The link I posted also has the free Victoria 4.2 base. You definitely want to pick that up. That model is what all others are made from. Daz3d also has free base figures for Michael 4 (the male character) as well as morphs for V4 and M4 (Stephanie, Aiko, "The Girl", She Freak, Hiro, and The Freak). So you can definitely get a lot going with free stuff.

Also check out:
http://www.evilinnocence.com/free-stuff.html (a ton of free clothes for V4)

http://www.pixeluna.com/freebies.html (more free stuff for V4, but most of it needs Morphs++)

https://market.renderosity.com/ and click on "Free Stuff"

I will suggest focusing your efforts on the free DazStudio. It's got the shortest learning curve of most of these sorts of tools. I actually paid for Poser and regret it. I like Daz better.

Tlaero

And while you're at the Daz site drop in to the new users forums. Lots of tips and tutorials. Ask questions and get answers from people of all levels.

Also try the beginners competitions, prizes range from $5 vouchers up to free licenses for the more expensive packages.

Wow, for all would be dating sim game makers, this could be made into a sticky (on the new forum perhaps)...

Just trying some stuff, migrating from v3 to v4 in daz studio

I think v4 is a little bit tricky to model, we really need to be careful with the body proportion,
Or else the model will look strange and oddly proportioned

Anyway, its easier to fit v4 clothes to v3 than the other way around

For the thread starter, I really recommend using daz studio to create the 3d model
Its quite simple, as ehlanna and tlaero elaborated above
You just need a litte tweak here and there, although making a beautiful character can take the whole say (for me at least)

And just to make things worse - Paolo (Pret-A-3D) has just recently released V1 of his Reality plug-in for DAZ 3 (requires at least 3.1.1.68) which will take a DAZ scene and pass the render details off to an OSS (Open Source Software) renderer called LuxRender. The advantages of that are related to the fact that LuxRender is an unbiased renderer which aims to accurately map real-life conditions. You need to re-think lighting, but it doesn't take that much effort.

Render in DAZ (using in-built 3Dlight renderer):


Render using LuxRender (paused after 20 minutes, after c. 450 samples, good quality is usually > 1,500 samples):

...and here is one of my favourite blogs about daz3d... with a lot of tutorials... (the tutorials go from new to old, so if you start with daz3d, you better go to the last page first.)

http://greywulf.net/tag/tutorial/

And the 'final' version - left it a little longer than planned (I forgot I had left it running - LuxRender is VERY CPU-friendly; it uses as much CPU as it can, but behaves very well in a multi-tasking environment) - total time, 2 hours 20 mins, with around 3,500 samples. Which is another nice feature. You can pause, stop and resume renders.

Pardon me if I'm being stupid, but is there a reason why there appears to be a bright spot of light reflected off her buttock and another off her coccyx?

Not at all ... not being stupid at all.
That's one reason you need to be a little careful with lights (and materials in Reality). Things will improve over time but with this first release skin is mapped to a sub-type of the material type LuxRender 'glossy'. That can cause bright spots.
As for the lights, this was a throw it together in DAZ scene - Misty, plus the SB Amelia skin MAT, AllTime hair, BAT LABS bikini top and bottom and Age of Armour V4 swashbuckler boots.
In Reality all I did was set base material type to Matte for the clothes and hair and that was about it. Not finding a light Reality plugs in an automatic 'sunlight' (as a standard distant light) for you (in the DAZ scene, which you can rotate to reflect time of day - horizontal = orange tone to light for sunset/rise, etc.)
As it was just a test I was not too fussed over the fine-tuning. Now I know what sort of 'side-effects' can happen I can take care to avoid or over-come them. I could have postworked the image to remove the bright-spots, but I tend not to do that.
It's possible that they may have disappeared had I let the render run on longer, but I suspect they may have stayed. It's just gleam of the light off a pert, curvy, mildly shiny ass!

Ahh, the bright spots, sometimes that happens with gloss skins, even with clothes

And it also can happen with lips color, I really hate when the lips suddenly become over-glossy, and not much we can do abt it

Btw ehlanna, thx for the info, I think I will explore myself about the luxrender

koill, the tips you've received will help you a long way to get what you want. And I hope some of my own personal advice in rendering techniques will help you through the process in getting some good pictures versus the 'just so' you can find on the internet.

First you need a scene. Why? You need something to reflect onto the glossy parts, like windows, mirrors and the like. Making indoor scenes are renderingwise much easier on the machine. To help your machine in outdoor scenes, you should use a skydome to limit the length were the light rays will travel. This will save you time.

Second, characters. You should try to make the various characters as versatile as possible. That is, to not make them look to much like each other. The Morphs++ package will help you a long way. Another way is the texture-sets you will use; this includes:
-The diffuse texture (what we call base texture)
-The specular texture (for the glossy/wet parts)
-The bump maps (to show the wrinkles and faking realistic skin)
-Displacement maps (veins, scars etc.)

You do NOT want to make the skin reflective, it looks unatural.

Third, you need the characters to have hair. Most people are not bald. The hair should preferably have movement morphs, so you can pose your character, and make the hair look natural. The longer the hair, the more difficult the posing will be. And if you can, try to avoid specular maps on hair. Many vendors supply their hair with spec maps. My opinion (and I might be wrong!) is that hair should never have spec maps, because lighting conditions will vary, and the light itself will take care of the 'bright' parts of the hair.

Fourth, you need clothes. There are both paid-for and free clothes. I urge you to get the free ones and get your experience using them. No need to pay for clothes early and not have the ability to use them wisely. Pay later when you need something, and beware that you can get stuff on the Fastgrab or for a greatly reduced price.

Light and camera are your main tools in telling the story. To make the render less CGI-like, you should see if you can use DOF (Depth of Field) on the camera to blur out the far-away background while focusing on the face (or other parts) of your character. And light does always carry a shadow. That is, turn the shadow ON, and adjust the shadow softness. I preferably use a precentage of shadow softness between 2.5%-5.5% depending on what scene I want to create. You can of course increase the softness if you need it to be very soft. Bright daylight create sharper shadows than evening light, so adjust the shadow softness according to what time it is (not to mention the angle the sun(moon is positioned in your scene).

That is a short tut that might be helpful. If you need pointers and help, don't be afraid to ask!

Hi, I just read this thread yesterday and it really made me curious.
So I fetched what you suggested and played around with it.

That's what I got late in the night: http://secretpaste.org/files/walk-01.avi

Thanks, Ehlanna

[font=Arial]obligatory note: I'm the author of this video.[/font]

Craban wrote : Hi, I just read this thread yesterday and it really made me curious.
So I fetched what you suggested and played around with it.

That's what I got late in the night: http://secretpaste.org/files/walk-01.avi

Thanks, Ehlanna

[font=Arial]obligatory note: I'm the author of this video.[/font]

That is pretty dammed inpressive - nice one!

Too bad I can't watch it on my iPhone, but I'll check it out after work on my laptop.

I'm really enjoying DAZ Studio ;-)

It seems to be quite complicated to create clothing - at least to make it look right. Do you have some experiences to share?

Here are two more pictures I took while playing with settings and stuff:

"Don't mess with me!"


"You're caught."