Freebies: How many do you have? What's your favorite?
ModernWizard
Posts: 851
We all know that there's a vast universe of 3D digital models, textures, poses, utilities, etc., available to us as artists. I know how I use freebies myself, but I'm curious to see how others incorporate them, if at all, into their runtime and/or workflow.
1) First off, what percentage of items in your runtime are freebies? I'm defining a freebie as something that you got for free, even though it might usually be a paid item.
2) Second of all, what's a freebie that you particularly like and why? And, just to make the answers a little more diverse, please don't say Daz Studio. I'd love to hear about lesser known items that people use often and/or think are well made and versatile.
For my answers:
1) Of the 1469 items I have amassed, 918 of them I got for free. That's just about 62.5%! There are lots of Platinum Club, Renderosity, and ShareCG freebies in there.
2) For a freebie that I really like, I'm going to say ISOP's Catherine MD Maid Dress for V3. I have sentimental attachments to this particular outfit because it was among the very first that I downloaded and ran through CrossDresser and Wardrobe Wizard the first time around [late 2007]. I didn’t really care much about the quality then, only that it was fetishy and skimpy and freeeeeeeee!
Now that I return to the outfit 7 years later [which is approximately a millennium in digital time], I examine it more critically. It’s a simply sculpted set of clothes [including pumps and a choker, not shown here], nothing fancy, but a few strategically sculpted wrinkles in the skirt and apron help to give it some realism. Furthermore, ISOP’s attention to detail [why yes *squint squint*, those are little buckles sculpted on the garter belts!] really finishes off the set so that it stands up to long shots and super closeups.
Overall, the superbly sculpted mesh behaves more like an actual piece of clothing than most digital outfits. I can crunch it through Wardrobe Wizard and Daz’ Autofit so that I can put it on my G2F-based characters without undue crimping, warping, distortion or fall-off zone problems. The bodice, though designed for a character with breasts, even behaves pretty well on Jareth, who does not have breasts. Not bad for an outfit at least 7 years old!
Two more things really please me about this outfit. First, the skirt of the dress and the apron contain many built-in morphs to accommodate various leg poses, including squats and sits. Since many commercially available dresses and skirts can’t be arsed to accommodate sitting poses, even today, the presence of this capacity in this old freebie outfit just makes it that much better.
Finally, the great setup of the material zones allows for custom shading opportunities. For example, take a look at the gloves. Besides having sculpted seams, they also have about 4 material zones: the main gloves, the between-fingers part, the wristbands and the wrist trim. It would have been really easy just to leave the gloves as a single material zone and execute any sort of banding or lace effects with the texture map alone, but nope — we’ve got easy-to-use material zones to play with!
So...what recommendations have you to share?
--MW
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Comments
I just amass them, I have far more than I'll ever use. If I really need something I've usually got Blender up and running in another window. My favorites are really the tools from MCasual, I probably couldn't do what I need to without them. Other than that there are a wealth of OBJ's from around the web I use constantly but the were not necessarily made for poser or studio.
And I, as well as collecting useful freebies, collect lists of freebies as compiled by others. http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/75/
I think my runtime is split 50/50 between freebies and paid items - although some of those "paid" items I got for free over the years.
(What? No, I pay for a lot of stuff. I like making lists and sharing the results...)
As for what I like the most ... (looks at avatar icon) (remembers getting the gen3 figures for free, way back when) (decides that's too easy)
There's the standbys of wardrobe by Mamota and wilmap, hairdos by Kozaburo and Mylochka, textures by our own Chohole, and pretty much anything by Mada, Trumarcar and Tiggersprings ... but I still have a soft spot for "Fuji Hair" by Fisty. It was the first freebie hairdo for Genesis; the fact that I suggested it is beside the point.
http://fisty.blackraven3d.com/freebies/LDFujiHairGn.zip
There's also a V4 version - that's the one I rendered here. (It's a render that I've used elsewhere.)
http://fisty.blackraven3d.com/freebies/LDFujiHairV4.zip
Couldn't begin to guess at percentages...besides indiscriminately grabbing from sharecg and holiday give aways, I mindlessly "buy" every freebie Daz puts up, just in case one day I may have an idea for it...
As for the favorite adamr001's Render profiles http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/16085/
Nothing else comes close.
THESE more than anything else helped my renders start looking good, and making me more confident in doing this (only been at it for a few months).
While I do appreciate it when a freebie is offered, I really don't make a point of looking for them or d/ling them if not needed at the time. I would say that my runtime is only 3-5% freebies at best. Of my most used clothing or props, none of them are freebies.
Now I do get a lot of use out of non DS/Poser meshes that are posted in game communities, on the web, meshes i get from games and ones i make myself since I model addons for some game communities. I would say that my current scene usage is close to 50/50 with these types of free assets.
I have loads, current faves are the Daz bundles and I also recently got Dreamlight's Destroyed City for free as I'd signed up to the Dream Lounge.
CHEERS!
I would say about 1 percent. Using freebies is murky commercially and not worth the hassle. I have a few morphs by zev and that's about it. I very much try only to have content with stated commercial use only in my runtime.
I counted, and determined that I have exactly a lot. Thanks to all the freebie makers out there! You guys/gals have given me a very diverse 3D graphics library from which to choose to complement the purchased portion of my library.
I can't really pick a favorite item, because I've only scratched the surface of what I can do with them and tend to jump around from one idea to the next rather than focus on one single thing. And of course I use them as a library, so I pull the item I need for whatever render idea pops into my head; the larger the library, the better the options or chances I can implement my idea, but that also means like a library that much of it has remained unused since each render isn't going to include thousands of things in it. Many I have not yet used, and I'll never know which items will be needed until the moment inspiration strikes (but when it does, they're instantly ready to use).
@SereneNight, I also try to have only content with stated commercial use in my runtime. I've gotten into the habit of the very first thing I do before even checking to see if the content works is to check the readme to verify this. It's a bit of extra effort, but not a huge amount, really takes less than a minute. Some download sites also allow you to filter by whether or not commercial renders are allowed (although best to check to ensure something wasn't misfiled), so you could very easily limit yourself that way if you decided to.
The problem is a lot of people don't put it specifically in their readme or even have a readme. Even if it is in a commercial use section, it is tough to be sure so I often have to pass over good stuff. Some sites are really bad at that.
I also pass over content that requires attribution. I appreciate why people want that, but I'm not adding a long list of contributers to commercial renders.
....I need the processing resources of IBM's "Big Blue" to figure out the total I have. Being on a very tight budget, "free" is a very good price.
I know a fair amount of what I have is for personal use only, but so much of it is well made (like aircraft models by Pedro Carparros and Neil Wilson) and I don't have any intention of selling works that use these models.
One creator I really like is Wilmap, as she does very nice "period" and practical "everyday" clothing which is hard to find in most stores because it doesn't sell as well as skimp and fantasy wear. Another person is Mr Sparky who creates some incredibly whimsical and hilarious models.
I don't measure them in numbers...I use gigabytes.
...:lol:
Think that's bad? I have a backlog of freebies not yet installed I can measure in gigabytes! :red: I go on "binges" where I download a batch of freebies from some site in the fear they might disappear sometime. It's happened. Since I don't do commercial renders, that usually isn't a consideration for me. I do check all the freebies I use in the freebie challenge and other contest entries.
As to favorites, I'd mention Kozaburo's Short Bob, which I've used many times, and Dyald's Valens Hair. I've used winteryvonne200's characters many times. Unicornst's Neith V4 and Nicholas M4 are excellent characters. I haven't used her much lately, but the Bruuna character by Roberto Melo is outstanding. Thanks to all the freebie makers!