Things that DAZ has still not got right even after all this time.
Hi all,
Here is a list of my peeves about the DAZ products.
Breasts: Even after all this time and awesome improvements on their figures and meshes Daz has still not been able to produce a figure with proper heavy breasts. Its getting there, you can inflate the breasts to enormous sizes and they look decent but the nipples are still on top of the breasts? What gives Daz? after all that time you still have not figure out that nipples can and should be lower on breasts that are above average so that they somewhat look normal. It should be in the mesh that you can displace the nipples to make them lower on the breasts and that you can position them and even resize them to your liking. Daz is still way too timid with that body part and is not giving enough controls to modify these parts so that you can get realistic render. They are darn close to perfection with the rest of their mesh but with nipples they are still failing.
Hair: Gravity should affect hair, you should have have to dial the darn position in or cheat to make gravity work on hairs.
Daz Studio needs lenses, more lenses and lens filters. It should be native in the program by now.
Also the figure should have dials for full body movement. i.e a dial that takes someone from standing and brings him or her to sitting, kneeling, crouching position, etc.... that way you can stop your dial in mid way to your position and have a pose.
Like dial puppeteer. or like recorded movements that you can slide adjust.
another example: A guy does a baseball pitch. You have a dial that starts him standing up and then the end point is when he finishes his pitch, you move the slider and to the "frame" position you want and then photograph it.
No more adjusting 30 dials to move someone in position. A bit like aniblock but programmed in the figure and using sliders parameters for the figure.
You could have a gazillion combinations of movements that could be programmed and sold for the figures.
SSS shaders should be automatically included with every figure sold
Daz studio should have global illumination settings like Carrara, Carrara has some unique and awesome render settings that make it easy to set up scenes and those features should be in Daz studio.
I might expand this list later....
Comments
I think that DS is amazing considering that the software is free and comes with two high quality base models.
The only thing I really do miss is dynamic clothing and controls that would allow artists to specify which part of the clothing will be dynamic and how much.
I do hope we´re getting there.
As for hair, when it comes to polygon hair, thats what wind and movement morphs are for.
I really doubt that we will ever see complex dynamic hair simulations in DS but that is okay.
About the SSS shader, does it not come with every Genesis 2 figure? I don´t know about older figures but Im pretty sure all G2 models come with SSS options.
I would not want a pitching or similar specialty pose dials built into the figure. I don't like the pose control dials that are already in the figure as they get in the way of being able to fine tune a pose using the standard rotation dials. The SSS shaders (actually any shader) can be applied to any object and surface you want, whether they have the added maps to make them look good is another matter.
There are 3 (actually more than that, 2 very easily accessible and 1 not so accessible) true SSS options already included in DS. The Onmifreaker family of shaders (yes, they are true shaders, not a bunch of presets) and the AoA SSS shader. The third is...all the necessary bricks are in the Shader Mixer, so you can actually roll your own, if you choose. There's at least one freebie SSS shader, available, too. And, with the Shader Builder, a whole host of options is there.
The two included options have been garnering more attention in the recent past, with included presets coming out for them. But it isn't impossible to make your own presets.
On the morph side of things...well many of the morphs you are talking about are rather specific or specialty...and with the Genesis family, you are not limited to using add-on morph packs the way you were in previous generations. Any Genesis 2 Female character can pretty much use ANY morphs, from any of the characters/ morph packs that have been added. Having ALL of them built in doesn't leave anywhere to go, except a new generation of base figure AND puts in a bunch of stuff a lot of people won't want or use.
One of the dangers of a whole bunch of 'preinstalled' poses...especially ones that require other objects, like a sitting pose. Yes, that pose is generally built to a specific chair. Without that chair, the pose doesn't really work without adjustment. So unless the objects used for the pose are included, the poses are pretty much worthless (it can be as hard or harder to adjust a pose than just starting from scratch).
GI lighting...well, there's been a GI solution included with Studio for years...not quite sure how many, but it's been included since before DS4 (and it was an add-on option before that). And with Shader Mixer and Shader Builder, there's probably hundreds of ways of getting there. Now that Iray is being included with Studio as an additional renderer, GI is even easier.`
For the movement pose situation. I did not mean specifically that it would need to be built in. It could be packages that you buy. Basically an animation that you would stop at the desired frame. It should be add on so that people could choose whichever package they would like, like buying specific morph packages.
You could have a general animation, pause it then tweak it to your desired end result. It is really starting to get old that you need to buy so many pose packages that are always static poses. Its time that "dynamic poses" ( for lack of better word) take over and get the figures out of the cookie cutter click the button and hope for the best situation.
Imagine that you have ballet dancer all set up and that you have some sort of animation of her dancing for a while, some animations that you could pause at a specific moment and photograph, wouldn't that be great?
or 2 guys having some sort of sword fight and you pause the action, frame and render in the way you want to capture the frame.
It would be like video editing in a way but in a good way. It would be weird and awkward to use at first but i am sure that people would get into it. The applications of such a concept could generate a thousand products or more on the idea alone.
In a way, that already does exist...the AniBlocks for AniMate. But like a number of other features, it's not well known or widely used.
Is it a 'chicken/egg' thing? Not a big selection because it isn't used or is it not used because there isn't a huge selection?
And yeah, there are ways of 'rolling your own'/converting other motion files to AniBlocks, but I think most of that kind of stuff requires the full aniMate2 plugin. The basic, included version does do 'playback', though. and that really does widen the field of choices.
I don't know how this is different than just using the animation timeline. Put in a pose at frame 0, advance to frame [x] and put in another pose. then as you slide between the two poses Studio is automatically moving the figure from the first to the second pose, a little more at each frame, until it gets to frame [x]. Just stop somewhere in between and render a still shot. Isn't this what you're suggesting?
You are, indeed, speaking of something that already exists and is in the store... they are the animation blocks from various vendors and they are in the "animation and poses" section of the store. They come in various formats, and aside from animation, they are designed to do exactly what you are suggesting. Some other vendors also have "pose construction sets"... and the recent Pose Builder script offered in the store, now also available for V4 & M4, offers the most flexibility of any utility I have used for combining parts of different good poses, even from different figures, into one great pose.