with retirement approaching, (3-4 years) I want to start looking at creating some 3d content -- characters, clothing, props.. etc,,). probably for Poser.. maybe DAZ

I am totally clueless as to where to begin. I am on the latest iMac.

what software should I be looking at? youtube videos? any advice is appreciated

That's a very broad subject, it highly depends on what type of content you want to do, but I'll try to offer some tips.

-For poses, all you need is Poser and whatever figure you want to make poses for. You'll need an image editor program to work your promos for the store, personally I use Photoshop, but there are many free good ones around these days. One that is widely used is GIMP.

-For textures, be them clothing textures or character skin textures, you'll need an image editor, preferably one that paints on 3d but that's not completely necessary. For painting directly on the 3d files, the one that's used the most is Substance Painter, and you can get that one as a subscription from Adobe OR as a lifetime license from Steam. For free options, you can check Quixel Mixer and Armor Paint, or even Blender - with Blender you'd also be learning a tool to model 3d objects and clothes, and there are cheap plugins to help with specialized things like texturing.

-For modeling, I could go on about many programs, but honestly? I use Blender and it's free. By now I've collected dozens and dozens of paid plugins for it to make things easier and more powerful, but those aren't really necessary. You can find Blender Guru on youtube and check his ever-loved Donut tutorial to figure out how to use the program. And with Blender you can get some plugins that will allow you to do a huge amount of things, like clothes, textures etc.

Ok so to be more specific, here's what I use personally to make my stuff:

-Photoshop for promo editing + some texture things.

-Poses just in Poser itself.

-Characters: I make my morphs in Blender, or the simpler ones straight in Poser. For textures I do some work in Photoshop over skin merchant resources, and/or load stuff in Substance Painter for more detailed or "professional" look (like when I want to make something look more realistic etc)

-Clothes: I use Blender. Addons for it like Garment Tool and Simply Cloth Pro help a lot with this, but most times I model + sculpt the clothes by hand. The Sculpt mode in Blender has tools to help you make believable fabric folds. I UV map them in Blender too, and group them in there as well when it's conforming clothing. And if it's conforming, you gotta learn to rig in Poser.

-Hair: I use Blender and an addon for it called Hair Tool.

-Jewelry etc: I use just straight up Blender.

Now, for all of these, you're gonna have to do a lot of learning. For the parts of the process that are in Poser, there are some tutorials here at Rendo, or Youtube too.

Thanks for the advice! I use Photoshop daily at work, pretty good with Poser. Blender is going to be the high learning curve.

Appreciate the info!

I'm not going to say that Blender is easy. There is a learning curve. But it has improved over the years. And there are tons of tutorials. And like Ohki said Blender Guru's donut Tutorial is great. It's not just do this do that, but you should do it too.

Blender can be confusing at first, but nothing that making a donut can't solve :D

Afrodite-Ohki posted at 2:25 PM Tue, 14 November 2023 - #4477693

Blender can be confusing at first, but nothing that making a donut can't solve :D

I have used several different modeling apps over the years, but the one thing that stays the same for me . . . I unwrap in Blender because I find it does the best job.

checked out Blender Guru on YouTube. watched the 1-5 Beginner videos.. this is gonna be a ride! thanks for the input.

Sounds like a good aim. First you probably want to make a "mind map" of what you want to create. Then another map of what the Poser/DAZ community is currently missing in terms of content, or if there are areas where the content is old / badly designed / or simple lacking. The overlap between those two maps is where you would probably find it best and most profitable to work.

Given the advances in AI in another 3-4 years, we will likely then have a workflow from Poser / DAZ to a real-time 'AI renderer' viewport, in which a real-time AI 'works up' its output from a set of basic renders of a scene (depth-map, cartoon outine, pose estimation). In which case Poser / DAZ's strengths will then be in fantasy / sci-fi 'things which don't exist' (no photography of them, to train an AI on), visualised precisely by Poser / DAZ in a way the AI can replicate in full.  Along with precise  character poses + facial expressions.

As for the very basics of character rigging for Poser, I can recommend Darkseal's old 'Z Poser Figure Creation with Darkseal' video set. Old, but still valid and very detailed and complete. On the DAZ Store and likely to go to $5 on the Black Friday sale.

That's a very broad subject, it highly depends on what type of content you want to do, but I'll try to offer some tips.

-For poses, all you need is Poser and whatever figure you want to make poses for. You'll need an image editor program to work your promos for the store, personally I use Photoshop, but there are many free good ones around these days. One that is widely used is GIMP.

-For textures, be them clothing textures or character skin textures, you'll need an image editor, preferably one that paints on 3d but that's not completely necessary. For painting directly on the 3d files, the one that's used the most is Substance Painter, and you can get that one as a subscription from Adobe OR as a lifetime license from Steam. For free options, you can check Quixel Mixer and Armor Paint, or even Blender - with Blender you'd also be learning a tool to model 3d objects and clothes, and there are cheap plugins to help with specialized things like texturing.

-For modeling, I could go on about many programs, but honestly? I use Blender and it's free. By now I've collected dozens and dozens of paid plugins for it to make things easier and more powerful, but those aren't really necessary. You can find Blender Guru on youtube and check his ever-loved Donut tutorial to figure out how to use the program. And with Blender you can get some plugins that will allow you to do a huge amount of things, like clothes, textures etc.

Ok so to be more specific, here's what I use personally to make my stuff:

-Photoshop for promo editing + some texture things.

-Poses just in Poser itself.

-Characters: I make my morphs in Blender, or the simpler ones straight in Poser. For textures I do some work in Photoshop over skin merchant resources, and/or load stuff in Substance Painter for more detailed or "professional" look (like when I want to make something look more realistic etc)

-Clothes: I use Blender. Addons for it like Garment Tool and Simply Cloth Pro help a lot with this, but most times I model + sculpt the clothes by hand. The Sculpt mode in Blender has tools to help you make believable fabric folds. I UV map them in Blender too, and group them in there as well when it's conforming clothing. And if it's conforming, you gotta learn to rig in Poser.

-Hair: I use Blender and an addon for it called Hair Tool.

-Jewelry etc: I use just straight up Blender.

Now, for all of these, you're gonna have to do a lot of learning. For the parts of the process that are in Poser, there are some tutorials here at Rendo, or Youtube too.

Fantastic advice, I am impressed considering how wide the subject matter is but it was not surprise, I love the impact you have on the forum and the community.

I try my best :) Hopefully it'll be helpful, would love to see more content creators around. 

Great objective, creating content for Poser and DAZ Studio is fun and very rewarding, especially when the product is refined to the point its merchandisable in one of the many 3d content stores.  OK, this really needs to be a conversation so we can explore more specific objectives and goals and then hone in on the best techniques and tools  to get the job done.    Most generally speaking, 3d prop and figure development for DAZ and Poser starts in a 3d modeler of choice (Blender, ZBrush, 3DS MAX, Maya etc)  for figures or CAD/NURBS type software for hard man-made objects.   Big Tip:  Ultimate UnWrap3D by bolthouse is an affordable and essential utility that is a swiss army knife fixing all sorts of import and UV/Mesh/Rig challanges and usually its an in-between step between development applications in my 3d product development pipeline.   Importing the modeled Mesh and doing initial rigging and materials in Poser then exporting to DAZ is the way to go, rather than the reverse because you will face many more pitfalls and challanges with the unimesh rig used by DAZ.  For higest merchandisability in the Poser markets, do adhere to the standard Poser group names and parametric rigging rather than weightmap unimesh because its not supported in the large base of older version customers, and existing clothing / poses will not apply. Also its very easy to create a unimesh version from a grouped and parametric rigged figure, but the reverse is not as easy because the mesh will not be properly sub-diveded into (poly)groups.  So thats a pointer to how to proceed but there is far more to consider and I will PM some resources.

If merchandising content is a goal, then do realize each content store has its own product guidelines and specifications to meet thier standard of quality.  In general, the more expensive and professional the store, the higher the quality demand is.  I mention this because its a giant leap to produce for a smaller indepently operated store to a very polished store such as Renderosity and ultimately DAZ.  Other general 3d content stores like CG Trader Turbosquid have very few guidelines and restriction as each artist is basically independantly represented and unsupported.  RealLusion is kind of uniqie in that it incorporates 4 types of content stores each with its own level of product standards and artist support.  Again, the a general assumption can be made with regard to the artist/store revenue split, where the more structured and supported the artist and product are in merchandising and marketing, the lower the share of sales will go to the artist.  I will PM with some merchant resource and guidelines to get an idea of expectations by the various marketplaces.  

1. Ryan King Blender tutorials. Also Grant Abbitt. Josh Gambrell for hard surface modelling.

2. Blender's 3D texturing lacks features, particularly if you're used to higher-end 2D painting, and I've found that getting consistent behavior out of its material assignment can be vexing. I've taken up 3DCoat. 3DCoat itself is a complete 3D package. 3DCoat Textura is for texturing. 3DCoat suffers from not enough 3rd party tutorials and general attention, but is a terrific program in active development.

3. For texture work in 2D, I recommend Krita. It's inspired by Fractal Design, now Corel, Painter, and has many similar characteristics, though it's not always identical. It's much more like Photoshop/Painter than GIMP is. Its fundamental intent is original art rather than photomanipulation, so occasionally I end up switching to GIMP, which I hate, to do something in particular. Has a wraparound mode for easy tiling textures. If you work with Krita, go get Rakurri's brush set (available for free, but definitely worth a contribution).