Character creation tutorial - is it up to date and of quality ?

cgidesign

Topic A:

There is a tutorial about character creation:

https://www.daz3d.com/how-to-create-a-new-custom-daz-studio-character

But there seems to be no information about when it was relased and which software version it relates to. Also no hint whether it was updated to reflect new software releases.

To my experience older tutorial videos often are of bad technical quality (bad sound, lowres content, etc.) and lack specific details and workflows of current versions of the software.

Furthermore I bought tutorials with various stages of "hm, oh that does not work", "oh, it crashed", "I don't know what this feature is for" or showing me half an hour of boring scupting and moving vertices around with no real progress on the know how.

• Does somebody know if the mentioned tutorial is up to date for DS 4.20x and blender 2.8+?
• Does it come to the point intead of vasting time with redundant repetitions and a trial and error orgy?
• Is the sound good enough to clearly understand the narration (hopefully without background music)?
• Is there maybe another tutorial recommended instead of the one I linked?

Regarding blender version:

The question is only relevant if special features of blender are used to achieve a goal. As long as it is only about standard modeling and sculpting tools it is not important which version is used in the tutorial.

Regarding DS verson:

The question is only relevant if DS 4.20 + requires or offers different workflows / functions to achieve the goals. If everything is named the same, found in the same place, works the same and I am not missing new, better ways to do something in DS 4.20 than in the version used in the tutorial, than the version is also not important.

Topic B:

Is there a tutorial covering the process of creating a fully custom figure (including base mesh concerns and rigging for DS)?

Hopefully I don't sound negative, but I don't like to vaste more money on badly made outdated tutorials than I did already.

MelanieL

According to the ReadMe, the tutorial was released in the store in February 2018. The screenshots on the store page show that it was based on Daz Studio version 4.10 and Blender version 2.78. Since the product was based on a webinar run by DigitalArtLive, I am 99.99% certain that it will not have been updated in any way since then.

I don't own that particular tutorial, so I can't say whether it has sound or redundancy problems, but I have watched several free ones by SickleYield (from her Youtube channel) and those are generally pretty good. (I have other DigitalArtLive tutorials by esha and Arki, and they don't have music.)

As to whether much has changed in the process I would guess not, but as I said, I've not actually watched it.

barbult

I own this product. The video is not about creating a totally new character from scratch and rigging it. This tutorial is about how to start with an existing Daz3D character (Genesis 8 Female is the example) and make custom morphs and save the character in a form that can be sold or given as a freebie. It covers things like exporting from Daz Studio and importing into Blender, modifying the shape in Blender and making that a morph in Daz Studio. It includes how to create Joint Control Morphs (JCM), Morph Control Morphs (MCM), Partial Head Morphs (PHM), Full Body Morphs (FBM), Adjust Rigging to Shape, ERC Freeze, etc.. It is very detailed and SickleYield explains WHY as well as HOW to do things.

The audio and video quality is good. SickleYield speaks very clearly. The video is 1920 by 1080 resolution. The video is clear enough and high resolution enough for me to see the text of the menus in both the Daz Studio sections and the Blender sections. Occasionally there are some artifacts in the video, but they don't interfere with understanding what is going on.

The video uses an older version of Blender (2.78). The current version of Blender (3.2) has a very changed interface. If you are not familiar with the evolution of Blender and how it has changed, I imagine you will have some trouble adapting the Blender instructions to the current version. I think Daz Studio 4.20 is close enough to 4.10 that you won't have much trouble following the Daz Studio portion of the video.

barbult

To address your Topic B, there is this tutorial, but I don't own it and can offer no additional info.

barbult

Also note that both of these SickleYield tutorials are in a bundle along with a third tutorial.

cgidesign

Thanks for the information. I bought the tut now.