Ah yes ZBrush. The app that makes difficult things easy, and the basics almost impossible. Here’s one such example of ingenious software design: the simple act of importing OBJ files, let alone multiple ones. There’s no File – Import dialogue like on literally every other 3D app. Instead we use the import option in the …
In this video I’m explaining how to apply random animations to otherwise static objects. This is a physics effect that’s applied to a shell around the object and is really neat to animate anything from wind to bounce to complex geometry. I’ve always meant to write the steps down and never found the time when …
I was wondering if I could use Blender to make my Substance Painter selections a little easier. I wanted to avoid importing the material zones into Substance, while retaining this information at the same time. Turns out there is a way to do this, but it needs a little manual labour. Josh explains it in …
I’ve been investigating Substance Painter and how to best select parts of a model. One such option is by using an ID Map, essentially a flood-fill of random colours per material zone. Wendy very kindly brought this to my attention in a recent stream (thanks, Wendy!), and before I forget, here’s how to do it. …
I remember making notes on the projection painting tool in ZBrush back in 2013, it’s called Spotlight. It’s very powerful and yet another fun way for us to project textures onto 3D objects. Last night I found the above excellent tutorial by Kevvfx and thought I’d take some notes on how to get started with …
One of my supporters had a great tip on how to convert Genesis 3 clothing to Genesis 8. He’s made a German video about the process and asked if I could make an English version. It’s coming soon, in the meantime here are the written instructions. This works for converting both genders in both ways …
Being the artistic tool ZBrush is, it often felt vague to me when it comes to accurate values. I had no idea how to rotate a model to exactly 45 degrees for example, until I came across this video by Joseph Drust earlier today. Turns out all we need to do is hold down the …
Texturing 3D objects is surprisingly easy in Blender. Essentially we’re using a 2D image that will be gently rubbed onto the surface of a 3D object, thereby creating a texture. Let me show you how to do it. Let’s use Blender’s default cube and any image of your choice. If you no longer have him …
Blender allows us to project regular images onto 3D objects from any angle onto a temporary UV space, from which we can then transfer such projections onto the “real” UV space. If this sounds like science fiction, bear with me – it’s a tad complicated and I thought I’d take some notes while the process …
When you work a lot with certain figures in DAZ Studio, it may be helpful to launch them from custom icons in the toolbar rather than having to find them your Content Library every time. There are two parts to the process. Let me show you how to set those up in this article. Setting …
Joint Corrective Morphs (or JCMs) is the principle of driving morph sliders if a particular joint rotation reaches a certain value. Say a bicep muscle that needs to flex when an arm is bent 90 degrees in one direction. It’s a bit like an “if this then that” statement, interpolated depending on what value is …
As part of the DAZ Season Pass, we have a dedicated section on the DAZ Forum that’s only accessible for members. I hang out there freuqently and answer questions, but becasue it’s been a while since I’ve frequented the forums, I had completely forgotten how to upload an image and present it inline. It’s a …
I’ve made myself an animated walking Slinky last week! I thought it would be nice to have him join the other figures on my stream overlay. It seems a simple-ish feat to do, but since I’ve built him from scratch in Blender, then rigged and animated him in DAZ Studio, there were quite a few …
Controllers are great little helper dials that can perform a number of functions and make our posing/animation life a little easier. They’re akin to Blender’s Drivers, yet implemented very differently in DAZ Studio. The idea is the same though: make one slider do multiple things, and let DAZ Studio calculate interpolated values. Let’s take a …
In my previous article I’ve explained how to rig a simple cylinder in DAZ Studio using the Figure Setup Tab. While my little cylinder bends, it does so with rather sharp deformations at the intersections to its other parts. The geometry seems to collapse, and in a real life scenario we may find that some …
Believe it or not, the above picture is the result of trying and failing to understand rigging in DAZ Studio for years. I’ve had many attempts at understanding the official documentation on this subject, but severe lack of knowledge and understanding have kept me from transferring this information into my brain. Like many things, it’s …
Smooth Shading is enabled by default for the Iray Uber Shader. This is in contrast to most 3D modelling packages, which disable this feature by default. While Smooth Shading works best for most organic objects, we may occasionally need the ability to disable this feature in DAZ Studio. Some objects are meant to have that …
The other day I thought it would be a hoot to bring in some of the wonderfully modelled low-res Synty Assets and use them together with the high-res characters in DAZ Studio. With access to the source OBJ files this worked out rather well, but it’s a time consuming process importing, shading and saving each …
Although I had decided to find the news popup on every Hexagon start “charming”, it wasn’t until this week that I got a tip from one of my supporters on how to turn it off. I must admit that it does get in the way for quick fixes. Here’s how to do it: start Hexagon …
I’ve been converting hundreds of small props for use in DAZ Studio. To speed-up my workflow, I thought it would be wise to investigate more efficient methods in the process. One such effort is to press a shortcut key rather than navigating to File – Save As – Support Asset – Figure/Prop Asset every time. …
I’ve just figured out a small mystery that I thought I’d share with you. It’s about enabling soft shadows in Unreal Engine, specifically with the Movable Light type. It’s the “expensive to calculate” variety, especially when enabling soft shadows. I’d like to use them to get real time good looking shadows for still images and …
Voxels have become a popular way to show off pixelated 3D shapes. For years we’ve been trying to make things look smooth and natural, but with retro being a thing right now, voxels can do the same for your pristine 3D objects that Lomo filters can to pristine photographs: make them look a little weird …
I’ve come across Keyed Properties by accident, and was thrilled with what we can use them for. Essentially they let us create a custom slider, whose position behaves much like a little timeline. This has huge potential for anything from an array of facial morphs to various poses or even full body moprhs. It’s the …
I have to be brutally honest with you: last time I’ve tried the official DAZ to Blender bridge I didn’t have a great time. But, a lot of time has passed and several updates have been released, so I thought perhaps I should try again with version 2.3.9. The first hurdle was of course to …
DAZ Studio has a helpful constraints function called Point At. With it we can point eyes at the camera, point a light at an object and do all kinds of other things. Blender also has this concept, but it’s called something else: Track To. Let me show you (and my future self) how to set …
I’ve spent some time this week putting Blender’s new Cycles X engine through its paces. The team have written about their plans, I’m excited about it and I appreciate the efforts it takes to make this work. I’m already very happy with the current implementation of Cycles, and with a bit of time on my …
I’ve had various requests and discussions with supporters recently about what might be a good configuration for a DAZ Studio and/or rendering computer. It’s a good question, and with so many systems and components on the market, I thought I’d compile this article as a starting point. Feel free to ask specific questions in the …
A viewer asked me recently how to get the ZBrush to DAZ Studio connection going step. I’ve explained how to use GoZ in this article, but I’ve not mentioned the pitfalls of the installation process. I thought I’d put this quick article together with screenshots and all. Prepare Install Manager First of all close DAZ …
The default poses for Genesis 3 and 8 are different: 8 is using an A-Pose, while 3 is using a T-Pose (kind of easy to remember that way). I sometimes have to re-fit clothing from one figure to the other, and as such I need to tweak an A-Pose into the respective T-Pose or vice …
I’ve been fascinated with the idea of using my Genesis 3 characters with newer Genesis 8 figure. There are some benefits and good outfits that are not backwards compatible without fiddling. So I came across two products that address this: RiversoftArt has various products that convert G3 to G8 and back, and then there’s the …