Looking to get into clothing creation
I've been using Daz for a few years now, and while I'm not claiming to be an expert I feel like I've got a decent hang of it. I want to take my skills to the next level and try my hand at creating clothing and hair. I've watched several tutorials, so I know it's going to be a learning curve, but I wanted to ask the community where should a beginner even get started? I have adobe creative cloud (mainly using photoshop), DAZ3d, and Blender (although I never learned how to use it.) I know there are other programs out there like Zbrush, Marvelous Designer, and Maya, but I have no idea which is better for beginners or if there's something else out there. This is just a hobby for me, so while I know most of these programs cost money, I don't want to be spending a ton of money on the software if I can avoid it, and if I am paying for something, I want to make sure it'll be something I can actually learn how to use on my own and won't overwhelm me with a ton of complex features.
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Hi! I'm SickleYield! I do this for a living, including the occasional clothing set. I made my first clothes with just Blender, Daz3d and the GIMP. They were not Daz quality at first, because I was new to 3d art in general, but they worked. I have a tutorial in text and video. I recently also released a video tutorial on making joint-controlled morphs, something you will eventually also need to know if you are interested in making clothes.
With the links out of the way, a more opinion-related reply.
In the present day I use Marvelous Designer for some projects, specifically the ones that need to be loose and draped. I have colleagues here that use Zbrush for clothing, but while I do have it, I've never used it for that. A lot of my clothing textures are made in Substance Painter using photos of clothes I own scanned into a scanner or photographed with my phone. I don't love their recent license changes, so I've been looking at trying to switch to Blender's PBR addon or 3D Coat, which I also have but have mostly used for skin texture composition.
Complex controls are something you should embrace, not avoid, because they are an attribute of almost every program that has all the features you need. You're going to have to watch/read some tuts and docs on any program you choose to use. But of those I've described, 3D Coat is probably easiest to use. Don't let people suck you into Hexagon, it is no longer updated and is basically dead now.
Making clothes is one of the hardest skill sets to master with what we do, but it is very doable. It just takes time and practice.
Thank you so much! I watch your videos all the time. :) They've really helped me learn Daz over the years and become much better at understanding it. I do want to embrace all the complex features, but I just didn't want to get into something that's complex out of the box. I'd like to start with something that's easy to learn, and as I do get better at using the basics I can start to get into the more complex features. Otherwise, I'll probably get frustrated and give up lol.
Thanks, I'm glad those helped. :)
In my experience there is no such thing, lol. You can look at trials and watch tutorial vids and find the program you find most intuitive, but you can't get a "simple" 3d modeler because 3d modeling is not simple.
But there's Sculptris, I guess:
https://conceptartempire.com/free-sculptris-tutorials/
Regarding texturing software. As SickleYield said about modeling - texturing is not simple as well.
But, at least there is another nice alternative to Substance Painter worth looking at.
https://quixel.com/mixer?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_content=mixer exact responsive search&utm_campaign=search brand
It is part of the Epic / Quixel ecosystem and free (even for commecial use).
Oh sweet. I thought I tried out something like that and the Megascans library wasn't free for commercial use or something, I'll have to give it another look.
It's only free if you're using it within Unreal Engine.
That is related to the megascans library but not Mixer itself. Mixer can be used for free by everyone for everything. But the assets are only free in conjunction with an Unreal Engine account (this is also free for personal use). I found out about Mixer because I was frustrated when Adobe killed the perpetual license.