A few questions about character creation for Daz store

infinitetofu

Hi. I discovered Daz early this summer and quickly became addicted to it. One of the things I found most interesting was character creating. I'm working on a character for the Daz store and I have a few questions.

1) I notice that many of the characters now have both 3Delight and Iray mats. I understand where to find the Iray shaders, but am I to understand that the default is 3Delight?

2) How do I make a character HD? Is it as simple as having the HD add-on for the base character dialed in?

3) I have the merchant skin resource for G2F and I understand that I have to change it up by about 20% in order to resell with it. I'm a little confused about morphs though. My understanding is that any morphs I use (for example, Shape Shift by Zevo) have to be owned by the person buying my character. Is that right?

Any additional information you think I should know would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Here is my model, Chloe, rendered in Luxrender.

 

frank0314

Iray is the default and not 3DL. Only current PA's have the tools to make HD characters. You should consider making the morphs yourself. Its gives you a bigger selling point.

infinitetofu

Thanks for the info! I'm not sure I understand how this works though. I have the Ultimate Merchant Resource Kit for G2F, so if I create a character using these textures, they will default in Iray? I'm confused about that, because it was around long before Iray. Is there another step somewhere or is it something that is done on Daz's side? Totally confused.

Thanks for answering my question about HD!

Richard Haseltine

Iray and 3Delight are the render engines. Material settings can use 3Delight shaders or Iray, mainly the Iray Uber shader. Textures are just maps - you need to set up the material settings to load the maps and apply the correct values to the shader used for 3Delight and/or iray - Iray is now the default render engine but your product should be at least usable in both engines.

Is the "change about 20%" from the docs for the resource? There isn't a general "change x%" rule, how much you have to do and how it is measured is set by the creator of a merchant resource package.

infinitetofu

Thanks for the reply. You've helped clear up some of the confusion I have about Iray and 3Delight shader settings.

The 20% change I got from a tutorial by Dreamlight. The merchant kit I got isn't specific--well, I haven't read all the documentation yet--it just says that I must alter them and make them my own. But I will definitely read all the documentation included with the product.

This is for frank0314: as far as making my own morphs go, won't I have to rig it once I get the morph created? Realistically, I can't use Zbrush (too expensive!) so I'd have to use something like Sculptris, but then I need to rig it so that it works in Daz, right? Do I sculpt it, then import into Daz as .obj, then rig it in Daz? For the sake of argument, let's say I sculpted an entire character in another program. Assuming I can rig it in Daz, how does it get recognized as a base figure such as Genesis or Genesis 2? Does that occur during the rigging process? It seems awfully complicated. For my first character, I think I want to keep it simple.

mjc1016

Morph creation...very simple version...

1. Export model you are making the morph for at Base Resolution/0 Subdivision (Parameters tab) in OBJ format.

2. Import into modeling application, making sure that you keeping Vertex order and groupings.

3. Make morph.  Export morph, making sure that the Vertex order is kept.

4. Use Morph Loader to 'import' the morph. 

A few other pointers...

Make sure you use the same export/import scale.

Do not add/remove any vertices in the modeling app.

With extreme morphs, some rigging adjustments may need to be done in Studio, after import.

infinitetofu

Thank you mjc1016. That's very helpful. Wow, so do I have to buy the $119 morph loader to do this? Please tell me I only need this for using external morphs.

What I really want to do for my first character is just something simple, but elegant. There are so many morphs in Daz already and one can get great results from those alone. As I understand it from the Dreamlight tutorial and the Daz PA documentation, all I need to do is create a character using a base UV, some morphs such as G2F face and body morphs, and a texture mat resource pack like the one I bought, provided that I alter them in some way. That, along with make-up and nails and such, is all I need to submit a character for approval to the sell in the store. Right?

Down the line, I'd like to get more exotic with custom morphs, but this is my first attempt at doing something like this. It's already been a steep learning curve just getting here from point zero in the last two months. I've learned my way around Daz, Photoshop and Blender and it's all been a lot of fun, but now I'd like to get down to brass tacks and just get this project completed.

mjc1016

Morph Loader is included in Studio...

infinitetofu

Awesome! Then I will totally take a stab at creating morphs for a character. Man, when I woke up this morning I had no idea I'd be creating my own morphs. Life sure is a roller coaster ride of twists and turns. 

Thanks everyone!

mjc1016, you've been especially helpful. 

mjc1016

One thing...it may not show on all layouts, but if you switch to the City Limits layout (Window >Select Layout) it will show up on the far right.

infinitetofu

Thanks!