Quote - > Quote - just wish they would put more effort into making a manual

Yes, but to their credit, they do make a lot of video tutorials.

-AniMajik

Video tutorials can be a pain to follow, but I have learned a good bit from them. Still, and I'm sure others will agree, document style tutorials such as PDFs are way better. I can get confused with video tutorials, because when trying to follow one that has a lot of stuff you have to do, you must pause the video, do the step, back the video up if you missed something, resume play, etc. Documents are easier because you can have them open right there while you are following them. I have them open in another tab on my taskbar and just click back to them when I need to look at something. Much faster and less confusing.

Quote - I have Winxp with both Daz3 (which I prefer)and Daz 4.5..HOwever my other computer is Win7 Ultimate and I'm unable to open any previously saved scenes. Seems certain items are missing. Keep Daz3 as very stable and easy installing..Daz/Studio/Content..

I had that problem at first, but it seems to have fixed itself. As for opening older files done in earlier versions, they can be opened but it is recommended that you resave them in the new format if you wish to work with them to create new images. I think the codewriters over at DAZ 3D decided to do a lot of new stuff for this version. Also,  if there are products missing or not working correctly from the DAZ store, you can reset the downloads for them and get the latest updates for them. One thing they have been doing for many of the older products is creating MetaData for them. This lets the product show in your Smart Content tab. Much easier to find and use that way.

Quote - As it should be. Could you enlighten us as to what features are mmissing from the latest version? I ran version 3 for quite awhile and now run version 4 and find it more feature full than ver 3.

"I have, but have not installed DS4.5 - I am going to wait on that a bit as I don't beleive in installing the latest version of anything until it's deemed stable enough."

Same here. Not to make matters worse, but version 4.5 is a totally new file format than version 3 and 4, so once you start using version 4.5 none of it will be backwards compatible.*

It came to my attention that certain things work better for DS3.x versions than for DS4.x. One is Collada file exports that will import into apps such as Blender with the armatures intact. This won't work right with DS4.x versions. I have DS4.5 Pro and when I exported a figure (V3) in Collada format from it, then imported it into Blender 2.63a, the armature was so messed up I had to delete it. Posing her created some nightmares.

DS3.x as far as I have gathered does not have this problem. I think it has something to do with the orientation issue (which axis represents up in the different apps). For DS3 all you have to do is rotate the Y axis of the whole model to get it to pose right in Blender, if my info is correct. Don't quote me on it, since I have not yet tried it myself. I only have information I gleaned from other artists who use these two apps. I will try the operation myself soon and get back to you with my results.

I have, but have not installed DS4.5 - I am going to wait on that a bit as I don't beleive in installing the latest version of anything until it's deemed stable enough.
-AniMajik

I have DS4.5 Pro installed on my Toshiba Sattelite and as far as I can tell it is stable. If you have a different version of DS4.5, I would recommend downloading the Pro version now since it is currently being offered for free. All of my plugins are green except for AniMate 2. If you already have AniMate 2 in your versions of DS, there is an upgrade code available at DAZ 3D for it for use in DS4.5 Pro. 

Thanks for this link. I have watched several of the tutorials there, but have to search through them to find the ones I can actually follow. Some are good & easy to follow. Others either leave things out, or muddy the water with too much unnecessary information. It would be great to find some good PDF or other type of document style tutorials. I find them easier to follow.

@ **goofygrape - **Someone over in the DAZ Studio Forum provided this link for me: 

"http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewthread/447/"

It takes you to a long list of links that take you to 3rd party hair for Gen3 & Gen4 figures and some for the Genesis figure. Most of it is free, so click on the link above and go see what you can get. In many cases the links will lead to other products you might want as well.

Have fun.

Agent 0013.

The models in the first two images cannot be exported for use in other applications. 

You may have noticed that they seem to have been UV mapped and had image maps applied. In actuality everything concerning the ships and the planets was done using PowerPoint, which has no UV Mapping feature. What I did was create separate skin image maps that matched the shape of the ships. Even the textured looking surfaces and the paint schemes were done this way. As for the planets, I used photo images as skins which when applied to the spheres wrapped to them.

To make the shapes 3D I used the Bevels feature, which I learned to adjust to get most of the shapes to look the way I wanted them. I had to compromise with some of them because of the limitations of the program. Also, assembling a model takes a bit of creative thinking, because the grouping of the shapes will push them together in ways that may not be what you want. What has to be done is each section of your model must be made and grouped separately, and then brought together to create the model without grouping the sections together. This gets around the program's tendency to push the sections together the wrong way.

Anyway, have a look and tell me what you think. How do the first two images compare to the third one?

Stay awesome!

Agent 0013.

Let me know what you think.

Cool! Happy to be of service. It makes me feel good to make others feel good. If I can do that, my job is done.

I am still uncertain about how to rig in DAZ but if I work things out I'll post it here.

That would be most appreciated. I have seen a few rigging tutorials for earlier versions, but this version (4.5 Pro) is far more advanced than those were. I've heard that there are several things in this version that have been vastly improved, such as the generation 4 clothing fit to Genesis feature. It may be that rigging is a lot better as well.

As for Cycles in Blender, I have not tried it. I just use blender to create models and sometimes to UV map a model. Even so, some of my other friends have said that you don't have to use the Cycles render engine if you would rather use the older render style. As I don't do much actual rendering in Blender, I cannot really vouch for those things.  

I also have UVMapper Classic, which if you can learn the basics, is a good bit easier to use than Blenders UV mapping. I also have Hexagon 2.5, which also can be used for UV mapping, but I am still a newbie with that one. It is supposed to be a great modeller, and does have good compatibility with DAZ Studio. For simple modelling I have Wings3D, and my photo and image editing app is Gimp 2.8 which I have yet to install as 2.6 is still quite useful to me. To round out my digital art apps I have Project Dogwaffle; wierd name I know, but for paint style work it is way better than the default Paint program that came with my computer. Resolution is much much finer. I use Microsoft Office PowerPoint also. You would be surprised at what I have been able to do with it alone! I'll post an image I made using it soon. It is limited in what it can do, but I have discovered ways around its limitations.

Anyway, if you can discover the ins and outs of rigging in DAZ Studio 4.5 Pro, and pass that info along for the rest of us, I'm sure it will be most appreciated.

Stay awesome!

Agent 0013.

I too am happy with it, the amount of active plugins I now have are nearly three times what was in 4.0 Pro. Of course there is now a Studio Library folder that lives on my desktop which appeared when 4.5 was installed. What it is for is something I have not figured out, and I have opened it several times to see if anything has been placed in it yet. It remains empty even now, and I have had 4.5 for going on a month now. The reason I have not deleted the folder is because I don't know what it might do to the software. Anybody else have this type of thing? Would it be okay to get rid of it? These are things I wish to know.

How right you are! In my work as a carpenter and cabinet maker, I would have to learn the terminology used by the crew I worked with at the time. Even when I was the lead man of the team, the terminology used would be that which was the most popular to the members of my crew, and I did not argue with that. The main point was getting the work done, so demanding that certain terms were used to describe something would have been counterproductive. Even so, it would be nice to know that the terminology describes the same things accross the industry. I guess for now we will just have to use our intuition to determine what a term means in a certain application, and then hope we are right about it. lol

Quote - Agent0013, I have followed your progress here with great interest. I have similar interests and I have some experience with Blender and DAZ Studio.

I would like your opinion on final render quality: At some future time I intend to make fully animated work in either DAZ or blender but both have plusses and minuses.

For example, rigging in Blender is tedious while DAZ already has the rigging done for you including speech morphs (something I would not want to struggle through creating in Blender). It would be nice to only do the shots you want in one program and then others in the other one but I am sure that lighting and texturing would not give a coherent result: so what do you suggest ?

Of course, I could be wrong about any of this too - there is just so much complexity and too much to learn !

 

One thing that I have learned about animations is that they can take a lot of time to render, due to several factors.

First is the amount of frames you want to have in your video. Each frame will require a certain amount of time to render, and then the next one starts to render. Since any animation is made up of a series of still images, you can see that the render time is going to be massive. A good rule of thumb to have fair quality in your animation is to have 25 to 30 frames per second of video. It makes the motion look smoother.

Second is the complexity of your scene in the animation. If there is a lot of static content in the scene, (things that do not move in any way), they will be included in the rendering for each frame. If something moves in the scene due to camera panning, that too must be figured into the render time. The more you have moving in a scene, whether it is due to camera panning, or to the characters and other objects moving according to a predetermined setting for each of them, the greater the render times will be. This is why a lot of computer generated animations have simplified scenery.

Third is the size of screen you want your video to fit. You can compromise here by lowering the resolution some but the quality of the video will be lower as well. Large screens obviously will require greater resolution, which will in turn require more render time.

Finally, there is the processing power you have access to. This is determined by the amount of RAM you have. The more your computer has the better, but if you are using the 32 bit version of DAZ Studio it will only render using up to 2 gigabytes of RAM, even if you have a significantly greater amount. So if you Operating System is 64 bit, I reccommend you have the 64 bit version of DAZ Studio. DS 4.5 Pro is currently being offered for free, so if you do not have it already, now would be a great time to upgrade.  

I have not done any animations with Blender at all, so I cannot say much about it. Still if you think you can pull it off, I see no reason to not use both for animating a single production. I know the first part of this post is a bit discouraging, but if you have the patience, skill, and determination for it, I say go for it. I personally do not have the resources to make a video that would be worth much. My computer only has 4 gigabytes of RAM so animations of any good length would be too much to ask of it.

Anyway, thank you for asking me for my opinion. I hope I have been able to give you as good as I am can, but I suspect that you will need to continue your search for information concerning this subject.

Stay awesome!

Agent 0013.