Welcome to part two of our 3DX artist guide! Let’s pick up where we left off last month. Before I began to make 3DX, I was always under the impression that the people I admired made what they did on the back of years of study and training in hyper-advanced 3D software. That turned out not to be the case, and the answer lies in posing software.
Posing software is essentially a clothing studio and an RPG character creator combined. You work with pre-developed 3D assets that you purchase from assets stores, and you compile them into a single scene. No modeling, no sculpting, no texturing, nothing. Smith Micro’s Poser and Daz 3D’s Daz Studio save you the trouble of having to start from absolute scratch with everything. You load the environment into a scene, you dress the girls, you give them a pose, you configure the lights, and off you go.
Let’s take a closer look.
Poser
So we’ll start with the more established program, the veteran of the bunch. Smith Micro’s Poser is where it all began, way back in the 90’s. Disclaimer: I have only very minimal experience with Poser myself. The reason for that is when I first started out, I had to be frugal. Given that Poser requires a license to use, that made the choice for its competitor rather easy.
Indeed, Poser 11 already clocks in at $200, while the Pro version is $500. It’s an old-school profit model used by Smith Micro, where software packages cost hefty sums. Of course, Poser’s license fee pales in comparison to what you pay for actual 3D modeling software, and if you’re gonna do this professionally, you’ll earn that money back. Moreover, this one-time investment will ultimately be only a small part of the total sum of expenses you’ll rack up. Like I said last month, 3DX is a costly business.
So what does Poser offer for its money? Well, for starters, a solid product support with a long development history. There’s nothing very glitchy about it. Its most attractive features are solid animation options as well as a dynamic clothing system. Dynamic clothing allows you to drape fabric naturally along surfaces likes arms, legs, chairs, etc, which gives you an edge over Daz Studio renders.
In terms of render engines Poser offers a rather limited selection. The Firefly and recently-added Superfly render engines produce nice enough results, but you’ll want to invest in Octane or something of similar quality sooner or later. That’s another couple hundred bucks.
Daz Studio
Daz 3D began as an asset developer for Poser. The entire line of base models known as Michael and Victoria are of their making, so at some point Daz figured out that perhaps they’d be better off launching their own posing software and integrating their 3D asset line into it. That was the idea that brought us Daz Studio and their freely included Genesis characters. In fact, free is the operative word overall. Yes, you’ll have to buy your 3D assets to expand your library, but Studio itself is freely downloadable.
Studio is a relatively young product compared to Poser. It receives frequent product updates, but it can’t always compete with Poser as well as it likes to pretend. For example, dynamic clothing functionalities are lacking in comparison, and animation is a bit more rigid and convoluted. Personally I haven’t found Daz Studio terribly wanting, but that may just be because I haven’t demanded a whole lot from it yet.
The most obvious benefits of Studio are Daz’s insistence on being on the cutting edge. Recently Daz struck a deal with Nvidia that allowed them to include the Iray render engine for free. That’s money money saved. Of course, it does make Daz Studio a bit of a non-option for people who don’t use Nvidia GPU’s. If you’ve got an AMD card, you’re gonna have to settle for 3Delight rendering over Iray, and the two just really can’t compare. That may help make the choice for Poser a bit easier, but then even render engines like Octane are based on Nvidia CUDA technology.
When you’re done posing
“But wait a minute,” I hear you think. “Isn’t posing software really just a way to make a character, give them an outfit and a pose, put them in a scene, and make a render? That sounds super basic. Surely there’s more to it?”
Well, yes and no. There isn’t more to it in the sense that you can make some really amazing erotica with just the means provided to you by Studio and Poser. You don’t have to be a 3D modeller and create every girl from scratch. But there definitely is software you can use to complement, or even replace, your posing workflow entirely.
When it comes to animation, neither Studio nor Poser are ideal. Girlfriends 4 Ever was animated in Poser and miro will attest to what a hellish, time-consuming job it was. The best and most realistic animation requires dedicated animation software like Maya or Cinema4D, but these tools are complex to learn and expensive to buy. Certainly not beginner-level stuff.
A lot of Affect3D artists rely on Zbrush to make custom 3D models like genitalia or clothes, or use it to apply corrective morphs to scenes where geometry doesn’t play along. But Zbrush, being dedicated sculpting software, is also really non-conventional and has a bit of a learning curve.
Lastly there is Photoshop, and that’s more or less a must-have. Every good artist runs his renders through it before publication, whether briefly or intensively, to correct skin errors, change image and colour tone, stuff like that. Post-production, as its called, is work you do after the render is done, and it can be a major contribution to the quality of what you put out. Thankfully, Photoshop isn’t difficult to learn, though it is hard to master.
More next month
Once you settle on which of the two posing programs you’re going to use, it’s time to look at next choices you have to make: character bases, asset stores and their subscription models, as well as which render engines to use.
But that is all stuff for next time. We’ll take a good look at the history behind Michael/Victoria and the new Genesis line, as well as which one you should base your renders around with regards to backward compatibility and other factors.
In the meanwhile, I hope this month’s look at what software to use has been helpful to you, and has given you some insight into how getting started with 3DX works. Seeya later!
Jayme Silvestri
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Kamlesh Solanki
June 22, 2020Do you have any creators using Autodesk Maya
Marie Fasolt
June 24, 2020Yes, the A3D staff use Maya to create our major productions (G4E, Bloodlust). We are looking into the possibility of offering guides for this software but nothing yet.
Gerepas
September 5, 2016Can you do a brief tutorial or a quick video on how you made the futa genitals
GumpOtaku
June 20, 2016I was about to point out that either by ignorance, hurriedness or both, The Dude forgot to mention the free LuxRender and the $50 Reality system which is awesome for artists with Team Red cards. Since someone already did, I would commend The Dude for another great write-up.
GumpOtaku
June 20, 2016Also that people interested in Iray and are looking to upgrade should look into the GTX 750\750 TI and its successor the GTX 950. The aforementioned cards are the cheapest at $110 and $150 respectively. The 950 needs a 6-pin PCIe connection, while the 750 and 750 TI draw juice straight from the motherboard. I’m looking to upgrade to a 960 within the year. For up to $200 it’s an awesome card for my needs.
DB Spencer
June 18, 2016As always, a great article. 😀
I do have to disagree with you on one point… Not having an NVidia doesn’t make DAZ a non-choice, nor are users stuck with 3Delight if they have AMD. LuxRender is a completely free, unbiased render engine that creates equaliy high quality renders as IRay (since Lux and IRay are both unbiased render engines). DAZ can export directly to LuxRender using Luxus or Reality, which are relatively inexpensive plug-ins for DAZ ($19.95 USD for Luxus, for example). I myself, having an AMD, use Luxus to export all of my work to LuxRender. LuxRender isn’t as fast as IRay, but for those who are just beginning, or cannot afford to upgrade to NVidia at this time, can still produce high resolution, quality images. For me, a typically staged and posed shot, at 1920×1080 takes from 1 to 6 hours to render. I can work on posing more shots while it renders, or I can leave the computer thanks to another benefit of using LuxRender- The Render Queue. LuxRender allows me to queue many images to render, one after the other, so that I can leave the computer and not have to babysit as it renders an entire series of shots. 😀
jack pinder
June 16, 2016As someone with an interest in the creative process and not knowing really anything about that process, Thanks for the insight.