Huh? Looks like the hair doesn't fit right. Maybe you're supposed to move the character's ears up instead of the hair's ear parts down? Weird in any case. 

To me the earline looks kind of punkish, like girl-with-the-dragon-tattoo kind of style... buzzed around the ear to show off either bigger ear piercings or tats or something like that. it's unique but not wrong. maybe cool if it had morphs to lower it, but you could for example dial ear height on the head by like 1% to turn on the autofollow in the hair and then go to the hair invisible follow morphs and dial it negatively if that makes sense. or use dformers or mesh grabber. ;) 

I have never seen a human with hair that starts millimetres above the ear. But there are several such hairstyles in the Daz store, and, invariably, they lack an ear height morph. I wonder what that's about?

 

Yeah AbyssalEros, I understood your comment... I just am kind of mind boggled at all the responses overall. Even if some of stuff isn't my style I think things were still quality. Michaela is gorgeous as folks have noted. I don't have Ophelia, so I was glad to personally add a tough muscular gal to my shapes collection and my char is kind of tomb raider tough movie star star inspired.

Serina was quickly put in my cart, really like her eyebrows and overall look. I LOVE that the blush option is added and not part of the default mat.  I hate blush that is built-in. Very nice job and love your gal!

Full disclosure, she does have some natural blushing-it was in the photo materials i used to make her, and its stronger with high sss. Alas. I hope you still like her! I strive to make each character better and better. Have been taking this month to rework from the bottom up so hope in the future I can offer even better.

The OP asked if there was a face transfer thread - I suppose this thread must be it. (I'm sure the mods will correct me if I'm wrong)

I've been playing with it for a bit now and I just want to point out a couple of tips.

Firstly, If you don't save face, then it keeps the face morphs but loses the textures. I use the default basic options and enter a name in the Shape: Label: of the save dialogue box. Saving face creates and uses a bunch of files located (depending on your configuration)

I:\DAZ3D_Originals\Runtime\Textures\[user]\Face Transfer\[label]

The generating algorithm uses only one image, so the quality of the transfer is down to the image available. However, navigating to the above location means you can air-brush the image if there are any marks such as shadows that need sorting out.

Secondly, I've found (in doing portraits at least) that the the hairstyle makes a lot of difference, as does the pose - I stick a reference plane behind the actor and put the original image (with a suitable aspect ratio) as its surface, then fiddle about with PowerPose.

I then save a scene subset of the character (saving as character seems to loose the morph.

I have never seen a human with hair that starts millimetres above the ear. But there are several such hairstyles in the Daz store, and, invariably, they lack an ear height morph. I wonder what that's about?

 

I don't like that ear section either. The rest of the hair is an interesting combination of layering though, but note there are NO MORPHS to adjust by the ears. 

 

Make the ears bigger. :)

The morphs that make the ears bigger also move the scalp hair up, unless you dial in elf/Vulcan ears, but that is rarely preferable.

It is possible to adjust auto-follow morphs (auto-follow on a morph can also be fully disabled, although that needs to done before fitting the item in question - the elf ear morphs have it disabled by default, which is why they don't follow).

If you go to the parameters on the hair with hidden parameters shown, you can adjust the strength of the auto-follow morph. This also includes setting the morph higher or even the opposite of what it is on the figure - so if you have any morph for adjusting ears on the Genesis figure, it can be dialed in on just the hair. (Smoothing may be necesary).
Although in that case, you may want to use the transfer utility to transfer the morph to the hair, as the morph will need to be at least slightly active to show up as an auto-follow. (although for one of my characters, I do have a morph I often want to apply to clothes dialed in at 0.001% on the figure just so it quickly and easily shows up on any clothing as an auto-follow).

This method is particularly useful for things like the "Bodybuilder details" morph, which can be dialled back on clothing to stop it looking too shrinkwrapped to the figure. (Just a shame when creators build all everything into one body morph, so that the details can't be dialled out. Separate HD morphs are particularly appreciated on this front).

I have never seen a human with hair that starts millimetres above the ear. But there are several such hairstyles in the Daz store, and, invariably, they lack an ear height morph. I wonder what that's about?

 

Huh? Mine does that and I've not done an inventory to know but I think it's not too uncommon.

I have never seen a human with hair that starts millimetres above the ear. But there are several such hairstyles in the Daz store, and, invariably, they lack an ear height morph. I wonder what that's about?

 

I don't like that ear section either. The rest of the hair is an interesting combination of layering though, but note there are NO MORPHS to adjust by the ears. 

 

Make the ears bigger. :)

The morphs that make the ears bigger also move the scalp hair up, unless you dial in elf/Vulcan ears, but that is rarely preferable.

I have never seen a human with hair that starts millimetres above the ear. But there are several such hairstyles in the Daz store, and, invariably, they lack an ear height morph. I wonder what that's about?

 

I don't like that ear section either. The rest of the hair is an interesting combination of layering though, but note there are NO MORPHS to adjust by the ears. 

I have never seen a human with hair that starts millimetres above the ear. But there are several such hairstyles in the Daz store, and, invariably, they lack an ear height morph. I wonder what that's about?

 

I don't like that ear section either. The rest of the hair is an interesting combination of layering though, but note there are NO MORPHS to adjust by the ears. 

I have never seen a human with hair that starts millimetres above the ear. But there are several such hairstyles in the Daz store, and, invariably, they lack an ear height morph. I wonder what that's about?

If you can line it up wth the figur you want to use it on then yes, via dForce as long as it is constructed in a way that works. If you want to/need to rig it (for example if it falls apart uner dForce) then you would need to adjust the model so that it fitted in its zero state around the zeroed figure, then use the Transfer Utility. There isn't a definite answer to be given in general, or (unless it's obviosuly a hopeless case) from looking at a single product page (so since the product page isn't informative and is off-site commercial I have removed the link)

Don't quote me on this, but I THINK I solved the problem of converting Gianni 6 (Transferred to G3M via GenX2). I had already successfully converted the G3M version in the Slosh product (https://www.daz3d.com/genesis-2-legacies-for-genesis-3-male-heroes). I watched as XTransfer created files in the "data\DAZ 3D\Genesis 8\Male\Morphs\XTransfer\D3D Gen X\Genesis 2 Male" folder and for some reason it created two other files: XT_FBMGianni.dsf and XT_FHMGianni.dsf.

I had already uninstalled the above product just in case that was causing an issue, but a new attempt created those same two files during the XTransfer conversion process. I went to my "data\DAZ 3D\Genesis 8\Male\Morphs\XTransfer\Slosh" folder and removed the entire folder to my desktop. I also wiped the failed conversion from the XTransfer folder for GenX2, and the Xtransfer files in Daz Studio's TEMp folder. Then I restarted Daz Studio and ran the conversion again, having made only the Gianni 6 morph the 'favourite'. XTransfer naturally picked up the head and body morphs as well as all the JCM and MCM morphs associated with the figure. After the conversion completed (it took  ) I tested the conversion and it worked without any problems. No geometry distortion down the right-hand side or any other issues I could see. It posed correctly. I closed Daz Studio, put the Slosh folder back where I had moved it from, restarted Daz Studio and tested it again. Both sets of morphs (the G2M version of Gianni 6 and the Slosh version) worked correctly. 

The version of XTransfer I used for the conversion was Version 1.1h, kindly sent to me by Zev0 after reporting my initial problems with converting this GenX2-transferred figure. Incidentally, so far Gianni is the only figure I've had a problem with. I also XTransferred a GenX2 version of Minotaur 6 with no problems at all. 

I hope this helps Zev0 with troubleshooting his fantastic script, going forward. 

Would it be ok for me to ask I could see your Gianni 6 as a Genesis 8. He is by far my favorite character of ALL TIME and has been my dream to get him to G8. I was holding my breath they might release him as an 8 character....but I have exhaled now.

^Thanks outrider42 :)

yeah - I think Daz need to market to the chess-clubs too now ;)

 

This is legit. One of the things about 3D stuff is that a lot of people outside just do not see a real world use for it...its all virtual inside a computer. Something like this shows there can be a "real world" use for such 3D apps like this that go beyond just making pretty pictures.

 

With some skill people could recreate their family and friends as chess pieces, which could be both entertaining or terrifying, LOL. With so many celebrity look a like models they could have a set based on favorite celebs or characters. Or catgirls. Catgirls vs Wolfgirls. OMG.

 

People who like both chess and scantily clad Victoria with a sword can now print her has an entire army of chess(t) pieces with the irony that the base covers her up more than most skimpy outfits.

I'm thinking, not only printing. I've been thinking about carving myself a set of chess pieces for a while, and this product could be fairly useful for rendering the blueprints for that. (making a blueprint is VERY helpful for woodcarving, and since I really can't express in drawing a concept I have in living colour in my mind, Daz is a key product in my favourite hobby)
Though I might look for a slightly narrower base for the pieces (is it possible to morph geografts?), this set will still help a lot with visualization of the concept.

When I do heavy morphing on for example the breasts. The textures can get stretched. So I was searching for bigger textures, but most of the characters seem to have 4K body textures, is there an 8K character?
 

This isn't about texture size - it's about uv-mapping. If you take a square plane with a square painted in the middle and then morph it into a rectangle, the painted square will stretch into a rectangle too. For extreme morphs, you need specially made textures that account for the stretching in the polygons (and/or a custom uv-map)

https://www.daz3d.com/dforce-double-dutch-braids-for-genesis-8-and-genesis-3-females, 

YAY for Strand Based Hair!!!

I'd like to include some general information and helpful tips for you to use my new sets in the store :) 

What is the difference between strand based hair and fibermesh? 

Strand Based Hair is generated inside Daz Studio.  Fibermesh is actual mesh generated within Zbrush.  Fibermesh can bring even the nicest computers to a painful crawl once it is imported into Daz Studio.  Strand Based Hair is so much lighter!! There are a lot less hairs in your viewport, and the rest are generated during the render. I don't know all the magic behind that part, but its really awesome.  

SBH ( Strand Based Hair ) is DYNAMIC! - Yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!.  As an artist that has been working with Daz Studio and Poser for almost 20 years, this is what I always dreamed of!!!!!! Well I have also dreamed of being a millionaire too, but I'll settle for this .

But what if I don't want to run a simulation?  With the ones currently in the store, you do not need to run a simulation unless you want to.   There are morphs that will move the hairs around like a traditional hair model too!  The coolest part is that you can use the morphs before a simulation, without a simulation, and/ or  after a simulation.  

How do I use it?  Select your figure and load the model like you normally would.  Make sure that you do not have the geometry editor tool or the awesome Mesh Grabber Tool selected, pose your figure and render.

How do I use the morphs?  These SBH hair models are currently in pieces to add more versatility.  Selecting it in the scene tab will make the morphs appear in the parameters tab ( They are parented to the head) .  Keep in mid that because these hairs are separate pieces they are grouped.  So you will have to expand the options in the scene tab to find the individual pieces.  Then just play with the sliders to your liking!

How do I simulate the hair?   Welll there are several ways to do this,  but the easiest way is to click on the simulate tab and click simulate.  No extra settings needed.  You can also use a timeline animation, or use the settings provided to use just gravity.

There will be so much versatility!! I have added a ton of separate surfaces so you will be able to easily kitbash these.  Shut off certain surfaces to combine them with other SBH hairs orrrr maybe even combine them with some of the regular 3d hair models in the store and make a hybrid!

Technical Stuff:

Line Start With & Line End Width -  This is how thick your hair is and how it tapers.  I kept mine slightly thicker  @ .09. and .03  to keep the amount of generated hairs to a minimum. If you want the hair to be thinner or taper more, you can turn this amount down, but oviously you will have to add more hairs.

Root Radius - This is the mode I have chosen to favor.  It doesn't require painted maps or interpolation algorithms ( where hairs can go off in crazy directions for almost no good reason)  and  it is much more predictable for me when I import my hair from outside programs.  With that said, there are no options for the cool stuff like frizz.  Sorry guys :(

PS Points (per hair) - for those of you that model this is similar to CVS in a curve. It can control how smooth the hair will look. If you do a simulation and the hair just turns to a straight mess, try turning this down.  The lower the setting, the more stiff the hair itself will behave and keep it's shape. Too low and you may end up with some jaggy edges.  I feel like 20 to 30 is a good start for these stiffer styles.  

PS Hairs (Per guide)-  This is fairly self explanatory.  If you want a fuller look, you can try adding more hairs.  More hairs will probably require more computing power. But feel free to play with the setting.

PS Hair Tip Separation -  This is a clumping option. Positive direction moves the hair away from the tip.  Negative direction forms a clump at the tip.

Bias and Gain - This also has to do with clumping. 

     Bias is where along the hair shaft the clumping/non clumping starts. The lower the number the higher up the hair shaft the tip separation starts and vice versa.

     Gain is how the bias transitions along the hair shaft. 

I don't bother messing with these too much, but feel free to play with them.

PS Hairs and PR Hairs -   PS hairs are supposed to be more accurate when simming than PR hairs.  Also, I have found that PS hairs have a more delicate, natural look to them.  PR hairs are great for adding a little extra bulk or frizz depending on how you use it.  To get hair more dense looking, you can add PR hairs one or two at a time.  I like to think of PR hairs as a multiplier, so you don't need to add a whole lot.    If you want to make the hair appear a little more frizzy, you can play with the distribution radius and the tip separation for the PR hairs.  

More Technical Questions * This will be added to as questions come up so all info can be placed in one convenient place

I like to use the NVIDIA Iray Preview.  The hair is not showing up in it.   How can I preview the hair in that window?

You can view the hairs by going into the parameters tab:  viewport line tesselation sides. You can change this setting from 0 to 2 or higher.

I want a certain section of my hair to drape more.  Is there a way to do that?   Yes! There are a few options you can use to adjust the draping so it suits your particular scene better.  You can adjust the PS Points on the surface you select to something higher. The double dutch braids in particular are kept fairly low around 20.  This keeps the whole hairstyle fairly stiff.  I would start fairly high at maybe 60 and see what results you get and what you are exactly looking for. If it drapes better but its lost too much of your shape you can adjust other options as well.

You can also adjust the Local Shape Constraint Stiffness.  Turning this down lower will also make the hair drape more while keeping the shape of the hair more in tact.

You can also adjust the tips of the hair with Local Shape Constraint Tip Stiffness.  This will loosen up how the tips drape more. A lower number will spread those tips out more during a simulation.

All of this is a process of trial and error and what exactly you are looking for in an end result. 

 I want to simulate hair on a figure that is on a floor. When I sim the hair it makes an explosive mess. Help!  This wasn't a question posed here yet but I know it's on the way :)  You have a few options to handle this situation.  If you are on an older computer that doesn't do so well with simulations, try keeping the model's head height as the same level  the default figure loads in. I hope that makes sense.  When a simulation is going it is essentially pulling those hairs to the end pose.  Further away from default equals more pulling.

If you have a decent computer and you don't have an issue with simulations then you can simply change the simulation settings - Pose Transition Time to something higher than 1.  The promos I did with Victoria on the floor all had a pose transition time of 3 - but I believe 2 probably would have done just fine.

Some general dhair issues were discussed in a different dforce hair thread and I want to share them here along with solutions.

"Needs greater stability when dealing with hair not pretty much falling straight down, but with head/neck at 'strange' angles.

Hair falls with gravity. If you bend the head to the right, then the hair should essentially fall to the right. However, depending on the style of the hair; you may need to use a pose, a morph, or a simulation setting to nudge the hair in that direction.   If it is a stiffer style, you will more than likely need to adjust the points or the stiffness.

I have had on several occassions tried to get a hair to flow a certain way.  Case in point : https://www.daz3d.com/dforce-soft-curls-for-genesis-8-and-genesis-3-females the promo with victoria on the ground. I tried several animations to get her hair to fall like that.  Using morphs i was able to nudge the hair the way i wanted but it still didn't fall the way i had hoped.  Simply changing the simulation controls  "Start Bones from Memorized Pose" to off used gravity instead of an animation.  It's a lot of trial and error.  Understanding your options, settings, and little tricks along the way can give some wonderful results.  The key is really to be patient.  Learning takes time.

"Needs to be affected by wind nodes in a consistent fashion"

I am not quite sure I understand what the author meant by this, so for the time being.. Im going to guess. 

Hair that is lodged into a figure will not move. No matter how hard the wind blows. 

" Needs to be able to cope with morphs that could produce poke-thru (such as elf ears) without crashing"

If you have poke through, you will get a mess. Plain and simple.  The bigger the mess the more likely chance you will have a crash.  

I understand you will want these products to do everything and then some that you can throw at it, but please understand we can't forsee all of your creative visions :)

I will look into seeing if morphing within daz studio can potentially be done by a customer. If it can, I will share some info here.

"Needs to handle motion in animations without leaving a 'trail' of hair floating in the air behind the figure."

I'm guessing that this is referring to producing a still render with a simulated hair animation.

Easy fix. Change the pose transition time to something greater than 1.   If you still have trails, adjust to 2.  You can also increase the stabilization times to something greater than1.

You can also try and move the figure closer to world center so there is less "pulling" on the hair during the animation.

Now go have some fun and be creative already!I will be here checking this thread as often as I can to help,  should you get stuck, have questions, or just wanna show off pretty pictures :)

I do not need them to load faster, I need to load them at all (the software does not take very long, it becomes unresponsive). This seems not to be a general problem as you describe it, but dependent on some clothing on some figures, not a global one. Other figure/clothing/pose combinations load super fast, as they should with my machine specs.

Since this happens only with certain content (as I wrote above) I do not believe this is a global problem. I can pose a Gen8 with complex clothing just fine, but other clothing, that is even way simpler, does not work. So the morph explanation makes no sense in this case.

Ofc the HD morph isn't included in the pro or starter bundles (again)

RayDAnt said:

TCC mode (what Puget Systems found to be the secret for getting memory pooling to work on GP100/GV100 cards under Windows) is supported on all Titan series cards as well as all Quadros. Meaning that anyone looking to take full advantage of NVLink capabilites on a pair of Titan RTX or Quadro cards should switch them into TCC mode (see this post for instructions on how to do this) in addition to linking them with an NVLink bridge to get memory pooling in Iray to function. Meaning that the only cards for whom SLI should be relevant in getting them to work are GefForce RTX cards.

Switched the Titans to TCC mode to try again (my prior post had them in WDDM mode and driving the displays DAZ was running on). I also had to set my 3rd non-CUDA graphics card as primary in BIOS for the TCC mode to stick.

Sadly, I could not use the same tools to measure VRAM since the usual suspects (GPU-Z, Afterburner) all showed full 100% VRAM usage.

Yeah, this is one of the disadvantages of TCC mode. Also be aware that cooling system monitoring tools like iCue also lose the ability to read the card's die temp. Meaning that if you have any part of your cooling system set to work off that statistic, you're gonna need to find an alternative.

Only nvidia-smi.exe showed a relevant number, which indicated 7GB VRAM for one GPU and 5GB VRAM for the other, for the same scene in my previous post. Which is lower. Render times were the same as WDDM mode with SLI enabled.

The reason for the lower VRAM usage overall is because of the absence of WDDM mode. WDDM mode essentially loads an entire game engine instance in the working memory of each connected GPU. And render times should stay virtually the same - as you've found - so long as the scene being rendered fits comfortably in VRAM on both GPUs since this won't trigger memory pooling. The only way to trigger memory pooling is by feeding the cards a scene that is too large to fit within the memory limits of the smallest connected card. In which case you should see a substantial drop in rendering performance (most likely 20% slower or more - as fast as the Titan RTX's NVLink interface is, its internal memory transfer rate is still much faster) without CPU fallback or total failure of the render to complete.

Still not sure if pooling is active and whether TCC mode is required for the Titan. I only have one 2080ti so I can't confirm if things are different for it (and all my Quadros are pre-NVlink).

Once you get through with the Titans I highly recommend trying the same TCC testing with whatever Quadros you have. Despite current marketing, the underlying functionality (GPU peer-to-peer communication via a proprietary Nvidia protocol called GPUDirect) that makes things like memory pooling across Nvidia Quadro cards possible isn't unique to NVLink. Prior Quadro card generations are designed to achieve the same functionality via the system's PCIE bus (notice how far back the development timeline in the GPUDirect link above goes...)

Unless Nvidia has enforced some sort of a lock on previous Quadro generation hardware peering with current generation hardware/software (which is possible given how much faster NVLink based devices can communicate) you should be able to get all of your Quadro and Titan cards working together.

Pose response time is greatly affected by the morphs being loaded th Genesis 8. You’ll find if you remove half your morphs in your selected gender character folder the poses will load much faster. This is because when Genesis 8 loads it loads every morph. Applying poses takes time becaue of this.  Genesis 8 is getting rather long in the tooth so by this time many people have tons of morphs and characters. These cause slowdown unfortunately.

https://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/exnem-body-hair-for-g8-female/123140/

I got that a little while ago the last time they had a big wishlist sale. It's fibermesh hair, in several sections. Nice and easy to use, doesn't add too much to the scene overhead or render time, and there's a morph to make the hair thinned-out or more bushy. I could have wished for more hair colour options, but overall I like it.

Does anyone know of a similar body hair set for G8M?

If you want to purchase everthing you use in your game I think it will go really expensive really fast.

If you want 3d stuff in your unity game you would be better off getting the starter essentials interactive license, trying a few morph packs without interactive license and than getting the one you really like with interactive license and use it to create your characters.

For eveything else, I would recommend learning a 3d software. Blender is free and can be very good and easy to use to create props.

For clothing you can also use Blender, with a little more skill or I heard Marvelous Designer is easy to use and very good, not sure how expensive a license is for that.

For hair, Blender would be your best bet but it's not easy to do. You might need to purchase a few types of hair with interactive licenses as well. If you go the purchase root try to get the most customizable ones.

There are also plenty of sites that offer free 3d models. From props to clothes and characters, even hair, you should look at them as well (also check the type of license for each of those free models).

I am curious what kind of game you are doing in Unity that requires full 3d real time graphics, if you care to share.

Oh, that is more of a pipe dream than an actual plan atm. I'd LIKE to try and create a story-driven psychological horror game with characters, cutscenes of (decent) quality, and overall an indie love letter to the late 90s/early 2000s survival horror genre. But I'm well aware the limitations of a 1-man noob, and what it would cost to hire people who know what they're doing, hence looking for any feasible shortcut I can find, like making character models with Daz figures if possible. I don't need a AAA Resident Evil 7 character model, but something that I can animate for gameplay/cutscenes with some decent emotional range would be great.

Nah, I'm gonna start small, learn the engine (Unity), make use of freebie assets and a handful of Unity Store Assets to learn my way around such things, at least learn coding and level design. If needed I'll try to learn Blender, but time may not be on my side to do it AND code the games, but I will look into those options you suggested. ^^

I would suggest maybe using other assets for the game itself and Daz for the cutscenes. Cutscenes are rendered stuff so you don't need the interactive license for it. This means you could have higher quality cutscenes with nice expresions and everything from Daz, while in-game you could use lower polygon models (freebies or cheap chars from 3d sites, just make sure they are rigged).

You should indeed first learn Unity and play around with it and afterwards see what you need.

I am sure you could find people that could maybe help you with some of the stuff in-game as well if you post on different game creation forums. Maybe try Patreon for support once you have some sort of game version.

huh, an interesting idea, would get tricky as far as replicating the locations they're in from Daz to unity (aka lets say the cutscene happens on a helipad, and immediately switches to said helipad in game) so now I'm curious if I could import environments from Unity to Daz for cutscenes, but that's a bridge to cross when I know game deving 101. lol

And thanks for the advice! Hopefully I can get a simple starter game off the ground this Spring!

You're welcome!

Keep us posted, for simple things, if I haveb the time I might help you with some stuff in Blender as well. For modeling hard surfaces I'm pretty good. Texturing, I don't really have the patience for.

As for getting stuff from Unity to Daz, you can import OBJ in Daz, just have to reassign materials but should not be a major problem. Only problem will be the render time of that animation, I imagine :).

If you want to purchase everthing you use in your game I think it will go really expensive really fast.

If you want 3d stuff in your unity game you would be better off getting the starter essentials interactive license, trying a few morph packs without interactive license and than getting the one you really like with interactive license and use it to create your characters.

For eveything else, I would recommend learning a 3d software. Blender is free and can be very good and easy to use to create props.

For clothing you can also use Blender, with a little more skill or I heard Marvelous Designer is easy to use and very good, not sure how expensive a license is for that.

For hair, Blender would be your best bet but it's not easy to do. You might need to purchase a few types of hair with interactive licenses as well. If you go the purchase root try to get the most customizable ones.

There are also plenty of sites that offer free 3d models. From props to clothes and characters, even hair, you should look at them as well (also check the type of license for each of those free models).

I am curious what kind of game you are doing in Unity that requires full 3d real time graphics, if you care to share.

Oh, that is more of a pipe dream than an actual plan atm. I'd LIKE to try and create a story-driven psychological horror game with characters, cutscenes of (decent) quality, and overall an indie love letter to the late 90s/early 2000s survival horror genre. But I'm well aware the limitations of a 1-man noob, and what it would cost to hire people who know what they're doing, hence looking for any feasible shortcut I can find, like making character models with Daz figures if possible. I don't need a AAA Resident Evil 7 character model, but something that I can animate for gameplay/cutscenes with some decent emotional range would be great.

Nah, I'm gonna start small, learn the engine (Unity), make use of freebie assets and a handful of Unity Store Assets to learn my way around such things, at least learn coding and level design. If needed I'll try to learn Blender, but time may not be on my side to do it AND code the games, but I will look into those options you suggested. ^^

I would suggest maybe using other assets for the game itself and Daz for the cutscenes. Cutscenes are rendered stuff so you don't need the interactive license for it. This means you could have higher quality cutscenes with nice expresions and everything from Daz, while in-game you could use lower polygon models (freebies or cheap chars from 3d sites, just make sure they are rigged).

You should indeed first learn Unity and play around with it and afterwards see what you need.

I am sure you could find people that could maybe help you with some of the stuff in-game as well if you post on different game creation forums. Maybe try Patreon for support once you have some sort of game version.

huh, an interesting idea, would get tricky as far as replicating the locations they're in from Daz to unity (aka lets say the cutscene happens on a helipad, and immediately switches to said helipad in game) so now I'm curious if I could import environments from Unity to Daz for cutscenes, but that's a bridge to cross when I know game deving 101. lol

And thanks for the advice! Hopefully I can get a simple starter game off the ground this Spring!