Blender and/or DAZ Studio?

marble

Over the past week I have been immersed in Blender tutorials (... again! ... this is something I do at least once a year, every year). At the end of these marathon sessions, I usually end up convinced that 3D scene creation without the convenient library of pre-made objects, poses, textures and accessories that are part-and-parcel of the DAZ-o-sphere is practically beyond my capabilities. 

Blender seems to have all one could wish for as a swiss army knife for creating scenes as I do in DAZ Studio but the learning curve is so very daunting. It is not that any particular part of the toolset is unreasonably difficult but the sheer scope is overwhelming. For example, in order to understand how a human figure gets her skin texture, I need to understand UV maps and how to create them and materials and how to set them up which means learning how to manipulate those little spaghetti-connected boxes called nodes (hours and hours of tutorials just to get started on those). Then there are things such as morphs which, in Blender terms, translate to Shape Keys. But it is not just a matter of a dial to make a glute tight when bent as that usually requires something called a JCM which is something that the DAZ products come with ready-made. They also come rigged while Blender has not one but several methods of rigging a figure and each has its own learning curve.

My introduction to the world of 3D was via a PC game called The Sims. I played it and soon became interested in how I might modify some of the elements in the game. I found that there was a whole community dedicated to doing just that and that they used esoteric software such as 3D Studio Max and Blender. But I found that I could download ready-made props and clothing, etc., to use in the game - all created by geeks with skills I could never hope to emulate. Pretty soon, the fad of The Sims wore off but I had also discovered there were other avenues for making scenes with virtual human characters, namely the quite expensive Poser and the free DAZ Studio. I tried both but soon abandoned the paid one in favour of the free DAZ software. It just seemed to suit me better. Little did I know that I would still be dressing up my virtual humans and placing them in scenes 15 years later.

Unfortunately, my creative impulses push me towards doing things that I can't easily do in DAZ Studio. I find the animation timeline doesn't work as I want it to or there is little scope for making my own morphs or that rendering more than a few frames is likely to use up a large slice of the time I have left on this earth. Blender looks like a solution to many of these shortcomings but it seems that learning the necessary skills will take up even more of that ever-decreasing time span and I am not even sure I have the capability to develop those skills. 

So one solution that seems to hold a lot of promise for people like me is the bridge approach (specifically the official version or the Diffeomorphic alternative). So I looked at the DAZ version and quickly decided that as it does not support some essentials such as geografts, it is a non-starter. Diffeomorphic, on the other hand, is more versatile but has quite a learning curve in itself. I've exported quite a few test scenes but once they are in place in the Blender viewport I have discovered that what I really need now is some in-depth knowledge of Blender in order to make the cloth or hair work or to light, pose or animate the figures. The texture probably needs tweaking, especially if I want to use Eevee. So I am almost back to where I started with Blender - there is no escaping going through that learning curve.

Or I could just find another hobby.

marble

By the way, I'm not really asking for a how-to here. Rather, I am expressing a point of view and sharing my experience. However, I would be interested to see how others face up to the challenge of moving beyond the pre-packaged confines of DAZ Studio.

brainmuffin

I do agree with your assessment. The Blender UI is stuck in the past as an Amiga application. I came to Studio as a programmer (as in creating a ray-tracing engine) and did a few small things in POV-Ray. When I'm trying to create a scene or an animation, I don't want to learn all the layers first. I'm more of a photographer than a texture creator.

margrave

One thing that makes learning Blender easier is that the shortcuts are pretty much the same everywhere. If you go to the Node Editor, you can hit "A" to select all the nodes, hit "S" to scale them towards each other, and hit "X" to constrain them to the horizontal axis, just like moving vertices in Edit mode. Despite the overhwhelming number of options, there's a lot of smart design choices.

I learned Blender first, and I only moved to Daz Studio after finding the free alternatives for human figures and assets weren't very good. So I can't really say too much about "moving beyond the pre-packaged confines of DAZ Studio.". But I can say that pretty much everything about Daz Studio makes me think "Why can't this be more like Blender?" Robust snapping options, arbitrary rotation points, having a stack of modifiers and constraints with assignable vertex groups... It's a lot to take in, but I find it a struggle coping in Daz Studio without these.

peterpeter

marble said:

By the way, I'm not really asking for a how-to here. Rather, I am expressing a point of view and sharing my experience. However, I would be interested to see how others face up to the challenge of moving beyond the pre-packaged confines of DAZ Studio.

You forgot about hair particles (if you want to create realistic hair, you'll have to do it from scratch and use the grooming tools to create your own hairstyles), physics (cloth simulation, soft body simulation), liquids, referencing a model (doing linking and  library overriding. Daz does this natively making your save filesize really small when you save a model). And Blender users have it easier because they have the Diffeomorphic plugin which does 95% of the job for you.  Other software users (C4D, Maya, etc.) have to do all of the things you mentioned plus the one I mentioned without the help of a plugin as good as Diffeomorphic. 

The learning curve is really steep, not going to lie, but then I remember how bad the posing system in daz is, the lack of a basic IK rig after all these years, and the crappy animation timeline and I don't regret having moved to a better software.

 

marble

margrave said:

One thing that makes learning Blender easier is that the shortcuts are pretty much the same everywhere. If you go to the Node Editor, you can hit "A" to select all the nodes, hit "S" to scale them towards each other, and hit "X" to constrain them to the horizontal axis, just like moving vertices in Edit mode. Despite the overhwhelming number of options, there's a lot of smart design choices.

I learned Blender first, and I only moved to Daz Studio after finding the free alternatives weren't very good. So I can't really say too much about "moving beyond the pre-packaged confines of DAZ Studio.". But I can say that pretty much everything about Daz Studio makes me think "Why can't this be more like Blender?" Robust snapping options, arbitrary rotation points, having a stack of modifiers and constraints with assignable vertex groups... It's a lot to take in, but I find it a struggle coping in Daz Studio without these.

Oh yes, if there is one thing I have learned from my immersion in Blender tutorials it is that Blender has ways of doing almost everything that DAZ Studio lacks (and probably what most of us would wish for if only we knew what we were missing). But your last sentence is a perfect illustration of the point I was trying to make: "a stack of modifiers and constraints with assignable vertex groups" ... I couldn't even attempt to tell you what that means even after considerable exposure to Blender.

marble

peterpeter said:

marble said:

By the way, I'm not really asking for a how-to here. Rather, I am expressing a point of view and sharing my experience. However, I would be interested to see how others face up to the challenge of moving beyond the pre-packaged confines of DAZ Studio.

You forgot about hair particles (if you want to create realistic hair, you'll have to do it from scratch and use the grooming tools to create your own hairstyles), physics (cloth simulation, soft body simulation), liquids, referencing a model (doing linking and  library overriding. Daz does this natively making your save filesize really small when you save a model). And Blender users have it easier because they have the Diffeomorphic plugin which does 95% of the job for you.  Other software users (C4D, Maya, etc.) have to do all of the things you mentioned plus the one I mentioned without the help of a plugin as good as Diffeomorphic. 

The learning curve is really steep, not going to lie, but then I remember how bad the posing system in daz is, the lack of a basic IK rig after all these years, and the crappy animation timeline and I don't regret having moved to a better software.

 

So I'd be interested to know what your transition looked like. Especially as you made the move in the opposite direction to that @margrave described. Did you, for example, start with Diffeomorphic and then dive into the depths of Blender? You see, I can't yet see a way of easing into Blender if I want to try to do what I already do in DAZ Studio with the added benefits of better animation, etc.

margrave

marble said:

But your last sentence is a perfect illustration of the point I was trying to make: "a stack of modifiers and constraints with assignable vertex groups" ... I couldn't even attempt to tell you what that means even after considerable exposure to Blender.

In Daz Studio, you pick one modifier and apply it to the mesh. Some of them (push modifier) let you create weight maps that are tied to that modifier, but for others (smoothing modifier) it's all-or-nothing. And they're applied in a set order determined by Daz itself.

However, in Blender, you can add as many modifiers as you want in any order you want. All of them go onto the modifier stack, where you can rearrange the order they're applied. And you can create however many vertex groups/weight maps you want, and assign them to however many modifiers you want as a way of controlling their influence.

Constraints are like modifiers for an object's transforms. Limit rotation, copy rotation, point at, etc. They also have a stack, so you can control what order they're applied in.

 

marble

margrave said:

marble said:

But your last sentence is a perfect illustration of the point I was trying to make: "a stack of modifiers and constraints with assignable vertex groups" ... I couldn't even attempt to tell you what that means even after considerable exposure to Blender.

In Daz Studio, you pick one modifier and apply it to the mesh. Some of them (push modifier) let you create weight maps that are tied to that modifier, but for others (smoothing modifier) it's all-or-nothing. And they're applied in a set order determined by Daz itself.

However, in Blender, you can add as many modifiers as you want in any order you want. All of them go onto the modifier stack, where you can rearrange the order they're applied. And you can create however many vertex groups/weight maps you want, and assign them to however many modifiers you want as a way of controlling their influence.

Constraints are like modifiers for an object's transforms. Limit rotation, copy rotation, point at, etc. They also have a stack, so you can control what order they're applied in.

 

Thank you. Now that I have an idea I can find some more tutorials to go into more detail. I didn't even think of the push and smoothing options in DAZ Studio as modifiers because I thought that was some esoteric term peculiar to Blender. I guess if I think in the literal sense, however, that is obvious.

tapanojum

I made the move from Daz to Blender in January 2020 and migrated an ongoing project there. I experienced much of the same issues you have, it felt daunting and was painful leaving the comforts of everything working out of the box via Daz. Once you realize that Blender isn't some giant overwhelming software, but really just a collection of smaller tools, it becomes much more accessible. Don't try to do everything at once, break up your goals into smaller subsections and work from there.

I've started a new project now and found myself having to set everything up like I did last year. With just a year of experience, all these steps seem incredibly easy in comparison to before. Things that took me a week to find a solution for I can now figure out within a few hours and with better results. Just stick with it, you won't regret it.

There are things like Sculpting/Modeling/Rigging that may take years of experience to achieve great results in. Fortunately, we can buy assets from people much more talented than us. All that's left is to just figure out how the toolset works which at the end of the day is just pressing some buttons and sliding some parameters, things that anyone can do.

marble

tapanojum said:

I made the move from Daz to Blender in January 2020 and migrated an ongoing project there. I experienced much of the same issues you have, it felt daunting and was painful leaving the comforts of everything working out of the box via Daz. Once you realize that Blender isn't some giant overwhelming software, but really just a collection of smaller tools, it becomes much more accessible. Don't try to do everything at once, break up your goals into smaller subsections and work from there.

I've started a new project now and found myself having to set everything up like I did last year. With just a year of experience, all these steps seem incredibly easy in comparison to before. Things that took me a week to find a solution for I can now figure out within a few hours and with better results. Just stick with it, you won't regret it.

There are things like Sculpting/Modeling/Rigging that may take years of experience to achieve great results in. Fortunately, we can buy assets from people much more talented than us. All that's left is to just figure out how the toolset works which at the end of the day is just pressing some buttons and sliding some parameters, things that anyone can do.

Yep, you are obviously right about the collection of tools rather than some huge, monolithic interface. I try to think of it (and use it) as separate applications such as one to make morphs (edit & sculpt), one to compose videos (VSE), etc. and right now I am experimenting with the render options after having imported a figure via diffeo.

Initially, the cycles render does not look as good as my IRay renders (Cycles looks washed out and not as sharp or detailled).I have tinkered with the 2.92 denoiser and the render settings such as number of samples but I'm guessing that I will need to learn more about lighting and materials to get it to look decent. Otherwise, the figure was wearing a dForce draped dress which comes over with poke-through - especially where I have geografts fitted to the figure. 

I have not tried posing yet and I'm not even sure what rig to use. So that DAZ Studio comfort zone keeps beckoning me back home. I also find the way that Blender does not view through the camera disconcerting. I like the viewport to show what will be rendered as I work on the scene.

tapanojum

Cycles does not look as good as Iray when rendering Daz characters because Daz textures are not PBR. They are made to look great in Daz and will look hideous anywhere else by default. That's why the Diffeomorphic guys have put so much effort in making the auto convert shader try to mimic Daz settings as close as possible (and they did a remarkable job). All other major software treat camera and viewport navigation separately as well.  The camera issue was unsettling for me at first as well but you can make it function just like Daz. Go to the View Panel on the side and select "Camera to View". I'd post a picture but it's not uploading for some reason.

Blender works very similar to all the other software. I've spent time in C4D, Maya, Houdini and in general these skillsets are transferable. With Daz, a lot of the work is specific to Daz alone so it may feel very uncomfortable at first to work elsewhere. At the end of the day, if the technical is getting in the way of your ability to make art, then it's totally fine to stick with what your comfortable with. Only you know what's worth your time investment.

 

The biggest takeaway for me was that I no longer felt limited by the software. I used to think "Can I do this in Daz?" and now the question is always "How do I do this"? Even if Blender isn't great at some particular task, it still works great with other software so I can quickly exchange data between software when needed. The only real limitation I've found so far is the particle hair system which is due for a full on overhaul this year.

margrave

marble said:

Initially, the cycles render does not look as good as my IRay renders (Cycles looks washed out and not as sharp or detailled).I have tinkered with the 2.92 denoiser and the render settings such as number of samples but I'm guessing that I will need to learn more about lighting and materials to get it to look decent. Otherwise, the figure was wearing a dForce draped dress which comes over with poke-through - especially where I have geografts fitted to the figure. 

I have not tried posing yet and I'm not even sure what rig to use. So that DAZ Studio comfort zone keeps beckoning me back home. I also find the way that Blender does not view through the camera disconcerting. I like the viewport to show what will be rendered as I work on the scene.

Regarding the pokethrough, Blender has a modifier called the shrinkwrap modifier. It's like a combo of Daz Studio' push modifier and smoothing modifier. If you assign it to the dress and choose the figure as the target, the dress's vertices will cling to the surface of the body. You can also define an offset so that the dress will hover above the mesh, eliminating pokethrough. 

It has a lot of options, so you'll need to fiddle with it. But, as I said before, you can add as many modifiers as you want and use vertex groups to isolate their influence to problem areas. You can also add a subsurf/SubD modifier above it in the stack, to give it more geometry to follow the base mesh with, if it's too low poly.

As to which rig to use, use Rigify. It's pretty much the only standardized one, and the builtin IK is pretty great.

Not sure what you mean by "does not show through the camera". If you mean you want to see what the camera sees, then just hit "0" on the keypad. Or, if you you're using a laptop without a keypad, you can find it somewhere in the View menu, but bewarned, Blender was really meant to be used with a proper keyboard.

wolf359

You can implement a Duo ecosystem pipeline however you need to become knowledgable
in BOTH softwares..No way around it

Official Daz2Blender or Diffeo seems to be perfect pathways for DS genesis users as they are the equivalent of the Auto setup tools we use for our Iclone/CC3 to Blender/UE4/Unity pipelines...

no manual texture node setups.

However you need still to become knowledgable
in BOTH softwares..No way around it

I assume you are not becoming a content creator with blender so for you it
it is a one way pipeline.

Pick a figure transfer method (Official Daz2Blender or Diffeo)
decide what features of Blender are your priority for your rendering objectives
and learn them...No way around it ....SERIOUSLY No ...way..around....it

nonesuch00

I was working last month on paid tutorials for keyframe animation and progressing pretty well but this month my sister is surprising visiting from overseas and. wala, I've not looked at animating the whole time & won't until she goes back to Germany.

And it always seems it's like that for me, this is just the latest example. Don't get me wrong the visiting is nice but trying to learn to be excellent at 3D and not having hoards of dedicated free time to do it in don't go good together.

marble

margrave said:

marble said:

Initially, the cycles render does not look as good as my IRay renders (Cycles looks washed out and not as sharp or detailled).I have tinkered with the 2.92 denoiser and the render settings such as number of samples but I'm guessing that I will need to learn more about lighting and materials to get it to look decent. Otherwise, the figure was wearing a dForce draped dress which comes over with poke-through - especially where I have geografts fitted to the figure. 

I have not tried posing yet and I'm not even sure what rig to use. So that DAZ Studio comfort zone keeps beckoning me back home. I also find the way that Blender does not view through the camera disconcerting. I like the viewport to show what will be rendered as I work on the scene.

Regarding the pokethrough, Blender has a modifier called the shrinkwrap modifier. It's like a combo of Daz Studio' push modifier and smoothing modifier. If you assign it to the dress and choose the figure as the target, the dress's vertices will cling to the surface of the body. You can also define an offset so that the dress will hover above the mesh, eliminating pokethrough. 

It has a lot of options, so you'll need to fiddle with it. But, as I said before, you can add as many modifiers as you want and use vertex groups to isolate their influence to problem areas. You can also add a subsurf/SubD modifier above it in the stack, to give it more geometry to follow the base mesh with, if it's too low poly.

As to which rig to use, use Rigify. It's pretty much the only standardized one, and the builtin IK is pretty great.

Not sure what you mean by "does not show through the camera". If you mean you want to see what the camera sees, then just hit "0" on the keypad. Or, if you you're using a laptop without a keypad, you can find it somewhere in the View menu, but bewarned, Blender was really meant to be used with a proper keyboard.

Thanks. Some good tips. I have not yet learned much about modifiers but clearly I do need to. As for the camera view, yes, I know about how to view through the camera but it is not the default view for the viewport. Instead I have to keep switching in and out of camera view even if I use the lock to view option. Also the camera view is a small rectangle in the middle of my viewport rather than the whole viewport. There's probably a way to imitate the way the DAZ studio viewport works but I will probably get used to the Blender way eventually. 
I watched another video on Rigify this time and it does look versatile. 
I do have a full keyboard and I am gradually picking up some of the shortcuts but it will take a while. I use the sculpt tools which share the shortcuts so I am not opposed to learning more of them. 

Paintbox

I am still working on : https://daztodiffeo.wordpress.com

Good chance you already seen it. I even have some suggestions from you in my notebook I think. Although current daily affairs don't give me a lot of time at the moment for adding tutorials. I hope to have some more time soon.

margrave

marble said:

Thanks. Some good tips. I have not yet learned much about modifiers but clearly I do need to. As for the camera view, yes, I know about how to view through the camera but it is not the default view for the viewport. Instead I have to keep switching in and out of camera view even if I use the lock to view option. Also the camera view is a small rectangle in the middle of my viewport rather than the whole viewport. There's probably a way to imitate the way the DAZ studio viewport works but I will probably get used to the Blender way eventually. 

If you want to increase the size of the camera frame, uncheck "Camera to View" and use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out.

I don't think there's such a thing as "the Blender way". The UI is completely customizable, and much more robust than Daz's. I take it you're using the tabs at the top, "Layout" and "Editing" and so on, to switch views? Those were just added in 2.8; I never use them. I always split panes to make my own views. You can make as many 3D viewports as you want, and unlike Daz they're not linked together. You can have five separate viewports showing completely different angles of the same object. You can also set each viewport to show a different camera; Blender usually has one "active" camera per scene, but if you hit the "Local Camera" box above "Camera to View" you can select a camera to show on a viewport-by-viewport basis.

marble

Paintbox said:

I am still working on : https://daztodiffeo.wordpress.com

Good chance you already seen it. I even have some suggestions from you in my notebook I think. Although current daily affairs don't give me a lot of time at the moment for adding tutorials. I hope to have some more time soon.

Yes I have seen it ... good of you to take the time. There are some things about Diffeo that I am not ready for yet - things like custom morphs and rigging options but, well, baby steps. 

marble

margrave said:

marble said:

Thanks. Some good tips. I have not yet learned much about modifiers but clearly I do need to. As for the camera view, yes, I know about how to view through the camera but it is not the default view for the viewport. Instead I have to keep switching in and out of camera view even if I use the lock to view option. Also the camera view is a small rectangle in the middle of my viewport rather than the whole viewport. There's probably a way to imitate the way the DAZ studio viewport works but I will probably get used to the Blender way eventually. 

If you want to increase the size of the camera frame, uncheck "Camera to View" and use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out.

I don't think there's such a thing as "the Blender way". The UI is completely customizable, and much more robust than Daz's. I take it you're using the tabs at the top, "Layout" and "Editing" and so on, to switch views? Those were just added in 2.8; I never use them. I always split panes to make my own views. You can make as many 3D viewports as you want, and unlike Daz they're not linked together. You can have five separate viewports showing completely different angles of the same object. You can also set each viewport to show a different camera; Blender usually has one "active" camera per scene, but if you hit the "Local Camera" box above "Camera to View" you can select a camera to show on a viewport-by-viewport basis.

The fact that there are so many customisable options is one of the things that makes learning Blender such a huge undertaking. I keep forgetting that there are so many tabs to do different things and, for this particular exercise, I have been anchored to the Layout tab. Also, my eyes are not as good as they used to be and my screen isn't huge so splitting the viewport into 4 or 5 wouln't be an option for me. What I do in DAZ Studio is constantly switch between the default camera view and the Perspective view. The latter does not interfere with the rendered result wheras the former is what you get in the render. So I use the Perspective view much like the Viewport in Blender but switching back to the camera in DS doesn't reduce my view to a small box in the middle of the screen. 

I watched a Blender Guru tutorial (see attached) and he was saying that people coming from other software often find the viewport difficult to get used to. That is exactly what I am going through but, like anything, the more I use it the more natural it will become. 

Here's the tutorial, watch from about 9 minutes in...

mike_from_nz

brainmuffin said:

I do agree with your assessment. The Blender UI is stuck in the past as an Amiga application. I came to Studio as a programmer (as in creating a ray-tracing engine) and did a few small things in POV-Ray. When I'm trying to create a scene or an animation, I don't want to learn all the layers first. I'm more of a photographer than a texture creator.

Seriously? That is very harsh. The versions of Blender 2.8+ are brilliant to use.

brainmuffin

mike_from_nz said:

brainmuffin said:

I do agree with your assessment. The Blender UI is stuck in the past as an Amiga application. I came to Studio as a programmer (as in creating a ray-tracing engine) and did a few small things in POV-Ray. When I'm trying to create a scene or an animation, I don't want to learn all the layers first. I'm more of a photographer than a texture creator.

Seriously? That is very harsh. The versions of Blender 2.8+ are brilliant to use.

Yes, seriously. Blender started as an Amiga program and it still shows. The UI does not follow the conventions of Windows, OS X, nor Linux (X/11, Gnome, etc).

marble

brainmuffin said:

mike_from_nz said:

brainmuffin said:

I do agree with your assessment. The Blender UI is stuck in the past as an Amiga application. I came to Studio as a programmer (as in creating a ray-tracing engine) and did a few small things in POV-Ray. When I'm trying to create a scene or an animation, I don't want to learn all the layers first. I'm more of a photographer than a texture creator.

Seriously? That is very harsh. The versions of Blender 2.8+ are brilliant to use.

Yes, seriously. Blender started as an Amiga program and it still shows. The UI does not follow the conventions of Windows, OS X, nor Linux (X/11, Gnome, etc).

I tried ZBrush for a while a few years back and just couldn't get my head around that UI. I'm not a fan of Poser either. So Blender is just another odd environment for me which I will get used to eventually. It seems like another lifetime now but 30 years ago I was supporting various Unix based systems and everthing I did was command-line. I was quite good with vi too. So it is odd that I resist keyboard shortcuts when I used them constantly back then. Maybe I was so happy to see the introduction of the GUI that I wanted nothing more to do with the keyboard.

juvesatriani

marble said:

Over the past week I have been immersed in Blender tutorials (... again! ... this is something I do at least once a year, every year). At the end of these marathon sessions, I usually end up convinced that 3D scene creation without the convenient library of pre-made objects, poses, textures and accessories that are part-and-parcel of the DAZ-o-sphere is practically beyond my capabilities. 

Blender seems to have all one could wish for as a swiss army knife for creating scenes as I do in DAZ Studio but the learning curve is so very daunting. It is not that any particular part of the toolset is unreasonably difficult but the sheer scope is overwhelming. For example, in order to understand how a human figure gets her skin texture, I need to understand UV maps and how to create them and materials and how to set them up which means learning how to manipulate those little spaghetti-connected boxes called nodes (hours and hours of tutorials just to get started on those). Then there are things such as morphs which, in Blender terms, translate to Shape Keys. But it is not just a matter of a dial to make a glute tight when bent as that usually requires something called a JCM which is something that the DAZ products come with ready-made. They also come rigged while Blender has not one but several methods of rigging a figure and each has its own learning curve.

My introduction to the world of 3D was via a PC game called The Sims. I played it and soon became interested in how I might modify some of the elements in the game. I found that there was a whole community dedicated to doing just that and that they used esoteric software such as 3D Studio Max and Blender. But I found that I could download ready-made props and clothing, etc., to use in the game - all created by geeks with skills I could never hope to emulate. Pretty soon, the fad of The Sims wore off but I had also discovered there were other avenues for making scenes with virtual human characters, namely the quite expensive Poser and the free DAZ Studio. I tried both but soon abandoned the paid one in favour of the free DAZ software. It just seemed to suit me better. Little did I know that I would still be dressing up my virtual humans and placing them in scenes 15 years later.

Unfortunately, my creative impulses push me towards doing things that I can't easily do in DAZ Studio. I find the animation timeline doesn't work as I want it to or there is little scope for making my own morphs or that rendering more than a few frames is likely to use up a large slice of the time I have left on this earth. Blender looks like a solution to many of these shortcomings but it seems that learning the necessary skills will take up even more of that ever-decreasing time span and I am not even sure I have the capability to develop those skills. 

So one solution that seems to hold a lot of promise for people like me is the bridge approach (specifically the official version or the Diffeomorphic alternative). So I looked at the DAZ version and quickly decided that as it does not support some essentials such as geografts, it is a non-starter. Diffeomorphic, on the other hand, is more versatile but has quite a learning curve in itself. I've exported quite a few test scenes but once they are in place in the Blender viewport I have discovered that what I really need now is some in-depth knowledge of Blender in order to make the cloth or hair work or to light, pose or animate the figures. The texture probably needs tweaking, especially if I want to use Eevee. So I am almost back to where I started with Blender - there is no escaping going through that learning curve.

Or I could just find another hobby.

I feel you .. Thats why I`m suggesting DAZ releasing most Flagship in Native Blender Format . With Proper RIG for animation and corrective morph instead focus in Bridges

Your problem similiar with mine , which having too much love with DAZ products so we never see another options . Actually There are tons of cool model out there . I would not abandon DAZ but if I want to play with Blender I`ll seek other options

If you have time or money to spend , try download or buy ready to use for animation figure for native blender . Try google Rocket girl rig for blender . its free and having nice rig setup . Try play with it .. making simple animation or maybe doing extreme material make over !!  and you`ll know why releasing DAZ figure in Blender native format is the obvious answer for us

mike_from_nz

brainmuffin said:

mike_from_nz said:

brainmuffin said:

I do agree with your assessment. The Blender UI is stuck in the past as an Amiga application. I came to Studio as a programmer (as in creating a ray-tracing engine) and did a few small things in POV-Ray. When I'm trying to create a scene or an animation, I don't want to learn all the layers first. I'm more of a photographer than a texture creator.

Seriously? That is very harsh. The versions of Blender 2.8+ are brilliant to use.

Yes, seriously. Blender started as an Amiga program and it still shows. The UI does not follow the conventions of Windows, OS X, nor Linux (X/11, Gnome, etc).

The UI and tool layout have changed signficantly. I'd suggest you try to use one of the recent versions to have a decent discussion about this.  

marble

juvesatriani said:

marble said:

Over the past week I have been immersed in Blender tutorials (... again! ... this is something I do at least once a year, every year). At the end of these marathon sessions, I usually end up convinced that 3D scene creation without the convenient library of pre-made objects, poses, textures and accessories that are part-and-parcel of the DAZ-o-sphere is practically beyond my capabilities. 

Blender seems to have all one could wish for as a swiss army knife for creating scenes as I do in DAZ Studio but the learning curve is so very daunting. It is not that any particular part of the toolset is unreasonably difficult but the sheer scope is overwhelming. For example, in order to understand how a human figure gets her skin texture, I need to understand UV maps and how to create them and materials and how to set them up which means learning how to manipulate those little spaghetti-connected boxes called nodes (hours and hours of tutorials just to get started on those). Then there are things such as morphs which, in Blender terms, translate to Shape Keys. But it is not just a matter of a dial to make a glute tight when bent as that usually requires something called a JCM which is something that the DAZ products come with ready-made. They also come rigged while Blender has not one but several methods of rigging a figure and each has its own learning curve.

My introduction to the world of 3D was via a PC game called The Sims. I played it and soon became interested in how I might modify some of the elements in the game. I found that there was a whole community dedicated to doing just that and that they used esoteric software such as 3D Studio Max and Blender. But I found that I could download ready-made props and clothing, etc., to use in the game - all created by geeks with skills I could never hope to emulate. Pretty soon, the fad of The Sims wore off but I had also discovered there were other avenues for making scenes with virtual human characters, namely the quite expensive Poser and the free DAZ Studio. I tried both but soon abandoned the paid one in favour of the free DAZ software. It just seemed to suit me better. Little did I know that I would still be dressing up my virtual humans and placing them in scenes 15 years later.

Unfortunately, my creative impulses push me towards doing things that I can't easily do in DAZ Studio. I find the animation timeline doesn't work as I want it to or there is little scope for making my own morphs or that rendering more than a few frames is likely to use up a large slice of the time I have left on this earth. Blender looks like a solution to many of these shortcomings but it seems that learning the necessary skills will take up even more of that ever-decreasing time span and I am not even sure I have the capability to develop those skills. 

So one solution that seems to hold a lot of promise for people like me is the bridge approach (specifically the official version or the Diffeomorphic alternative). So I looked at the DAZ version and quickly decided that as it does not support some essentials such as geografts, it is a non-starter. Diffeomorphic, on the other hand, is more versatile but has quite a learning curve in itself. I've exported quite a few test scenes but once they are in place in the Blender viewport I have discovered that what I really need now is some in-depth knowledge of Blender in order to make the cloth or hair work or to light, pose or animate the figures. The texture probably needs tweaking, especially if I want to use Eevee. So I am almost back to where I started with Blender - there is no escaping going through that learning curve.

Or I could just find another hobby.

I feel you .. Thats why I`m suggesting DAZ releasing most Flagship in Native Blender Format . With Proper RIG for animation and corrective morph instead focus in Bridges

Your problem similiar with mine , which having too much love with DAZ products so we never see another options . Actually There are tons of cool model out there . I would not abandon DAZ but if I want to play with Blender I`ll seek other options

If you have time or money to spend , try download or buy ready to use for animation figure for native blender . Try google Rocket girl rig for blender . its free and having nice rig setup . Try play with it .. making simple animation or maybe doing extreme material make over !!  and you`ll know why releasing DAZ figure in Blender native format is the obvious answer for us

Yes it would be really good to have a universal format so that we could move our creations between editing  and rendering software. Blender looks like it will further adopt USD this year but I see no signs of DAZ moving in that direction. Perhaps now that NVidia are also getting into USD with their Omniverse development, DAZ will have to follow suit.

tapanojum

juvesatriani said:

marble said:

Over the past week I have been immersed in Blender tutorials (... again! ... this is something I do at least once a year, every year). At the end of these marathon sessions, I usually end up convinced that 3D scene creation without the convenient library of pre-made objects, poses, textures and accessories that are part-and-parcel of the DAZ-o-sphere is practically beyond my capabilities. 

Blender seems to have all one could wish for as a swiss army knife for creating scenes as I do in DAZ Studio but the learning curve is so very daunting. It is not that any particular part of the toolset is unreasonably difficult but the sheer scope is overwhelming. For example, in order to understand how a human figure gets her skin texture, I need to understand UV maps and how to create them and materials and how to set them up which means learning how to manipulate those little spaghetti-connected boxes called nodes (hours and hours of tutorials just to get started on those). Then there are things such as morphs which, in Blender terms, translate to Shape Keys. But it is not just a matter of a dial to make a glute tight when bent as that usually requires something called a JCM which is something that the DAZ products come with ready-made. They also come rigged while Blender has not one but several methods of rigging a figure and each has its own learning curve.

My introduction to the world of 3D was via a PC game called The Sims. I played it and soon became interested in how I might modify some of the elements in the game. I found that there was a whole community dedicated to doing just that and that they used esoteric software such as 3D Studio Max and Blender. But I found that I could download ready-made props and clothing, etc., to use in the game - all created by geeks with skills I could never hope to emulate. Pretty soon, the fad of The Sims wore off but I had also discovered there were other avenues for making scenes with virtual human characters, namely the quite expensive Poser and the free DAZ Studio. I tried both but soon abandoned the paid one in favour of the free DAZ software. It just seemed to suit me better. Little did I know that I would still be dressing up my virtual humans and placing them in scenes 15 years later.

Unfortunately, my creative impulses push me towards doing things that I can't easily do in DAZ Studio. I find the animation timeline doesn't work as I want it to or there is little scope for making my own morphs or that rendering more than a few frames is likely to use up a large slice of the time I have left on this earth. Blender looks like a solution to many of these shortcomings but it seems that learning the necessary skills will take up even more of that ever-decreasing time span and I am not even sure I have the capability to develop those skills. 

So one solution that seems to hold a lot of promise for people like me is the bridge approach (specifically the official version or the Diffeomorphic alternative). So I looked at the DAZ version and quickly decided that as it does not support some essentials such as geografts, it is a non-starter. Diffeomorphic, on the other hand, is more versatile but has quite a learning curve in itself. I've exported quite a few test scenes but once they are in place in the Blender viewport I have discovered that what I really need now is some in-depth knowledge of Blender in order to make the cloth or hair work or to light, pose or animate the figures. The texture probably needs tweaking, especially if I want to use Eevee. So I am almost back to where I started with Blender - there is no escaping going through that learning curve.

Or I could just find another hobby.

I feel you .. Thats why I`m suggesting DAZ releasing most Flagship in Native Blender Format . With Proper RIG for animation and corrective morph instead focus in Bridges

Your problem similiar with mine , which having too much love with DAZ products so we never see another options . Actually There are tons of cool model out there . I would not abandon DAZ but if I want to play with Blender I`ll seek other options

If you have time or money to spend , try download or buy ready to use for animation figure for native blender . Try google Rocket girl rig for blender . its free and having nice rig setup . Try play with it .. making simple animation or maybe doing extreme material make over !!  and you`ll know why releasing DAZ figure in Blender native format is the obvious answer for us

Rigs are not transferable between software and it would be absolutely insane for Daz to create separate rigs for each character in every software they have a bridge to. They've already taken a step in the right direction by going PBR with 8.1, meaning textures will translate properly outside of Daz. Diffeo converts chars to Rigify just fine and I imagine that eventually the Daz to Blender bridge will as well.

juvesatriani

tapanojum said:

juvesatriani said:

marble said:

Over the past week I have been immersed in Blender tutorials (... again! ... this is something I do at least once a year, every year). At the end of these marathon sessions, I usually end up convinced that 3D scene creation without the convenient library of pre-made objects, poses, textures and accessories that are part-and-parcel of the DAZ-o-sphere is practically beyond my capabilities. 

Blender seems to have all one could wish for as a swiss army knife for creating scenes as I do in DAZ Studio but the learning curve is so very daunting. It is not that any particular part of the toolset is unreasonably difficult but the sheer scope is overwhelming. For example, in order to understand how a human figure gets her skin texture, I need to understand UV maps and how to create them and materials and how to set them up which means learning how to manipulate those little spaghetti-connected boxes called nodes (hours and hours of tutorials just to get started on those). Then there are things such as morphs which, in Blender terms, translate to Shape Keys. But it is not just a matter of a dial to make a glute tight when bent as that usually requires something called a JCM which is something that the DAZ products come with ready-made. They also come rigged while Blender has not one but several methods of rigging a figure and each has its own learning curve.

My introduction to the world of 3D was via a PC game called The Sims. I played it and soon became interested in how I might modify some of the elements in the game. I found that there was a whole community dedicated to doing just that and that they used esoteric software such as 3D Studio Max and Blender. But I found that I could download ready-made props and clothing, etc., to use in the game - all created by geeks with skills I could never hope to emulate. Pretty soon, the fad of The Sims wore off but I had also discovered there were other avenues for making scenes with virtual human characters, namely the quite expensive Poser and the free DAZ Studio. I tried both but soon abandoned the paid one in favour of the free DAZ software. It just seemed to suit me better. Little did I know that I would still be dressing up my virtual humans and placing them in scenes 15 years later.

Unfortunately, my creative impulses push me towards doing things that I can't easily do in DAZ Studio. I find the animation timeline doesn't work as I want it to or there is little scope for making my own morphs or that rendering more than a few frames is likely to use up a large slice of the time I have left on this earth. Blender looks like a solution to many of these shortcomings but it seems that learning the necessary skills will take up even more of that ever-decreasing time span and I am not even sure I have the capability to develop those skills. 

So one solution that seems to hold a lot of promise for people like me is the bridge approach (specifically the official version or the Diffeomorphic alternative). So I looked at the DAZ version and quickly decided that as it does not support some essentials such as geografts, it is a non-starter. Diffeomorphic, on the other hand, is more versatile but has quite a learning curve in itself. I've exported quite a few test scenes but once they are in place in the Blender viewport I have discovered that what I really need now is some in-depth knowledge of Blender in order to make the cloth or hair work or to light, pose or animate the figures. The texture probably needs tweaking, especially if I want to use Eevee. So I am almost back to where I started with Blender - there is no escaping going through that learning curve.

Or I could just find another hobby.

I feel you .. Thats why I`m suggesting DAZ releasing most Flagship in Native Blender Format . With Proper RIG for animation and corrective morph instead focus in Bridges

Your problem similiar with mine , which having too much love with DAZ products so we never see another options . Actually There are tons of cool model out there . I would not abandon DAZ but if I want to play with Blender I`ll seek other options

If you have time or money to spend , try download or buy ready to use for animation figure for native blender . Try google Rocket girl rig for blender . its free and having nice rig setup . Try play with it .. making simple animation or maybe doing extreme material make over !!  and you`ll know why releasing DAZ figure in Blender native format is the obvious answer for us

Rigs are not transferable between software and it would be absolutely insane for Daz to create separate rigs for each character in every software they have a bridge to. They've already taken a step in the right direction by going PBR with 8.1, meaning textures will translate properly outside of Daz. Diffeo converts chars to Rigify just fine and I imagine that eventually the Daz to Blender bridge will as well.

You missed my point , i dont talk about transfer rigs between apps  . But releasing  Victoria  - AIKO or Michael model  with proper rig for animation in Blender . it shouldnt "dead" close with what we`ve already had in DAZ Studio , but for better use for animation

I`ve already test all DAZ bridges including diffeo but since its based on DAZ rigs ( or i should say based on what DAZ studio used for ) it still not really suitable for animation . 

Can you create animation with coverted rig ? Yes of course but the truth is Converting to other rig system doesnt mean fix the problem if the structure not right in first place for animation use 

If you dont believe, go to blend swap or blender market and find premade character for Blender and you`ll see what kind rig setup for animation.

I do believe DAZ have skill and knowledge to do that  and before DAZ studio exist , they support Poser ecosystem which have slighty different method of Joints and Rigs , so why not for Native Blender right now ? 

About PBR , in theory they should output similiar result. But in reality its not really . Because every light system in each render engine is different . So they react different . That conclusion based on my fiddling with  PBR material in major Render Engine including Corona - Arnold and Lumion in daily work

margrave

marble said:

The fact that there are so many customisable options is one of the things that makes learning Blender such a huge undertaking. I keep forgetting that there are so many tabs to do different things and, for this particular exercise, I have been anchored to the Layout tab. Also, my eyes are not as good as they used to be and my screen isn't huge so splitting the viewport into 4 or 5 wouln't be an option for me. What I do in DAZ Studio is constantly switch between the default camera view and the Perspective view. The latter does not interfere with the rendered result wheras the former is what you get in the render. So I use the Perspective view much like the Viewport in Blender but switching back to the camera in DS doesn't reduce my view to a small box in the middle of the screen. 

You can use the mouse wheel while you're in camera view to increase the size of the rendering frame, and it should remember your settings if you leave camera view and come back. Overall, I find it much easier to use than Daz's method of going to a dropdown to switch between perspective and camera. Just like how snapping and changing the transform orientation are easier in Blender because you don't have to go to a dropdown in the Tool Settings menu to do it. That's always a time-waster.

If it's your eyesight you're worried about, here's something else to remember: you can maximize any pane by hovering your mouse over it and hitting Ctrl+Spacebar, so it fills the whole Blender window.

I watched a Blender Guru tutorial (see attached) and he was saying that people coming from other software often find the viewport difficult to get used to. That is exactly what I am going through but, like anything, the more I use it the more natural it will become. 

I've been following BlenderGuru for almost a decade now (has it been that long...?). He and CGCookie were pretty much the only two Blender "authorities" on YouTube back then. And after rewatching his old videos made in Blender 2.4, pretty much anything is an improvement, UI-wise. If you've strugged with that, then 2.8/2.9 is the most intuitive thing in the world.

tapanojum

juvesatriani said:

tapanojum said:

juvesatriani said:

marble said:

Over the past week I have been immersed in Blender tutorials (... again! ... this is something I do at least once a year, every year). At the end of these marathon sessions, I usually end up convinced that 3D scene creation without the convenient library of pre-made objects, poses, textures and accessories that are part-and-parcel of the DAZ-o-sphere is practically beyond my capabilities. 

Blender seems to have all one could wish for as a swiss army knife for creating scenes as I do in DAZ Studio but the learning curve is so very daunting. It is not that any particular part of the toolset is unreasonably difficult but the sheer scope is overwhelming. For example, in order to understand how a human figure gets her skin texture, I need to understand UV maps and how to create them and materials and how to set them up which means learning how to manipulate those little spaghetti-connected boxes called nodes (hours and hours of tutorials just to get started on those). Then there are things such as morphs which, in Blender terms, translate to Shape Keys. But it is not just a matter of a dial to make a glute tight when bent as that usually requires something called a JCM which is something that the DAZ products come with ready-made. They also come rigged while Blender has not one but several methods of rigging a figure and each has its own learning curve.

My introduction to the world of 3D was via a PC game called The Sims. I played it and soon became interested in how I might modify some of the elements in the game. I found that there was a whole community dedicated to doing just that and that they used esoteric software such as 3D Studio Max and Blender. But I found that I could download ready-made props and clothing, etc., to use in the game - all created by geeks with skills I could never hope to emulate. Pretty soon, the fad of The Sims wore off but I had also discovered there were other avenues for making scenes with virtual human characters, namely the quite expensive Poser and the free DAZ Studio. I tried both but soon abandoned the paid one in favour of the free DAZ software. It just seemed to suit me better. Little did I know that I would still be dressing up my virtual humans and placing them in scenes 15 years later.

Unfortunately, my creative impulses push me towards doing things that I can't easily do in DAZ Studio. I find the animation timeline doesn't work as I want it to or there is little scope for making my own morphs or that rendering more than a few frames is likely to use up a large slice of the time I have left on this earth. Blender looks like a solution to many of these shortcomings but it seems that learning the necessary skills will take up even more of that ever-decreasing time span and I am not even sure I have the capability to develop those skills. 

So one solution that seems to hold a lot of promise for people like me is the bridge approach (specifically the official version or the Diffeomorphic alternative). So I looked at the DAZ version and quickly decided that as it does not support some essentials such as geografts, it is a non-starter. Diffeomorphic, on the other hand, is more versatile but has quite a learning curve in itself. I've exported quite a few test scenes but once they are in place in the Blender viewport I have discovered that what I really need now is some in-depth knowledge of Blender in order to make the cloth or hair work or to light, pose or animate the figures. The texture probably needs tweaking, especially if I want to use Eevee. So I am almost back to where I started with Blender - there is no escaping going through that learning curve.

Or I could just find another hobby.

I feel you .. Thats why I`m suggesting DAZ releasing most Flagship in Native Blender Format . With Proper RIG for animation and corrective morph instead focus in Bridges

Your problem similiar with mine , which having too much love with DAZ products so we never see another options . Actually There are tons of cool model out there . I would not abandon DAZ but if I want to play with Blender I`ll seek other options

If you have time or money to spend , try download or buy ready to use for animation figure for native blender . Try google Rocket girl rig for blender . its free and having nice rig setup . Try play with it .. making simple animation or maybe doing extreme material make over !!  and you`ll know why releasing DAZ figure in Blender native format is the obvious answer for us

Rigs are not transferable between software and it would be absolutely insane for Daz to create separate rigs for each character in every software they have a bridge to. They've already taken a step in the right direction by going PBR with 8.1, meaning textures will translate properly outside of Daz. Diffeo converts chars to Rigify just fine and I imagine that eventually the Daz to Blender bridge will as well.

You missed my point , i dont talk about transfer rigs between apps  . But releasing  Victoria  - AIKO or Michael model  with proper rig for animation in Blender . it shouldnt "dead" close with what we`ve already had in DAZ Studio , but for better use for animation

I`ve already test all DAZ bridges including diffeo but since its based on DAZ rigs ( or i should say based on what DAZ studio used for ) it still not really suitable for animation . 

Can you create animation with coverted rig ? Yes of course but the truth is Converting to other rig system doesnt mean fix the problem if the structure not right in first place for animation use 

If you dont believe, go to blend swap or blender market and find premade character for Blender and you`ll see what kind rig setup for animation.

I do believe DAZ have skill and knowledge to do that  and before DAZ studio exist , they support Poser ecosystem which have slighty different method of Joints and Rigs , so why not for Native Blender right now ? 

About PBR , in theory they should output similiar result. But in reality its not really . Because every light system in each render engine is different . So they react different . That conclusion based on my fiddling with  PBR material in major Render Engine including Corona - Arnold and Lumion in daily work

To be honest, it really sounds like you don't know what you're doing, which is totally ok.

Enchanted April

Hi Marble, I can feel with you because my start with Blender was frustrating, too. You have to figure out so much functions and that can be overwhelming and often I forgot the simplest things and shortcuts but every time I come back to Blender (after 2.8) I can recognize the beauty, dephth and robustness of that software. Btw. you can make the camera view as big as you like and you can change the aspect ratio in the render properties. I can highly recommend to go through the apple tutorial by CG Boost. It covers so much themes and is so beginner friendly and you will see how good Cycles renders. https://www.deviantart.com/enchanted-april/art/An-apple-a-day-842921038