Daz Studio Pro Tips: Getting your characters to look more human pt.2

[@GameDeveloperTraining]

There is rather a lot to pack in so I've kept it as simple as possible. I may end up making a multi part series about each property in the surfaces tab.

[@gregfox7477]

I have watched several of your videos tonight and was quite surprised at how much I learned outside of the main intent of the videos themselves. The descriptions of the options in the panels answered many questions that I have had for a long time and in a way that was very easy to understand. I've always wondered what all of the maps were for and how they worked together. Thanks!

[@haraldschuster3067]

When it gets choppy by moving the character or the camera, it's usually a smoothing modifier that's acting up (unless you have a seriously underpowered system - then it is, indeed, the number of vertices and size of textures). Disabling smoothing while workign on the scene often helps to make stuff more responsive.

[@learning3d742]

Thumbs up and I am already subscribed. Thanks for pointing out the importance of HQ assets. I already thought that this is very important but now I have confirmation. I will check three times before I buy assets next time.

[@ardonellmoonshadow6232]

Awesome tutorials... been binge-watching them and sucking up all the information. Thank you so much for making these! :D

[@GameDeveloperTraining]

Thanks for the kind words bro. I will be uploading more Daz Studio stuff very soon.

[@yourhandlehere1]

Thank you for the insight Mr. Games sir. I just recently started to mess with some 3D again, got a little better machine than this laptop to play with. Got Daz 4.12 a month or so ago. Nice render engine, I'm liking that Nvidia view option to actually see what I'm getting. Seems to run Daz pretty well. I can use some of my old Poser stuff in there which is handy. Bump maps...Most creators seem to think that simply making your color texture grayscale is a "bump map". I saw it years ago in Poser. Nobody has changed from what I see recently at the Daz store and Renderosity. Not bad looking until you zoom in. A mole (or whatever) is supposed to stick out not poke in. Eyebrows and freckles are not supposed to be dents. If your skin uses real photos, like a face with dark eyebrows, you have to at least make two grayscales. Invert one and spend some time mixing the two so all your innies are in and your outies are out. So I'm working on my own generic bump map for the Genesis bodies. Adjustable goose bumps if it gets cold. Animate-able if I want to go that deep I guess. I get some unwanted stretching in some areas I have to figure out. I think (just now I thunked it as I'm typing) I just need to "compress' those areas. ( If a single goosebump is a "circle" that gets stretched to an ellipse, I need to make an ellipse that gets stretched to a circle. duh.) Off to Photoshop I go.....sorry for rambling.

[@tonyheisenberg7587]

very good and informative video! The way i do it is i check all the pictures of a product read all the details and what's included and then buy (and i do that only if the discount is 70%+) after i play with the character a bit if its shit i just never buy from the same person again. And the opposite if one character of a certain creator is great i go to his profile and put some of the content in my whishlist.

[@KiwiHawk-downunder-nz]

Awesome mate,.. may I ask is Nikki the character or which character your using if you renamed her pretty please, she is really choice,.. Bummer you Discord comes up as an invalid invite mate

[@GameDeveloperTraining]

Hi Kiwi. Honestly It's such a long time ago I can't remember the character. I ended up closing the discord as people were just using it to promote themselves or complain.

[@KiwiHawk-downunder-nz]

@@GameDeveloperTraining Bummer, she jus had a realy nice body shape from what I could see, shame too people are such a-holes just because they can while hiding behind a screen

[@dinenequick5126]

Thank you for the lessons. I'm a very new beginner. Your videos are the only ones that make sense to me. You have a wonderful teaching style. One comment you made is to be very careful where we buy characters. How can we determine if an artist is reputable and is putting out a very good product? At this point in my learning, I won't have any idea how to figure that out. Thanks again for the awesome lessons.

[@GameDeveloperTraining]

Best thing to do is look at the creators work on the store. That can give you some indication of their level of ability. The promo artwork can be used but bare in mind that almost all the artwork on the marketplace has been heavily edited

[@hendarinriandi1100]

Great video👍 ...... I have 2 questions/request : 1. would you also give tutorials on how to play with skins? In real world there are so many skins ethnicity, I have specific characters with specific skin maps that I want to change to look natural, how to copy other skins to our existing maps? 2. In rendering, I often times had problems with poking through dresses ..... when I pose a characters with dresses on and then simulated it to get good natural dress on a character, then in the view tab I changed it to Nvidia, everything seems perfect, but when I rendered it, I got a lot of poking through here and there, how to overcome this problem? Thank you very much

[@GameDeveloperTraining]

Remember that Skin's are just surfaces like any other object. Play with the surfaces tab and experiment. You will learn loads. Regarding poke through, When using dForce, check that your mesh smoothing is turned off, that should remove some of the poke through, the rest is just easier to fix in post.

[@hendarinriandi1100]

Thank you very much, you’re very kind, greatly appreciated 🙏

[@russtecauto]

Thank you for sharing. What are some good sources to get characters from? What criteria should I look for? Thanks.

[@GameDeveloperTraining]

You'll need to just look around really. There are heaps of places to buy assets from, each has it's down-side.

[@russtecauto]

@@GameDeveloperTraining thank you

[@calloutscreativeassets]

Great video, thank you! In your opinion which Daz character artists produce the highest quality characters? In other words, which vendors should I look to, for quality and realism?

[@GameDeveloperTraining]

I can't recommend anyone specifically but the best advice I can give is to look at the promo art and assess whether or not you could achieve the same results. It's not fool proof of course but it will at least allow you to rule out three quarters of the garbage. And there is a LOT of garbage. Also I would generally avoid third party sites. For all their faults the Daz Productions QA team are pretty strict about what level of content they will accept. The other content marketplaces have no such standards and you are far more likely to buy rubbish from them.

[@fulani67]

Your perspective on photorealism is interesting. No mention of referencing photos, mimicking lighting, face shaping to resemble real people, skin texture (editing where required, ie veins, variation in the texture since real skin isn't a single colour) or dual lobe settings (useful additions to varied glossiness here). It appears difficult to achieve photorealistic (referring to real people) results without the aforementioned practices. Eyes, hair and how clothing sits usually breaks the realism most definitely.

[@GameDeveloperTraining]

There is a lot to discuss in terms of photo-realism. far more than I can squeeze into a single video without it being very dull. I discuss most of the principles you've mentioned in other videos, live-streams or posts on Patreon. This video was specifically aimed at the surfaces tab, as per the description :)

[@fulani67]

​@@GameDeveloperTraining Sure you meant Patreon? Your name's not turning up in any searches. Your Discord in the description also appears down. Subscribestar is for adult games? You have indeed however stated the specific topic in the description. I missed that. Didn't know if there were more comprehensive discussions as they weren't mentioned in the video or the descriptions though. I'll check from now on. :)

[@GameDeveloperTraining]

Patreon is linked in on my channels main page. I don't link subscribestar to youtube as I don't want links between my Patreon (which is for my youtube channel) and Subscribestar (for my games). I have just closed the discord channel today as nobody was using it. No harm done my friend :)

[@fulani67]

@@GameDeveloperTraining Ah, cool, cool. No problem.

[@aranksentimentalist]

Great videos.

[@DaveSmith-yr5ss]

Where did you get this character from

[@GameDeveloperTraining]

She's my own custom character

[@CoolOutSessions910]

What graphics card are you using?

[@GameDeveloperTraining]

It's a GTX 1070ti

[@sbradley3008]

A render would have been nice to show off what you were talking about.

[@tontonjeannot6089]

American here. As we have very little understanding of the English language, did I hear you use the phrase, "bog standard"? That's a great expression, might you give a bit of a definition? If I were to use it, would the O.E.D. secret assassins find me and poison my overpriced coffee? Oh and your videos are great, thank you!

[@GameDeveloperTraining]

Hi there. Bog standard is just another way of saying ordinary or plain. I have to apologise for using slang, I sometimes forget people watching all over the world not just in my back yard. :)

[@tontonjeannot6089]

@@GameDeveloperTraining Thank you!. Please do not stop speaking naturally on my account. The rich use of real language is delightful aspect of You Tube.

[@__Mac_]

discord link expired @ThundornGames

[@backdoor3d667]

I should have mentioned that on Discord I am "Mandrake", everywhere else I am BackDoor3d. I just subscribed to you on Discord. So if you see me (on Discord) you know who I am....Cheers.

[@GameDeveloperTraining]

BackDoor3D awesome. See you there man

[@backdoor3d667]

Awesome stuff. Love what you do. Discord Channel? Please I would love to join you on Discord........it's not in the comments as mentioned. Cool stuff. Thanks man!

[@erikmaki8642]

I love your DAZ tutorials. But, have you ever yourself tried to listen 30 mins in row that background music? It makes everybody nuts and wanting to turn the volume to zero, which obviously would make one loose some part of the information flow... Would you kindly not use this background music in the future, so I would be glad to donate too.