Why I'm not at Blender yet
Masterstroke
Posts: 1,968
Today is a good reason to consider to dump DS and go to Blender entirely.
Huge problems for me with that:
1) I just don't get Blender! Just tried recentl. a complete enigma to me. Played once with Maya at a friend's place. Even Maya made more sense.
I started of with cinema4D and got kind of used to its interface, but Blenders UI still does not mak any sende to me.
2) The obvious! I need to migrate Roxy for g8f to Blender with all her custom made expressions, JCMs, materials and anatomical elements.
This is my dilemma. I'm stuck with DS, like stuck with a partner, you've just caught cheating on you. (premier)
C4D, Reallusion, Maya are way out of my finacial range and I'd still had the same problems migrating my digital girl.
Any advises?
no, never mind
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Comments
I understand premier is adding new features, not removing existing ones. Plus one can still use 4.22 if he doesn't like 4.23 for whatever reason.
As for migrating a custom figure to blender, with materials geografts and custom morphs, diffeomorphic should do it quite good. Just use easy import with "baked correctives" enabled. Though personally I believe the power of blender is to customize figures and scenes rather than importing exactly from daz. As for blender being complex to learn, yes it is.
You are not the only one. Blender is very hard to start. I have been playing a bit with it for a while and is still challenging.
One of the things i still find hard (and i wasn't that stuck with daz as long as most) is the middle mouse button for movement. It will give you nighmares, lol
There are couple reasons to not change the mouse/key bindings too much (unless is strictly necessary). The most important one is that every video/tutorials you will see the person will be using middle mouse move and most of the defaults keybinds.
Yes.
0- Don't open blender until you are ready to do something.
1- Blender can do a lot of things, but other things it may not be good at all. Think what you want to achive and see if that is available. If there is something, go to next step.
2- Look for tutorials. For each thing that blender can do, There are a lot of people making tutorials. Look for those target at begginer/first step on the things you would like to do as they will explain the interface targeted at that use.
3- Combine 1 and 2 and then open blender. Having 2 monitors, or second equipment where you see the tutorials while working is a huge plus.
(optional)
4- Full keyboard, not compact and with numpad is recommended. I have a compact keyboard because i used to share the desk with two laptops and i do miss some keys, need to buy a new one but i'm kind of broke after upgrading and switching back to desktop and don't want to buy cheap one.
Numpad can be USB/BT not included with main keyboard. OR use an MMO mouse (the ones for gaming that have 12 keys on the side). Even having full keyboard an MMO mouse could help.
5- Addons/Extensions: Use and play with the free ones as you like. For paid ones, search what many people say before spending. There are many addons worth paying for, but some content creators can be a bit too obsesed or 'too interested' so see if its the real deal and you will actually have a use for those.
Note: That was just an opinion from someone still trying things out that find similar issues as a barrier to use it more. Not a blender expert.
I also started off with C4D (V4). It was great, easy to understand, and easy to use. However, I couldn't afford to keep upgrading and went to Carrara Studio. It was also quite logical and easy to use, and developed native support for DAZ figures. Then DAZ bought it and gradually stopped developing it. DAS Studio (DS) is great at what it does, figure posing and rendering, but it's missing sooo much that I needed in Carrara. With the update to the UI in Blender (3.8?) I found a usable alternative to Carrara. Blender does have a rather difficult learning curve, but it really isn't insurmountable. I haven't used it much with DAZ figures, But I have used it for several animations for documentaries (no human figures needed except for one small project).
After you get past the initial feeling of being totally lost in Blender, you begin to see just how powerful and flexible it is. Two things can help you get past the initial stage of feeling lost. One is to do a few tutorials to just get your head around how things are done in Blender, The "Donut" tutorial is a must do IMHO simply because it exposes you to some of the possibilities and capabilities of Blender. The other thing that will help is to do a few projects in Blender. Pick something your interested in, and take it to completion. It might simply be doing something like bringing your own DAZ character into Blender, and maybe a prop or two, and make a simple render. don't try too much at once, and keep it simple so you can begin to understand how lights, shaders, and the UI work. Then try another more involved image (maybe improving the materials, using an HDRI and lights, etc.).
The key is to not give up. Blender will feel uncomfortable at first, and that's OK. The more you work with it, the easier it will become. It's a very complex bit of software that doesn't hide the complexity from the user like DS does. But with a bit of determination it can be learned, and the rewards can be well worth it.
Now, something that might help motivate you to learn Blender. Here is a product that will help to give you a great starting point for the shaders on your character. "One Click Skin Shader - Humanify" - here is a YouTube Video for it : https://youtu.be/HqFRU7QIq-o?si=3rR6ZT-3PZaRX4YS
Started with Poser and C4D/Vray as well. Even wrote Daz and C4D scripts to transfer V4 and G3 to C4D in the past. Left C4D when they changed their payment model.
Also used Carrara until Daz bought it and stopped the further development.
When Blender changed the interface, I had a closer look at it and now I climb up the steep learning curve. Diffeomorphic is a great extension to get the base over and enhance it.
Still a lot to learn and it is not easy. I give you that.
Stayed with Daz Studio 4.21 and Blender 4.2. New features are nice, but we should be able to use the existing features first. Went through a lot of tutorials on Youtube and Udemy and decided to share my workflow for dummies. This may take a while though and I hope to share something by the start of the next year.
Had a look at Humanify. It looks great, but I am uncertain about the integration in my workflow. Decided to stay with G8/G8.1. I have a lot of converters to get the old stuff (V4.2, G3) there.
Learning one thing just because you're not happy with another thing may not really make you happy... let alone learning Blender, IMHO ~~
So just learn Blender when you really love to learn it.
For me too, Blender 'clicked' at version 2.8 with the improved UI. I can heartily recommend the Donut tutorial mentioned above to get started, and yes, once you have some clue about the basic operations, start a project of your own, even if it's only to model the desk you sit at while you work with Blender ;-)
There are many tutorials out there, both paid and unpaid; find some that you like to explore more of Blender's capabilities.
One thing: you don't have to know everything. If you like modelling, but don't care about animation for example, just look at the basics because you will sometimes work with a timeline (just as with dForce in Studio).
Don't go crazy buying addons, models and textures! One addon that I'd advice everyone to look at is Blenderkit. The free version already gives you an enormous supply of materials, as well as models.
Edit: One more piece of advice, don't feel obliged to operate the view through the numeric keypad; the gizmo is perfectly functional.
Oh, I dunno, spite can be a great motivator.
However, Blender really is a lot of fun in itself, once you have the basics down.
If you have already followed some of his tutorial Jay Versluis also have a couple based on Blender, either as a standalone product or as a tool to create morphs for Daz Studio, on his youtube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@WPguru
I followed mostly the ones about clothes, and it provided a base knowledge to know what I was doing (or at least, to think I knew what I was doing but in the end, I had FBM and PBM working on some clothes, so, yeah ?
).
I tried to follow the donut tutorial, but at one point, I messed up something and I had to redo some part and got a bit fed up, but I'll likely start from scracth in the futur: the explanation felt clear enough (I think it's mostly that I'm not interested in modeling a donut)
My two years' journey in Blender proves your 2nd point... just because I've been learning and using it with happiness, plus using DS of course, haha ~
It all boils down to a 100% crap user interface (I don't mean it is bad, I mean it is not like anything else, and that by itself is bad), a Windows user have no idea how to use Blender, a Linux user also has no idea how to use it, delete key does not work, only backspace, the middle mouse button crap drive you nuts, hidden Windows 8 style areas where you click and drag and exciting things happen.... maybe, deleting collections will drive most users mad when things go crazy in the hierarchy, the outliner is bonkers, you have to click on the node you want to do something with and then you have to click the correct tab also to do anything.
To add to the madness, most tutorials tell you to click this or that shortcut, they don't tell you what happens when you press it, just to press it, that works fine until you changed the shortcuts to something less crazy.
On top of that you have the gazzilon of Blender fanatics that only know how to say "Use blender instead"
And the person that decided to user vertical tabs with text should be punished in a warm dark place (espically with the N plugin menu).
OMG!! Consider me motivated!!!
Really great advice, @Wolfwood.
I'd use even stronger advice: a numpad is required. The hotkeys for some very important viewport and camera functions rely on the numpad, things one uses very, very often. These functions are available through the menus, but it ruins Blender's efficiency.
Some other advice I'd give is that we become better at everything through repetition. Using Blender makes one better at it. Wasting time complaining that it's hard, does not. It's hard because it is different, and better. Trust what the proponents are saying and I did not miss that DS apparently just added away to use the hotkeys of other apps, Blender included.
I found there is a tremendous amount of outdated information and tutorials online for learning Blender. That makes a steep learning curve even more difficult. It can be maddening.
That being said I am so glad that I fought through all of it. I sculpt in Blender nearly every day, it's awesome! It was/is a challenging journey to get here. It was helpful to me to brake down the learning process into smaller steps, it was much more manageable.
Any recommendations for non-video tutorials?
If you want to get gud at blender, the magic key is learning the keyboard shortcuts. There are a few that you will be using constantly, a few that you will use less. Others, having it set up for spacebar to search will aid in finding it. I have seen some users get insanely fast with pi menu + gesture too, but I never got into that method. Seems a lot quicker to me to just push a certain key. If you are going through menu for everything, it's gonna be a lot slower and tedious, at least it was to me.
@murgatroyd314 Jay does both video and write ups (thankfully). Blender
The Blender Reference Manual is here.
With the sculpting interface I find it easiest to use a Stylus and Graphics Tablet. It is a very similar experience to sculpting in clay with a tool. I never touch the keyboard until I need to name a file. I love that.
Thanks for you respondses :-)
There is also Bforartists, which is suppose to be more mouse friendly, but I struggle even with that one. Something about the Blender concept is absolutely counter intuitive to me.
I've watchted many YT Blender tutorial videos.
Paraphrazing:
"If you want to do this job in Blender, you only need to do this,
then you do this, than just go to here and only do this
yadyadayada
<25 minutes later>
And finally just do this and only click here and you're already done."
Really?!
30 minutes with every sentence containing the words "only" and "just".
@Masterstroke
Maybe if you pointed out your specific problem where you get stuck? I'm sure there are lots of people here who could help you by saying exactly what to do, and after some time of doing that you'll be flying along in Blender.
This is interesting. I have aquired a Wacom Tablet several years ago that I used with Photoshop CS6. It would be nice to use this with Blender as well. E.g. for texture painting and sculpting. Have to look for some tutorials out there.
@Singular3D Some tablets have issues with the sliders in Blender. The fix is here.
Operating the view controls with a stylus does have a learning curve but it is not difficult.
Thanks for the link. Jay seems to have some valuable info there for other stuff as well.
Ok so, please do not take this as advertising products. This is how I've dealt with issues earlier in the thread. On the topic of keyboard, I've been using https://www.logitech.com/en-us/products/keyboards/k360-compact-wireless.920-004088.html for years as it is a lot smaller than standard keyboard and has a full keypad. Then to the problem of middle mouse button, the answer is a mouse that has a middle mouse button separate from the scroll wheel and I use an old logitech mx anywhere 2s for that - could buy something newer but that one keeps going and going. So, no reason to avoid blender because of the controllers needed and naturally one can buy something much fancier and more expensive.
I agree, a pen tablet is great for sculpting and such. I have one of those gorgeous XP-Pen 24" 1440p tablet monitors for that. I like it a lot!
I love Blender! It's really a great program to render in. I think the biggest thing about it is the learning curve, but once you know the how,where and why's, you will move away from DS for rendering. Not saying DS is bad for rendering, but Blender provides a lot more options when it comes to rendering and the results you want to achieve. The addons for Blender are awesome, and sculpting is really fun. I find it a bit funner than Zbrush, but that's just a personal choice. Once you get to understand the fuctions, nodes etc... of Blender you will see it's benefits. I can tell you,just from my personal expirence, I like rendering in Blender because of OptiX. I feel throttled in DS when it comes to rendering, not at all in Blender.
I would NOT reccomend Humanify. I purchased that in May, they have not kept their promise in terms of new skins and fixing the seam issues. HOWEVER, their Global Skin is very impressive, and i have been using that quite a bit.I rendered this in Blender and with GS. GS is far superior to Humanify, and the ability to change pretty much everything you need to