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New to Daz and interested in learning 3D animation, questions?

djwackdjwack Posts: 0
in New Users

Hi,

I'm a musician and have long been wanting to get into making 3D animations, in order to make music videos for my electronic music. I am old enough to remember watching X- Mix videos on Music Television in the 90's, and have wanted to make that sort of stuff since. But never really considered the prospect too seriously because my experiences with 3D software platforms was nonexistent.. up until I got reintroduced to them on iOS! There was an app by Autodesk called 123D, and it gave me my first taste of creating 3D graphic art. I ended up making a bunch of picts with it, but then after a while, felt I had hit the wall since there was no way to create animations. I was further bummed out when Autodesk pulled the app from the store, and I lost my only 3D sculpting tool for about two years, until I stubled onto an app called Forger. So now I could get back to sculpting again! But still I had no way to animate nor pose anything..

And today I finally found out about Daz! So I want to get back to making 3D animations a reality for realizing future creative potential. But now to my questions..

Watching a few Daz tutorial videos gives me the impression that Daz is more suited towards reusing existing Daz resources and creating content with those. I cannot get a clear sense how I can go about doing things DIY, because I have many ideas I'd like to experiment with in 3D and I want to create most of my assets/resources from scratch. I want to sculpt my models with Forger and perhaps also with Shapr3D, import them into Daz and use the staging, posing and animating tools with those custom assets. I'm also curious about rendering, and am especially interested to know if Daz offers some ways to customize the rendering engine (to something like shell shading, lofi/scrubby etc).

So to ask more specific things here's a few questions:

1) The posing tool works based on some sort of skeleton. How do you create such a skeleton? Can you include one in a .OBJ file?

2) I notice there are all sorts of lighting resources available. Can these be created from scratch? And if yes, with what?

3) Can I import custom textures and backgrounds easily into Daz?

4) Can I texture paint models in Daz or do I need to do that in Forger before importing my resources into Daz?

 

Thanks in advance! I can post some pics of the type of 3D stuff I created with 123D if you want to get an idea of what I'm going for.

 

 

Comments

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,842

    djwack said:

    Hi,

    I'm a musician and have long been wanting to get into making 3D animations, in order to make music videos for my electronic music. I am old enough to remember watching X- Mix videos on Music Television in the 90's, and have wanted to make that sort of stuff since. But never really considered the prospect too seriously because my experiences with 3D software platforms was nonexistent.. up until I got reintroduced to them on iOS! There was an app by Autodesk called 123D, and it gave me my first taste of creating 3D graphic art. I ended up making a bunch of picts with it, but then after a while, felt I had hit the wall since there was no way to create animations. I was further bummed out when Autodesk pulled the app from the store, and I lost my only 3D sculpting tool for about two years, until I stubled onto an app called Forger. So now I could get back to sculpting again! But still I had no way to animate nor pose anything..

    And today I finally found out about Daz! So I want to get back to making 3D animations a reality for realizing future creative potential. But now to my questions..

    Watching a few Daz tutorial videos gives me the impression that Daz is more suited towards reusing existing Daz resources and creating content with those. I cannot get a clear sense how I can go about doing things DIY, because I have many ideas I'd like to experiment with in 3D and I want to create most of my assets/resources from scratch. I want to sculpt my models with Forger and perhaps also with Shapr3D, import them into Daz and use the staging, posing and animating tools with those custom assets. I'm also curious about rendering, and am especially interested to know if Daz offers some ways to customize the rendering engine (to something like shell shading, lofi/scrubby etc).

    So to ask more specific things here's a few questions:

    1) The posing tool works based on some sort of skeleton. How do you create such a skeleton? Can you include one in a .OBJ file?

    You can rig an imported OBJ, certainly, but the geenral expectation is that you will use pre-rigged figures (such as the Genesis figures). Still, although a more advanced topic there are certainly guiides around.

    2) I notice there are all sorts of lighting resources available. Can these be created from scratch? And if yes, with what?

    Yes, the tools to create lights are included. if you are looking at HDRIs, however, those are created in external applications - and to create good ones from real environemnts require special, and often expensive, tools to enable the efficient capture of multiple images at multiple exposures.

    3) Can I import custom textures and backgrounds easily into Daz?

    Yes, through the surfaces pane - as long as the model being textured is UV mapped.

    4) Can I texture paint models in Daz or do I need to do that in Forger before importing my resources into Daz?

    No, Daz Studio does not include painting tools.

     

    Thanks in advance! I can post some pics of the type of 3D stuff I created with 123D if you want to get an idea of what I'm going for.

     

     

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