What essentials should I buy to start?
biggerhammer_3af0e1eec5
Posts: 14
in New Users
I've just picked up Daz3D. It includes just enough content to make me want more (good job, marketing department!).
So, if you were just starting out, what figures, hair, props etc would you consider essential? I'm hoping to spend sixty bucks or so, and I would like to get a photrealistic full-figured female figure as the centerpiece.
Thank you for your advice!
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Right now, I am contemplating three things:
Caprice is a full-figured female based directly off of Genesis, so I won't have to buy another figure.
The tenements are cheap and look like there is potential for several different scenes.
The hair? Just a random choice.
https://www.daz3d.com/genesis-8-female-body-morphs
https://www.daz3d.com/genesis-8-female-head-morphs
Also, since you said "full-figured", I'd recommend Boom Chica Morphs and/or Big Girl Morphs
Those are the essentials (assuming you're using Genesis 8), and will give you a lot more control over how your figure looks than just buying pre-made characters. Beyond those, it's hard to make recommendations without knowing more about your artistic vision. You could experiment with the Strand-Based Hair editor built into DS to make your own hair, but if you want to use pre-made hair, what kind? What kind of environments and clothing are you interested in? In other words, what genre will your renders fall under?
Thank you for the suggestions!
My artistic vision, such as it is, will be street scenes set from the sixties through today, mostly in American small towns and cities. I will eventually build up cars from various eras; for now, I'm just concentrating on learning how to use Daz3D competently.
Definitely grab the Tenements while they're that cheap, because they don't go on sale all too often, though something like the Collective3D Neighborhood series might be a better value if you're looking for small towns. You may want to look at BlueJaunte characters, as those are widely considered to have the best female skin textures (and they also come with custom smiles, and sometimes other expressions as well). iSourceTextures look pretty good, but I don't have any experience with them personally.
I second the head- and body-morphs Gordig mentiones, they are truly essential.
I would argue the 200+ morph pack is also essential (which is basically just more head morphs), but perhaps not necessary from the very start.
Beyond that there's no products that are essential for all users. It really depends on what you want to do.
If you like the look of that character, hair, and environment then they're good for you!
I do recommend (eventually) buying at least a few characters; morph packs are essential but they only get you so far. And each character comes with a skin, and skins are extremely important!
Some beginner's tips for shopping here:
- There's always some sale or other going on here, literally almost every day. 50% is an ok deal, 70% is a good deal, 80%+ is a great deal. Unless you're rich, don't pay full price for things. If you're patient that one item you want is probably going to be on sale sooner than later! And don't worry if you miss a sale... there's always another one coming right up.
- That being said, don't let the constant marketing circus here charm you into spending more than intended! I personally find this more easily said than done!
- You can return everything within 30 days without giving a reason.
- Don't buy a lot of stuff at once, especially not a lot of the same kind of stuff, and especially not when starting out. Buy only a few things. Play around with them, make some renders. Make some more renders. Get a feeling for what works and what doesn't work for you. Don't buy a lot of stuff all at once that you're planning on using sometime down the line, in the far future.
- You say you want to spend $60. Sometimes we get gift-card sales. If by coincidence a gift card sales should come around, why don't you buy yourself a $60 gift card?
- There's a thing called PC+ freebies. These items are free for PC+ members. I won't get into PC+ membership here, it's not really my cup of tea... however, even if you're not a PC+ member, the PC+ freebies become free if you put them into the cart with any other item that costs money. So, whenever you're buying anything, go check if there are PC+ freebies and put them into your cart, they become free!
Good luck, have fun!
For hair, I would say choose something from OOT (outoftouch). I think you will find it to be more realistic than your random choice. I have had to submit bug reports on a couple hair products from Propschick, although I don't own the one you mentioned.
Thank you for all the suggestions.
I found a '50% off whole order' coupon code (MORE-FOR-50) and went nuts. I followed Gordig's suggestions, and added in some hair, some clothes, the Caprice character, and one of the BlueJaunte characters.
I will now go and start playing.
Thank you all!
Aside from the basics like Genesis Head & Body morphs and some shader packs to retexture environments, here are some specific PAs I can recommend:
Bluejaunte -- Best-looking figures for sale. The skins are so good I use them to replace other figures' textures, and the faces have this very tangible, real-world look. They look like people you could pass on the street.
iSourceTextures -- Excellent figures, but more hit-and-miss. The misses can plunge into the uncanny valley. Since the PA uses scanned photos of real people, the skins don't have as many options as I'd like.
RedzStudio -- Unlike the last two, actually has male figures. Redz's characters have character; rugged dudes with interesting histories and jaded ladies putting on brave faces. Plus, their fibermesh hairstyles are some of the best hair in the store.
AprilYSH -- Large selection of hair for men and women, often with a ton of shaping options and material settings.
Zev0/DiscoBob/Bitwelder -- These three often collaborate on utility products which add features to your Genesis models. Fit Control, Growing Up, Aging Morphs, etc. Essential if you want to expand the capabilities of Genesis.
Stonemason -- The pinnacle of urban environments. Urban Sprawl 3 might be too lo-rez for detailed close-ups, but it's great for the skyline of his many back alley sets.
Polish -- Excellent environments and cars. The Desert Motel bundle and the Retro Vehicle bundle will make for some nice road trip renders.
Ansiko -- Does environments from all over the world, but Sweet Street has a nice Main St., USA vibe. Also has the Workshop Bundle, which is a good blue collar Americana set.
First Bastion -- Good mix of outdoor and suburban scenes, though much of it pre-dates Iray, so they might require re-texturing to look good. I recommend investing in some shaders too.
Predatron -- Has some great small town environments, like The Meeting Place, Along the Prom, and some nice beach sets.
Mely3D -- Eclectic mix of environments, some with a retro flair. Check out Northern Winter Village and American Diner '60s.
My fun money is spent for now, but I'll be back to this thread when I have more!
iSource has a couple men, although you're right that it definitely isn't their primary focus.
Looking over their store again, I see you're right. But both of them have that waxy, velvety sheen, so I'd classify both as "misses" rather than "hits".
I think Commodus is pretty good, but again, I can't compare to their typical female characters.
They may bounce a free month for PC membership your way [if that coupon was had the way I think it was] ... but seriously, PC membership pays for itself very quickly as the prices of everything tend to be drastically lower. October tends to be a very good PC membership month, major sales, etc.
Basics are for the Daz3D morph sets {head/body} for whichever figure one is interested. So many other characters make use of those for their figures.
Put things into the Wishlist so they can be found quickly later on when sales are happening.
https://www.daz3d.com/scene-optimizer
and
https://www.daz3d.com/mesh-grabber-bundle-win
The most important utilities you MUST have.
So funny how everyone has their own idea of what is great and a must have and yet none of the lists match, LOL
At least you got the basics right, the base head and body morphs will get you further than anything else. If you are focusing on street scenes, then specific characters are not really that important since there are no closeups and you can just use the base morphs to create your own and then save those shapes as your own presets. You will definately need scene optimizer if you plane to create street scenes. Keep in mind that the more you add to a scene, the more performance it takes. HD textures addup quickly. best of luck!!
On the other hand if you are only rendering outdoor scenes with an HDRI your renders will much quicker than indoor scenes. You won't need high subD on your characters and, as mentioned, you could get away with reducing texture sizes.
I'd say Scene Optimizer is essntial if you're GPU rendering.
If You're CPU rendering it still helps, but I wouldn't call it essential.