Why is 'Blender' so popular for creating daz characters?
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LMAO "worship at the altar of NVIDIA in Daz studio". Love it.
I think this highlights the main problem. I've noted shortcut keys so many times and tried to remember them but I just don't use Blender enough to fix them in my head. The same with tutorials - I've been through the basics more times than I care to admit but unless I use it regularly, I forget all that good information and have to watch the videos again. Some of that is probably down to my age which brings the twin evils of poor recall and Attention Deficit Disorder (I tend to fall asleep or find my mind wandering if I settle down to watch a tutorial). I also don't have the confidence of my youth when I was game for learning almost anything.
But Blender is such a behemoth of an application that it tends to be daunting. And some things just won't stick no matter how many times I watch the tutorials. I can't get to grips with the node system, for example. I can see how it works and understand why it is better than the alternatives but, like the keyboard shortcuts, there are just too many nodes to remember and a node system for someone who can't remember what nodes are available or what each can do is useless. I'm sure it is better than the Surfaces Tab in DAZ Studio but at least the surface sliders are there on the screen to tweak (alright, I know that no surface has all the parameters on display either but I can tweak the ones that are).
Maybe if DAZ Studio didn't exist, I would have concentrated on Blender or Unreal Engine or Unity and constant use would have brought familiarity and a degree of skill.
Yeah, I got a chuckle out of that too! Great line from Wolf359.
Personally, I wish Daz had some of the hot keys like in Blender as it really does make life so much easier. I can't tell you how many times I've hit G or R in Daz to move a limb and sighed when I remembered which program I was in.
Bennie Daz Studio does have hot keys not all them work like blenders though , If you open daz studio go to the top click on Edit> scroll down until you see view,> view tab is the whole complete list of daz studio hot keys. Plus you can use a few hot keys that zbrush uses in daz that are not listed on the list. there like Ctrl + z for undo, and R for repeat , W for move 1 step forward. there is a few others too . I use them all the time. Unfortunately unlike Zbrush or Blender you can't custom assign hotkey in daz.
oh yes you can
moving your library breaks it though if it's a script as I found
but yes under custom actions in the editing
I changed the WASD camera movement to the arrows too
Really how?
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/272366/keyboard-shortcuts
RH probably explains it better than I can
Top Menu > Window > Workspace > Customize (or just F3 which takes you to the same place).
Then scroll down to View Control (or anything else that has keyboard shortcuts)
Right-Click on the one you want to change and there is an option to enter your own shortcut.
NM I posted it to the wrong thread I did tell yall I was blonde right? lol https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/184271/what-s-the-one-thing-you-ve-always-wanted-to-see-sold-at-daz-but-never-have#latest
yeah, I've added some of blenders hotkeys to DS
particulary the viewport controls as I am unable to navigate a viewport without them at this point. Plus as an added bonus alt+mmb to adjust the focal length. Thats right you can adjust the focal length in perspective view, but as far as I can tell its a feature so hidden you need to create a custom hotkey to do it (talk about interesting ui descisions)
Just by the way (and you probably know this already): if you want to link to a specific post in this forum, right-click on the time under the avatar over there on the left and copy link.
But I think that is exactly the point I and at least two others are trying to make: The "To Each Their Own" argument is not valid. Blender's design favors hotkeys. All modes of using Blender are not created equal. That is not jamming anything down anyone's throat, but it is more experienced users trying to disabuse less experienced users of their misconceptions that lead them to believe that Blender's UI is poorly designed. It is not. It is well designed, but with a certain philosophy that may be a little different from what many people may be used to. There's nothing wrong with, and it is still helpful, for people to point that out.
Fair enough, if it was done without sounding like an 18 year old boy that is THE best driver in the whole wide world (only in his own mind)...
Like I say, when you're talking about software that does 1.63 gazillion functions, it's virtually impossible to put all of those in a format that everyone will find usable and intuitive. And especially if you're doing something complex like building models, there's a point at which you're doing many repetitive functions as you push and pull vertices and faces.
As an example, today I decided I needed to make a simple pair of eyeglasses in Blender. Not difficult, but you do have to continually extrude and rotate and move stuff. Many, many times. So for someone like me who much prefers push buttons and/or menu items, it's really not practical to do that every time. So actually with the keyboard it becomes much easier. I poise my fingers over the E, G & R keys and then extrude, move, and rotate very quickly. And actually it's more enjoyable. Yeah, I need to keep some notes showing the keyboard shortcuts, but no biggie.
So yes, I can come over from the non-hotkey darkside in certain circumstances. We like to think everything is a simple "one way or the other", but rarely is that the case in the real world. Which is why some of us use 15 different software tools to do different things. None are perfect, and the best approach is to merely choose the right tool for the job, and not stubbornly stick with something and claim it's perfect solely because you "like" it.
Now, for those who really want to make life easier, I strongly recommend something I've mentioned before: Scripts. Especially in something like Blender, you can turn a long procedure into a single button click. And all the complaints about keyboard shortcuts quickly dissolve away...
I think the problem here is you can have 5 people going "you don't have to use hotkeys but as you learn them they can make repetitive tasks easier and go much faster" and 1 person going "Learn the hotkeys NOOB!!" and everyone starts responding to the hotter take. So the hot take is the one that sticks in everyone's mind.
Fortuneately they kept the previous functionality
I do find it amusing to watch all the later tutorials which make a point of saying that the old complaints about having to memorise hotkeys has been addressed and that now everything can be done with mouse clicks or menus. Then they get into the tutorial and, wouldn't you have guessed it, they launch into a succession of hotkeys to show how to do something.
I know - they are making the same point as is being made here: that it can be done in other ways but hotkeys are quicker and so worth learning.
@marble
"I've noted shortcut keys so many times and tried to remember them but I just don't use Blender enough to fix them in my head. The same with tutorials - I've been through the basics more times than I care to admit but unless I use it regularly, I forget all that good information and have to watch the videos again. "
I have a similar issue- where I use almost all the major 3D apps in some way and I can't remeber the difference(s) between them. Once, I was using one and thought I lost my workspace preferences and started Googling how to get the original layout back- until I realized I was using a differenr app. Sometimes I want products that came only in a specific 3D session format. Lots of things are only available as Blender Session format. Same with 3DS.
I made a word document Software Tips and Tricks that has a bunch of notes for each program. Some navigation notes and some notes for how I do certain-often used functions.
I also have post-it-notes all over the desk. Document everything!
No way- I could ever remember everything.
Who mentioned Bforartist as an alternative to blender?
As someone, who still struggles with blender, you made my day.
Do diffeomorphic and the blender bridge work as well in Bforartist?
...I'm pretty much the same with video retention. Thankfully I am now retired so I have the time now to just poke & prod at and experiment with it until I get things right. I have an old copy of the Blender for Dummies book which is still somewhat helpful if I ignore pretty much everything about using the keyboard. However again with the new pointer driven option and menu tabs I do find it more intuitive.
One of the other reasons I've soured on video tutorials as so many are just poorly produced with the narrator skipping steps as if expecting you know them already, prattling on about irrelevant stuff, or having a thick accent that makes it difficult to understand what is being said. . With a text manual (whether on paper or on screen) I find it simpler to keep it open to the relevant section at hand without having to stop, "rewind", and replay multiple times over.
As to the "Spaghetti System" (nodes) I'm with you there. I recently opened the Shader Mixer for a hair product, and in comparison, it made the wiring diagram for a 747 look like child's play. Yeah I'll eventually have to get used to it (I prefer the shader system in Carrara, as you can see the effects instantly but that only works for Carrara).
...hotkeys are not very efficient when for example you can only use a single finger on one hand on the keyboard. The only reason I finally aopted Blender after all these years was the addition of a pointer based control and menu tabs and the fact Daz seems to have abandoned Hexagon
...scripting? that's fine if you understand and are into coding. Not everyone does/is. That said, there are a number of prewritten scripts (just like with Gimp) that are available which can be installed.
I get that not everyone is into coding and I understand. However, in case some are just hesitant, one of the great things about Blender is that when you do something (use a tool or any other function) Blender prints out the line of code/script that it used to do that function in a terminal window. So if you want to automate, say, loading in a particular object, you just load the object, then look in the terminal window at the code it generated to do that. Then copy that line of code it generated and Voila !! you have your script. Yeah, you need some initializing stuff, but in many/most cases you're only talking about 4 or 5 lines of code to automate something. And it has a built-in editor where you type your code and run it. If it works, you just load that text as a plugin and you're all set.
There is a distinction between node setups made by an automated process, say, the Diffeo plugin, and are not necessarily intended for human beings to ever see, or at the least, with little to no effort was put into making them readable, and a node setup made by a person like, say, the Default Cube guy on Youtube who knows that he'll have to come back to his work time and time again.
...interesting it does that when other programmes I've used don't. I'll stil stick to using pre written scripts, learning/improving modelling skills is enough on the plate to digest for now.
Also, as someone who uses both, the shader editor in Blender absolutely blows DS away in terms of ease of use. Make sure you have node wrangler enabled and with anything you are doing its easy to see exactly what you're changing, in real time. you can just ctrl-click through the nodes "ooh whats that do?" click. "ooh whats that do?" click
Actually I think the fairest interpretation to DS is they have different goals. In DS the mixer is designed to create shaders that are easy for the end user to use, but is itself arcane and painful to use. Blender is set up so that everyone has to use its mixer, but the mixer itself is much easier to use, but doesn't output a nice shader that hides all the complexity - everyone gets to see the guts.
This is I think somewhat true for the programs as a whole. You can do weird, arcane, things in both, but DS hides them behind a nice friendly layer and Blender lets it all hang right out there. But if you're into doing weird arcane things not having them hidden in some closet is awfully useful
...opened it up to figure out why a certain PA's line of hair content would not convert to 3DL from Iray using the conversion script.