Daz studio is 3d package for posing and rendering 3d models. Its really fexible if you think about it as a character creation tool. Its been around for a very long time and I have messed with it to see what makes it tick from time to time. Well it has a fairly large database of character clothing and models to mess with.
The issue is that the models are super high quality. Maybe one or two generations over the level of quality you see in something like Witcher 3. Well, kind of.
Anyway I just messed around for a little bit and find that its remarkably easy to export from DAZ to UE4 and even include the base pass for the character materials. Its just too **** easy to make just about any kind of character export it. I dont really have any assets in my library but what I do have isn’t even remotely up to date. These things are years old.
I mean, who knows, if you are working on a project where it wont have lots and lots of characters on screen then why not just use a full quality 3d model? Could save a lot of time and effort.
My only question remaining is if it would be easy to rig these characters to the base skeleton on the UE4 third person model. If that ends up being an easy task then this could just be a fantastic way to get some characters put together.
edit: I have absolutely nothing to do with the DAZ studio development team. This was an observation I made by myself
I can see the potential there, certainly working with some elses precreated textures saves time when you’re doing your materials, especially if you can export the alpha and object maps. The biggest concern is polycount. From what I’ve seen of Daz, because they’re targeted and prerendered scenes, they’re not optimised for gamedev. Which makes each character prohibitively expensive to put in a game beyond cinematics. It might look fine in a demo level, but once the density of stuff on screen goes up, you really feel the cost.
We have been looking at Daz Studio for a few years and was thinking of going with the Genesis 2 system but jumped on it with the introduction of Genesis 3 which seems to be a lot more flexible. The base model is only 34k which also includes body parts that you may or may not need but there are optimization options with a lot of room to work with if you add something like a 3ds Max to the pipeline.
Lots of features with low cost modules but our content team loves it as there is a GoZ bridge that you can send the base Genesis 3 model over to Zbrush, make the base clothing, and the use the pro morpher back in and fit the clothing to any custom model design you come up with.
For sure worth the look at if you keep in mind that the total feature and tool sets available requires a learning curve equal to UE4 and once Epic fixes a few minor FBX import bugs it’s a no brainer Daz Studio will be adding tools, along with what they already included in the last release, to manage polycounts.
As for rendering one of our first tests using DS.
With out sounding like an ad there is also the flip side in that you can bring in your own custom designs and make use of the tools in DS and it will not cost you a cent so free is a good feature that makes it worth buying.
There is a possible downside in the form of the licenses, but it does look good. You can generate a good texture, from what I hear, and if you have someone who can decimate it then rig it, you’ll be on to a winner. Of course, if these last two areas come anytime soon, I’ll be buying it.
Models are way too high poly for my tastes, and the license fees are prohibitively expensive for my budget… not too mention that one of the main strengths of using Daz3D is the sheer amount of textures for the models, which only a fraction of them even have the ability to be licensed.
high poly count isn’t a problem, the issue with Daz3D is all their character look very generic there’s sense of personality to them. You’re better off taking photo’s of a real person head ,turning that into to a 3d model is easy via software.
The basic licensing is the same as Epic’s marketplace in that if you buy and download an asset your licensed in hand but at the moment only covers the need for 2D image rendering. At the “moment” the <100,000 Indie license is $500 and the >100,000 is $2000 but since it is Daz 3D they have a habit of lowering, putting on sale, or out right giving away for free in support of their real business of selling art assets.
The other consideration is Daz 3D is not the only asset site that supplies working assets using the “free” Daz Studio application.
A lot of the free stuff is covered under CC0 which is compatible with Epic’s Unreal 4 licensing.
Texture wise there is a texture atlas tool that will combine all of the textures into a single image and since DS does support Substances you have a lot of options in that area. If you need a lower polycount there is also a decimator that will lower the count but processing in 3ds Max using Pro Optimizer does a better job.
To point it out again you don’t buy Daz Studio or the Genesis 3 frame work as both are part of the same download package which you get for free and if your only need is to make 2D sprite sheets then your licensed in hand based on what you buy or what you obtain under CC0.
Then again as someone mentioned there is Morph 3D which is
Daz 3D repackaging Daz Studio in a more direct to Unreal 4 fashion.
LOL here’s me sounding like an ad again but Daz 3D’s marketing strategy is to sell digital art assets at a reasonable price and supplying the means to any individual to be used in any way they wish. After all Unreal 4 is no longer “just” about making video games and if Epic can fix the FBX importer and supply a proper hair shader would open UE4 to a much larger market place where polycount does not matter.
Good news for Daz models lovers, now you can use mixamo.com to upload your model from Daz and get it rigged and animated for free… BTW recently mixamo added an option for downloading to save as special fbx for UE4 and that means the known rig of UE so you can easy retarget all the animations packages from the market …
I been working on a personal project for the last 6 weeks. It is just a test of conforming and morphing.
I took all the tri files from Skyrim’s character and used Bodyslide to generate body morphs and some outfits for this test. The current model has over 300 morphs and can be done live in game play once I get the code sorted out. What this boils down to is a customizable char that can have any shape or color with conforming armor.
It could, if they make a plugin for UE4. It is to be noted that they have not committed to UE4 yet. Daz3D figures currently can morph using the current morphing tools in UE4. There is a YouTube video by a regular on the forums that showcases how to do this with DAZ Studio, 3DS Max and UE4.
Until it’s out I’ll have to assume that Morph3D will offer the same level of usability as DS does. The only flaw with DS at the moment is it has a very high learning curve equal to UE4.
There is also an export/import bug at the moment that one has to take a detour through 3ds Max that is preventing a direct DS > UE4 pipeline but once fixed but once again once fixed I would assume that Morph3d would also offer the same tool sets DS has to make any changes you wish.
