Existential Question About Daz
andykarta
Posts: 84
Hope I spelled existential right.
I've been animating stuff for 2 months or so and I just ran into the guy that recommended Daz to me. And when he asked me how I was doing, I was surprised by the emotion that welled up. I said it was witchcraft. Pick two poses, put them on the timeline and boom. Puppeteer especially blows my mind.
But Daz is cantankerous. I'm spending all this time learning workarounds. For example, it took me about six hours to get a hang of splines in Cinema 4D. But I must have spent the same or more time trying to figure out how to import models with the textures as they should be in Daz. The things I could have learned in that time. But Daz doesn't like mtl files. And Daz made its coordinate system different. And Daz likes to rename stuff so Genesis 3 models don't play well with older poses and cloths and ....well there's a lot of ands. There's reasons for all of this, I know, but taken collectively its kind of like a built in anger management course in the Daz software.
Look, I know its not fair to compare Daz to Cinema 4D. Top Gear fans will understand this metaphor. Cinema 4D is like Mercedes. Its got a room full of people making sure everything works right. Everything is where it should be and perfect (though I wouldn't say Mercs are 'perfect' anymore). Daz is more like...I don't know, Morgan. Its made out of wood. Its built by three guys in Lester. You wouldn't want one for your daily commute but there are times its the best thing in the universe. You can't expect the same level of build quality in a small company that you would demand from an industry leader. I get it.
Its just that some of the decisions the developers have made don't have the same priorities I would if I were the Daz grand poo bah. I'm harping on import and export but its kind of a big one. It should be bullitproof. And there's other things as well. Like Render times. Daz takes about 3 times as long even optimized. Iray causes dots and noise in the final render that the Cinema 4D render doesn't. Crank up the passes and the dots go away and the render times shoot through the roof. Export to Cinema 4D and it looks like my little superhero's been through a blender. (And I'm not talking about the program.) So its back to workarounds and more workarounds.
So the big existential question is: Is Daz a product for professionals like say, Photoshop or is it an amateurs product with limited functionality like Photoshop Essensials. Is there any reason to use Daz for anything other than animation and posing? I'm not talking about someone building a personalized avatar or banner ad but someone wanting high production value. Is there any reason to use any of the other features in Daz that isn't done better in one of the big polygon pushers?
And to those people who have fantastic art and animation, and there are many, the question is, could the time you spent learning the ins and outs of Daz have been better spent getting just the basics and figuring out how to do everything but the posing in other programs? Would the lighting be better if it were done in Maya or Unity? Would your textures look more realistic if you made them in 3D Studio?
I'm not trying to be mean or flame the makers of this flawed but wonderful product. I really want people to say, 'why yes, of course you should...' and then tell me why. I've got a limited amount of time on this planet and I'd rather spend it learning how to make my weird ideas pretty than figuring out workarounds for .dae files.
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Comments
DAZ Studio, for better or worse, was originally developed to provide a way to use content created for Poser, at a time when the continued existence of that software was in question. Animation capabilities are through a series of plugins, rather than built into the core program, though there are users that do create animation successfully. One key to being able to do so seems to be sticking with Genesis 2 and earlier figures until such time aa DAZ fixes the import/export issues the rigging changes in Genesis 3 and later have caused unless you wish to use workarounds.
Hi
I am a Daz Studio /Maxon C4D user
and My question for you is this:
Why are trying to use Daz studio as your final render output
tool when you have access to C4D??
From my perspective Daz studio is only good for one thing.
Collecting Decent quality Daz store content to be prepared and EXPORTED
to a Real CG program that has a professional camera lighting & rendering system
Particularly for animation.
The only time
I actually import anything INTO daz studio, is when I
import a clothing model I have made in C4D to be rigged with
the transfer utility.
ANIMATION:
I am a digital animated filmmaker
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2TYEp536iB8THNhYzV3c3VXN0k/view
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2TYEp536iB8dFh4OHNiRldLalU/view
Now why am I using Daz Content and not Creating everything in Maxon Cinema4D??
Well I stopped upgrading at R11.5 and seven full version releases later, Maxon has made it clear
that they are not interested in Character animation but mostly in Motion Graphics.
Maxon C4D has NO ability to create lipsynch from imported audio
and no ability to have Dynamic Clothing on a moving Character.
Daz fills these needs for me nicely& cheaply
Daz studio is a free loss leader program that gives
the buyers of its store content, a place to render their purchases
and the majority of them are still image render makers, not animators.
I Create My animations with Iclone pro & Daz studio with the
graphmate & keymate plugins.
I export my figure as .obj files with the animated Data exported as
MDD files
in C4D I import the obj/MDD light and render.
To the OP, your view is different from the many DS users as you started with industry standard high end 3d apps like C4D. Most in this community don't have access to those kinds of apps or even know about them or their capabilities. In a sense, going from C4D or Maya to DS is taking steps backwards because many DS users aspire to be able to have access to the high end apps like C4D, maya, or max.
Daz Studio is designed for one purpose, to use DS specific content which is why there are many DS specific things that don't translate well into other apps. If it wasn't for the quality mesh that DAZ creates, many outside this community wouldn't give DAZ much of a look, but as it is many outside this community are always trying to find ways to use DAZ mesh assets in other apps other than what they were developed for, Daz Studio.
.........even not so highend apps like iClone and Carrara
These are exactly the kind of things I was looking for when I wrote the post. I'm coming at CG in general as a storyteller rather than an artist. I love how the massive amounts of work to produce a few moments of story teach brevity. If writers had to actually make their own paper and ink they might just try to get to the point quicker. Therefore, to me, the actual art is a means to an end. All I want from my graphic art is that people don't go, 'hey that was awesome but why are the shadows all wrong?' As a result it feels like I'm swimming against the tide in forums and tutorials which stress ever better this and more realistic that. My ideal look would be simple (seeming) like in Clone Wars or the 2011 Green Lantern series. I need high contrasting people (like Jackie Chan advises) so I can bring out the violence and comedy of my fight choreography. (For example, in one of my fight scenes I'm about to start, my girl superhero is going to fight mutant werewolfs while simultaniously trying to hack into a computer on an armband laptop. There's going to be a little screen that shows all the syntax errors she makes as she's getting punched and kicked. I can't wait. I think it'll be a hoot).
I've had an inkling that monetization has played a part in the difficulty in importing and exporting. But you can't blame people for trying to make a buck, especially when they show you how to create magic. As a noob to the art form my initial love for Daz has made it hard to break the strings. (Daz kind of reminds me of a psycho girlfriend I had about 10 years ago. Totally insane but she had red hair.) But my sets in Daz were just aweful. So I decided to stop with the user content and just make my stuff myself in Cinema 4D and its day and night. Its not as good as FSMCDesigns obviously (check out his stuff especially if you're an Edger Rice Burroughs fan like me). But its good enough for the storyboards and showreels I'm doing.
As for Wolf359's question (great name btw), Daz was what I started with. I know better now. I'm going to try your workflow and I'm probably going to try the Dynamic Motion animation thing since I too appreciate the link between comedy and violence. There's a video on Every Frame a Painting that Jackie Chan goes into depth on the subject. You should check it out. He talks about how in Hong Kong he'd have a whole film crew spend eight hours doing some little move that would last half a second on screen. Any animators out there able to relate to that? My task is especially brutal because the videos I'm making are set to music so there's no talk or narration. The entire story has to be told visually and the plot has to be synchronized to the music to create the illusion that the music was written for the story. Its harder than it sounds. But I've always felt that dialogue and narration were totally overrated.
Again I'm not flaming Daz (or my psycho ex girlfriend). I want to hear about workflows and the easiest ways of making things look good.
So onward to look up how to import mdd files effectively. Great advice. Thanks party people!
Oh and wolf, I didn't notice the video links you put til after the post. Your use of colors reminds me of Dale Chihuley. I'm in Seattle and he's kind of like a god here.