Anyone Using DAZ 3D Studio 4.7 Pro?

I just downloaded this program as it looks very interesting for character creation and animation. 4.7 was just released with some cool features and I was wondering if anyone using Blender also used DAZ in their pipeline?

http://www.daz3d.com/home

I’ve deleted my comment to deter anyone from further derailing the thread.

I presume that you…
…never used somebodies else HDR to light/provide a background, right?
…never used a texture coming from a photograph you did not take and process on your own, right?
…never used a shader from this forum or blendswap, right?
…never used in any way a mesh from any other starting point but Blender’s cube, right?

Dear Mistro, long time Poser user here, in the process of transitioning to Studio.

Two snippets:
1 - I have seen Genesis, exported as DAE, posable in Blender and
2 - there is a tool called mcjTeleblender which exports the scene from Studio into Blender, with Cycles materials.
The possibilities are mind boggling.

You can PM me or, if you have a deviantArt account, go to my dA persona, jpb06. I think that we should not keep lowering the level technical and artistical prowress of this community with our noobish chit chat.

Don’t hold back ohsnapitsjoel, tell us what you really think :wink:
So, is ok with YOU if someone uses your facial mocap addon in an “artistic” context
or does that smell of hack-iness as well???

Please, stay on topic. It’s a simple question.
If you’ve been there do share your opinions on the matter otherwise just drop it. Do strive for constructiveness.

… Moving on.

To the original poster, my apologies if I inadvertently derailed your thread. I still think you can do better than DAZ if you put your mind to it. :slight_smile:

I used DAZ sometimes and I find it a great tools! As you said, possibilities are mind blogging! It would be great if you would like to share with us your knowledge… don’t mind the people who don’t like the program :wink:

When I hear about DAZ and what they sell, I’m left to wonder if they’re really more concerned about selling sex or otherwise suggestive tart than actually developing their software.

You don’t really hear at all about big developments for Bryce and Carrara anymore for one thing (which they own). All of their recent developments seem to be primarily to help people make virtual dolls at a higher quality and clip.

I own several versions of Carrara (plus addons), Hexagon and Amapi. Carrara and Hexagon were sold to Daz3d. Smithmicro bought Amapi, which was originally owned by a French company. I haven’t touched any of them in years.

As for premade 3d content, I wouldn’t be inclined to insult people who use them. 3D is too broad a field. Even if I bought some of them, I wouldn’t know what to do with them like creating fantasy scenes artistic people are capable of doing.

If you’re making a living out of 3d, it’s impractical to do everything from scratch. I could see people making use of them in forensic science, medicine, book covers, children’s books, many various kinds of illustration, etc.

Right now, I’m doing 3d in hopes of making a living out of it. Theoretically, I’m doing everything from scratch. Even then it seems strange to say that. How can you do that if you’re using Blender, its modeling feature, rendering, texturing, etc. That’s not from scratch. I don’t use skin textures taken from real photographs. Many people do. If not, you may be using Gimp or Photoshop.

Bottom line is nothing can be done from scratch.

I used Daz for several years but moved to Poser last year after becoming dissatisfied with Daz’s limitations. There’s a ton of content available and generally, it works in both programs. Be aware that there is some animosity between users and frequent flame wars over the use of different figure bases such as Vickie4, Genesis6, Dawn, etc. The Poser and Daz forums aren’t nearly as well behaved as this place.
I use Blender to create stuff for use in Poser both for work and personal use.
One of the best (and downright hilarious) examples of what can be accomplished with it is found on ‘Ero’s’ site. He makes almost everything from scratch and is close to releasing a new base figure.
http://my.smithmicro.com/poser-3d-animation-software.html (not free but worth every penny)
(Family unfriendly link removed. PM me if you want it. (outrageously funny but VERY not safe for work))

Interesting…I wanted to get set up and play around before I replied. So far I’m developing a perception of DAZ. It’s NOT a modeling program. I’m seeing it as a 3D compositor of objects you can import as well as get ready made models and environments to make a quick scene. Is this correct?

I was able to easily import models made from Sketchup and Xfrog along with a backdrop. I also exported one of the included models along with the environment into Blender. OBJ came in the smoothest while FBX came in like a failed lab experiment (poor girl). I have to figure out the rules of exporting FBX and dae with DAZ to Blender if there’s a such thing.

What brought me to investigate DAZ is my current studying of anatomy and figure drawing. I want to use some 3D model references and put them in different poses and lighting situations. Even maybe bring some of the models into Manga Studio 5. I was hoping that I could take the models and do some deep customization to them. Looking into that now. Any help is appreciated.

I would get Poser if I could afford it but it will have to wait. I spent over $1,500 on CG software in the past 6 months on top of upgrading my hardware so I have to be thrifty right now. I am looking into building models from scratch as well. But we all learn from examples. As an artist, I learned much from others works. I hope this program will make a good addition to my pipeline. I’m optimistic so far.

Correct. There are some anatomical models and a skeleton available but I’ve no idea of their accuracy. As an anthropology student I’m following this project ( http://africanfossils.org/ ). I’d love to get entire skeletons into Poser for animation.
Best way to get Blender stuff into Poser/Daz is via the obj format. It’s a bit of a black art but quite do-able. A grouped Blender object can be imported into Poser and rigged with bones, textured etc. Blender textures don’t really survive the import process and there’s a considerable size difference between the two. Please ask if you want all the gory details.
There’s a ton of free content available. I can provide links if you’re interested.

I forgot a link so, to sum up, jpb06.deviantart.com or user latego on DAZ forums.

Bobb- I bookmarked that site. It looks very interesting. The funny thing is my approach on studying anatomy is to start with the bones.

jpb06- Thanks for your help. I will take you up on that. I think I have a Deviantart account but it’s been VERY long since I used it. I lurk there all the time though. I will look you up.

As for DAZ, I wonder how strong its animation rendering is?

I tried it when i was just starting to get into 3d - several years ago.
DAZ was really all about the girl models - at least from my point of view- and the accessories. Posing them, dressing them up, adjusting their blendshape sliders…

It is a male fantasy - the creation of a digital woman, and the software is really good at serving that to people who have no experience with 3d modelling or rigging.

I wouldnt call it professional for people who do 3d character models for a living. And to my knowledge there is a general distate to both daz and poser at other major 3d websites as well. They call it “the fairy porn software”.

If you are smart about it, you could use it in a pipeline - and focus on the animation of your characters. I think there was an award winning short film made with it and blender, but forgot the name

I’m user of Daz. Mainly as a digital pose tool because I’m too cheap to buy that wooden doll. And I can save poses instead of mangling around with that wooden doll. There is a digital pose robot, but sadly, it still not widespread here.

I do use it in my pipeline - but only as a ‘scene builder’ for a 2d painting.

I wouldn’t blame Daz to cater certain market. I mean, look at ZBrush gallery. Or cgtalk gallery. How many voluptuous woman / gun girl are there?

Anyway, Daz is just a tool. It’s digital barbie / sim / what not.

The ironies is that people that use other 3d software look down on Daz while making 3d models for murder porn (read: video games).

Look, theres nothing wrong with porn. It’s a huge industry with a lot of potential when it comes to VR headset games. Porn industry makes more money than movie industry sadly.

However, I wouldnt call the models you can output from DAZ/poser original.
You can tell where they come from :smiley:
More over , those models are not optimized to be used for anything but a render (to my knowledge).

This is where the distaste comes from- at least for me.
The models are unoriginal, they are not technically flexible enough to fit some of industry’s needs.
The majority of people who use them dont have much knowledge in anatomy and rarely I have seen anything that is well animated. The DAZ community is very diluted with people with little artistic skill- just look at daz stuff on deviantart. You can tell by the majority of work that is done with it - torture porn, weird fetishes, its all nekkid ladies- badly posed, badly lit, mostly naked.
That is the reason for distaste. It’s not fault of the software that it’s so easy to pickup by anyone. They do make their money on selling 3d babes and accessories in the end of the day.

Thus why I say “male fantasies”.

One of the best fitting and pithy definition I have ever heard in all my life.

I used to use DAZ Studio a lot and it was more or less my gateway into CG. Yes, a lot of the products sold for it and images rendered out of it do fit into the ‘sexy elf/knight/cyber warrior’ club, but that stuff does have a market. Personally I find the rendering engine to be very cartoonish and unrealistic though…

Animation is possible but difficult without additional costly addons, as the base program doesn’t come with a keyframe editor if I remember right. Also, I don’t recall if the renderer can do motion blur.

These days I still use DAZ content from time to time (mostly environment and vehicle models), but I shade the models and render them in Blender along with custom modifications. As far as whether that is a ‘cheat’ or not all I can say is that big Hollywood effects companies use Xfrog plant models…

jdent02- Yeah, the more I study compositing and how they do things in the movie industry, the more I realize how much smoke and mirrors we are exposed to.

At the end of the day, it’s all visual art. A good artist can find uses for MS Paint. What people do with the tools does not sum up the value of them. I seen some tasteful art made with DAZ.

Can any seasoned users tell me how deep the customization can go in DAZ? Or if anyone successfully brought out a model into Blender to do more subdivisions and editing?