Looking for Help from the DAZ Studio Wizards

[Gavynn]

Hey everyone -

I was looking at the "Art for Games" thread with great interest and want to start making some of my own 3D art for an upcoming game. I downloaded DAZ Studio and have finally figured out how to import content I download from the DAZ website into the DAZ program. I have Michael, Victoria, Aiko, The Girl, and the Kids, and it all looks pretty cool, but now I am thinking that it looks pretty expensive. Sure the software is free and the main base models are free, but even to put hair on them starts to cost bucks. I don't want to break the bank on 3D models here.

So I am looking to do some low-fantasy, pre-Viking age stuff here (and I did notice they sell Saxon and Viking kits that look pretty cool), but what "basic" stuff do I need, especially that I can get inexpensively, or is the deal, just that I am going to be laying out $100 - $150 bucks to gets a reasonable variety of stuff to get started?

Thanks for your input -
Gavynn

[Bruno]

There's a lot of free stuff lurking around - of varying qualities, but free is always a nice price. Check out www.sharecg.com, they have an entire category of Poser stuff for download (you need an account, but the account is free too). Also Renderosity.com has a whole section of free stuff, and DAZ posts new free items every week (they go on sale for full price after a week, so snatch 'em while they're around).

If you're interested in the for-pay historicals from DAZ, I recommend sitting down and making a wishlist (use the wishlist system through the DAZ website) and then review how many of the items are "Platinum Club" items. PC items are $1.99 to members, so it may be worth your time to save up some cash, then get a short-duration membership to pick up a huge pile of PC items. Many of the really good "fundementals" for fantasy art and viking/historical art are platinum club items - there's even a drakkar in there.

[Mark Skarr]

Yep, the core software is free (not for me, I'm using 3.0 premium 64-bit), but they'll get you on the content.

I have to agree with Burno: join the Platinum Club. Seriously, I can't stress that enough. I don't work for Daz, I just love the product. The Platinum club savings on Stonemason's stuff alone pays for itself in a short period of time (at least for me).

Renderosity, RuntimeDNA, VanishingPoint all have free zones. Some of it is awesome, some of it isn't.

I'm not a huge fan of RuntimeDNA (had some billing issues in the past), but they've had some stuff I've needed.

I shudder to think of how much I've spent on my 3d content.

But, as usual, Bruno is correct: look at the sites and see what you're going to need and what you can work without and put together a list. Check all the sites as you might find something you really like, but they have a more interesting version (or mats) at another site. Spend some time playing with the free stuff to figure out how it works before you start buying stuff (I made the mistake of buying some stuff and getting really torqued off that I couldn't figure it out for a while).

Me, I blew $29.99 on a surface shader and now I can't work without it. It quadruples the time it takes to render . . . but it looks so much better.

[Gavynn]

Thank you guys for the sites. That is a big help. I figured that the deal was to give you the software and then charge you for the content, but I figured there has to be some places to look for some free stuff while I am still working with it.

Maybe I'll be posting something cool to the art thread in a bit.

Thanks again,
Gavynn

[demonsbane]

Interesting recommendations. Thank you.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by demonsbane

Interesting recommendations. Thank you.

Your welcome! The freebies are really a goldmine. One place I forgot to mention was Chohole's freebie textures - she's a retired woman in Wales, and she just loves making new textures for clothing, specializing in historical and fantasy. I believe she used to sew real clo

She targets cheap or Platinum Club items, and produces EXCELLENT quality textures, with DAZ Studio presets. She could do with more bump maps or displacement, but for the price (0$) I hardly expect it.

[Mark Skarr]

Originally Posted by Bruno

She targets cheap or Platinum Club items, and produces EXCELLENT quality textures, with DAZ Studio presets. She could do with more bump maps or displacement, but for the price (0$) I hardly expect it.

You can make your own bump and displacement maps. Load the textures into Photoshop and set them to grey-scale. Save the grey-scale file, and load it as the bump/displacement map. If it doesn't work right, try inverting it and loading it again. It doesn't take too much work to get a reasonable bump/displacement map working.