Why use custom characters?
Hexdrake21
Posts: 94
I've been using Daz for over a year, and I was wondering that other than clothing items occassionally having fitting morphs for certain characters (like Honni 8 or Ellithia 8), is there any reason to buy these base characters besides getting gen mats and personal taste? I was just curious what everyone's thoughts were. I have bought Ellithia 8 and Victoria 8 when they were priced comparably to morphed G8 figures, but don't normally consider buying them. Is there a special reason I should?
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The title is a bit misleading, because you're talking about base figures, not "custom" characters. There are various reasons for buying base figures, which you may or may not find compelling. One is that base figures are often of very high quality; Babina 8's skin is widely regarded on the forums as one of the best female skins out there, and some others are also highly regarded. Some of them introduce things to the gene pool that are uncommon otherwise, like Edie and Ollie, Floyd and Mabel, and Tobyn and Caryn. Though this is not so much the case any more, a new base figure often became the basis for many other characters that would require that base to look right. Also, the clothing and hair fits are no small matter, since a base figure is far more likely to be supported by clothing and hair makers than whatever other random characters you might want to use.
...yeah the title seemed a bit confusing me a little as I've been designing "custom" characters of my own for years though mixing shapes and morphs along with using merchant resource content.
I rarely purchase characters outside of the base figures unless they add something unique, like sculpted features.
depends on what your use is. Do you just need a generic female figure?
Thanks all! Sorry for the terminology. I usually use custom G8s and then quite a few morphs (and have occassionally found the fitting of clothes and hair a pain) and noticed that for a lot of wardobe items there are a list of morphs for base figures. So I wanted to find out more. I have had only two characters I have used without any morphs; I just can't help but tinker
! Thanks for explaining the purpose/use of base models and correcting my ignorant terminology.
And I have different uses, FSMC, but mainly fantasy characters. I occassionally do contemporary stuff when expiramenting. I am always looking for unique characters, especially with tattoos and such, so if you have suggestions on a particularly great model I'd love to hear them. I have a fairly large G8 library, as one of the few advatages to coming late to the game is there is a lot of great content for sale that if I had started a few years later I would have paid quite a bit more for. But I am always looking for something a little different.
Those DAZ base or core or whatever you want to call them figures - add many ethnic/racial/alternate figures with correspondingly appropriate facial features and skin textures. 3D artists are internationally located - in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, everywhere, and some North American and British Commonwealth country's artists don't want all their characters looking the same, they want a diversity of appearances to match the diversity visible in their country's population. It's personal taste. I don't want all my characters to have the same skin. Some artists DO want all their characters to have the same skin - which is fine. In fact, some artists use ONLY one or very few characters. Some of these DAZ figures have spectacularly good skin textures.
Not really.
Core characters tend to be high quality (usually, not always) but there's no reason to get them beyond personal taste.
BTW, many non-core characters have gen mats, and not all core characters do.
I use custom characters because they won't look like what others are doing.
I buy Daz and PA characters because I also like mixing and matching and I'm basically a collector!
The only reason I get any character, be that paid or free, is for the textures...that's all. Only morphs that interest me are the head and body morphs, maybe the packages for height adjustments to make younger characters and same for making senior characters, and finally for some dumb reason I need the muscle morphs cause they just had to be separate from the head and body morph packages.
As for the idea of trying to make renders look like someone else's...why would anyone do that. Why would someone go through the effort and expense to create a render that looks identifcal to someone else's. That's not creating art, that's the same as taking a paper and pencil and tracing someone else's work. It will always be second rate to the original.
I'm just another to add to the list of those who only buy characters (whether DAZ "base" or PA derivatives) as a starting point for my own "custom" characters. That means I like to have a variety of skin textures and a few of the more unusual body shapes but I always load that character and start applying applying the morph options to come up with my own look.
The more unusual shapes I get, I am a big fan of Joe Quick and his creations, so wish I could morph like he does ... lol The only reason I get characters is because I'm not very good at creating my own textures. Mixing morphs I have done on occasion.
Well I went off on 3 different rants about characters and finally said screw it cause it won't matter what I say, people are still going to make characters where you have to have the base model, the core character, plus several other characters in order to use the newly released character that was made from all them.
I should preface by saying I tell stories with my art so a large cast of characters is important to that end result.
The only custom characters I buy are the truly unique ones. Most characters seem like cookie cutter regurgitations, sometime resuing skins and reusing morphs which you can just dial spin yourself quite easily.
In contrast, unique characters bring new morphs to the gene pool and sometimes provide really authentic looking skins of various cultures and nationalities. .
George, Jeb, Tennesse, Mabel, Grandmother HD, Ms Rin, Ryker
If they includes additional facial or body hair in the HD set, then that's also a useful consideration.
https://gcdn.daz3d.com/p/30806/i/00-main-george-hd-for-genesis-3-males-daz3d.jpg
https://gcdn.daz3d.com/p/71817/i/old-jeb-hd-for-genesis-8-male-00-main-daz3d.jpg
https://gcdn.daz3d.com/p/65855/i/tennessee-for-genesis-8-male-00-thumb-daz3d.jpg
https://gcdn.daz3d.com/p/51997/i/01_14_29.jpg
https://gcdn.daz3d.com/p/52459/i/00-main-grandmother-hd-for-genesis-8-female-and-edie-8-daz3d.jpg
https://gcdn.daz3d.com/p/71725/i/ms-rin-for-genesis-8-female-00-main-daz3d.jpg
https://gcdn.daz3d.com/p/55595/i/ryker-hd-for-vladimir-8-00-main-daz3d.jpg
Yep - those are the types of character I buy too. In fact I have 5 or your 7 listed (and I'll look again at the others with interest) and that's from my very small collection of characters compared, I guess, to most of the DAZ customer base.
That's a rant about dependencies. Yes, I also despise dependencies in bothe figures and clothing.
For clarification, I consider characters made from the base and the standard morphs to be perfectly fine. Custom sculpts are great! More than that is excessive, I think.
Got any examples of what "more than that" is? What you mention is pretty much the norm in my experience
I can't give you examples, but I've definitely seen morphs that are basically just a preset of a bunch of different character morphs. I've only seen them as freebies, though; I can't think of any in the store.
edit: actually, I just thought of an example: this freebie goat/ram morph.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/435747/horse2goat
I think Gordig's example wins.
The worst offender I've seen for sale was Kelpie for the original Genesis, which is no longer in the store. She required four different named characters plus a morph set, and only one of those was listed as a required product on the store page.
I don't have any recent examples in mind, either. People in the forums are really good about showing how characters look without a "required" specific character. Broadly speaking, when an item requires more than 2 support products, I leave that item alone.
Good exam[le, although I had never seen it done like that till now and I agree, excessive.
...exactly, that's why I "cook up" my own. For textures I have various resource content which saves me a bundle on buying characters just for the skins..
...+1
...yeah I actually have her. Already had Teen Julie from the YT5 bundle who was one of the required figures (listed on the Wiki). I believe she also required Vicky5 (who I already had) and Hitomi5 (who I had to purchase)
Yes needing multiple characters and/or morph packs to use one new character is definitely a no for me.
I still grumble at descriptions and product info on whether or not textures will work on the base model if you don't have the extra characters or morph packs or both.
I got lucky with Mabel cause she doesn't use a morph or character for her look, so I know it will work on the base model and I now have a texture for when I want an elderly character in my render.
Having all the character morphs available on sliders makes customizing easy and fun! Mabel is useful, too. A few percent adds a little bit of mileage to other female characters.
Despite pointing out the goat morph as an example of what people are talking about, I actually really like that morph and am glad that it exists, because it gives me something that otherwise doesn't really exist. There's less need for that kind of thing when we're dealing with human figures, where there are a lot more options available, and obviously it would be better if it were actually a hand-sculpted morph, but I'm still glad I have it.
Where the customization gets awkward is when you've dial-spun a character and want to try to move it to a new genertion. Sometimes that just doesn't really work and you need to start over and just try to get as close as you can using different components.
...that's another reason why I stopped at G3 as I I spent a lot of time (and money on various resource content) developing a number of characters (as well as rebuilding them following a drive crash a few years ago).
Didn't care to go through all that again.