Zbrush or Blender for creating DAZ morphs ?
Hi, I've been messing around a bit with making Daz morphs and now I'm torn between sticking with Blender or trying out ZBrush. I’ve played around with Blender's sculpting tools and got a decent grasp on the basics. ZBrush, on the other hand, is unknown territory for me. However, the GtoZ plugin seems to make the transition from Daz to ZBrush and back again a breeze. With Blender, the process feels a tad longer - export as obj, tweaking, then importing back using Morph Loader. It can get a bit tedious, especially if the result isn't quite what I was aiming for and have to do multiple rounds of tweaking.
I'd love to hear your experiences and insights on this. Is the switch to ZBrush worth it for a smoother workflow or should I stick with Blender and perhaps there's a workaround for the exporting-importing hiccup I'm facing?
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It certainly avoids the intemediate file creation, but do you use groups (or surfaces) to help when creating morphs? GoZ sends over the bare mesh, if you need groups to help with selection and targeting in Zbrish via GoZ you have to make them yourself (though ZBrush does hae a tool to crate surface groups from UV islands).
zbrush has the most annoying interface. People who complain about any other software obviously havent tried zbrush. Other than that, it's superior to everything else because of the polycount you can achieve without it slowing down, plus a million other features it has accrued over being industry standard for so many years.
I havent tried GoZ bridge. I would only be interested in this if it sped up JCM/CBS creation. Does it? Importing via morph loader isnt that hard.
First... it's only fair to mention that I am biased: I never really liked Blender and its annoying interface and/or default settings (like at one time insisting that the right mouse button should be used to make selections... tha heck?!) and well... eventually I had saved up enough to get myself a ZBrush license and it changed everything for me. Note: I don't hate on Blender or such, just making sure you understand where this is coming from, and my bias in favor of ZBrush.
So, first things first: the saying that "you get what you pay for" definitely applies here I think. See, it's not just the ease of use but also the rich feature set that ZBrush provides. Making morphs is one thing, but what to think about creating (fibermesh) hair assets? Or applying changes to textures? Polypaint for example is pretty awesome, though this does have its limitations; for example you can't apply textures to several parts of a mesh at the same time; it's either one texture for the whole lot or nothing. Texture sets such as those used with Genesis (or Substance 3D painter) aren't supported in ZBrush.
But back to the morphs...
As you said GoZ is awesome... I don't have to worry about anything other than making sure the figure or prop I want to edit is selected, I then "GoZ" them over, drag them into my canvas and hit 'Edit'. Now I'm ready to get some work done. Note that this works for bare figures but also figures which you already equipped. So, for example, a female figure with hair and clothing isn't an issue: the figure will be sent over 'as is' but after you draw it in it will be "divided" into so called sub-tools. This is a specific ZBrush feature (in ZBrush everything evolves around tools; so the mesh / figure you're working on is now referred to as a tool). Note that this won't hinder or change your workflow too much, but you can only work on 1 active (sub)tool at a time.
Then for the editing itself... my experiences with other tools is limited, though I have been using Hexagon quite extensively before I moved to ZBrush. Still... I have seen plenty of YouTube videos and well.. bias or not but I'm really into the experience because one of the things I value the most in ZBrush is that I can always fully concentrate on my work, my figure. No matter what I do. For example... while sculpting is definitely a very useful and quick way to apply changes there's also something to say for hard surface modelling. In other words: focusing on the polygons, the lines and dots. In many other programs - as far as I am aware - (!) this means changing into a different 'mode' with all the strings attached. First your figure is neatly positioned where you're ready to edit, then it suddenly shifts into another location (doesn't matter if this move is slightly) and then you can do your thing.
In ZBrush all the editing is done using brushes, this also includes the hard surface modelling (for that you'd use the ZModeler brush). Yah, switching brushes is seemingless. No change in your canvas at all, which I always heavily valued.
Well... after your edits all that's left to do is sent your stuff back over into Daz Studio. Where I also want to mention that GoZ works both ways: while I usually use ZBrush to change stuff I also create some of my own assets. Yah... all I have to do to make that work is GoZ it over into Daz Studio. Remember me mentioning polypaint? It only takes clicking 1 option to create a texture out of my polypaint endeavours, and when I GoZ something over to Daz Studio this will include textures. Which makes adding a colorized object to Daz Studio pretty darn easy. Though a very important disclaimer is in effect here: you may end up with issues if you don't customize your surfaces settings afterwards, because the initial location for the used texture is in a dynamic location. In other words: it can end up deleted over time.
Also noteworthy... GoZ is very flexible. I can just sent the default selection back, I can focus on only sending the visible tools back or if I have parts of my work hidden I can force Zbrush to GoZ everything back.
If you did everything right then Daz Studio will pick up on the changes and suggest you create a morph for it, couldn't be easier. And best of all: if this isn't fully to your liking... just alt-tab back into ZBrush and work on it some more, then sent those changes over as an update.
I'd also like to mention that I heavily rely on this workflow to make incompatible clothing still fit a character. I have some awesome (IMO) clothing assets for Genesis (the first generation?) which "work" on G8 but it still look odd and out of place. So I GoZ that into ZBrush, use something like the "Move", "ClothMove" or "Move Elastic" brush and I'll have a properly fitting setup in no time. Also... if you do go this way: "ClothFold", "ClothNudge" and "Crumple" can be invaluable brushes to add that little extra touch to clothing to make it look even more natural or realistic. Maybe try to remember these names ;)
Last but not least... I'd also like to mention the interface.
Many people seem to dislike it but to be perfectly honest I don't quite understand why myself because it's flexible as heck. You can customize just about everything you'd like. In all fairness it definitely takes getting used to: for example you don't use your mouse scrollwheel to scroll between options but you drag such lists around. Takes getting used to but at the same time it's also way more reliable than a scroll wheel which tends to skip every once in a while.
Another thing I'd like to point out is that you can assign keyboard shortcuts for just about everything as well. And every time you're puzzled about an option.. hover your mouse over it, press the control button and lo and behold: you'll get an extensive explenation.
And if you feel that you should be having multiple custom layouts to work on multiple ways of editing.... then you can just do so, and switch between them with one click of a mouse (or one press of a button).
So yah... sorry for a long read (I'm passionate about both 3D editing as well as digital audio processing) but moving to ZBrush was one of the best things ever for me.
Oh.. right, before I forget: don't get it into your head that picking up on ZBrush will give you instant improvements in your editing. I'd even argue that the opposite could happen, at least at first! ZBrush has a rather specific workflow and a ditto interface (like having all the menus ("Palette's") sorted on alphabetical order?), and this implies a learning curve which will take some time to get into I think. Took me a while for sure.
But right now it's definitely my favorite 3D editing / sculpting tool and my #1 support asset for Daz Studio. Bias or not.. I doubt anyone would regret picking up on this, but that's just me ;)
Hope this could help!
One guy who creates HD morphs for DAZ characters and is not a PA uses GoZ. He makes it look like a smooth transition back & forth once he does his initial workaround. I relax to Nikolay Naydenov Blender tuts like he's Bob Ross. Nikolay doesn't require super high poly figures for his work & says he does most projects in Blender now, but he doesn't use DAZ. Maxon's 14 day free trial is cringe but better than nothing. Hard to get used to the software in that time. I'm sure one could find a workaround if one was so inclined. I don't think Adobe has bought it yet so $360 USD yearly is fair. That's like 2 days a year of no DAZ shopping to offset the cost
. I've toyed around with Blender a bit & I still accidentally use the "industry standard" hotkeyes for navigating. Sculpting is easier because of the pen not the mouse. When I'm doing HS modeling using the mouse that old muscle memory kicks in from time to time. So annoying I set DAZ Studio navigation to be the same as Blender's to help train my brain. I brought G9 loading to a crawl a while back OBJ'ing between Blender & DAZ MLP. Dup morph accident. Working 45+ hours staight will do that so I understand your inquiry. If I'm inspired I just want software that doesn't get in the way of what I invision in my mind. If ZBrush does that then it's worth every penny. Nikolay says you can't smooth edges in ZBrush the way you can in Blender. Not sure if that's still true or applicable to your needs. If you give ZBrush a try I'd be interested in your opinion / review / comparison.