Re: 3D art question
 

Another thought on morphs/characters for figures...
If they are labeled as "injections" or "INJ", when you apply them your character will change automatically, if no other morphs are required
Most, not all, free characters require the non-free character morph packages.

If the word injection is not listed somewhere in the description or name, applying the character will appear to do nothing except add dials. If you have the morphs required for the character to work, if any, you need to adjust the dials for the new character to appear. Sometimes the dials will be named after the character, sometimes not, it just depends on the quality of the download. :)

Re: 3D art question
 

Hey ST. Hows the experimenting going? Learn anything new? I've been following your progress and the help from Manikus so I can learn this stuff too. It's a little difficult to keep up since I don't really know exactly what your reading or what your working with in terms of actual models and textures and such nor even what program your talking about.

I assume you made the switch from ts3.2 to DAZ3d near the beginning of this thread. If not then I'm totally lost. Please jot down some notes on what you tried that worked for you as a beginner and what you used and what you used it with. That would be such a huge help to me and anyone else who reads this thread and wants to get started on this road to becoming a 3d graphic artist. I'll share what I learn on my own as well. And naturally I'll come back here with questions for Manikus, lol. ;)

Re: 3D art question
 

When I'm asking for help here its for DAZ Studio. I'm a beginner with this process and it does take getting used to, but I can see with the right characters and props making a lot of character renders in the near future after the contest is over.

I'm still hanging on to both for now, as there are good points for both programs (I'll explain later in this post).


Ok, well... um... ok. I don't think of myself as someone who could teach someone else to use these programs since I'm still new at this, but ok.

See, here's my pros and cons for both programs:

DAZ GOOD: DAZ is a free program (always nice) that has life-like customizable characters, with being able to pick the body shape, facial expressions, hair, clothes (and other accessories/props), stick them to the proper part of the figure so they don't wander (hair on the head for example) and make pictures/renders, animation with the click of a button for the most part. There is some overlap in the Poser area of available characters and accessories as well. There are plenty of tutorials and I know someone who is well versed in DAZ (Manikus ;)

DAZ BAD: Trusting that the zip file installs properly (thank goodness for the beginners tutorial that told me how to place them or I'd have all kinds of junk...) and that the poser items actually compile in DAZ. There are a lot of character stuff for free that is a supporting file for something you have to purchase and without the purchase does not work at all.

Truespace 3.2 good: another free program, and this has the ability to build things yourself without having to rely on someone elses character or item (so there's no use restrictions if that applies). Does not rely on downloading matching component parts. Can do it all: item/background/character/creature builds, animation and renders.

Truespace 3.2 Bad: This was caligari's baby but they moved up to version 7 (or so) now so its outdated and amost all tutorials out there are for newer versions with different (and mebbe even easier) controls. This means figuring stuff out. Also, it was version 4 and after that did skeleton animations for character animations (so as to allow simple edit for animation). also, in making your own characters the realistic look could be difficult to get done right.

So I'll keep you up on what I'm doing. And if I learn something, I'll let you know also

ST

Re: 3D art question
 

There is actually a lot of overlap. Everything for poser works in DAZ Studio, though mc6 files need to be rewritten as pz2 (just changing one or two words and the extension) and dynamic clothing doesn't work properly yet. Everything in DAZ Studio, however, does not work in Poser, as DAZ decided to use a proprietary format for everything, which they've not released and SDK on, and it's not text based. Fortunately, you can choose to save everything in Poser formats.

This isn't really a problem with Studio so much as it is with the people creating and releasing the freebies. The same errors happen if you're trying to use those freebies in Poser. As someone who's released a couple of freebies, I feel I can gripe about the crappy packages (just for the package not the content), as it took me maybe 30 seconds extra to put it in the proper format, including file structure, and include a good readme file. :)

You should check out and see if Ziroc has any tutorials or hints as he used to model in TrueSpace (he may still for all I know). I know he has models (freebies) to offer on the Great Escape website (the mother site of Ironworks).

Re: 3D art question
 

@ST - Ok cool, thanks.

Yeah that was one of the few things in this thread I truly understood without having to see examples or read a tutorial since it dealt directly with specific changes to a specific file type and only requires notepad [or some favorite text editor like Editplus, Notepad2, etc] to edit it.

I ran into the same exact problem with the free model packs offered by fans online for FPS Creator. I haven't touched FPS in a while now because it is in such a mess and I started trying to clean it up so I could find the stuff easier while trying to put together a game but I ended up deleting something important apparently so now I need to just delete the whole damn thing and start over from scratch. I don't feel like going through all that again since I've already played with it enough and I decided I have much more fun working on more retro or old school style games, even though we are using 3d programs now to produce graphics for DC - lol.

Re: 3D art question
 

The only other game editor I work with is RuneSword II, and not as much as I should b/c the magic system is very different than AD&D and I haven't figured out how to make it more like AD&D yet, though I'm told it's possible through scripting.
There are a lot of games to play, and a lot of art available, though most of it is not original. It is completely free, however, and is Open Source, which is pretty high in my book. I've done some art for the project, put together about a third of their wiki and put together all of their website. :) It's a pretty mature editor/engine so there are relatively few bugs and new features being added quite often.

Re: 3D art question
 

Wow I checked out some screen shots and it is isometric! That is cool. I've always wanted to be able to make a game in the style of Fallout or Diablo or Arcanum, etc. This is awesome, thanks for the heads up Manikus! I'll definately be adding that to seditionproject.info!

Re: 3D art question
 

The fact that it's isometric is what first drew me to it. :) It helps that the group of guys working on it are pretty cool and responsive to requests, questions, etc.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I must say that I am a part of development team. :D But I only do art and maintain the website. I would help with the coding, but I'm a .NET programmer, and it's being done in VB 6.

Re: 3D art question
 

I've just been playing around with RSII OS. I tried out the modules that come with it. It's a neat little program though it isn't what I expected from the screen shots. I thought it would be more to the scale of the commercial isometric RPGs like the ones I mentioned and with animated sprites. But though I was a little disappointed in that regard I can still appreciate it for what it is. I think it would be cool to do a Runesword remake of Bard's Tale.

The home town module I played in RS totally reminded my of that cool artists rendering of the town map of Bard's Tale that came with the game. That map is permanently burned into my neurons because I played the game so many times when I was a kid and memorized every little detail of that map. I also had all the dungeons memorized from going through them so many times but I played recently and realized I didn't retain the dungeons as well as I did the map. Guess I crawled through too many other dungeons in the years since then so the neurons storing the BT dungeon maps got flushed down the memory hole to make room. lol.

One thing I like about RS is the simplicity of it. Did you do most of the art for the scenery and stuff for RS? That is amazing work for such a tiny scale!

Re: 3D art question
 

I've hardly done any artwork. Almost all of it 'gleaned' from other sources around the web or is a scan of a miniature from a nice company who let the use the pics.
RS II started off as a commercial game, called RuneSword, but the company released it as Open Source. :)

The game can support animated sprites, people just need to make them. :D:D:D