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Pros and Cons of working outside of Daz3D?

nicksyncnicksync Posts: 0
in New Users

I see a lot of people exporting from DAZ3D to iClone on YouTube. Are there any cons of working with the Genesis 8 models outside of Daz? My preference would be to work with Maya just because of the endless tutorials online.

I have three questions:

1. I am very interested in the Lip Sync feature from DAZ3D. If I wanted to use the DAZ3D lip sync feature, would the lip sync frames or animation be exported to Maya as well?

2. Do the models lose any native quality by being exported to another 3D software? Do they look the best in DAZ?

3. Are there any important features in DAZ3D that I would be missing out on if I worked in Maya instead? Or is it basically the same?

 

Thank you.

 

 

Comments

  • nicksyncnicksync Posts: 0

    4. Complete noob question:

    -Say I imported a body animation from Maya into Daz and applied it to a model. Would I be able to animate the face morphs on top of the imported body animation? I'm thinking this may be the most convenient work flow for me. To just import animations from Maya into Daz.

  • CGHipsterCGHipster Posts: 241
    edited August 2018

    Hi, I wouldn't consider the answer for this either a list of pro's or a cons but more of personal preferences when trying to complete certain tasks. 

    I have tinkered with Iclone for a little while now with Daz and bought it after reading other user experiences about it here in the forums (This was my "I want to animate phase" crying).  I really didn't need Iclone and could just use Blender or Daz for what little Animating I have tried.  Animating in Iclone 7 is very fast but it also has a different render engine (PBR) and you can export animation from Iclone using Exchange and render inside Daz and therefore render out with Iray or even Octane or Lux plugins.  I have tried animation with Daz and had some success but many will tell you that Daz was not intended as an animation software and therefore IK/FK is not implemented as deeply as with other software that specifically focus on those tool sets.  My whole experience is not as an animator and I only dabble because well... why not lol.

    In order of your questions and only my opinion:

    1. I have bought and used Mimic Pro for the lipsync and exporting the animation is the same as any other animation export, you can bake animations or export them to other formats.

    2. When you export to FBX you will experience a different texture quality than when viewing natively in Daz, other apps will have different shaders, and lighting etc. and it all depends on the texture size you export with but if your comfortable with and can tweak in the new app the results can be very good.  

    3. Maya is very very deep, if you know Maya it won't be an issue.  I personally tried Maya for a few months with LT and didn't like the complexity of it and ran back to Blender and Daz, for me Maya was an expression of my dream big, fall hard intro to animation (big fail).   In my experience, Daz is geared towards a wider group of users for rendering and scene setup so I feel for these things it is far easier to use than Maya.  Daz has a great content library, nice integration with its marketplace via DIMM, and it is less complicated to get results and requires less knowledge than Maya.

    4.  If you use Animate 2 in Daz it quickly allows for animation layers so you could bake the imported animation to aniblock and you can select what is animated or not from the plugin and then add layers for further animation and you can add to that timeline animation either with keymate, graphmate or timeline. 

    All that said I am not an expert in Daz, and before Daz I only built models in Blender and was not into scene renders before finding Studio.  From my experience, the ease of use in Daz is very high and even I could get really nice results without having much knowledge in Daz.  I was sold on the vast content, large user base, helpful community, and ease of use.  The first thing I noticed in Daz was that getting any result at all was just fast.  Even if at first the learning curve felt big, in a short time I was up and running way faster than I was with Blender, I don't even think about Maya since it just wasn't for me.

     

    Post edited by CGHipster on
  • FSMCDesignsFSMCDesigns Posts: 12,782
    nicksync said:

    I see a lot of people exporting from DAZ3D to iClone on YouTube. Are there any cons of working with the Genesis 8 models outside of Daz? My preference would be to work with Maya just because of the endless tutorials online.

    I have three questions:

    1. I am very interested in the Lip Sync feature from DAZ3D. If I wanted to use the DAZ3D lip sync feature, would the lip sync frames or animation be exported to Maya as well?

    2. Do the models lose any native quality by being exported to another 3D software? Do they look the best in DAZ?

    3. Are there any important features in DAZ3D that I would be missing out on if I worked in Maya instead? Or is it basically the same?

     

    Thank you.

     

     

    1. I don't think it would work

    2. Yes. DAZ has very proprietary rigging and features that are very DS specific since that is the app they are developed for. Obviously there are ways to export and use the DAZ assets in other apps, but in most cases there is a lot of work to be done in getting them to shine. I am a Max user and there are reasons I don't use DAZ assets in MAX. As for looking best, there are many other renderers that are better than IRAY and if you know what you are doing you can make the shaders/textures shine in them.

    3. Maya is a full featured app meaning it has many, many more features than Daz Studio will ever have (but DS has features that no other app will ever have) and if you have deep knowledge on using Maya you can make any mesh do what you want. Daz Studio and the DAZ assets are designed to worktogether to get the most out of how DS is programmed.

    Bottom line, Daz assets work best in Daz Studio, but if you put in the work you can use them in other apps with good results.

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 38,598

    lipsync exports to Max so I see no reason it would not to Maya too

    (I had trials of both but forgot to test it in Maya)

  • nicksyncnicksync Posts: 0
    CGHipster said:

    Hi, I wouldn't consider the answer for this either a list of pro's or a cons but more of personal preferences when trying to complete certain tasks. 

    I have tinkered with Iclone for a little while now with Daz and bought it after reading other user experiences about it here in the forums (This was my "I want to animate phase" crying).  I really didn't need Iclone and could just use Blender or Daz for what little Animating I have tried.  Animating in Iclone 7 is very fast but it also has a different render engine (PBR) and you can export animation from Iclone using Exchange and render inside Daz and therefore render out with Iray or even Octane or Lux plugins.  I have tried animation with Daz and had some success but many will tell you that Daz was not intended as an animation software and therefore IK/FK is not implemented as deeply as with other software that specifically focus on those tool sets.  My whole experience is not as an animator and I only dabble because well... why not lol.

    In order of your questions and only my opinion:

    1. I have bought and used Mimic Pro for the lipsync and exporting the animation is the same as any other animation export, you can bake animations or export them to other formats.

    2. When you export to FBX you will experience a different texture quality than when viewing natively in Daz, other apps will have different shaders, and lighting etc. and it all depends on the texture size you export with but if your comfortable with and can tweak in the new app the results can be very good.  

    3. Maya is very very deep, if you know Maya it won't be an issue.  I personally tried Maya for a few months with LT and didn't like the complexity of it and ran back to Blender and Daz, for me Maya was an expression of my dream big, fall hard intro to animation (big fail).   In my experience, Daz is geared towards a wider group of users for rendering and scene setup so I feel for these things it is far easier to use than Maya.  Daz has a great content library, nice integration with its marketplace via DIMM, and it is less complicated to get results and requires less knowledge than Maya.

    4.  If you use Animate 2 in Daz it quickly allows for animation layers so you could bake the imported animation to aniblock and you can select what is animated or not from the plugin and then add layers for further animation and you can add to that timeline animation either with keymate, graphmate or timeline. 

    All that said I am not an expert in Daz, and before Daz I only built models in Blender and was not into scene renders before finding Studio.  From my experience, the ease of use in Daz is very high and even I could get really nice results without having much knowledge in Daz.  I was sold on the vast content, large user base, helpful community, and ease of use.  The first thing I noticed in Daz was that getting any result at all was just fast.  Even if at first the learning curve felt big, in a short time I was up and running way faster than I was with Blender, I don't even think about Maya since it just wasn't for me.

     

    Great! Thank you very much for your time and help! It sounds like I should just stick to Daz and import any animations into Daz while using layers with Animate 2. I'll keep all of this in mind. Thanks again!

  • Cris PalominoCris Palomino Posts: 11,694

    One little note. Daz is the company name. You notice you say Maya, not Autodesk. Same with Daz. It's Studio or Daz Studio. :)

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