The Path to Becomming A Merchant....
RitaCeleste
Posts: 625
Ok, I am very new daz3d. But I am currently working at Burger King so everyone needs a dream right??? I want to learn to model and texture for the Platinum Club. I have looked at how good the texture sets are and its a bit terrifying to contemplate doing anything that good. I can find tutorials on modeling and I have some things for texturing. I can not afford the latest and greatest software if I can't learn use what I have and create something for sale. I am currently reading lots of things and watching lots of videos. I have limited time to actually work at this because of my job and family so nothing will happen overnight.
What is the least path to becoming a merchant? Is characters, hair, clothing, textures for clothing, modeling clothes, modeling scenes? Where do the newbies start out? Is there a path? With photoshop elements, blender, gimp, Carrara, I think I should be able to make something, but where to start? I have ideas for clothes and shoes, not so much for hair. I have seamless textures for clothes. I have all the fabricator like things. Is it okay to shader bake a texture and is there anyway that would be good enough for the marketplace? With regards to rigging clothes and skirts in particular, any tutorials? I don't even know how to make movement morphs for skirts yet. Magnets? 3d software? How you get a sitting pose to work? Like I said, its not going to happen any time soon.
I just want to have a goal in mind and maybe a clue as whether or not I'd be able to have money for 3d.sk and 3d coat in the future if I found something I could get to market..... I'm new I should be just playing with Daz Studio and enjoying all the neat things I have. I just load them and try to figure out how they were made..... (sadly I was the child that took apart all their toys at xmas and sometimes could not reassemble them all correctly. When I took apart my snowcone machine, my mean cousin hid the blade so I couldn't fix it and got a beating....) I want to make things and understand how they work. I think I am not the kind of person who just wants to enjoy what I have. I want to make content my 12 year old daughter would love to play dress up with. Its okay if doesn't sell or if I give it away in the end. But Burger King makes me want to think about making money for this hobby so I can have all the cool things and expensive software. Would making things aimed for platinum club be a good starting point? Any easier to get content there rather than highest quality in the market place? Just where does one start? Good tutorials? Would it pay off to try to get something in the marketplace? Could it help support my hobby?
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Comments
Just want to say 2 things for now
#1 - PC content is not lower in quality than any other content in the DAZ 3D store, and goes through exactly the same QA process
#2 - Make a name for yourself first, before you try to become a vendor. Share some freebies, so people can see the quality that you can produce.
oh and almost forgot .........
#3 - Don't expect to become rich overnight. It does take time to get accepted and to do well as a vendor.
Thanks! Yeah the texture sets in PC are awesome. And the models I have are well made with lots of fitting morphs that work well no matter what pose I apply and fit them to. I just don't know where to start right now. I really want to do the stuff for my daughter. If it looked good, I'd probably to try to get it into the market place. When it gets rejected, it would then become a freebie. When you work at Burger King, you gotta at least TRY!
But I do notice the texture set are smaller for platinum club. The models come with fewer textures usually. I didn't mean the quality was lower in the end, but doing a set of 2 textures and promo images for those does look like half the work of doing four or five textures. So if you are going to do the promo images and things, you'd like to know if it was a big project or a small project.
<-- +1 to those.</p>
Also:
Don't choose something because it's easy and plan to learn the hard stuff later, or you will just never do it. If you ever want to make meshes, learn to make meshes before you've got an investment in this as your only income.
Plan to put in a lot of extra hours while you're learning. Don't quit that day job until your digital income is enough to supply your needs.
It can be done. I was working part-time at a coffee shop when I built my first store at Renderosity.
The best way is to try everything and choose to further develop what you have a natural intuition for.
To some people posing comes naturally but to others modelling and uv mapping comes easy but posing takes forever to make look right.
Be patient and experiment until you find what you enjoy and have a natural spark for.
Creating freebies is a great way to get feedback and a feel for what people want in a product.
But most of all if you're passionate about it and believe in yourself the skies is the limit. But its not going to be easy :D
In addition, you might go through this document:
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/publishing/start
You might not get in the first time or the 10th time. Look at all of it as a learning experience and just keep at it. Know your audience. There are certain categories that sell more than others and while you may find your product accepted and being sold, it may not make as much as you hope and it could be because you have made a product that appeals to a smaller segment of the buying community.
As PAs, we are often asked in the forums to make items that we unfortunately know that no matter how many people tell you they want and will buy, it just doesn't happen.
You will need to learn to have a tough skin. When people purchase things, they often feel that comes with the right to say whatever they want about your product good or bad. Take praise with humility and when it's the opposite, listen, and don't take it personally. Just try to hear what they didn't like or wanted different. If you find it has merit, find a way to use it to push you to improving your next product.
If you want this bad enough, you'll continue to work at it. Good luck. :)
Thanks! Yeah, the products I want to make are mainly appealing to kids. Not really for adults with money who are making art professionally with Daz3d. That's what happens when you let a 12 year old tell you what would be cool in Daz Studio.....But I would learn a lot doing them, so its worth my time. And they would make great freebies for the kids. SickelYield, your story inspires me so much. I'll keep studying and see if I can make a few things. Thanks for all the encouragement. I am going to try making meshes. And I need to go look my hair and see those meshes....Right now I'm looking at what I have so I can see the type of things people expect in a product, morphs and rigging and such. It would be so cool to just be free to make something because I wanted it. My ex told me to learn the modeling. I always look at things in his RPG game. He knows how long I've put off learning it.
I am still quite new but I have been learning a lot in recent months. Before the summer started I knew almost nothing about 3D, I had no idea how to model and texture meshes and since then I´ve learned a lot and I hope to have my first full outfit with shoes and accessories finished before the end of August. (Thats my first deadline I set for myself).
I really love spending my free time doing 3D and even though I´m not a professional artist I still have a schedule when things need to be done. I figured if I want to get better at this I should make one. So what works for me is that I decided that I will spend a certain amount of my time every day doing 3D. Sometimes I get really determined and I stay up late at night doing things and I´m always like "I´m not going to sleep unless I finish those morphs..." but well I really like it and I´m a night owl so its no problem for me.
Having a schedule and doing this every day can be very good especially at the beginning where you learn a lot of things and also forget half of it before the day ends. So its always good to come back to it the next day and see if you can rig those shoes without a tutorial this time for example. Chances are you will do much better than you would if you came back to it after a week.
And we are quite lucky that there are artists who are very kind and willing to help as you are learning! Sickle has been absolutely amazing to me.
modeling was by far the hardest thing I learned, but by far the most rewarding.
[edit] wait, change that:
Guitar was that, modeling; close 2nd.
I started making my own clothes for Genesis about 21/2 years ago. My husband persuaded me to put them onto ShareCG and see if people liked them.
I was astonished at how popular they became! I keep making things that people request as well as things I want to make for myself and they all seem to be just as popular.
Don't know how I would fare as a PA, because I still haven't learnt all about morphs etc.
Just keep practising, until your happy with the results.
I don't know if it's true, but I've read it before: Really learn how to light and make good renders, as good or better than the promo renders you see for products. That's supposed to help you get into the DAZ PA realm much more easily as it's good proof you know what you are doing. The freebie route is a good way to start, too. Experiment since you are new to see what really works for you. I do wish BK paid better, I love The Whopper! :)