Hello from DAZ 3D!

[jack_norton]

I'm probably one of the Daz's best ex-customer. I spent literally several thousands of $$$ on models until last year, when I decided I couldn't continue doing everything alone (coding+art) so started to hire external artists for my games. If you check my previous games on http://www.winterwolves.com , they're all done with poser and photoshop manipulation.

[killdream]

Well, just remember the general rule of recognizing users from their avatar: usually the real users has opposite gender of their own avatar. Since PyTom's avatar is a girl, so... (so actually, your rule is upside down when it goes with internet avatar, sorry)

That's... so not true... look... my avatar is a guy :O

[DAZ_HakDragon]

I want to try out Bryce, the problem is I want to make any environments created with it 'walkable' and I am intimidated by the game engines out there... I was wondering what's the easiest to use in terms of importing your 3D model and using it as a base to walk around in with a generic third-person sprite.

With game engines, we're not yet at the point where you can drop-in 3d art assets and go. There are some "quick fix" solutions, such as Dark Basic or the scripted Crystal Space engine. With Bryce, the easiest work pipeline would be to use your terrain as a top-down rendered image, and walk across that. I would love to see something that you could import Bryce terrains and walk around them in 3d, and be able to drop that into a game engine painlessly and without coding.

If you are not afraid of a little coding, there are more and more solutions appearing out there for "walk around the height field in 3d" appearing in many of the game creation packages. I know Dark Basic has this as a demo application, and there are a couple other packages out there that showcase this technology. Of course, with this type of workflow, you would be exporting your Bryce height field and importing, so your materials, trees, and other assets would not survive the trip...so there's a bit more work and coding involved.

-Hak

[EwanG]

Daz - I think something a lot of us would like to see would be some tutorials showing how to get a good cel-shaded effect out of Poser/Daz3D. The last time I tried this, the example file took my breath away, but I can't say any of my own work was quite so successful

Also, I've noticed many engines now accepting import from Google's 3D Warehouse so if you're on a limited budget you can spend on the big items (like characters) and economize on background objects. Any thoughts of doing that with y'alls products?

[DAZ_HakDragon]

Daz - I think something a lot of us would like to see would be some tutorials showing how to get a good cel-shaded effect out of Poser/Daz3D. The last time I tried this, the example file took my breath away, but I can't say any of my own work was quite so successful

Also, I've noticed many engines now accepting import from Google's 3D Warehouse so if you're on a limited budget you can spend on the big items (like characters) and economize on background objects. Any thoughts of doing that with y'alls products?

Toon renders! Ah yes, I love all the options we have in DAZ Studio to do toon rendering. There is a basic "toon render" style in DAZ Studio's rendering options, which does a pretty good job for a one-click solution. I would recommend altering texture maps, or simplifying things to base colors if that is the effect you want.

As for tutorials, I have them:
http://www.daz3d.com/i/tutorial/tutorial?id=1502&_m=d
http://www.daz3d.com/i/tutorial/tutorial?id=1667&_m=d
http://www.daz3d.com/i/tutorial/tutorial?id=1333&_m=d
http://www.daz3d.com/i/tutorial/tutorial?id=2122&_m=d
http://artzone.daz3d.com/wiki/doku.php/ ... oonshaders

And a very cool product:
http://www.daz3d.com/i/3d-models/daz-st ... t=341&_m=d

As you can see, there are a lot of ways to achieve a variety of effects, and you can get pretty good ones out-of-the-box with just basic techniques. The pwToon product is also very cool, and comes with a bunch of interesting presets and styles. Toon rendering is one of the things where DAZ Studio is way ahead of our competitors in features and options. All I can say is create a basic figure, and then keep experimenting! You will develop a technique you like, it is exactly like Photoshop in regards to trying different things and experimenting.

As for using our models in games and interactive 3d applications, currently, our license doesn't allow this. Our executive team understands there is a great need here, and that is about all I can say. As for DAZ Studio importing Google's "3D Warehouse" objects...I will put this in as a feature request for the next version of DAZ Studio. I am the guy who does that here.

Thanks for the questions,
-Hak

[Blue Lemma]

Hello back

I bought some of the DAZ stuff (the Hiro and Aiko bundles) when I was at an anime convention, and I was pretty impressed ^^ I think I tried out that DAZ Studio program when it was in its first version... pretty basic, but I checked up recently and it looks like 2 new versions have come out since then. I should give it another try sometime - fun stuff to play with

Although I'm more a fan of hand-drawn graphics in VNs, I think 3D gives a good opportunity to have more poses and expressions. Although... is it just me, or does it seem like most (if not all?) of the 3D character VNs have been hentai so far? Hmmmm...

[Guest]

As for using our models in games and interactive 3d applications, currently, our license doesn't allow this. Our executive team understands there is a great need here, and that is about all I can say.

Although... is it just me, or does it seem like most (if not all?) of the 3D character VNs have been hentai so far? Hmmmm...

Poser != DAZ

[EwanG]

Toon renders! Ah yes, I love all the options we have in DAZ Studio to do toon rendering. There is a basic "toon render" style in DAZ Studio's rendering options, which does a pretty good job for a one-click solution.

How well would these "translate" to Poser if one wished to pursue the more "professional" option?

As for using our models in games and interactive 3d applications, currently, our license doesn't allow this. Our executive team understands there is a great need here, and that is about all I can say.

Pardon my confusion here. If I took one of your models, put it in a setting, did a toon render, you're saying that the resulting image could not be used in a VN? Or you're saying that the model itself can not be used in a 3D game engine? Some clarity here would be helpful. Because if even the resulting image can't be used, I'm a little unsure of the value of the product to the producers on here who are considering the tool for future games.

And again, I suppose I should ask if the answer to the above is the same for Poser?

Last question - how do you see yourselves differentiating from the "all in one" packages like iClone? In other words, what is your strengths compared to a package like that?

Thanks again for contributing to the forums. It's always helpful to be able to talk to a vendor directly. Particularly when I have several games I'm preparing to work on for the next year, and can use some help in deciding what tools to use.

[DaFool]

I needed a better tool for bigger world-building, so...

Mwahahahahaha!

Code: Select all

Your order is DAZ order number XXXXXXX
Your order contains:

Bryce 6.1                                        1 @ $99.95    = $99.95
Tax:                                                           $0.00
Shipping:                                                      $0.00
Discount:                                                     -$19.99
Paid via Gift Cert/Voucher/other credit:                      ($0.00)
Total:                                                         $79.96

=========================================================================

Pat yourself on the back, DAZ_HakDragon! You're a good employee.

P.S. And I fully intend to use this software for commercial projects (after 2D filtering, of course). I sincerely hope I had paid for the 'professional' version similar to the pay versions of other freeware softwares like Google SketchUp and Terragen.

[DAZ_HakDragon]

Toon renders! Ah yes, I love all the options we have in DAZ Studio to do toon rendering. There is a basic "toon render" style in DAZ Studio's rendering options, which does a pretty good job for a one-click solution.

How well would these "translate" to Poser if one wished to pursue the more "professional" option?

Plug-ins and render options for DAZ Studio do not translate over to Poser, they are two separate programs. DAZ Studio's "toon render" option is quite good, and the pwToon product is a professional-grade plug-in. You can get good results out of DAZ Studio, and we even have a Photoshop bridge plug-in which lets you layer interactive 3d scenes with Photoshop itself using DAZ Studio.

Poser has its own "sketch render" capabilities, but they haven't been aggressively updated in the past couple of years, and this renderer has trouble rendering through transparency. There are tutorials out there on getting cartoon effects with Poser, but they usually involve complex shader setups which take a bit of fiddling to get right, and it certainly isn't a good option for a production environment where you need to be making pieces quickly.

As for using our models in games and interactive 3d applications, currently, our license doesn't allow this. Our executive team understands there is a great need here, and that is about all I can say.

Pardon my confusion here. If I took one of your models, put it in a setting, did a toon render, you're saying that the resulting image could not be used in a VN? Or you're saying that the model itself can not be used in a 3D game engine? Some clarity here would be helpful. Because if even the resulting image can't be used, I'm a little unsure of the value of the product to the producers on here who are considering the tool for future games.

And again, I suppose I should ask if the answer to the above is the same for Poser?

Let me say this unequivocally: the 2d renders (toon, realistic or otherwise) you product with DAZ Studio, Poser, Carrara, Bryce, or any other DAZ Product are your IP to keep, sell, put in games, or do anything else you want with. Any 2d art you create with DAZ Studio or Poser is yours!

The 3d models and texture resources are a different story, and those cannot be used in a 3d game or interactive application. This is the part I was talking about as the part our executive team here at DAZ was aware of. The one exception to this is textures converted using our "Texture Converter" product we sell at the DAZ store. These can be brought over into Second Life for personal use only.

Last question - how do you see yourselves differentiating from the "all in one" packages like iClone? In other words, what is your strengths compared to a package like that?

Thanks again for contributing to the forums. It's always helpful to be able to talk to a vendor directly. Particularly when I have several games I'm preparing to work on for the next year, and can use some help in deciding what tools to use.

DAZ's true strength are our partners. We have a whole community of artists creating content, characters, clothing, and scenes, and putting out new content every day of the week. With packages like iClone, you buy a basic package of content, and you are stuck with it for a while until the company comes out with more. With DAZ, you can pull from the entire library of Poser and DAZ content from our site, and across all of our competitor's sites like Renderosity, RDNA, and others. Our prices are great too, so it's not going to cost a lot to put together a package of assets for a project.

Of course, we have pretty good software too. Our Photoshop bridge for DAZ Studio is a key part of professional pipelines, and speeds up your work incredibly. Comic artists can create a 3d scene on one layer, adjust word balloons on another, and work on filters on a another layer, all without having to hit render if they need to jump back into the scene and change something. We have a new layers render system in Carrara 7.1 that lets you render animations to color and shadow layers, so you don't have to go back and rerender a whole movie if you want to change something.

Thanks for having me here, and I'm happy to answer your questions! We here at DAZ are always happy to talk, and I agree, it is nice to get answers from a real person directly. I run Software and Content QA over here at DAZ, so I know a lot, and I am always happy to share.

Thanks for the questions,
-Hak

[Watercolorheart]

I work mainly in Poser myself. I'm pretty successful at 2D, and I just paint right over the 3D renders. A lot of toon solutions are clunky, especially if you want good outlines ... sometimes the best ones are the ones you make yourself. :V

That said, Cinema4D's toon rendering is incredible.

[EwanG]

That said, Cinema4D's toon rendering is incredible.

For $1000 I certainly hope it would be

[DAZ_HakDragon]

I needed a better tool for bigger world-building, so...

Mwahahahahaha!

Code: Select all

Your order is DAZ order number XXXXXXX
Your order contains:

Bryce 6.1                                        1 @ $99.95    = $99.95
Tax:                                                           $0.00
Shipping:                                                      $0.00
Discount:                                                     -$19.99
Paid via Gift Cert/Voucher/other credit:                      ($0.00)
Total:                                                         $79.96

=========================================================================

Pat yourself on the back, DAZ_HakDragon! You're a good employee.

P.S. And I fully intend to use this software for commercial projects (after 2D filtering, of course). I sincerely hope I had paid for the 'professional' version similar to the pay versions of other freeware softwares like Google SketchUp and Terragen.

Congratulations! Bryce is a great application, and it has an incredible future with us here at DAZ. You can get some great results out of the box with it, and if you're creative, there are tons of ways to save time on a project. One of my favorite tricks is to use a spiky height field as a forest, and it looks great in far-away shots. Line the edge of the forest with 3d trees of your choosing and you're good to go.

Glad to have you onboard,
-Hak

[DaFool]

Thanks for the tip! I had also installed the free Studio and tons of content packs... all in all around 12 packages, it's overwhelming but I'll manage somehow, starting with some tutorials.

One thing that was immediately obvious was the reliance on tool buttons for camera manipulation -- placing it all in control by the mouse movements would have been more intuitive. But maybe I just haven't customized some settings yet.

I used to dabble with Animation Master and Maya, what was lacking then was good render settings out of the box. So I gave up and for a long time I made pure handdrawn 2D backgrounds, which lacked finesse for the most part. I can say I'm pretty pleased with the default render of DAZ / Bryce.

I used to generate objects and terrain separately, then merge them somewhat haphazardly in Photoshop. Hopefully I'll be able to construct entire playsets of towns and cities hugging the terrain like you see in the galleries, that is my ultimate goal. It'll be much easier to take multiple camera shots that way, then use them as pre-rendered backdrops in adventure-style gameplay. I just need to figure out the right common scale since it's ridiculous to have an entire mountain peak that's no bigger than a tree.

Of course integration of Poser and all that isn't much of a concern to me since I've been a 2D character artist for a while now.

[jack_norton]

Just to share a bit of my experiences in an impartial way, I think vue d'esprit is much better than bryce. Final results and the poser import makes it really good to integrate your character in landscapes, if you want to do 3d.
Sorry to break this "love vs Daz3d thread" but I want to be objective. Daz 3d models are the best, but bryce...hmm