How long to learn AND best resource to learn?

keithepatton

I'd like to use 3d as reference for my 2d oil paintings. I want to be able to pose my models, apply clothing, simulate the clothing, set up the environment theyre in, and most of all control the lighting.

I'm not interested in learning how to model in 3d. For all the paintings I want to do, I'll bet I can almost always find assets. I just need to be able to function like a cinematographer/director and position everything how I want and light it how I want. I'm very picky about lighting and want to control that the most. The base "sunlight" that washes everything out is totally unacceptable to me. I need to be able to control light direction, light intensity, light color, the number of lights, etc.

I also don't need to learn about animation.

How long will it take me to learn how to pose, light, and render in Daz? Which are the best tutorials to learn this efficiently?

lilweep

When learning new software, you will probably be impeded every time you want to tweak a basic thing just due to not knowing which button to click, so factoring that into the equation you might want to double or triple what i wrote below, also add a multiplier for your IQ.  Also learning 3D could be a never ending project, depending how deep you want to go.  

Posing: I would estimate maybe an hour or two to learn some basic posing skills for humanoid characters (e.g., posing the Gen 9 figure). COuld be half a day to learn most or all of the different posing tools.  A week to become fast at it from practicing.

Lighitng: For lighting, to learn how to add lights and set up lights in a scene (of all kinds, be they HDRIs, point lights, spot lights, gobos, emissive surfaces) it might take half a day of learning max. But to make good lighting for a scene could take quite a long time to gain proficiency since it is something of an artform.  WIth your art background and sensibilities, i think it would be faster than for people who lack an eye for artistic quality.

Rendering: if you are just rendering out references, then it wouldnt need to be perfect?  I assume you will just be using placeholder objects.  So setting up the scene and clicking the render button and maybe playing with render settings shouldnt take more than 1 hour to grasp/learn the basics.  Factoring in learning the camera settings, then maybe could be longer depending how deep you want to go.  

Simulation: im not really sure since im still not very good at this. I always find it hard to use the dforce simulation system in Daz. I suspect it is just a case of watching a few videos on youtube to learn how to sim clothing and sim hair.

Resources: just use free tutorials on youtube + these forums