Need help

Steelblade

I am trying to put together a comic strip but have no real drawing skills. I want to use Daz for my character, and Google Sketchup for backgrounds.

The single character I will need is a female, and after a few opening frames of (She comes out of a 'replicator tube' and was literally just 'born'.) implied nudity, she will put on a skin tight space suit with a sort of skirt around her waist to cover her bottom (she's embarrassed by the exposure).

I've looked through the assets and can't find anything like that suit. The Gen 2 and Gen 3 isn't working so well either since I sould ike her to have long flowing hair. Not stupid long, just shoulder length. That will look good in some later frames of her in space.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to achieve these?

Roman_K2

Is the comic going to be line art, like in a newspaper, or more photo-realistic (I don't read comics much of late but how about "Heavy Metal" magazine?) or something in-between. Different rendering methods support different ranges of shaders; all have their relative strengths and weaknesses.

Assuming you want to go really sci-fi and glossy let's talk a bit about Iray. I'm sure there are all sorts of sci-fi and other Iray shaders that, when applied to a leotard or superhero suit on one of the Genesis figures will yield a suitable "space" look. Hair may be a problem - you just have to look around.

In this very basic example Genesis Female wears a wetsuit (like for surfing in the ocean), a tank dress, and leggings. Hair is "Portia" from the DAZ store; it comes in various colors. I skipped the footwear and helmet for now, and sorry about the dumb pose and so on -- I'm lazy. One or two hair sets in the store will "morph" in the wind or lack of it, eg. in "weightless conditions" and you can really make it float around if you want.

Ok so leaving the hair alone for the time being, the first thing I did was apply a metallic shader to everything except the dress. I have all sorts of shiny chrome shaders and DAZ Studio even comes with a few bright samples, but I chose to tone it down a bit and I used a slightly duller, metal-like (metallic?) shader by Jen Greenlees - directly onto parts of the Genesis body to give a real skin tight look and on the leggings. See the first example below.

Next, in the second example I cut the top of the dress away with the Geometry Editor, leaving just a skirt. I could put in the boots from the M3 "Space Suit" but I hope you can distill the basic idea and steps from this rough example: even if you can't find clothing and props that 100% fit your needs from the get-go, it is possible to improvise.

Even if you can't draw you can use the base figures in DAZ to set up scenes, clicking and dragging, moving them around and pinning them, and changing camera angles and so on. This will give you a great feel for composing the scenes.

seeker273

Is there a reason you can't work with G3F? OOT has a ton of shoulder length hair with really good movement. There are also plenty of skin tight suits for G3.

The https://www.daz3d.com/genesis-3-superhero-bundle even comes with an extra skirt.

 

 

Steelblade

These are both pretty good. My G3F built in only has short hair. I've looked through the hair already installed and none of it seems to 'work'. Not the barefoot dancer, Victoria 6, etc. 

Since I am matching a foreground character to a background (probably in Gimp) i've considered just leaving the model 'nude' and manually coloring in a suit. I'm not that hot an artist where manual drawing is concerned. I suppose I could just practice and do the hair that way, but it would probably look better if I could find a matching hair that doesn't just 'stick' to it's one pose.

Steelblade

Roman, I haven't decided yet the 'gloss' level. I may render it through Gimp as plain line drawn black and white. The story is the stongest part, but over reaching for a visual style I can't pull off will detract from that. As I posted, my art skills aren't so good so I am looking for a compromise. Hopefully Daz is it.

Roman_K2

You sound like you're taking a thoughtful approach. I kept at it for a while though, trying various things. For example I took an army flight suit sort of outfit for V4 and I made it silvery, down to the boots and laces. Worked fairly well but I eventually crashed the scene - too many shaders and browsers running at the same time etc.

Roman_K2

About making the hair work, did you mean for rendering, or...? I somehow managed to make a scene yesterday which would not render, period. Blank screen. Something to do with the Iray lights?? Not sure. But it does happen.

In the Scene tab you may want to right-click on the hair and choose "Fit to..."

Also some hair jumps around, not matching the figure exactly. For example V4 hair to G2 and vice-versa I suppose.

Steelblade

I found a compromise, I think. I went ahead with the short hair. There are some later scenes that would have looked great with her long hair flowing, but it isn't that important.

I am using a semi nude model, panties, long boots, and arm sleeves. I can 'color in' her skintight suit in Gimp using a minimal of art skills on my part.

Steelblade

Is there a working way to import a model from Daz into Sketchup? Collida is supposedly a direct route, but it only imports the figure, not the pose.