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
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
That's a good way of putting it, yes! Character! Heroine's not the type of look which suits, say, a delicate ballerina, but she's great for a lot of other types of female archetypes. As with any other character, I'll rarely dial her in 100%, but instead try to mix-and-match with other characters and shaping morphs, until I get something which feels right. But, yeah, Heroine has often saved me a lot of time with getting certain characters looking right.
Several of Serene Night's categories I'd agree with, too.
If it's something non-human, then I tend to snap up anything cybernetic/robotic, because I can usually use individual components and combine it with others. Ever since I figured out how to give the G2F Bot Armour a human face/head, I've been having a lot of fun with adapting that for various characters, recently.
For creature-based stuff, I go more for reptilian/arachnid/insectoid/mollusc stuff than anything along the lines of warm-bloodied mammalian appearances. I prefer my creatures looking exotic and potentially vicious (even for a protagonist, because I like anti-heroes and an air of ambiguity), rather than muscular and furry. Anything Lovecraftian-esque, basically! The moment someone brings out a way to graft extra sets of limbs onto Genesis 2 or a different type of jaw arrangement, I'm going to be one of the first in line! And, needless to say, wings and, especially, tails I'm often looking for. If someone creates some robotic wings/tails, I'll eagerly get that, because I most definitely want to combine it with the Bot Armour.
Back to human characters, though, yes. Character. A unique look. I would, however, say, that anything which is assymetrical, like a skin with an obvious blemish, makes me less likely to purchase it, because I want to be able to duplicate a character, subtly change the shape/age and potentially use two or three of those for scenes which require family relatives or something like clones. Any kind of skin blemish can instantly destroy that illusion. If it's a character I can simply put another skin on, that helps, but I'd be spending money for the privelage of the product's included skin, so...
That can also sometimes go for costumes, too. I love the look of Valandar's 'Death Knight' outfit, but the optional second look has one of the horns broken. It's a generic evil armour set, but if I were to use it for an army of skeletal things, they'd all look like they've suffered exactly the same damage in the past, which would kill the illusion! :)
Yura did something similar on their otherwise amazing 'Soldier 2025'. I absolutely had to get it, because it's one of the most realistic sets of near-future armour I've seen in the store, but was almost put off by the slight damage effect which has been moulded into the actual armour. Whenever I use it, I'm forced to remember that if I place it over more than one figure in a single scene (something I will be doing), then I have to either use shadows and the darker colour scheme to hide those bullet impacts or have the camera set a lot further back than I'd like. Otherwise, if the viewer looks at several guys all with exactly the same damage in exactly the same area of their costume, it's going to look strange! I love the realism of the damage, but do wish it had been an option.
I would guess that it's for the same reason that you need to define the existence of muscles when you're doing a pencil sketch or painting. That underlying structure has to be there for the bending and flexing to look natural, and it's comparitively easier to envision the effects of softening/adding bulk to an existing muscle structure than it is to see how a less defined muscle and tissue mass would look if it was at it's maximum "toned up" level. Since DAZ is selling these figures as a "base", it makes a certain amount of sense to show them in their most basic form. That said, I imagine that this was also why the less toned Olympia was introduced.
Oh, I'm with you. I have a pretty solid suite of options for characters, a reasonable range of outfits. But good environments... can be tricky. I'm just glad my webcomic is mostly aboard spacestations, because 'mostly featureless rooms and corridors' is often ok. (Of course for my next page I had to decide to put it in an interior garden, ugh)
One thing I'm finding tricky is just a good ground surface. On a recent image I struggled with a grassy surface. The ground plane that came with an otherwise nice set looked astonishingly bad in Iray. I attempted various displacement morphs that looked even worse, contemplated LAMH, and then finally said 'eff it' and arranged the camera to hide the ground as much as possible.
Yeah, between a decent set of bases and great youth morphs like ZEV's growing up and Mar3d's sets over at Rendo, we're really spoiled as far as young shapes. That said, there's still a lack of skins that work well on younger characters out of the box, especially for males. Echoing Novica's comment above about eyebrows, the choices get pretty slim, pretty fast if you want a 15 year old who doesn't have her eyebrows plucked to perfection ... and needless to say, 10 year old boys with facial stubble and heavy laughlines are right out. :p
On the other hand, it's still not fantastic at the other end of the spectrum. There's just Zev's Aging morphs, Zev's Skin Overlay, and a few "witch" and "crone" sets and a handful of female skins with even a hint of crows feet on the ladies side.
True, there's a certain point where you can add things on to the original texture mats in Photoshop, and a point where you really wish vendors would include an eyebrowless version. The problem with thick brows is that they often need to be bushier, and I've yet to see a 100% satisfactory set of add-on brows that work across a wide range of morphs.
I've experimented with adding eyebrows in LAMH, but it can be tricky. For one thing, you really want eyebrows to start with to provide a paint map of where the hair should be.
I only really care about the textures. I'll take what I can get with male textures because they're much more rare than female. With female textures I look for good eye shadow. I'm pretty easy to please
I buy Figures, that look most realistic to me. If the joint bending is good too, then I can't hold back and purchase. I buy lots of morph targets to spice up and extend my own morph sets. I have never ever seen a figure or character set, that seems perfect to me right out of the box. The typical female DAZ character has a big chest case, small hips and more six pack, than I myself can ever achive, allthough I am a skinny person.
So I'd be happy to have a female, female-DAZ Character - allthough the G3F default body was a good start.
...one of the reasons I like the Julie skin texture is she has thicker eyebrows.
I also find another couple good options for younger characters are Skin Builder Pro and Extreme Closeup - Freckles.
Somebody else mentioned variety, and I realized that this also drives my purchase choices, but that means that my previous purchases and volume of content affect my choice when I'm on a budget. At a few recent sales I dug through and found some characters that looked great that I would really like to have owned, but to limit the budget I instead opted for a few other figures that, while still good, were perhaps somewhat less interesting but were more diverse and filled the various gaps in my library. That way in the future when I decide I want to create something, I'll have a better chance of being able to create it from the wider variety of characters than if I had instead a group of similar characters and was missing something.
Of course, since I know own those new characters, the gaps in the library have moved, and thus my next round of purchases will be different, which makes past purchase history somewhat less of a predictor for future purchase history.
I also have to look at similarity when I decide what to buy. Some vendors make characters that resemble their previous work quite a bit. Sometimes I will skip characters or not buy them if I have one that looks basically much like that one. I need some differences to spark the sale. The same goes for skin resources. If I see a similar resource used I will avoid repeat purchases using the same resource.
Budget is the first consideration for me. Can't buy if I don't have the money, right? As far as the characters themselves go, though, the core characters (V6, V7, etc...) will almost always be top billing, as many products use some element from them. Otherwise it's a "Do I like what I see?" situation.
Skin Builder is great, except the number of options isn't as wide as I'd like, so I've taken to making my own stencils for things like the tan builder. At one point I think theey were considering doing some expansion packs, but I think Zev and Draagonstorm have their dance cards filled out for quite a while with just new products. I haven't picked up the Freckles set yet, but lately I've been using the Skin Overlay merchant resources to do things like freckles rather than use the LIE based systems, primarily because the main problem with a lot of otherwise workable skins is that the eyebrows other facial hair are the wrong colors.
I mainly buy for skin textures, body/face shapes are not that inportant to me because I prefer to dial my own. For female skins, I need a no-makeup face, realistic looking, ie freckles, lines, ideally not plucked to within an inch of their life eyebrows, and nice looking eyes. For male figures the same criteria, especially the eyebrows part, and a bald head option because there's nothing I hate more than that painted on plastic looking doll hair. Though because male characters are more rare, I tend to be a bit more permissive. And of course price is important too.
When it comes to buying the base figures (V7, V6, M5, etc.) the real question is... how much of the clothing in the bundle will I use? :)
Buying the base figure separate from the bundle depends on how many characters using that UV have come out that I like, and whether or not the body shape is something I'll want to build off of or not. I've bought one or two base characters that I didn't strictly need because I'm lazy and I'd rather spin a single dial to get my "base shape" than spend 20 minutes fiddling to base shape and then build (or subtract) from there.
Nutshell Answer: Personal taste dictates 95% of my purchase decisions. The other 5% is how unique it is compared to what I already have or how often I'm going to use it.
I wonder if you would think differently if there were nude promos offered by the vendor on request?
It's not the first time I've seen this particular gripe, and I wonder if there's a way around it without stepping on toes/making sure those that ask are of an appropriate age to see them (which is the problem DAZ is trying to avoid by not allowing nude renders on its site and gating genital models with Pro bundles).
This is something that is addressable with transmaps, I think. Painting on larger eyebrows and then using a transmap to sculpt them shouldn't be too hard. Something to look into, certainly.
I buy figures when they're less than $5. Beyond that, I'm mostly looking for skin types. Physical features can be done with morphs with work, but skin can't. Even at that cost, I'm at 37 options in my Smart Content Figures.
When I'm looking at darker skin types, the first thing I look at is hands and feet. There's a lot less melanin in everyone's skin there, and if the texture doesn't reflect that or the promos don't give a good view of it, I skip the product.
The one that I most want right now is https://www.daz3d.com/ly-brynn but I'm still waiting for some kind of sale for her. I get the feeling I'll be waiting for a while. I'm really interested in the "dirty girl" option and the "smoke around the goggles" option.
Oh, I missed the obvious. Compatibility with my existing library also drives the decision of what to purchase or not. The newer figures look really, really nice, and I applaud the talented artists who make them and envy the customers who are just now entering the hobby and purchasing them. Unfortunately, in general (minus some limited potential autofit and trasfer through multiple generations) they aren't compatible with the bulk of my existing library of other figures/clothing/accessories (much of which is for V3/M3) and it isn't practical nor cost-effective for me personally to start over.
The original question was asking about whether purchases were/weren't made based on personal taste. Of course compatibility has nothing to do with personal taste, but it may be of value to know that even if personal taste were to drive some purchases, that factor can get completely negated by other factors such as this.
Depends on if the texture has what I need. I have contected a few vendors at rendo because I was interested in a character and there was no nude promo. I was more curious as to why since it was allowed there and it's an important part of any texture package. IMO if a vendor that creates characters for sale has a problem with nudity, they really should move on to another creation aspect like props or clothing. Asking for promos is fine, but a customer shouldn't have to ask each time they are interested in a purchase.
Used to be that some vendors here and DAZ had an external link to complete promos, I really wish they would bring that back..
And some vendors DO maintain offsite images at sites like DeviantArt. All that said, given equivalent items here and at Rendo, I'm far more likely to buy the Rendo version as their image previews tend to be far more reflective of what's actually in the set. By comparison, when I buy at DAZ, it's usually because it's on sale at a stupid low price... yes, I know that I can theoretically return any item, but while I've price adjusted quite a bit in the past, I can't remember ever making an actual return except when it was to upgrade to a better version of the same thing.
If DAZ wouldn't take issue with it, then I would most likely offer such a thing via dA link in my signature or somesuch. Pretty much the only way I could cover my own butt, frankly. Just set up an adults-only subgallery, and only upload the promos I couldn't upload here.
Selling at Rendo I would just upload the nudes with the rest.
As long as filters were set on the deviantArt image that would be fine.
Promo art is a big deal for me. If I Can't see how it will render in 3delight, or the lighting is using that terrible IRAY sepia tone that V7 and Bethany 7 have, I can't figure out honestly how the base skin will look, making me disinclined to buy it.
For me it's a mixture of physical attraction and variety. In the end, my favorite shapes for Gen6 were Gia and Olympia, followed by Lilith and Belle. I hope against hope we will see those back in Gen7. Well, I am optimistic about Olympia and Lilith, but much less so about Gia.
I also really warmed up to Giselle over time, she is also quite unique, but I did have to shrink down her frog-hands to get her to be proper fairy. Still, a much nicer shape than I originally thought.
I use DAZ figures as an aid in my illustration work, so I tend to buy what I need for a particular project. I haven't had to buy a female in a long time (though I do jump on those super sales the pro packs get now and then). Between what's out there for G2F and what I can sculpt in ZBrush, I'm pretty well covered. I'm just waiting for G3M at this point and hoping he gets some interesting figures.
For what it's worth, I've been happy with Skin Builder + Skin Overlay to create skins with a wide range of eyebrows.
I prefer to buy male characters. The male bundles contains mostly more useful content and not just simple underwear. What I don't like is, when a vendor decide to release a adult character without textures for the genitals. This vendors should concentrate their talents on other things, but not on characters.
I have limited understandings, when they don't add genitals texture together with younger characters. Apart from that I could use the texture of a teen also on a adult person. Colin for example is a young teen with a little freckled body texture, which look a little celtic or irish. I use his texture also on my male adult charcters, but because Colin was released as a teen, there are no matching gen textures for my adult males available. When I sell a product, that I can use on different types of characters from baby to old man I should think what the customers want.
I bought way too many characters for V4, Genesis and G2F without really putting too much thought into why I wanted them. My runtime library is littered with characters that I will propbably never use. Now that G3F has arrived on the scene, I'm determined to avoid making that mistake again.
From now on a character will have to have a unique or realistic face or a high quality texture set if I am to be tempted (I wonder if there will be any Elite Texture sets for G3F/V7 etc).
I will, probably, buy most of the DAZ base characters (I already have Victoria 7, Eva 7 and the gorgeous Bethany 7), simply in order to have a variety of body shapes and some different texture sets. Custom morph sets by Zev0 and Posermatic are always a no brainer for me. I really hope Zev0 is planning to release a version of Fit Control for G3F/V7 soon. I love the Sculptured Reality characters by Adam Thwaites over at Most Digital Creations, so I hope he releases a few SR characters for G3F.
What really puts me off of buying a character are things like :
I'm not a fan of ultra "realistic" textures, they tend to look way out of porportion with the face, i.e. pores are too big, too many details. Their use is verying limited, I'd rather have a texture pack to add those kinds of details.
Having all those details is fine for the no make-up face texture, but horrible when it's with make-up. A woman tends to wear FOUNDATION to cover pores and wrinkles and blemishes. So when I see pores on a MU texture I don't buy, it's not realsitic. I prefer a semi-realistic texture, enough details to pull off an idealized realism; or look good if I want a semi-toon render. That's how I shop textures. I love Surreality's girls because of versatlity of the textures even though most are design for poser. Her textures are instant buys for me.
The face morph is important to me, I shop faces. If I see a face that I like I tend to buy it whether I need the texture or not. Thats why I hate promos that hide half the face, I want to see brows and forehead, too.
Body morphs are the least important because DAZ and other morph packs tend to cover all the basic body types. Plus, my characters mostly wear clothes so body details are not that important to me. But I still hope for a Girl Next Door Body morph for GF2/3, and an AeonSoul Body morph for GF2/3. I do buy body morphs if it is unique and beautiful and hard to duplicate with morph packs. I prefer athletic body types. Also, even through I am a straight female, I'm a sucker for long legs hence buying Eva 7 as soon as I had the funds.