this I own 3D-coat and Vue... I end up feeling like those are companion ‘art’ tools rather than modeling tools though. Once I made a morph for G3 in Hexagon but I never rendered it. Just didn’t meet my standards and I didn’t have some internal vision I was trying to match. I do kitbash freely, though
I suppose if Lady Littlefox doesn’t do the Precious wolf and red panda she mentioned I might have to make (morph) those myself since I incorporated them (conceptually) into a storytelling project that is currently on hold.
I like making my own stuff, but not necessarily to use. I just get in the mood to make something. I use my own stuff sometimes, but rarely ;). I'm just weird that way. LOL
Laurie
LOL, I hate cooking because you spend a lot of time doing it and a few minutes later, it's gone! I don't even have my stove plugged in! But I am creative with making things quickly in the microwave, adding interesting spices or ingredients, and I mostly eat lot of simple healthy snacks rather than full meals (raw nuts, fruit, low sugar granola bars, organic yoghurt) that are easy to grab and you can eat while on the computer.
I now have a low level version of ZBrush and a tutorial for Blender so I am definitely planning on learning basic modeling soon. But textures come more easily to me. I sometimes see a set in the store that I'm on the fence about, and then I see a promo of the untextured version, and I see it in a whole new way when it's just white. I can make that into a sci-fi set, or a trendy LA club/restaurant... Back in the day, I used to create my own textures and skin/makeup for The Sims games, that's probably what got me into Poser and creating 3D art in the first place, the idea of creating my own full size Sim!
I think I own, at this point, almost every real world 3D object that exists and I can easily make new textures for them in Photoshop or use shaders, but there are futuristic and sci-fi objects that aren't in the store because no one has invented them yet. That's the stuff I want to create! (But then there's stuff like rigging which scares the hell out of me...)
I do like making the stuff I need and can't find out there, but if there's something already available, I calculate how much time it might take to make, and compare it to what it costs, and then determine if I'll use it more than once. After that, I usually buy it. Those rare things though, that you can't find but need, they're worth the time to build.
Well, judging from your sales page, seems like you can definitely do everything yourself! And you can sell whatever you make, so there's that...