Creating Assets for DAZ
plarff
Posts: 264
in The Commons
Hey all.
Are there any DAZ asset creators(PA's) that can maybe answer me?
What or which apps do you use to make create an asset for instance a house/room/bed/car? Blender is probably something I'll use or is this difficult to learn?
What is the process for exporting the once completed asset for DAZ usage?
What is needed to get one's product ready to be sold on DAZ store or other online stores?
Currently I am making a Visual Novel but I would like to go over to becoming a PA at some stage.
Thank you.
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Blender, 3DS Max, Maya, ZBrush, Hexagon...any program with modeling capabilities will work, it's just a matter of which you prefer working in. Blender, Hexagon and Houdini Apprentice are free, and ZBrush, Maya Indie and Houdini Indie are pretty affordable.
That's going to depend on what kind of asset. If it's a room, house or bed, you'll want to export each component separately, but something like a car you'll probably want to export as a single piece, unless there are certain parts that you want to remain separate so they can be added/removed.
Not a PA, but you'll want to make sure it has metadata and is properly categorized and rigged. Know that any rigging you do in your modeling program probably won't survive the transfer to DS, so expect to do your rigging inside DS. Content Package Assist creates DIM-compatible zip files.
I am not a PA, but I make assets, primarily for my own purpose, and for fun.
I use blender for modelling. Sickleyield is also a blender user (or at least was). There are many free tutorials. Blender have many aspects, and you shouldn't try to learn all at once.
For export/import I use obj. In the newest beta fbx has become better, and I have considered using that, but am not using that yet.
For texturing I primarily use Filterforge, as it is cheap and serve my purpose. I think many PAs use Marvelous Designer for texturing.
For products sold in Daz, a well functioning product with some good promos. I would think that you should prepare more than one product, in order to try to get it sold.
You could start by making some freebies, and see how they are making, and get some feedback on those.
Thank you for answering. Many of your explanations I have figured that is how it may work. I thought Marvelous Designer is mainly to make clothes but it seems can be used for other functions as felis said, texturing?
My mistake, I meant Substance Painter. For some reason I always get it mixed up.
And yes Marvelous Designer is for making clothes.
There're different domains as well as domain knowledge that'll be required. I'm not a Daz PA but I also tailor made things to some of my clients and myself. I always suggest try making things first of all in free ways, so I use Blender though I've been learning ZB. But for making clothing / garments, I still recommend MD, at least starting from MD if you want to be a Daz PA, based on cost-effectiveness firstly. Usually on Black Friday, you may get good price of it.
There're quite a lot of PAs in here 'n there make clothing with MD, but some popular PAs like Sue Yee, she always use Maya / ZB (she's been able to afford full ver., haha ~) If you aim to make house/room/bed, Blender is really a good choice and there're a couple of good add-ons that can speed up your workflow... but making cars especially good cars might be more challenging... And you can further texturize your stuff just in Blender rather than Adobe SP for which you may have to pay more... esp. for acquiring more HQ texture resources
As for selling things in this store, have a domain focus first, then make some good stuff + renders, then apply for PA. After getting the approval, well plan and make your maiden work, pack and send all contents to Daz who will pack them as IMs and place them on the shelf. Selling on Rendo, similar procedure... selling on RH, simply set up your store then sell !
Thank you for your info. Selling anything will be much later on. I have played around with Blender and it's a steep lurning curve but nothing is impossible if one apply oneself. I am not going to be making clothes and the cars, i'm thinking of will be mostly lower poly or background models. As a Visual Novel dev, I know what is needed for most of these Visual Novels so I'll be aiming more towards that market. But all of this is still a ways off for me. However when I do have the time now, i'll start making smaller things like mugs/bottles etc... I have already made with Hezagon that I'm using in my current VN.
I am not naive to think it's a simple process and easily done. It's going to take me a good few years to just get the workflow down.
Then that'll be a good start ! No hurry and take it easy. Having fun with enough interest as well as passion is the first priority, then success will naturally follow !
The metadata gets added by Daz when they package it up for the store, same for categories (Smart-Content-wise). You will need to set up the folder structure the way they like (currently something like: content\environments\sci-fi (or whatever)\Artist-Name\product name etc. The rest is correct though. You can reach out to Daz with a support ticket if you're interested in becoming a PA and they can give you the main points to adhere to.
I use Blender and Substance Painter for the most part, but also GIMP for 2D editing of texture maps. There's no one programme that you have to use. I find Blender easy (and there are loads of tutorials), but some people find it hard (it has way more options that I use, so maybe that confuses some people).
Best bet is to make a few smaller sets (e.g. useful props) as freebies and get feedback before making a set to submit to Daz.
I am trying to learn Blender, but the learning curve is atrocious.
What I need are examples and how to use guides.
Look up a guy called Andrew Price. He's tuts are pretty amazing.
Subscribe to CG Cookie. They have so many wonderful and easy to follow tutorials.
https://www.daz3d.com/catalogsearch/result?q=blender+tutorial
Video tutorials are also available over on YouTube.
Thank you so much.
Just youtube what you need to learn on blender as you go, and learn things that intrigue you. I.e., ignore the boring donut tutorials that people will tell you to do. (Why would you want to make a donut when there are hundreds of more interesting tutorials on youtube, udemy, artstation, etc?)
Of course it is complex software so you will never master it even after many years, and may not be most intuitive software either. But that's what tutorials are for. There is a video for almost every possible thing about Blender on youtube. Or go on the blender discord, forum, stackechange, etc., for bespoke assistance.
Marvelous Designer is fairly easy/intuitive if you want to make clothes. Substance Painter for texturing can be annoying because there are very particular unintuitive settings you need to become acquainted with, but that is just part of the learning process. Any software will be frustrating at first.
I think someone could learn Marvelous Designer and Substance Painter from scratch within just a couple weeks if doing full time, and be in a position to have created a couple high quality garments that would be sellable on Daz marketplace. Going from garment to Daz Product is another whole process though.
I make a number of freebie assets. Some of which are poses, some are scripts and some are models.
I don't make clothing due to my tools being aimed at engineering and I'm co-opting software that's really not suited to clothing type curvy stuff. My modelling tools are SolidWorks, and a 3d modeller I wrote from scratch due to frustration with a finite element stress analysis modeller and have since added texture mapping, groups and surface material settings. So, you can use anything that can create Obj or FBX output.
The poses & scripts are entirely done in DS.
Regards,
Richard