Is it worth investing in Hexagon? Should it be free?
boisselazon
Posts: 458
Hi,
the tittle is a bit provocative but needless to say that the 3D creation market has evolved a bit since the last (major) update of Hexagon.
I'd like to invest in a 3D creation tool to create both characters and outfit, at least for Genesis and more certainly genesis 2.
Here is what my investigations gave me:
- hexagon (2.5) seems abandoned in term of development
- hexagon has some limitations
- hexagon is NOT free.
- main competitor seems to be sculptris, which is free
- same for blender
- super pro will use super pro program like zbrush and marvelous designer etc... but we are speaking about hundreds of USD here
- the main investment is....TIME. It is the core of my question
So, regarding the choice, hexagon or sculptris, what should be my choice?
Tell me if I'm wrong but both seems equal in term of learning curve. do they?
Which one is the easiest to work for daz content creation?
not important question but interesting to know (and to let Daz Staff knows): do you think that Hexagon should be free nowadays?
thx in advance for your enlightments , newbee here ;-)
do you think that
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it was free a while. if you want a free modeler, wings3d is still free, easy learning curve. there's blender.
the thing is not to look for a free program (14USD for hexagon won't broke me ...). The real problem is more strategic for me: TIME, evolution possibilities, etc...
time -> 1. learning curve, 2. productivity (eay to create an outfit for DAZ genesis, G2? a character? 3. features in the program etc...
evolution -> if everything goes well, I'll put it to the next level for a living. more powerful program etc...for example going from sculptris to zbrush seems easy
So, what should be my strategy with , first, low cost programs? (I'll learn only one)
Short answer, yes.
Hexagon has a DAZ Studio bridge.
You will benefit in learning sculptris too, but Sculptris is hardly equal to Hexagon. Hexagon is a professional 3D modeller. And at least a few PAs on this site use it to create products. It does have some limitations for UV mapping, but the skills learn with it are transferable to other more robust modellers. I paid a $1.88 for it back in 2010, and I'd easily pay $200 for an updated version of it today, knowing what I know now, and for how much it is worth. And yes, almost every product on mine has had some Hexagon modelling in it.
I've been debating the same exact thing. I did buy Hex last month when it was in sale for about $8, but I haven't used it yet.
I'm having the same concerns over time investments as you are. I'm not sure if the time to learn Hex is time well spent, or if it should be spent learning Sculptris.
Learning new skills is ways a good thing, but hex does seem abandoned, and I'm pretty sure Sculptris is similar to Z-Brush.
If someone starts out learning Sculptris and realizes they really want to pursue 3D modeling further, they can move up to Z-Brush where their familiarity of Sculptris will be beneficial.
That doesn't help a lot: one says "go haxagon" the second says "I've gone hex but seems to me that I should have gone Sculptris"...for the exact same reasons that I exposed.
@FirstBastion, thx a lot for sharing your experience. I really love what you do. But. There is always a "but". You are creating almost only architecture/envireonment things. And for that, what ever the program is can do the trick. Why? just obj ;-)
My question is more about characters and outfits for genesis/G2 . And THERE lie the problems :-(
Some people love hex.. Some not so much. For some people it runs really well, others learn to adapt to it's little issues and some throw up their hands and walk away. I am one of the learn to adapt people. It doesn't kill me to remember to save regularly. Actually you would be surprised how many PA's are of the learn to adapt variety with hex. For many of us it was easy to learn and is still the "techy" but somehow still warm and fuzzy modeler we use.
If you are one of those for whom Hexagon crashes all the time, then your decision has been made. No Hex for you!
to be clearer here is a sample of my goal:
a recent bundle, for example:
http://www.daz3d.com/forgotten-grotto-bundle
kind of thing I'd like to do char+specific outfit
some recent char/monsters
http://www.daz3d.com/hob-troll-hd
http://www.daz3d.com/gargoyle-hd-for-genesis-2-female-s
kind of monsters Id like to do
ons of my all time fav:
http://www.daz3d.com/undead-fiend
this is the real big deal I'd like to be able to achieve ;-)
What are exactly the programs the authors use?
What is the workflow?
Work flow is different for everyone. No two people work the same, so that's really not an easy question to give a definitive answer to. Personally, I only use Hexagon for modeling. I have Blender, but can't make heads or tails of it. I picked it up while it was still free. So far, I've made and modified Japanese style clothes, I've made jackets, boots, even a Victorian style Men's Opera Cloak with liner and capelet. I've made an armored battle glove, a shotgun, cybernetic smart goggle mirror shades, even a monster motorcycle. I've found Hexagon to be very intuitive and easy to use. This is always a plus.
In the cases of the Rawart products you listed, I "believe" he uses Zbrush for his morphs and Photoshop for his textures.
As for the HD technology Daz Studio uses, as an end-user you won't have access to creating those. It's proprietary and open to Daz vendors only.
If you're looking to make clothes, Sculptris and hexagon are really not comparable. Sculptris is a pure sculpter not a vertex modeller, there are no tools like extrude etc.
Personally, I use blender. I got a handle on it fairly quickly. But it's setup does seem fairly love it or hate it.
Hexagon
Modeling
Last Release August 2011, Previous release 2008
price $19.95
Blender
Modelling
Rendering
Rigging
Posing
Sculpting
Texture painting
Physical modeling
Motion capture
Compositing
Real (and non) -time rendering
Video editing
3D printing
Last Release March 31, 2015, Previous Jan 24, 2015
price $0
blender = powa bla bla bla ok.
In a perfect world ok.
But my concern is also about how it interacts with the daz world, especially when it comes to create genesis/g2 stuff (monsters/characters and outfits)
Could you please enlight me as I "don't know nothing" about this (superb) program.
Is it easy to lear?
Is it hard to create G1/G2 stuff with it? etc...
thx in advance for all people like me who are asking themselves the same questions (at least 2 in this thread ;-) )
Blender being "easy to learn" is a relative thing, and I'm not just giving an evasive answer. The hard part a lot of people seem to have with Blender is that you're just overwhelmed with options and things to learn right out of the box. That list above gives a good example - with Hexagon, you ONLY have to learn modeling, because that's all you can do with it. With Blender, you have a whole lot of things the program can do, and excels at, but it's hard to look at Blender and say, "Okay, I'm going to learn Blender."
Some people are great at modelling, some people are great at animation, some people are great with rigging figures, texturing, sculpting, compositing a good render, whatever. It takes a LONG time to get good at all of those things (I'm nowhere near there yet). Blender can do all of those things, but it's good to look at Blender as a broad program that you can grow into. Compartmentalize your learning with it, and you'll do fine. If you want to learn JUST modelling to start with, that's perfect. Having both programs, I can say that it was easier for me to learn Blender's modelling and I tend to leave Hexagon on the shelf.
For ME specifically, that was because I learn very well by watching video tutorials, and my job sometimes gives me the opportunity to watch them for several hours on end while I'm working. There are a ton of videos out there for every aspect of Blender. Hexagon, not so much.
For my workflow, I also prefer Blender for its dynamic sculpting. It works better for me to sculpt an object and then retopologize it cleanly (make a new mesh on top of your sculpt) than it is for me to model something from raw polys. Again, personal preference.
If you are strictly going to learn modelling, and you want to model things to sell on Daz3d, go with Hexagon. Not having all the other UI options there to confuse you will help. :) Otherwise, I say learn Blender a step at a time to go for a more rounded 3d experience. If you learn Hexagon and then want to branch out into more than modelling, you'll have to learn another program.
I too use Blender...and it's not really any better/worse at Genesis (1 or 2) specific content than any other modeller. They all have things you need to do to the content to get it into a format usable by Studio. It's just that to get a comparable feature set, you'll be shelling out a lot of money, otherwise.
For some it's very difficult to learn...others, like myself, not so hard. Like was mentioned it's a love it/hate it...because it's UI is not 'standard'.
There's a ton of great tutorials covering the basics and then some on places like Blendercookie, Blenderartists and such...many on Youtube and Vimeo.
No one tool is going to fit everyone and no one tool is going to do it all.
I would love for Hex to work on my machine...because the bridge is very useful for a quick fix or something. But it doesn't work well on this set up. I currently have about half a dozen modelers installed and use all of them for one thing or another. That's not counting the dedicated CAD software, too. Yes, all of it gets used, sometimes all to make one Studio item. Each one has something to bring to the table...even with it's flaws and shortcomings Hex is useful, to some (if it works without crashing) degree.
Greetings,
As someone who's trying very sporadically to learn Silo, and is definitely jealous of the Hexagon <-> DAZ Studio bridge, I have to wonder...how hard is it to build a bridge like that? It should just be a DAZ plugin, right? An exporter and an importer...but tied in, somehow, to DAZ so you can create morphs from the changed obj...
I'd love to see an external program which scales all the points in an object by a small fixed amount, and then the source for a 'bridge' plugin that exports to it, and imports the scaled object as a morph, just as a sample bridge to build on.
-- Morgan
...I'm one who pretty much gave up on it save for fairly quick easy jobs (and I paid a lot more for it than either the current or PC price) . Found it to be too unstable for any large projects,. I tried a number of solutions, including making it Large Address Aware on my 64 bit workstation yet still have to deal with it freezing up and having to shut it down through windows Task Manager.
Would love to see the stability issues fixed, improvements to the UV mapping,and 64 bit support. Of all the modellers I looked at, it has the nicest, cleanest, and easiest to work with UI of the lot.
There are many programs that PAs use.
Clothing is almost always done in a vertex modeler such as Hex, Blender, Maya, Modo or other dedicated modeler because it offers you a high degree of control over the mesh at the vertex level. However, some have been able to make clothing in ZBrush or another sculpting program such as Sculptris; often they retopologize in ZBrush or take it to another program to do so.
Characters are most often done in a sculpting program as they are usually morphs of a base figure. Many use ZBrush. ZBrush has also introduced more ways to work at the vertex level, and some have found this helpful while others still prefer to ues a vertex modeler. If the 3D vertex modeler includes sculpting tools, it could probably be done there. I've done morphs in both ZBrush and Modo. Morphs cannot have geometry added in the process of making the morph. So you have to be very aware of how sculpting tools work in any program you choose to use.
There are PAs here that use Hex for all their work. Some use a couple to a few programs for various stages of the work.
Lastly, there is which program do you like to use because a program may be very easy to use for one person and horrible for the next. As I've said on many occasions, anyone who tells you "you should use this or that" is telling you based on their experience with the program and their particular level of skill. It's purely subjective and, as such, you may or may not have the same experience with what is recommended.
...what about dedicated clothing modelling software like Marvelous Designer? I find it more intuitive than a vertex modeller for clothing design as it is pattern based and I've had experience in theatrical costuming.
If you are one of the lucky ones Hexagon will work for then it is definitely worth every penny even though it's a little long in the tooth and its features are lacking compared to modern vertex modellers. It has a wonderfully intuitive interface that is very clean and the bridge to Daz Studio makes it very useful even if you aren't a modeller.
Sadly very few people with modern 64-bit PCs are able to get it to run well at all. It's just not stable on modern machines and when Windows 10 comes out I wouldn't be surprised if these problems got even worse.
Frankly given the lack of any sort of meaningful support for the modeller I think it's dirty pool that Daz charges for it. It's one thing for a free app to have no support but when you part with cash for a product you expect the supplier will live up to their responsibilities to make sure the product works. Better yet, if Daz isn't going to do anything with Hexagon I would love it if they'd make it open source so that it could be upgraded by the open source community. A dedicated vertex modeller, especially one with an interface as slick as Hexagon's is of great benefit to the 3D world. And an open source supported vertex modeller that has a direct bridge to DS can only bring good things to the Daz community.
...agreed.
Except that it's more a cloth simulation program than a modeling program. It tends to create much more geometry to accomodate movement rather than maintain good topology which would provide smoother and lower poly mesh because you have more control and can place loops for good deformation in a vertex modeler.
It is being used more even in the gaming industry. I just haven't seen if the gamin industry uses as is or then optimizes the meshes from MD.
Except that it's more a cloth simulation program than a modeling program. It tends to create much more geometry to accomodate movement rather than maintain good topology which would provide smoother and lower poly mesh because you have more control and can place loops for good deformation in a vertex modeler.
It is being used more even in the gaming industry. I just haven't seen if the gamin industry uses as is or then optimizes the meshes from MD.
Also, at a subscription fee of $60/month, Marvelous Designer is pretty specialized, niche software. It has a unique method for creating clothes that may appeal to some people more than traditional 3d clothing modelling, but that's ALL it does. Unless you're only planning on making clothing, and you think you can make enough quality models to offset that $60/month and still make profit, I'd say skip it. This is more for AAA game studios, and I bet even those only subscribe for a month or two while their assets team make what they need for a project, then drop it again.
Except that it's more a cloth simulation program than a modeling program. It tends to create much more geometry to accomodate movement rather than maintain good topology which would provide smoother and lower poly mesh because you have more control and can place loops for good deformation in a vertex modeler.
It is being used more even in the gaming industry. I just haven't seen if the gamin industry uses as is or then optimizes the meshes from MD.
..however I prefer cloth dynamics over fitted clothing content as it just looks more natural. I've seen some pretty nice results here on the forums from people who have used it. Granted, I use it for my own purposes, not for commercial content creation. Besides, I'm still not 100% certain the personal licence can be used in that manner save for selling finished clothing meshes and patterns on the MD site.
For me it's one of those "if it works well for you, use it" situations.
Also, at a subscription fee of $60/month, Marvelous Designer is pretty specialized, niche software. It has a unique method for creating clothes that may appeal to some people more than traditional 3d clothing modelling, but that's ALL it does. Unless you're only planning on making clothing, and you think you can make enough quality models to offset that $60/month and still make profit, I'd say skip it. This is more for AAA game studios, and I bet even those only subscribe for a month or two while their assets team make what they need for a project, then drop it again.
...there also is a perpetual personal licence available. Those with an older version get a 50% discount. As a majority of the clothing content sold in 3D stores tends to be more on the "sexy" side, I find MD valuable as I need RL styles for my work. For example, I've yet to see a proper female business suit that doesn't either have too short a short skirt or low cut/open blouse.