Sci-Fi Uniforms Ranks upto Admiral & General
So far i have most of the Sci-fi gear offered in store but i don't really see high ranks or elaborate ceremonial outfits, the only stuff i see is basic low rank foot troop and lower officers with bland signage for things like ranks medals or unit markings, i'd like to see more variety of different styles covering military ranks upto admiral, general or field marshal that look authentic as they are needed for game purposes, i need varying styles for many factions human & alien concepts i couldn't possibly all come up with myself just by mixing and matching content, i need new original meshs with original textures not just a reshade of some old content.
Rank transfers that would apply like a shader and scale via a tile set would be ok too, something you could change the colour and scale of that will place like a layer over the outfit piece or maybe a collection of prop badges that you can parent to anywhere on an outfit would be nice.
The picture below shows the kind of Star Trek / Starwars theme i'm going for, a mix of old school retro sci-fi with a modern touch just so you get my meaning on the kind of content i'm looking for, it doesn't have to be exactly the same as those movies & T.V shows but along the same theme. Things like the Imperial Snow Trooper from Empire strikes back, Tie fighter and X wing pilots, The Imperial guard that protect the Emperor kind of stuff.
Comments
One of the things that discourages me from buying more uniform sets is the lack of insignia, especially insignia for rank. Apparently, it's assumed that uniformed services are completely egalitarian. Nobody issues any sort of command--It's all on a "Hey, if you have time, would you mind doing me a favor?" basis.
Rank insignia tend to have simple geometry. They're small and don't need fine detail. Hard to imagine that insignia would require the PA to put in weeks of additional work. They can be sold as an add-on. See Herschel Hoffmeyer's https://www.daz3d.com/insignia-expansion-for-atlas-armored-suit.
The situation is as bad as the shortage of helmets (The influence of Ron Burgundy's "No touching of the hair or face" rule).
That what I want too!! I feel what you are saying!
why wait for a PA, just create it yourself. DS comes with lots of primituves and you can create your own textures yourself in photoshop or gimp
Could I use primitives to make insignia myself? Yep. Hell, if I want to get Photoshop involved, I can just cut images of insignia and paste them into a finished render.
Call me crazy, but the idea behind the Daz Store is that ready-made and ready-to-use content is available in exchange for money.
Or, to put it another way, "make your own" is really for people who want to spend the limited time available for this hobby on sculpting or other content-creation activities. I think that's a minority of Daz users. I'm not sure "make your own" is a good-faith, useful "Product Suggestion".
This is a small market with limited resources, so I was just pointing out an option since usually product suggestions don't see the light of day and sometimes a user actually has to think outside the box to get what they need. That is why a popular term used around here is kitbashing, mixing parts from many outfits to get the look one is looking for. Also many times a user asks for something in this forum, and more experienced users point out existing products or provide alternatives, just to be helpful.
While it's true that are many users around here that are into the plug and play aspect of what DAZ provides, there are also many more that look at being artistic as being creative, and modeling parts, editing textures, or creating morphs is a big part of that creative process, I would say much more than clicking buttons and hitting render. There are also lots of users here that do heavy postwork and spend hours, even days painting over renders in photoshop
FSMCDesigns,
Fair enough, but . . .
1. Within the finite market of Daz wardrobe, uniforms are a fairly common genre. Every generation of figures ends up with multiple police and military uniforms, so it seems like uniforms are a niche of large enough size that they have some commercial viability. Insignia are logical and conspicuous part of these uniforms, yet PAs don't include them. Insignia would actually be easier for the PA than bows, zippers, fringe, belt buckles, etc.
2. I think your implication that sculpting and surface manipulation are the essence of artistic creativity is both narrow and incorrect. It seems to me that the most important elements of creativity are conceptual or ideational: Will the art be abstract or figurative? If figurative, what are the objects I'm trying to represent? What people or things are of primary interest? Where should they be placed within the frame? What aspect ratio should the frame have? Where should the camera be? In 98% of my renders, I'm altering shapes and/or retexturing objects. I'm also using Photoshop for postwork, though not as much as I did eight or nine years ago. Those are not, as steps in a process, "more creative". Rather, they are part of the technical execution of the render, just like clicking the "Render" button in the interface.
Artists who sculpt their own content, either in Daz Studio or in another app/platform, aren't necessarily being more creative. Rather, their workflow includes steps that I tend to find frustrating and boring.