General Wondering about 3D Assets

vijayasimhabr

I have been playing around with Daz for about 3 days. I have already spent a decent amount of money at the store, got the PC + membership. So far, it all looks good. For the first time in my life, I can create actual art outside of taking screenshots from video game photo mods.

However, I am thinking, what is the story in general. I have been researching 3D art creation, and names like Blender, Cinema 4D and Maya keep popping up. Also, when I look at other stores (Daz store is great, and I find the convenience of Daz Studio and Daz Central extremely super cool) like Sketchfab, the formats are 'OBJ' and the available ready to use converters are for unity or Blender or Cinema 4D or Maya.

I have gone through a few forum discussions, external tutorials videos. The general impression I get is, the OBJ and FBX formats do work, but after a fashion. There are some quirks and things may not always as expected. Ultimately, nothing will be as smooth as getting stuff from the DAZ Store.

So far, the DAZ Store is so massive (and prices incredibly reasonabe for the kind of work I am planning to do), I might never exhaust myself out of the depth provided by DAZ.

Still, I am curious. Say, 2 years from now, if I am still in the 3D art hobby/business, should I migrate over to Blender or Cinema 3D or Maya? Is DAZ essentially a subset of what these full fledged 3D apps do?

If Blender was the Animal Kingdom with all its animals, is DAZ a focussed part of it, like a pride of lions. I start using DAZ to learn how to study lions, and then, if I am enjoying it, I upgrade myself to Blender or Cinema 4D and study the entire full set of animals?

nonesuch00

No. Even if you own everything in the DAZ Store you'll still have specific scenes to require things you DAZ never had and many things you bought from DAZ will need to be modified.

What you do, if you have both the time & interest, is learn either Blender or Maya Indy now, not after you have bought everything you want out of the DAZ Store. Of course, real life has a way of interfering with that unless you are college aged and those skills you need to learn directly integrate into your major.

Of course you can always change the action and dialogue in your scenes to fit with what you bought from DAZ easy enough and accept those limitations.

...but what you do in those regards depends on if you are interested, not in our opinion. If you want to be a professional 3D modeler you immediately start with Blender, see if you are dedicated, and then move onto Maya Indy.

Gordig

It depends entirely on what you want to do with your art. I use C4D, but still spend most of my time in DS because I like the workflow and can do most of the things I want to do there.

Catherine3678ab

Sketchfab [sorry, meant Sketchup] is great for making buildings to put on Google Earth. Pleeeezzzze do not use that for making models in D/S.

Blender is a fantastic modeler for many people, it can do a lot of things and has a lot of community support, some free plugins, some for purchase. It's free. A place to start and learn if indeed you like modeling. Modeling involves also learning how to make uv maps. So some parts of the workflow are more fun than others.

Hexagon is also free but really limited ... depends entirely what you want to do. I use Hexagon quite a bit. But not for massive morphing or major big models. If you want to raise a wall, make a floor, make a ball for K4 to hold, things like that, it fast and easy.

D/S prefers quads. No n-gons. {it will 'fix' those, sound of clearing throat}

I think of Daz Studio as a "stage" - a staging program - upon the stage one places the actors, props, etc. and renders out the images. While one can make a few simple things inside D/S using the Create a primitive options - depending upon what one is doing, better results are often had by making those in a modeler. Why is because one can make the uvmap differently, add or remove tessellation lines, etc.

Several of the major modeling programs provide a 30-day free trial. 3DCoat 2021 has one which becomes a limited working edition indefinitely until one buys the license. If one is wanting to paint the 3D models there is the full program - or there is now also a part program which has just the texturing tools, 3DCoat Textura. {and it is fantastic IMHO}.

I have noticed that many people making character morphs and skins are using ZBrush. I have seen published over on YouTube of some of the available plugins for Zbrush and wow! Does "hair" too as I recall.

Try out the different programs and see which ones work for you. Takes awhile to learn any of them, but if you can't stand the interface, move to another one.

vijayasimhabr

@nonesuch00

After posting this, I have been leaning towards blender myself. I am interested in making 3D art. Essentially take real life scenes (say, a family in the living room, playing with kids) and render them in software to turn them into a posters or marketing material and such. Ultimately, I want to take '3D digital photographs' in a virtual sets, instead of taking photos in real life. 

I trained as a photographer and spent a small fortune on it. The pandemic turned everything upside down. So, I want to have a 'virtual' option to take photos. That way, I can take photos either in real life, or virtually. 

Further, I have a long term plan spanning 2 to 3 years. I am old (36, married and kids and all that), but I have time, patience and discipline and money and computing hardware. So, I am good to go and this is in line with my hobbyist long term term plans.

I have added your thoughts to my work diary. Yes, I am heading towards a Blender + Daz 3D route. It makes more sense to me. Thank you for your advice.

@Gordig

I agree. Daz has an incredibly workflow. I believe I will continue to depend on Daz Studio whilst using other tools (like Blender) as supporting tools. I apperciate your advice :)

@Catherine3678ab

Understood.  Sketchfab - Yes. I am not interesting in that. I will skip that. 

Blender - This appears more interesting. I also dont feel like paying any money to Adobe or May. At least not in the first year of my learning. I will stick to open source for now. 

Hexagon - I agree that this is limited. I dont feel this will help me at all. I will be skipping this. 

3D Coat - This looks interesting. I have sufficient budget, so I dont mind buying the licenses if it looks good. I was not aware of this software. I will give it a spin.

ZBrush - I ended up earlier on the ZBrush website but left confused. Your thoughts have clarified it more for me. I will give this also a spin over time. 

Ultimately, I believe, as with any other learning, I think, I will have to get my feet wet with multiple tools and see which fits my planned work/hobby. Thank you very much for your advice. 

WendyLuvsCatz

you mean Sketchup Catherine

Sketchfab is a 3D model market (very recently bought by Epic games)

WendyLuvsCatz

you mean Sketchup Catherine

Sketchfab is a 3D model market (very recently bought by Epic games)

akmerlow

Zbrush is, actually, "virtual sculpting".

Totally different approach than most other 3d model creation methods.

But it has (limited) version called zbrush core i think? So you can try and see how it goes.

Personally, i prefer constructing (like in blender or maya polygonal tools) rather than sculpting.

 

margrave

akmerlow said:

Zbrush is, actually, "virtual sculpting".

Totally different approach than most other 3d model creation methods.

But it has (limited) version called zbrush core i think? So you can try and see how it goes.

Personally, i prefer constructing (like in blender or maya polygonal tools) rather than sculpting.

There's a sculpting mode in Blender, which is already free, and every new release adds like five new brushes. 

Catherine3678ab

WendyLuvsCatz said:

you mean Sketchup Catherine

Sketchfab is a 3D model market (very recently bought by Epic games)

You're right. I didn't even realize that there was another program with a similar name. Thanks for catching this.

vijayasimhabr

@akmerlow

Zbrush may not be the right tool for me.

Yes, I believe I am leaning towards a "Daz 3D + Blender" combo as my way forward. Thank you for your advice. 

 

akmerlow

margrave said:

There's a sculpting mode in Blender, which is already free, and every new release adds like five new brushes. 

Sure, but there is a reason why people still come back to zbrush. So i had to mention it. 

BirthStone

Learning other programs can help you use DAz better, and their functions don't conflict  

vijayasimhabr

@akmerlow

I have had some more time to research and roam around the internet now. I agree with you. There is no single tool that gets the entire job done. Over time, if I am really serious I may end up using everything from Daz 3D to Blender to Zbrush to Adobe Photoshop (and even more) to get things done. 

Thank you for pointing me in the right direction.

@BirthStone

I have eventually come to this conclusion as well. I think that is why, when it comes to 3D, I keep hearing 'pipeline'. There is no single software that gets the job done. The job defines the tools, and not the other way around. 

Thank you for your thoughts.

ShelLuser

akmerlow said:

Zbrush is, actually, "virtual sculpting".

Totally different approach than most other 3d model creation methods.

While that is true it actually provides a lot more than that. Traditional modelling like in Hexagon is also fully supported for example, only a lot easier (in my opinion of course). Then add the invaluable (to me) poly paint feature (= paint on the 3D model itself and build your texture maps from that) and you got yourself a near to complete package for making 3D props, figures and their textures (took me a while to get the hang of poly painting but my days of texture packs have officially ended because of it).

I'm not much of an artist where design goes (though I am making slow progress on a Jabba the Hutt sculpture which I'm basing on existing images), so sculpting is a bit hard for me. However, it can make an ideal combination together with the modeling features; do your crude work using sculpting and use that as your starting point for the rest. Takes getting used to, but once you do it may surprise you to see how fast you can get some results. At least that's how I'm faring so far (note: with very elementary props like a tire, a lamp, a (rigged) chain and a (bit crude) cellphone). 

But it has (limited) version called zbrush core i think? So you can try and see how it goes.

Correct. It even has a free version (ZBrushCoreMini) and of course you can also demo the product.

For me ZBrush provides a perfect combination with Daz Studio; I was actually quite surprised to see how easy it was to get something into ZBrush (GoZ), apply a texture on it and then sent those changes back to Daz Studio; nearly instant results. However... in all fairness... it took me some time to get my fingers behind it all, it took me a few months before I got more comfortable with the environment.