Okay, Which Products would I need?
RitaCeleste
Posts: 625
I joined Platinum club and started buying content 6 months ago. I made some good decisions and bad decisions. I am left with vast holes in what I have and what I want and what is actually available.
1. I like morphing characters. I want Thorne's morphs but I am unsure if I need to buy for both Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 Females. I have Skin Builder for textures but there is no version to skin G2F males.
2. I like outfits. I have spent a bit here. But I have ended up with many things for V4 and not many for G2F. I have V4 shapes for G2F which can auto fit some of them. But I still need the dress rig.
3. I am lacking a bit in hair. But I have some V4 hair, long short. Is there really a terrible problem with using it on G2F or Genesis?
4. I have some fabric textures and tutorials for texturing things. I also have some stitch brushes. I like to tinker. I have the fabricator and and friends and like these.
I want to make my own characters by using morphs and Skin Builder. Because there is nothing like skin builder for the G2M for textures, it makes me hesitate to buy M6 or the male characters for G2M. I am unsure about investing more into Genesis as far as morphs go and if I did I would wonder about investing in GenX to get those morphs working on G2F.
I would like to get different V4 outfits and hair working on G2F and or Genesis. I have most of what I need and what is left I can slowly get.
I would like to learn to texture things. Are there more things I will need to be able to do this? I have Gimp and Elements.
I know its a lot of questions but I am trying to cut my spending down for a bit and keep it under $40 a month for a bit. I can't figure out which items I need the most or what to invest in first. I have sat thought and thought about it but I am lacking some direction. I am less worried about scenes and doing finished renders at this point. I am more than happy to just use backgrounds for the time being. So far I'm leaning towards the Dress Rig for G2F and the Genesis clones and the morphs as to what to start spending my meager budget on.
But I am checking here to find out if i I have really missed having what I need to do a good texture and to decide how much I want to spend to be able to morph the Figures more. Advice needed.
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Well, I thought I'd make the hobby more affordable by looking at ways to make things for myself like clothes and textures and characters. I thought the great deals on V4 items were great even though I want them on Genesis or G2F. I am learning that tinkering isn't really that cheap for me. Freedom seems to come at a price. When I joined I was told to keep it affordable, stick to one generation. I was told also picking a genre and try to work within it would help. Hmmm, looking back I see the error of my ways. There needs to be a handy newbie list of pitfalls to avoid. Currently I am deep in the pit. I figure the Newbie who buys characters and scenes, outfits and textures as needed is getting a better deal than me with all my tinker toys. I keep thinking there should be a thread about which products are "Best" but all my favorite stuff and what I want to do may be so different from what other people want to do.
Hi,
When I first joined, thought the idea of grabbing all the free stuff was good too.
There are some free tutorials to help with the fitting of older products to the G2 figures.
[and also others worth downloading for content]
http://www.daz3d.com/tutorials?dir=asc&order=price
n.b. that many of the older V4/M4 products can be first created for Genesis, then from Genesis over to the G2 figures - or directly over if one has a few other products.
http://www.daz3d.com/victoria-4-for-genesis-2-female
http://www.daz3d.com/tutorials/michael-4-for-genesis-2-male
Everything in the store goes on sale at least once if not thrice or more times during the year.
Fastgrab is a good page to keep an eye on although they haven't been changing it as often lately. I noticed this week they have but rearranged last week's selection.
Now for morphing characters, I skipped those really ugly things in Fastgrab but do have their add-ons which for a few dollars were a good deal. Some of them dialed in partially with other morphs made for some pretty good "look a-likes" for the occasional scifi aliens.
Aside from morph packages [the basic sets by Daz3D can be very helpful as many will base their products using them], all sets are not essential. Depends what one is wishing to accomplish. If you have Hexagon, it is also easy to make what I call "little morphs". Not everything has to be a full figure character morph. Also over in sharecg.com there are some great large sets of morphs which cover just about anything one could possibly want to do with the figures. [Google search comes up with a nice list, keywords: morphs genesis sharecg.com]
Good point. I have the free morphs and I love them! I often I want more than I need. I noticed when I bought beads for crafting I bought in bulk. I'll never make that much stuff with those beads. I wanted the dress rig for the handles and morphs. That will be first. I often feel like I have to collect 10 times as much stuff as I need before I begin to feel comfortable sitting down to work with it. I can wait for a sale for the morphs if I can resist spending my whole allowance every month. Some people had complained about longer V4 hair on Genesis or G2F but I don't often use poses that cause problems with it and I can just parent it instead of conforming it. There are a few outfits I really want that are new, but I still have plenty of V4 $1.99 items on my wishlist. I thought maybe I would try to learn to make textures for the market place, but a better newbie goal would be some freebie things for the more affordable older items for practice. Okay, I just need to sit down and work with what I have and collect some glorious freebies until money is not tight. Thanks!
About making the morphs, I did see a tutorial on that and on on fixing them up for free or for sale. That would make nice freebies too. If I'm not spending like a pro, it makes giving it all away seem like a good thing. lol
I think we've all been there, it's an expensive lesson to learn but don't feel too bad if you were distracted by all the shiny, wonderful things in the store. I'll bet in most cases that advice is passed from not-so-new user to newbie to try to stop someone else making the mistakes we already made ourselves. :)
There are so many different directions you can go in with this hobby. I'm sure many of us feel the pull in all those different directions at the same time: learn to model, create character shapes and textures, make clothing, texture clothing, make props, build scenes, not to mention actually rendering all that stuff we went and bought.
Actually, now you have a lot of months of experience and you'll make better decisions that you could have when brand new, so this is a perfect time to decide what really matters to you and just focus on that.
As for what's best, Novica collected a Top 10 from a lot of us at the beginning of the year and collated them in her helpful thread. I'll go find a link for you. As you say, we all like different things and the store is full of great stuff, but there were definitely some products that came up in a few different lists.
OK, there's the link for you. http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/34269/ The top ten lists are over the first few pages so I've linked to page one.
Advice is always difficult to give, as you could have any number of people answer you and they would each mention different items.
Sticking to one generation is not really good advice. Genesis does make things much easier than it was in pre Genesis generations of figures, because Genesis and Genesis 2 F & M are so versatile, and of course the base figures are free. Genesis can become anything Genesis 2 is almost as versatile, but has the gender split. and with things like the one Patience has mentioned can become even more versatile.
Experimenting using freebies is always a good way to start. Wilmap has many different clothing articles for both the Genesis figures, and you could use them to start experimenting in texturing. Far cheaper to try on freebie items, and it is how I started texturing.
Check out some of the lists in this thread for other freebie items http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/75/
People have spent a lot of time putting these lists together, and they cover a lot of different things,
And when you are over in the freepository come and see how people enjoy themselves in the freebie challenge, which is a great place for new users to have fun without spending too much money, as the idea is to make the best render you can using freebies in the main
Making textures for clothing is far easier than making new textures for the Human figures themselves. I have been texturing for almost 15 years, but have never yet managed to make a skin for a figure that I would have been happy to share. :roll:
As someone returning to this hobby after a long time away I have a dual perspective.
I'm looking for what I need now and what's missing. But I also have a large collection of things I gathered up a decade ago.
That large collection helps inform me with what turned out to be useful and what didn't.
Rather than a list, I'll give you my 'philosophy' for considering things...
I find the essentials boil down to:
1 versatile female figure, 1 versatile male figure. - Look at your work and figure which is more often used, and that one should get focus.
A collection of diverse morphs is a lot more valuable than a fancy character. Many morph kits though, are too specialized into a specific kind of look. You want the morph kit that most lets you take your base figure as far from 1 look you make for it as you can, when you make a second look.
Lighting - this is the real thing to put attention on. You want a very good kit of lights, or to learn to use lighting so well with your chosen app that you can skip the presets. Even then, you should consider some light making kits... things that introduce new tools to the lights (for example, I grabbed the Advanced Spotlight and its related bundle items over the weekend - as most of my scenes are done using just 3 spotlights).
- When I look through galleries, the images I remember had good lighting. The ones I click next on didn't. The props and figures in each can vary. I've seen fully forgettable work that a person must have spent weeks on custom morphs and many figures and layout and so on... but bland lighting left it... uninteresting.
I feel a lot of people skip the lighting step because its not as 'sexy' as playing with the butt-moprhs of the latest vicky... :) or something...
- But the end result WILL be a lot sexier...
Clothes:
- This is where it is so easy to go nuts buying hundreds of things that years later... all look very similar but with minor differences...
Some very very very popular content producers have made careers producing variations on a one-trick-pony. People will drool over and post up and talk up their latest item... and 6 months later when you load it into a scene next to the one they put out before it... you notice, you could have gotten by with just one of the two... or should I say, one of the dozen you psyched yourself into buying.
So when you buy an outfit... mentally map out at least 3 different scenes you might use it in before clicking buy. And go through your collection of stuff and make sure it really is something new for you.
If I were completely new but had the hindsight I have now, I would tell myself to get 1-3 daily-wear outfits for both the male and female figures, 3 genre outfits for my favorite genre, and 1 off-genre outfit that was semi-modular from 1-2 genres of partial interest (modular so I could take a piece or two and use it in a different genre scene - for example a super hero mask could work for a masked ball or a burglar scene).
Scene props:
- Kind of the same as clothing... AND you're going to need variety in these. The modular kits are better than the specific scenes.
Scene props can often end up being absurdly high priced... BUT if you master lighting you can work around this with some freebies of dubious quality by learning how to show and shadow them to best effect while you're waiting for a sale to come around on that amazing modular kit you've got in your wishlist...
Get 1-3 scenes of your favorite genre, and then some 'pieces / kits' that can be multi-purpose (most genres can use a tree or cobblestone path for example).
Cameras...
Yeah, there actually are some cameras to buy - like the atmosphere effects ones. BUT mostly I want to say that watching some tutorials on cameras / positioning will really improve your ability to use less and achieve more.
Postwork:
I've always tried to avoid doing postwork. But for almost postwork one needs to do - if you don't have Photoshop, remember that Gimp is free. Its probably a good idea to learn Gimp even if one does have Photoshop as Photoshop upgrades get pricey, and now that they're on a subscription model... that price will get obscene if you move up (it seems small month-to-month, but adds up really quick).
Well put arcady.
Daz comes with many lights by default. Not just the ones from the "Add' menu. And there are some great tutorials on using them.
DzLights, Uber Lights, etc.
Some Tutorials come with useful stuff as well, Like the barefoot dancer and the second one with the dagger kit. Thing is, the light presets are immensely useful in stuff other then the tutorials.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewreply/645307/
case and point.
Tutorial Uber Area Lighting: The Basics
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/14536/
UE2 AKA, Learning UberEnvironment 2 Return To Topic
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/5320/
DzLights 101, More then just the Menu Lights.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/43303/
I agree, that is a very well written and detailed post which should be very useful to many new users. Thanks for posting.