Anything and Everything Will Be Helpful

KateAK

Hi! I'm a new user and I would greatly appreciate it if any of the pros coulds give me tips and tricks to get started. I want to use this program to begin designing characters as reference for things, along with just creating realistic versions of the aforementioned characters.

Anything will help!

 

KateAK

BeeMKay

Hi KateAK,

Welcome to the world of DAZ craziness.

The video tutorials are a good start on how to use DAZ studio. https://www.daz3d.com/help/help-daz-3d-video-tutorials

Studio itself istn't a modelling program, so if you intend to create your own things, you might want to use Blender or Hexagon in addition.

Other than that, be aware that there are various "generations" of characters, which are not neccessarily fully compatible to each other. Also, all items before 2016 are not designed for Iray, but mostly for 3Delight. That means that lights will not work in Iray, and surfaces will have to be adjusted.

Nevertheless, 3Delight is a worthwhile option if your PC doesn't have an nvidea graphics card.

For characters, I'd recommend you start out with the free essentials packages that come with DAZ Studio. You can see which character works best for your puposes. Older characters like Genesis 1 are often cheap in sales, so you can build up a stock of characters and items for less money, but the downside is that little to no new content is made for them. Then again, if you are dialling in your characters yourself by using the shape dials and morph packages, that is probably not much of a problem.

You can get a lot of free stuff in the shop, just sort by price lowest first. Also, there's a changing group of freebies with purchase:

https://www.daz3d.com/free-3d-models

Your PC: Rendering takes a lot of horsepower, and Iray needs a nVidea graphic card that will hold your average scene in full, unless you want to look at hours of render time. If you render CPU, more cores are a good thing. And if you use a laptop, be careful, as it might fry it unless it has real good heat management.

Last but not least, if you decide to jump into the fray for real, consider buying a Platinum Club membership. It gives you a 30% discount on DAZ Originals, and very decent prices on PC+ items, which means that you can built up a stock of items at a reasonable price.

 

EDIT: I almost forgot about a really helpful section: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/categories/new-user-contests-and-events

They are contests, but what happens is that you get suggestions on how to improve your WIP image for the contest. You don't have to actually submit in the end if you are uncomfortable with the result, but it's a really great way to get above the intial frustrations, and get useful help and feedback.

Eagle99

I would recommend to start here : https://www.daz3d.com/help/help-daz-3d-video-tutorials

DAZ also has a youtube channel that's very helpful: https://www.youtube.com/user/WWWDAZ3DCOM

and there is much more to be found on youtube and of course in this forum.

There are also video tutorials in the shop.

When you've learned the basics, I guess you will know what to search for.

 

Posting all these tips and trick here will definitely blow up this thread I guess.

 

Kind regards, Eagle99

Edit: @BeeMKay ... Ok, we had the same idea at the same time about the video tutrial section... ;-)