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Hello... as a complete newbie with a keen interest in animation (Graphic Artist - old school) I am teaching myself a "new " skill... Can someone please advise on what software they use, some tutorials etc for a complete beginner?
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greetings and Welcome
Most folks here will tell you to visit DAZ 3D for their free DAZ Studio software It will give you a taste of what it can do and of course upgrades are available, anyone will tell you this sort of hobby is not cheap
tutorials can be found on You toob and from what I hear there are a lot of them..
If you decide to get into this then join DAZ's Platinum club and go for the yearly fee this way with any DAZ items you get 20-30% off and it's always best to buy a bundle as they are already discounted and with the platinum discount you can save even more.
Regards Shadoman Who knows what lurks in the hearts of perverted artist....
The Shado Knows
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As Shadoman said, Daz is the way to go right now. The software is free, and then you can see if that part of the hobby makes sense. Poser would be the other big hobbyist tool, but Daz has the newer models and the more functional in-app physics based rendering option (imo, the only way to go for new users). Https://www.daz3d.com3D animation? That's a harder prospect. The next release of Daz (4.12, currently in the beta channel) is supposed to have improved animation tools. Animating 3D models takes a lot more computing power, though. Rendering a static 2D image at high resolution takes time. Multiple frames per second? That's why the interesting stuff comes out of other tools like Source Filmmaker. Exporting to 2D and animating that way is my current learning curve. There are plenty of tools to take 2D art and animate it. Live2D Cubism, Spine, Dragonbones, Synfig, Pencil2D. Most of those are free.
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Thank you so much - let me play with Daz a bit - and I will report back.
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PS - how many of you use a pen to draw with?
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I don't use a pen and tablet. I don't have enough use to justify the cost, I guess.
I render and manipulate in GIMP. It's not very complex work. I only need a mouse and keyboard for that.
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I'm of the same heritage, traditional graphic artists that went digital. While the software (Studio from Daz3D) is free, the characters and accessories can be expensive. This is how Daz funds the free software. My advice is to start with the V4.2 figure (lovingly referred to as Vicky four). She is cheap (but not slutty) and has a collection of clothes, poses, expressions, characters, jewelry and other accessories that all the other figures combined have yet to equal. There's also a pile of free items and characters available for her. You can get some experience inexpensively before deciding to dive in. Apply the Iray Uber shader and she looks just fine rendered in Iray. Don't let others browbeat you with hysterical cries that she's old school and ancient. That's all bullshit. The realism shown in a render is more to do with the skill of the artist than the items used. There's an excellent forum where I see renders using Vicky Four that are every bit as good (sometimes better) than anything done with Genesis Eight. As a professional artist I don't have to tell you that having better tools doesn't necessarily translate into a better product. Its the skill in using the tools you have. Making your own items...do not pass go, do not collect $200. Go directly to Blender ( https://www.blender.org/ ). The new 2.8 release is easy and intuitive and there are at least a billion-trillion-gazillion excellent tutorials available (no really!...I counted them.) Blender is a 3D program for creating stuff. Snoop through the Daz3D forums and you'll find links to tutorials on moving between blender and Studio. I lived with a large tablet and pen while I was still working, as I was mainly in Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects. I didn't find it helped in 3D. I bought a 3D 'Space Mouse' that turned out to be a pain in the ass to use. Others have different opinions on them.
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Originally Posted by: brookes  I'm of the same heritage, traditional graphic artists that went digital.
That's all bullshit. The realism shown in a render is more to do with the skill of the artist than the items used. There's an excellent forum where I see renders using Vicky Four that are every bit as good (sometimes better) than anything done with Genesis Eight. As a professional artist I don't have to tell you that having better tools doesn't necessarily translate into a better product. Its the skill in using the tools you have.
Sorry. Bad advice... V4 IS old. The bends are bad and the marketplace has moved on to newer models. V4 base is NOT free, unless you catch one of the times DAZ gives it away free.. all the genesis bases are free, you can buy a genital package here or through one of DAZ's Pro bundles... V4 doesn't have genitals at all as a default, so you're still buying content. There's are characters that you can buy for both v4 and genesis that only require the base... so no savings there. And yes there's tons of freebies for genesis and all of them can be autofitted to the latest version... and an extra few steps can convert the V4 stuff as well. So if you're going to shell out the same money to get the figure up to where you need it to be, it's far more wiser to do it with more current stuff.
EDIT big note: to use most of the newest features in DAZ Studio, they're made for genesis not V4 because it's old tech and v4 isn't supported.
Edited by user Wednesday, July 31, 2019 6:13:42 AM(UTC)
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 2 users thanked terrancew_hod for this useful post.
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Hello Kryptika,
Here is my two bits.
First of all, you have inadvertantly been injected into an ongoing 'debate' about what is better, who is better etc. Largely between the program Poser and DAZ 3D.
But that is all I will say of it, just explaining some of what you're seeing here.
Now onto it, what brookes says is true, V4 can look good with the right tweaks and effort, and in experienced hands.
But here is the rub for me though, as DAZ has progressed in technology, they have added over the years active morphs to the arms and legs and other parts to make it look more or closer to realistic, not to say it's perfect yet, there are many products being sold by vendors to improve on this, like sitting morphs for the buttocks, so they flatten correctly etc.
And all this CAN be done in V4, but it takes much more effort and time to do it, and if time = money or however you want to look at it, using that old model will take extra time and effort you may or may not be willing to spend.
Now if you go and look at various picture galleries, you can spot which is a V4 generally and in my opinion by the way the arms and shoulders look. Many times it tends to look like a balloon animal, with distortion in the joints and ballooning around the muscular and soft tissue areas, and all this can be fixed with the correct morphs, but each and every time it will take manual adjustment. Plus you will have to create the morphs or buy them, which can be done most should be still available.
Genesis 8/Victoria 8/V8 will take some tweaking too, but not nearly as much and mainly in the soft tissue areas like as I said before, the buttocks, breasts etc. And there are many products to help with that, a vendor named Zev0 has many great products to help with this. As do many vendors here, Meipe is a great vendor with many products that will help you. Take a look at these vendors if you decide to go this route.
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Look in the gallery and ask the artists what they are using in the work that you like. Don't just take our word for it.
I use Genesis 2 and 8 mostly, so I know I'm biased towards 8.
I'd recommend Genesis 9 today if it were available, though. Always the latest IMO.
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EDIT: Apparently telling the whole truth has caused a minor insurrection so I'm going to tweak this post. If you simply want to make pretty pictures Daz is easy but upgrades are expensive. Daz is largely undocumented and that seems to be by design. The most recent book I could find online is an Oreilly that's six years old. Daz forums are ok for help but be very careful what you say about things because ideas are stolen over there. But there are a few helpful people. Haseltine and Sickleyield come to mind. My recommendation is to learn Blender and also keep Daz handy for protoyping characters you like which you can then simply export in to Blender as an obj or filmbox. Also, the contwnt artists work very hard to make quality products for you around here. You can also buy those and export them in to Blender if you're so inclined. Blender is great for learning. Its renderer is much faster and you can also design meshes in a top flight mesh editing program. It handles many different file types pretty easily. You can animate much better. Its extremely well supported. It's well documented. Oh did I mention it's free? In short Daz is a useful program for dressing dolls. It is only nominally a 3D program in my opinion. But it does dress them well. EDIT II: There, is everybody happy as a pig in shit now? Edited by user Thursday, August 1, 2019 9:43:13 AM(UTC)
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Originally Posted by: causam EDIT: Apparently telling the whole truth has caused a minor insurrection so I'm going to tweak this post.
If you simply want to make pretty pictures Daz is easy but upgrades are expensive. Daz is largely undocumented and that seems to be by design. The most recent book I could find online is an Oreilly that's six years old.
Yet there's tons of great renders and content. 
So obviously there's a flaw in that argument  Blender is free but to use those new renderers you're going to spend the same money for upgrades, so that point was moot.
Really the point with using DAZ and the new tech was to help new users easily fit clothes and render, which is an improvement over older figures like V4... which was actually the point of the original recommendation.
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Originally Posted by: terrancew_hod
Originally Posted by: causam EDIT: Apparently telling the whole truth has caused a minor insurrection so I'm going to tweak this post.
If you simply want to make pretty pictures Daz is easy but upgrades are expensive. Daz is largely undocumented and that seems to be by design. The most recent book I could find online is an Oreilly that's six years old.
Yet there's tons of great renders and content.
So obviously there's a flaw in that argument Blender is free but to use those new renderers you're going to spend the same money for upgrades, so that point was moot.
Really the point with using DAZ and the new tech was to help new users easily fit clothes and render, which is an improvement over older figures like V4... which was actually the point of the original recommendation.
I think what he's referring to is learning just Studio vs learning both Studio and Blender. If you want to make 3d objects and make them well, Blender is an actual modeling program and Studio (without Hexagon) is not.
Whether Blender has better rendering results than Studio/Iray is debatable, but Blender is definitey the best (low cost/free) modeling solution out there for people just starting out. I doubt you'd find anyone to defend the quality of Hexagon as being better than Blender, I'm not saying Hexagon doesn't have its uses, but the fact that there's almost no major content creators still using it is telling.
Personally I prefer rendering in Studio/Iray, but again, that's personal preferrence/ease of use.
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Originally Posted by: Thunder-3D
Originally Posted by: terrancew_hod
Originally Posted by: causam EDIT: Apparently telling the whole truth has caused a minor insurrection so I'm going to tweak this post.
If you simply want to make pretty pictures Daz is easy but upgrades are expensive. Daz is largely undocumented and that seems to be by design. The most recent book I could find online is an Oreilly that's six years old.
Yet there's tons of great renders and content.
So obviously there's a flaw in that argument Blender is free but to use those new renderers you're going to spend the same money for upgrades, so that point was moot.
Really the point with using DAZ and the new tech was to help new users easily fit clothes and render, which is an improvement over older figures like V4... which was actually the point of the original recommendation.
I think what he's referring to is learning just Studio vs learning both Studio and Blender. If you want to make 3d objects and make them well, Blender is an actual modeling program and Studio (without Hexagon) is not.
Whether Blender has better rendering results than Studio/Iray is debatable, but Blender is definitey the best (low cost/free) modeling solution out there for people just starting out. I doubt you'd find anyone to defend the quality of Hexagon as being better than Blender, I'm not saying Hexagon doesn't have its uses, but the fact that there's almost no major content creators still using it is telling.
Personally I prefer rendering in Studio/Iray, but again, that's personal preferrence/ease of use.
But going back to the OP's original post, the poster asked what would be the best software for a "complete beginner". So is suggesting blender, with no base figures, content and notorious for a long learning curve, the right thing to suggest?
What happened instead of people properly offering suggestions for a complete beginner, they are getting triggered and not using logical arguments without considering the original subject or the poster.
At least some suggested the simpler software that makes putting a scene together, with clothing and content (some which is freely included and available on various sites like Renderosity and *deleted*) without messing with older CR2s which once you save you cannot change and are harder for beginners to use... particularly with fitting clothing and is a can a worms once you try to add an aftermarket gens to it and add new characters. Some of older users have gigs of cr2s of characters set up for scenes that we have to keep saving out when we make any change to them.
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