Month: July 2019

DAZ Studio 4.12 Beta – a Sneak Peek – 3D Shenanigans #25

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On today’s stream I’ll take sneak-peek at the new features in the brand new beta version of DAZ Studio 4.12. It was released earlier this week, and it’s all about better animation tools: integrated features from GraphMate and KeyMate, and IK Chains inside a scene hierarchy. The highlights in this version are: overhaul of the …

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Trying out Chocofur Asset Management for Blender 2.8 – 3D Shenanigans #24

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In this episode I’ll try to install the Chocofur Asset Management add-on for Blender. It’s recently been updated to Blender 2.8, but right now not so easy to find on their website. Chocofur have lots of free assets to try out, perhaps we can work out how this works together. I was unable to get …

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DAZ Studio 115: Parametric Light Objects in Iray

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In this episode I’ll give you an introduction to the various parametric light objects we can create from the menu, how to use them and how to tweak their respective parameters as they apply to the Iray render engine. Here’s the link about Colour Temperature I’ve mentioned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_temperature Here’s the one about Luminous Flux: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminous_flux …

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Using Blender on a Laptop with a Trackpad

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After futzing CentOS 7 on my old Samsung Q330 laptop, I thought it would be fun to see if the old hardware from 2010 would be capable of running Blender. After all, the team have recently added CentOS as a new pre-built package to the list of downloadable options, and for me that was the perfect opportunity to try it out.

Turns out my Q330 only runs OpenGL Version 2.1, which means it can’t run Blender 2.8+. However it’s still capable of running 2.79, and it made me smile to see it full screen.

Of course trying to move anything on the screen proved to be difficult, because I had never done that before with a standard trackpad. My Mac has one, and it behaves beautifully with gestures out of the box, but I guess Windows and Linux users don’t have that luxury, even if a trackpad is present.

How do we navigate 3D space in Blender then, if there’s no mouse nearby? Well I’ve just found out, and I’d love to share it with you. I’ve only been able to test this in Blender 2.79, but I’m assuming

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Duplicating an object along a path in Blender 2.8

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The other day I tried to create a simple necklace in Blender 2.8, only to find out that the way I’ve once learnt from Blender 2.79 and below using DupliFaces no longer works. This feature has been removed from Blender 2.8. Thankfully there’s an easier way to do this, using the Array and Curve Modifiers.

For this example I’ll create a circle for our path, and an object I want to duplicate on it. Perhaps a UV Sphere. Make sure to apply all transformations after any scaling operations with CTRL + A.

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Editing DAZ clothing using a reference figure in ZBrush

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Even though I own it, I know very little about ZBrush. It may forever remain a mystery for me – like driving a car or getting excited about Team Sports. It’s just… not for me. Be that as it may, I’ve often wondered how clothing manufacturers use a character as a reference to make or update clothing geometry in ZBrush. Perhaps a jacket that doesn’t quite fit, or some boots that need a quick adjustment.

The challenge here is that both the character and the clothing need to be imported into ZBrush, and we need to be able to adjust the clothing only, while seeing the character in the background as a reference so we can work around it.

While the art of sculpting in ZBrush entirely eludes me, I believe I have finally understood the overall workflow. Before I forget it again, I thought I’d share it with you and my future self. Let’s see how we can transfer a clothed Genesis 3 figure from DAZ Studio 4.11 into ZBrush 2019.1, make adjustments on an item, and then bring it all back with a few clicks.

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