DustRider posted at 3:24PM Fri, 23 August 2019 - #4360268

Hello HKHan99, and welcome to the madness of 3D!

I've read your threads in the other two forums, and thought this forum may be the best place to post a response (the Blender forum would have worked too, but I use DAZ Studio a lot, so this is the one I chose). As you may well have already gathered, there is no simple response to your questions. Everyone tends to have their favorite software, often for different reasons, but one thing that is fairly common is the closer the logic in the workflow and the design of the UI fit with the way you think (especially when first starting out), the easier it will be to learn. It sounds like the logic and UI in Blender 2.8 is a good fit for you. I'm just learning Blender 2.8 myself, and I'm finding it very easy to use, with a lot of great features (soooo much better than the previous UI).

I should give you a bit of background, so you know where I'm coming from and you can better evaluate my opinions. I've been involved with 3D of some sort since about 1990, I started using Poser with version 3, I started dabbling with DAZ Studio (DS) when is was just a beta product (i.e. before is was version 1). I did my first real modeling with Cinema 4D (version 6), and then Carrara Studio (version 2), and have also used Hexagon for modeling. I've used several other 3D software packages, but those really don't pertain at all to what you are doing (more for technical landscapes and virtual archaeological site reconstructions). My focus has never been for any type of comic book style renders, so I'm fairly ignorant there! I have also had a real love/hate relationship with Poser. It has always seemed to have so much potential, but for what I've wanted it has always fallen a bit short, with the last version (Poser 11) being the first version I didn't upgrade to (even though I was very interested in Superfly, it seemed like it was rushed out the door, and didn't have what I was looking for). So, I'm not a big Poser user, but have had a fair amount of experience with it.

If you decide on Blender "only", the biggest hurdle might be finding the figures you want for creating your comics in a native Blender format. I have no doubt that Cycles (or Eevee) will be able to provide the comic render style you want, and the real-time view port rendering of Eevee, or near real-time view port rendering of Cycles will no doubt be perfect for the view port visualization you want. The real question is can you find enough affordable pre-made content in Blender format for your needs (or depending on your needs, you may have the time and desire to create your own, which makes the pre-made content issue mute).

For the content side of things, Poser or DS might be the perfect "addon" for Blender. I know there is a way to export from Poser to Blender (IIRC the steps needed are in the Blender forum here), but don't have any experience with it. I have tried the diffeomorphic plugin for DS, and it does a great job of exporting content from DS to Blender (including fully rigged Genesis figures and clothing with all the needed JCM's, and quite good conversion of the shaders to cycles). There is another exporter by mCasual called "mcjTeleBlender 4" that also looks quite promising as well (you can find more information about it on in the Freebie forum at DAZ 3D).

Personally, I prefer DS to Poser. The UI just works better for me, and most of the content, IMHO, far exceeds what is available for Poser (though Le Femme may help Poser to catch up). However, there is a big caveat in the previous statement .... I prefer a more or less real 3D style, not a comic style (see my galley for reference). So with that in mind, Poser content may well perfectly meet your needs. I do think if/when you feel so inclined, you should definitely check out DS to see if the UI and workflow work better for you, but that would only be if you decide you need content, or if maybe Blender isn't quite capable of delivering a workflow you want. If you are able to use Iray to create your comics, then I think DS would give you the view port visual capabilities you are looking for using Iray preview in the viewport. However, you might run into some similar issues to Poser with things not displaying correctly in the view port if using 3Delight.

Anyway, welcome to the world of 3D, where very little is as easy as it seems it should be!

Hi, DustRider, and thanks for your detailed response. Since I already have Poser, I'll certainly use content from it in Blender, and I see that there are a lot of free models out there on the web in various formats, many of which Blender imports. I have no issues with using that kind of stuff if it's practical, but I am just starting to explore what's involved. It seems that Blender doesn't import most of them with their materials attached, even when I can see materials in the folder, but I don't know why. A couple of buildings I experimented with did open up with flat colors, but nothing like what appears in the promo material. So I guess my next step is to figure out the import/export, file compatibility and conversion issues. I should probably open a thread in the Blender forum about this, because what I read in the manual seemed to pass right through me (possibly I should read it again when I'm fully awake...). I agree about Poser- from my limited experience, it seems like if all the stuff they sell you actually worked together it would be a great program, but instead it's like owning a whole bunch of programs made by different people for different purposes with some third-party work-arounds thrown in to make it 'work.' I don't know about Daz, but it seems like Blender is now developing so rapidly and has such a large base of people actively involved in building the product, or support materials for it, that it won't be long before Poser has to a do a top-to-bottom redesign and recode of the whole shebang, along with updating all the materials so they work in all aspects of the program in a uniform way, or there just won't be any reason to own it. In fact, I think right now the biggest obstacle to Blender invading the Poser demographic is that they don't care, and the second is that, although their tutorials are very clear and well organized, they suffer from the same problem that I see in pretty much all software tutorials - they are bottom-up, instead of top-down. So you learn a lot of little things, that, in the end, you need to make something you want in Blender, but it's hard to keep it straight because you can't actually do anything with the knowledge and see how it all fits together until you get at least a passing command of the whole thing- which is pretty big. If they started with complete scenes and objects, and taught each of these units around them, you'd see what everything was good for right away and you'd know how it fit in the workflow. The company that does this is going to kick everyone's ass.