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My recent 3D art FAQ. (WIP)
10 years ago
Though of writing this one due to the number of doubts I've received regarding the 3D art I've submitted recently. Since it's a WIP, I'll throw some more stuff in as it comes up. And no, I'm not a pro at this so go easy on poor little me. |D~
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1: What software(s) do you use?
Right now, Zbrush 4R7 for sculpting/adjusting geometry (Mostly for clipping/unfitting clothing and hair), Photoshop CS6 for texture editing (Extended editions only) and Daz Studio 4.8 to bring it all together, as it has a truckload of assets (backdrops, props, wardrobe, cameras, lights, rendering features, etc).
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2: Where do you get all your content?
Mostly from Daz's Store ( https://www.daz3d.com/shop ), sometimes other places like Renderosity, Renderotica, ShareCG, etc. Most of these have freebies or sales from time to time. But then again, I also create some things of my own.
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3: Can you make my character?
Not right now. To be honest, my current cougar figure is an adaptation of the default Genesis 2 Female model that comes along with Daz (which is free, by the way). I have RawArt's Cat World bundle ( http://www.daz3d.com/cat-world-bundle-set ), plus a few HD textures, but it's for Genesis 1. So I adapated the body morph first, mainly for their digitgrade feet (better than attaching Creature Creator's feet to a human figure) by using Transfer Utility to give the Genesis 2 model the Cat World models body form. Then, sculpted my own head & neck on top of their face AND the "lion head" morph, also from Creature Creator, in Zbrush. The last step was the texture, as the ones from CC are kind of bland (you can see them in some of my first 3D pictures). I tried using the ones in Cat World, but since they're for Genesis 1, the UV maps are different; a.k.a. I get horrid black spots and seams all over the model, not to mention severe texture misalignment (noses on chins, paw pads on top of shins, etc). So I use Photoshop to import the model and its textures and manually paint/clonetool the figure. In the case of my current one, it's a mix of the HD Sabretooth textures ( http://www.daz3d.com/cat-world-rege.....-hd-sabretooth ), some plain Photoshop brushing and my own details (like the black in the ears, 'cougary' face details, lips and brighter fur on the upper thighs/back).
Anyway, my point with all this is that most of what I have or do is still based or derived on others' work. While that makes it ok for posting, it's not ok for selling, unless I create them myself, from scratch. And I'm not that advanced yet (it's been less than a month since I first touched any 3D softwares, ever). I -might- make a character or two from others, for fun. But not that often. Right now, I'm mostly adapting textures and modeling heads and specific parts (like hands and feet).
__________________________________________________________________
4: Can you teach me to do 3D stuff too?
Nope, since I'm still learning, myself. I actually feel extremely insecure in it, still (amusingly, the title of my latest 'ventish' render). Mostly because...honestly, aside from the aforementioned textures, body parts and geometry alteration, I'm mostly organizing assets from others into a rendered scene. While it's what most 3D artists do (that I see, at least), it's much, much faster than modeling everything by hand, which would be ten times worse than regular 2D art, both in effort and time spent. But I'm still working hard to 'streamline' my texturing and modeling skills, so that at least that part will be original and give me some measure of pride. x3
That said, I do understand why many have doubts with 3D software. I found most of the 3D community to not be exactly...beginner-friendly. Most tend to talk about & refer to aspects that most beginners have no idea about. For example, you wonder why your character doesn't have that 'fur' texture to them. Asking around, you're gonna be asked about your Bump Maps, Normal Maps, Specular Maps, maybe even a LAMH Plugin. So now instead of one question, you have several more (What are these, what do they do, what's their relation to textures, what plugin is that, how do you use plugins, etc). So yeah, it takes some googling to get going. But to get started, Daz itself has several 'interactive' lessons, plus some more in the store that are free. For Zbrush, the best resource I've found so far is Zclassroom ( http://pixologic.com/zclassroom/homeroom/ ), with several dozen (maybe hundreds?) of instruction videos entirely for free. It's very useful, since, at least in my case, softwares like that tend to leave me overwhelmed at first. e_e
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5: Have you used <softwarenamehere>?
Aside from the three mentioned in Nº1 (Zbrush, Photoshop, Daz Studio), I've tried just 3D Coat and RealityPaint, for 3D Texture painting/editing. However, the first left me overwhelmed...and frustrated. The second was buggy, confusing and frankly lackluster. Thanks to a suggestion from a certain veteran in the field though, I'm also trying Autodesk Mudbox right now and might try a few others in time (Blender, Maya, Mari). I've also used Poser, but that's in a veeeeery distant past. And those are just a few. Googling yields tons more softwares, of varied licenses. :3
__________________________________________________________________
GLOSSARY:
(a.k.a. Some 3D terms I've used in the past that confused some people)
-RENDER: The finished 3D image I submit, as opposed to the 'preview' in the software, which is of far lower quality than what you see in the submitted image. Usually, depending on the amount of polygons and lights in the scene, it can take anywhere from 2 hours to 20 hours. The render details also affect the overall time (texture filtering & samples, filters, etc).
-MORPHS: At least in Daz, morphs are different forms you can 'Morph' your object into by using a slider. For example, a regular female body figure may have a "Bodybuilder" morph slider, which you can increase to make the character more muscular, without needing to load a different object (although you can save that object with that morph applied as a new object). It's also very useful because you can create your own. In my case, I modified the original female head to the current cougar head, then saved it to Daz as a morph preset, thus allowing me to turn it on or off as needed. I also used this to adapt the default human female feet to the present digitgrade anthro feet. There's actually many morphs for sale on the Daz Store too.
-ASSETS/CONTENT: I refer to everything I got from online stores AND left unaltered (except basic geometries, due to clipping) as 'Assets' or 'Content' (Daz refers to them as the latter). Otherwise, I just call them custom or handmade.
-FIGURES: Literally, the 'person' you pose around. Can be Human, Animal, Anthro, Robot, Creature, Fantasy, etc. You can even convert other inanimate objects to figures and pose them around.
-RIGS/RIGGING: I don't know how to do rigging myself, yet. But as far as I know, they're the 'bones' within a figure. Without establishing those, you can't pose the figure around because it'll be just one large 'block', so to say. Since I don't know how to do that yet, I stick to modifying an existing rigged figure (in this case, Genesis 2 Female). I'll need to learn it eventually though, in order to create my own figures.
-UV MAPS: They're simply coordinates to make a 2D texture 'wrap' around a specific figure. Since figures are different, UV Maps also are different. Thus, textures made for one map may not fit correctly on a different figure (as I mentioned above). An example of what they look like (the texture must fill or fit within the dark lines): https://www.dropbox.com/s/yfz0qzp6d.....14.10.png?dl=0
__________________________________________________________________
Feel free to ask your own questions here too. O:
__________________________________________________________________
1: What software(s) do you use?
Right now, Zbrush 4R7 for sculpting/adjusting geometry (Mostly for clipping/unfitting clothing and hair), Photoshop CS6 for texture editing (Extended editions only) and Daz Studio 4.8 to bring it all together, as it has a truckload of assets (backdrops, props, wardrobe, cameras, lights, rendering features, etc).
__________________________________________________________________
2: Where do you get all your content?
Mostly from Daz's Store ( https://www.daz3d.com/shop ), sometimes other places like Renderosity, Renderotica, ShareCG, etc. Most of these have freebies or sales from time to time. But then again, I also create some things of my own.
__________________________________________________________________
3: Can you make my character?
Not right now. To be honest, my current cougar figure is an adaptation of the default Genesis 2 Female model that comes along with Daz (which is free, by the way). I have RawArt's Cat World bundle ( http://www.daz3d.com/cat-world-bundle-set ), plus a few HD textures, but it's for Genesis 1. So I adapated the body morph first, mainly for their digitgrade feet (better than attaching Creature Creator's feet to a human figure) by using Transfer Utility to give the Genesis 2 model the Cat World models body form. Then, sculpted my own head & neck on top of their face AND the "lion head" morph, also from Creature Creator, in Zbrush. The last step was the texture, as the ones from CC are kind of bland (you can see them in some of my first 3D pictures). I tried using the ones in Cat World, but since they're for Genesis 1, the UV maps are different; a.k.a. I get horrid black spots and seams all over the model, not to mention severe texture misalignment (noses on chins, paw pads on top of shins, etc). So I use Photoshop to import the model and its textures and manually paint/clonetool the figure. In the case of my current one, it's a mix of the HD Sabretooth textures ( http://www.daz3d.com/cat-world-rege.....-hd-sabretooth ), some plain Photoshop brushing and my own details (like the black in the ears, 'cougary' face details, lips and brighter fur on the upper thighs/back).
Anyway, my point with all this is that most of what I have or do is still based or derived on others' work. While that makes it ok for posting, it's not ok for selling, unless I create them myself, from scratch. And I'm not that advanced yet (it's been less than a month since I first touched any 3D softwares, ever). I -might- make a character or two from others, for fun. But not that often. Right now, I'm mostly adapting textures and modeling heads and specific parts (like hands and feet).
__________________________________________________________________
4: Can you teach me to do 3D stuff too?
Nope, since I'm still learning, myself. I actually feel extremely insecure in it, still (amusingly, the title of my latest 'ventish' render). Mostly because...honestly, aside from the aforementioned textures, body parts and geometry alteration, I'm mostly organizing assets from others into a rendered scene. While it's what most 3D artists do (that I see, at least), it's much, much faster than modeling everything by hand, which would be ten times worse than regular 2D art, both in effort and time spent. But I'm still working hard to 'streamline' my texturing and modeling skills, so that at least that part will be original and give me some measure of pride. x3
That said, I do understand why many have doubts with 3D software. I found most of the 3D community to not be exactly...beginner-friendly. Most tend to talk about & refer to aspects that most beginners have no idea about. For example, you wonder why your character doesn't have that 'fur' texture to them. Asking around, you're gonna be asked about your Bump Maps, Normal Maps, Specular Maps, maybe even a LAMH Plugin. So now instead of one question, you have several more (What are these, what do they do, what's their relation to textures, what plugin is that, how do you use plugins, etc). So yeah, it takes some googling to get going. But to get started, Daz itself has several 'interactive' lessons, plus some more in the store that are free. For Zbrush, the best resource I've found so far is Zclassroom ( http://pixologic.com/zclassroom/homeroom/ ), with several dozen (maybe hundreds?) of instruction videos entirely for free. It's very useful, since, at least in my case, softwares like that tend to leave me overwhelmed at first. e_e
__________________________________________________________________
5: Have you used <softwarenamehere>?
Aside from the three mentioned in Nº1 (Zbrush, Photoshop, Daz Studio), I've tried just 3D Coat and RealityPaint, for 3D Texture painting/editing. However, the first left me overwhelmed...and frustrated. The second was buggy, confusing and frankly lackluster. Thanks to a suggestion from a certain veteran in the field though, I'm also trying Autodesk Mudbox right now and might try a few others in time (Blender, Maya, Mari). I've also used Poser, but that's in a veeeeery distant past. And those are just a few. Googling yields tons more softwares, of varied licenses. :3
__________________________________________________________________
GLOSSARY:
(a.k.a. Some 3D terms I've used in the past that confused some people)
-RENDER: The finished 3D image I submit, as opposed to the 'preview' in the software, which is of far lower quality than what you see in the submitted image. Usually, depending on the amount of polygons and lights in the scene, it can take anywhere from 2 hours to 20 hours. The render details also affect the overall time (texture filtering & samples, filters, etc).
-MORPHS: At least in Daz, morphs are different forms you can 'Morph' your object into by using a slider. For example, a regular female body figure may have a "Bodybuilder" morph slider, which you can increase to make the character more muscular, without needing to load a different object (although you can save that object with that morph applied as a new object). It's also very useful because you can create your own. In my case, I modified the original female head to the current cougar head, then saved it to Daz as a morph preset, thus allowing me to turn it on or off as needed. I also used this to adapt the default human female feet to the present digitgrade anthro feet. There's actually many morphs for sale on the Daz Store too.
-ASSETS/CONTENT: I refer to everything I got from online stores AND left unaltered (except basic geometries, due to clipping) as 'Assets' or 'Content' (Daz refers to them as the latter). Otherwise, I just call them custom or handmade.
-FIGURES: Literally, the 'person' you pose around. Can be Human, Animal, Anthro, Robot, Creature, Fantasy, etc. You can even convert other inanimate objects to figures and pose them around.
-RIGS/RIGGING: I don't know how to do rigging myself, yet. But as far as I know, they're the 'bones' within a figure. Without establishing those, you can't pose the figure around because it'll be just one large 'block', so to say. Since I don't know how to do that yet, I stick to modifying an existing rigged figure (in this case, Genesis 2 Female). I'll need to learn it eventually though, in order to create my own figures.
-UV MAPS: They're simply coordinates to make a 2D texture 'wrap' around a specific figure. Since figures are different, UV Maps also are different. Thus, textures made for one map may not fit correctly on a different figure (as I mentioned above). An example of what they look like (the texture must fill or fit within the dark lines): https://www.dropbox.com/s/yfz0qzp6d.....14.10.png?dl=0
__________________________________________________________________
Feel free to ask your own questions here too. O:
My question: Have you ever thought about developing Oculus Rift or other VR content using your models?