Library of Characters and Clothing Without Breaking the Bank?

pixelforce_1173045

I have been creating architectural visualization for some time now and have always used 2D people to fill my scenes - and I hate it. The lighting is never right the limitation on camera angles is frustrating and getting the scale correct and scene setup is just too time consuming.

I'm hoping I can import Daz characters into 3DS Max (Assuming FBX is the best route) - http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/4128/P60

I render my scenes in 3DS Max - though I am certainly no Max pro and only use it because it works well with Revit - and I want to import 3D Daz models into my scenes. I have looked around at the shop and have come to the realization that this could cost some serious money in order to get a variety of characters and clothing. Is there an "best bang for the buck" way to shop without sacrificing quality?

I am hoping to have a library of character in different poses with different clothing that I can place into my scene. The ability to pose them in Max would be a bonus for fine tuning - especially for close up scenes.

The images I have included are typical, however I have been getting requests to model hotels and shopping centers which will require a larger variety of characters.

Thanks for any advise you can give.

Scott Livingston

I don't know much about 3DS Max, but I can provide some information on content... There is a lot of good free clothing on ShareCG (for starters, look at wilmap's stuff), and lots of high-quality outfits available for $1.99 each for Platinum Club members: http://www.daz3d.com/clothing-accessories?plat_club=23

You can get pose sets from the same two sources, or just make your own poses.

High-quality free or cheap characters are perhaps a little harder to come by, but they do exist. The Freepository forum is a good resource for freebies. Which figure or figures do you plan on using? Genesis? Victoria 4 and Michael 4? Something else?

Slosh

If you are budget conscious, Genesis is a really good way to go because of the flexibility, and she/he is free with DAZ Studio. Out of the box, you can get a good variety of shapes, and if you buy the Evolution Bundle (Head and Body Morphs), you get even more flexibility. I just recently joined the Platinum Club, which gives great discounts after the initial startup. As Scott has suggested, there are scads of free clothing items to be found. And, as you are a Max user, you may be able to model some clothing of your own. With Genesis, simple clothing models can go a long way.

SickleYield

Yep. Genesis, ShareCG and Renderosity FreeStuff are your friends.

pixelforce_1173045

This is great info - thanks!

Of course every studio has a budget but I also realize that you get what you pay for - sometimes a little more if your lucky, but sometimes you're not so lucky. I don't mind paying for quality it's just that sometimes - for distant characters - high quality is not always necessary.

This is good. I can create my library for distant, medium and close use.

As for the characters themselves, I figured I'd use only the latest Genesis, Victoria and Michael - assuming they will yield the best results, and I can pose them once and dress them according to their distance from the camera. However, with that said, will ALL clothing designed for Genesis fit the latest Genesis?

I plan to buy morph/poses and tweak as needed.

There is a lot to sift through to find ordinary everyday clothing.

Is there a way to relax the fabric between the breasts? Some of the clothing is skin tight when it shouldn't be. I thought I had seen a plugin or utility to correct that...?

Scott Livingston

There are two options in the DAZ 3D store that can help with that breast-cling problem:

Sickle Rigging and Morphing System (by SickleYield, who has posted in this thread...she also has some really nice clothing and other freebies at ShareCG, incidentally). It addresses the cling issue as well as other things. See the thread here for more information: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/15492/

and the Clothing Cleavage Modifier, which is more specificly aimed at the cling issue.

I've also heard good things about the Sickle Breast Fixer (also by SickleYield but available offsite) which takes a different approach to this issue. And another option would be learning to do it yourself...either by creating your own clothing, or making modifications to existing clothing to ensure a better fit. There's some good information here: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/12921/

The only one of these things that I've personally tried is the Sickle Rigging and Morphing System. I've found it to be very useful.

SickleYield

pixelforce said:

As for the characters themselves, I figured I'd use only the latest Genesis, Victoria and Michael - assuming they will yield the best results, and I can pose them once and dress them according to their distance from the camera. However, with that said, will ALL clothing designed for Genesis fit the latest Genesis?

Thanks, Scott.

And yes, for a given value of "fit." Genesis, unlike Gen 4, can use clothes that weren't made for a given morph through DS4 and up's Autoconform, but results are this way/that way (breast cling will be common on less-supported morphs; V5 and M5 are the most commonly supported). Utilities like the ones Scott suggested do help.

For a greater variety of characters for free, especially when it comes to the faces, there's also this converted character set: http://www.sharecg.com/v/58198/view///#commentAnchor

You might need to use the duplicate IDs script on some older clothes, and you can get that here: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/740/

mark128

I'm not sure how many characters you want to get into your scenes. The DAZ Gen4 (V4/M4/G4) and Genesis characters require a lot of memory in DS. I have created and rendered scenes with 15-16 characters on a 16GB machine. Rendering that scene required more than 8GB of ram and the DS GUI got slow.

There are some low resolution characters available that require less memory/compute power. You can get more of them in a scene.

http://www.daz3d.com/loretta-lorez
http://www.daz3d.com/lorenzo-lorez
http://www.daz3d.com/lorez-casual-man-1

There are some others, including a bundle of Loretta and Lorenzo.

These characters are intended to be used in the background. They do not look as good as Genesis or Gen4 characters up close, but they have much lower polygon count and consume a lot less memory in DS anyway. Much of their clothes are sort of skin textures, but they have some clothing items too. They have morphs and can be posed. The packages come with a variety of clothing for the characters, but it can be limiting if it is not the kind of clothes you are looking for. I saw one person made a dress for Loretta Lorez on sharecg, but that is about the only 3rd party offering I have seen.

You can mix the lorez characters in the background with higher resolution characters in the foreground.