Exploring Daz3D with Scooter and Daria.

[scooter_ca]

I bought Daria a beach house.
She's currently giving a tour of it in Dolls Alive --> Daria's New Home on the Beach.

This topic is my journey of discovery as I learn how to use DAZ Studio.
It goes into more technical detail about the pictures Daria is posting.
You are invited to join me as I learn.


What is Daz 3D and DAZ Studio.
Daz 3D are the creators of the amazing 3D application caled DAZ Studio.
It's 100% free!!! There is no silly trial versions or versions with watermarks or restrictions.
You get the complete, full function, Ad free, application.

What's the catch?
Out of the box, DAZ Studio can do many amazing things.
However, as you progress you may want to go even further.
DAZ 3D offers many add on's like clothing, hair, and body morphs that can push your pictures to the next level.
These are offered for sale at reasonable prices.
Also DAZ and several sites offer DAZ freebies.


What's my goal.
I want to insert pictures of my doll Daria into realistic looking environments in a way that blurs the boundary between real and virtual.
I have photographed Daria all around my small house.
Now I want to photograph her in more exotic and luxurious settings.


What's my strategy.
My initial plan was to create scenes using Daz Studio and a virtual Daria.
I would then photograph real Daria in a similar pose with the same lighting.
Then I would post edit to blend real Daria over the virtual Daria.

Unfortunately, due to COVID-19, I can't currently take any new pictures of Daria.
So I am implementing my strategy in reverse.
I select interesting pictures of Daria and then remove the background.
I then create a Daz3d picture with virtual Daria that matches the lighting and perspective of the original picture.
I then blend real Daria into this picture.


Shout-outs.
I want to shout out to The Doll Laboratory (Von Ruber) and hansdampf for their inspiration.
The Doll Laboratory --> The Doll Laboratory Stories featuring Svetlana, Molly and..?
hansdampf21 --> Lena's Naked 3D Adventure.


Daria's Beach House.
Now it's time to find a setting for Daria.
It is possible to create a house from scratch in Daz Studio but it would take thousands of hours.
Fortunately Daz has entire furnished houses for sale for ridiculously low prices.
I decided to go with Modern Rustic Cottage and purchased it during one of Daz3d many sales.
I think I paid about $14.
That's ridiculously cheap considering its a "two-story house with a Large Living Area space, Dining Area, Kitchen Area, Laundry Room, and a Guest Room with a Bathroom on the Lower Floor. The Upper Floor consists of 3 Large Bedrooms with balcony, an outer Bathroom, and Master Bedroom with it's own Bathroom inside."
Everything inside the house is editable. You can move them, hide them, make them bigger, smaller... etc.
You can also download any additional freebies to redecorate the house.



OK. Let's begin....

Daria's New House on the Beach.
For my first picture I just want something that introduces the house.
This picture isn't all that impressive, but a great deal of learning was involved in creating it.



Steps involved in creating the picture.......
The Modern Rustic Cottage comes as a walled gated enclosure.
I'm looking for a little more open concept.



In Daz Studio, you can make any item invisible.
I removed the wall, gate, and some trees.
Now we have this beautiful cottage floating in space.



Now, this is the tricky bit that took a lot of learning.
I may not be explaining this well but in DAZ there are HDR Environments.
"These HDR images capture the lighting information of real world scenes and background detail in order to fully envelope your characters in realistic locations.".
A freebie available from DAZ is Iray HDR Outdoor Environments.

These are like spheres that your 3D object is placed inside which creates a whole 3D world.
Here is Daria's Beach House inside the sphere.
In Render settings ->
- Envirinment Mode = Dome and Scene
- Dome Mode = Finite Sphere
- Draw Dome = On
- Environment Map = dthdr-mauia.hdr



Then it's a matter of fiddling with the Dome Scale Multiplier, Dome Radius, and Dome Rotation until the house is in a nice position on the beach.
I'll leave this dome in place for future pictures so that any interior scenes that have a window will show the beach outside.



In the next instalment, Daria welcomes us to her beach house.



Thanks,
scooter

[AtomicPunk]

Interesting concept! I'm sure the biggest challenge is coordinating the lighting and shading between the two, but i'm sure you'll figure that out. Have fun!

[setevoltas]

This is so, so cool scooter. What kind of system resources do you need to run the program?

[scooter_ca]

This is so, so cool scooter. What kind of system resources do you need to run the program?

That's a great question setevoltas and I'm going to deal with that in great length in an upcoming post.
However, here is a quick preview.

You can run DAZ Studio on basically any computer that has a built in or external graphics card.
I run mine on a old Lenovo T420 laptop. This is fine for setting up the scene and rendering small draft samples (eg 400x300px).
The problem arises when you want to do the final render of the picture.
On my Lenovo, the final render can take over 24 hours to only partially complete and my laptop is running so hot that it could burst into flames any minute.

To speed up the renders you need to spend $$$ on a high end graphics card....
OR
If you're a cheap bastard like myself, you can do the final render in the cloud for pennies an hour.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) where you can spin up images and pay by the hour.
I can spin up a GPU spot image that costs 34 cents per hour.
So, now I am creating my pictures using my Lenovo Laptop, and then I spin up a spot image in EC2, transfer my file to the the server, and then render it in one or two hours.
I then transfer the results back, and stop and delete the spot image. Total cost - 68 cents.
To me, this is way better than spending hundreds of dollars for a graphics card.

I will go into great detail about how I do this in a future post.
And just to keep it interesting, here is another Daria preview...


Thanks,
scooter

[Anglian]

This is fascinating I will be following this thread with interest . Thanks Scooter for taking the time to explain how you are making these wonderful photos of Daria's beach house. Only trouble is that Sarah will want one !

Anglian

[setevoltas]

Watched some of the Daz tutorials today. Did you use the Face Transfer tool to "create" a Daria figure? It looks like the free version only gives you three renders.

[scooter_ca]

Interesting concept! I'm sure the biggest challenge is coordinating the lighting and shading between the two, but i'm sure you'll figure that out. Have fun!

Proper lighting is a big part of DAZ Studio.
DAZ uses Iray ray tracing where each beam of light is calculated to see how it interacts with, and bounces off each object.
The render in this post calculated up to 5 bounces for each ray of light.

This is fascinating I will be following this thread with interest . Thanks Scooter for taking the time to explain how you are making these wonderful photos of Daria's beach house. Only trouble is that Sarah will want one !

Thanks Anglian. I hope Sarah gets what she wants.
I like learning new things and I like sharing what I learn.
So rather than learning from an expert, you get to learn with me as I muddle along.

Watched some of the Daz tutorials today. Did you use the Face Transfer tool to "create" a Daria figure? It looks like the free version only gives you three renders.

Hi setevoltas. For what I want to do, I am not concerned with how the virtual Daria looks.
She is just a placeholder to create shadows and to help me judge how the real Daria should look when I blend her it.
You can see virtual Daria later in this post.
Handsdamp21 will know more about using real faces as he has created a virtual Lena and a virtual representation of himself.

_____________________________________

And now.... Thanks everyone for coming back.
In this first picture, Daria welcomes everyone to her new beach house.
Welcome to our home. I'm really looking forward to exploring it with you.



Thoughts about this picture:

• - Not to shabby for a first attempt. I think I can do better.

• - The Ocean background is too dark. I was still learning HDR Environments and had not quite figured it out.

• - I changed the door colour to red, but this also coloured the door handle. I'll fix this in the next post.

• - I had to use an existing picture of Daria and remove the background because I am not able to take new pictures of Daria right now.

Creating this picture:

First I rendered the empty doorway.
This took 20+ hours on my Lenove T420. Later I'll create a post about how I switched to rendering in the Amazon Cloud.



I then added virtual Daria.
She's cute, but what I am really interested is the shadow she casts on the floor and door.
I spot render the place where her shadow falls.
A spot render is quicker because you are only processing a small section of the picture.



Then in Photoshop I combine the doorway, shadow, and Daria layers.
A mask is added to Daria's arm to make it be behind the door.
Tweaks like cropping and adjusting the contrast are done, resulting in the final picture.


Thanks,
scooter

[KarmaMusic]

real nice Scooter_ca, have fun great program!!

[scooter_ca]

Thanks KarmaMusic.

And now for the next picture in the series.....
This is the Laundry Room!
Yes, I agree that this is a strange place to begin a tour, but I'm drying a big load of summer clothes and they're almost ready.
Plus it feels so nice here in the sunlight.



Since this is a Beach House, the sun is very strong and therefore I want strong deep shadows.
This turned out to be much harder than I thought.
I tried and I tried for DAYS but no matter what I did, there were no shadows.

In DAZ Studio you can create a spotlight and direct it at anything that you want well lit.
Within the program you can also look at the scene from the perspective of the spotlight to see where it is aimed.
In this case I have the spotlight blasting in the window set to 1,000,000 Lumens.

Still no shadows.



Thinking that maybe the spotlight couldn't penetrate the window, I created a strong light inside the room.
In DAZ Studio you can create something called a "Primitive" which is just another name for a shape, ie a plain, cube, sphere ... etc.
Primitives can also be set to be emissive. That is, they give off light.
I created a tiny plain just inside the window and played with the Luminescence setting.
Still the picture was either overexposed or nicely exposed with no shadows.



After days of experimenting and watching YouTube vidios about lighting, it suddenly occurred to me.
The entire Beach house is constructed from primitives. All the walls, floors, and ceilings are just rectangles.
If my tiny plain could be emissive, then maybe other objects in the room might be emisssive.
It turns out that the second story floor is emissive on one side... ie the ceiling of the first floor.
It was set to 9,000,000 Lumens which was overpowering any lighting I added to the scene.
Once I reduced the ceiling lighting to 1,000,000 Lumens THE SHADOWS APPEARED.

With the shadows now appearing I could render the room and then spot render virtual Daria to capture the shadows she casts on the washing machine.
Then in Photoshop I blend the room, real Daria, and shadow layers to create the final image.



Once I reduced the lighting from the ceiling I also discovered that the spotlight was working just fine.
It can send it rays through the window.
I use the spotlight a lot in future pictures.

Stay tuned.... more coming.

Thanks,
scooter

[scooter_ca]

Let's revisit the front door again for another "Welcome" picture.
Come in! The tour begins.
You can see a little bit of the living room. This will be the focal point of the house with its great views of the ocean.



Thoughts about this picture:

• - It's a pretty simplistic picture, but I'm still learning how to use Daz Studio.

• - The HDR Environment is much better this time resulting in a bright colourful beach.

• - I fixed up the door handle this time. Last time it was tinted red and wasn't shiny.

• - I added a slight background blur using Photoshop.
  In future pictures I will explore the virtual camera options some more. Daz Studio has setting for Depth of Field, Focal Length and Focal Distance to match what a real camera can do.

Creating the picture:
I set up the scene and then add virtual Daria to it.
Virtual Daria is about 150cm tall, so adding her helps me scale real Daria correctly when I blend her into the picture.
My Daria is actually a little shorter, but in this virtual world she is 150cm.



I set up a exterior spotlight beaming into the living room through the upper floor slats.
This gives the interesting shadows on the stairs and floor.



I render the background scene and then use Photoshop to blend Daria into it, matching the perspective of virtual Daria.



More to come.

Thanks,
scooter

[setevoltas]

Awesome scooter! Daria looks like she's having a blast!

Which lighting tuts did you watch on Youtube? I'm going to start bingeing Sickleyield's stuff this week.

[KarmaMusic]

Scooter looks fantastic, looks like i need to start a 3D project with my dolls!
I can see you doing a lot of cool stories with DARIA and DAZ
By the way there is a Plugin for UNREAL 4 that allows one to import DAZs into Unreal that i will be trying soon.
I have been using POSER more than DAZ but now that DAZ is more flexible i might use it more Great program and fun too.

LevelDesignQS - Unreal Editor_2020-05-15_02-44-13.png (5.84 MiB) Viewed 1795 times

My 3D town in Unreal 4 that i plan on added DAZ characters to it

Shoppingmall.jpg (225.77 KiB) Viewed 1795 times

one of my Poser projects

Koshini&Bandwebsm.jpg (50.15 KiB) Viewed 1795 times

Have fun I know I am!!

[scooter_ca]

This is great.
Looks like I have stimulated the imagination of two TDF members.

Awesome scooter! Daria looks like she's having a blast!
Which lighting tuts did you watch on Youtube? I'm going to start bingeing Sickleyield's stuff this week.

I was mainly searching on how to light a interior room. There were lots of interesting topics about emissive surfaces and ghost lights.
There are lots of tutorials about lighting a character. Daz Studio lights and cameras are so lifelike that all the traditional rules about three-point portrait photography also apply to Daz Studio.

Scooter looks fantastic, looks like i need to start a 3D project with my dolls!
I can see you doing a lot of cool stories with DARIA and DAZ
By the way there is a Plugin for UNREAL 4 that allows one to import DAZs into Unreal that i will be trying soon.
I have been using POSER more than DAZ but now that DAZ is more flexible i might use it more Great program and fun too.
Have fun I know I am!!

That's great. I look forward to seeing your projects.


And now, the next picture in the series from Daria's New Home on the Beach.
Let's head into the kitchen.
Pull up a chair and I'll pour us some wine. Do you like red?



Thoughts about this picture:

• - I love this kitchen. The Modern Rustic House has such great rooms.

• - I love the reflection of Daria on the kitchen counter.

Creating the picture.
First I render the empty room.
This took 24 hours on my Lenovo T420 laptop and it ran so hot that it threatened to burst into flames any second.
My next post will describe how I am now rendering in the Amazon Cloud.

The wine bottle and glasses were free stuff that I downloaded.
Two great sites are:

• - https://www.most-digital-creations.com/

• - https://www.renderosity.com/

The Daz main site also offers freebies.
Daz also sells characters and items.
My suggestion is not to pay full price. They have many sales throughout the year.
Just wait a short bit and it will be on sale for half price or more.

I lowered the hanging kitchen lights a bit to a height that looks good.
One kitchen stool is rotated slightly, inviting Daria's guest to sit down.



I then spot render the picture again with virtual Daria.
She is posed in the same position that real Daria will be in.
She is dressed in a white top to match Daria's top.
As usual, she is cute, but I am more interested in how she changes the environment, especially her reflection in the counter.
Also she is a good guide to the height, size, and perspective the real Daria should be when I add her to the picture.



Then in Photoshop, I layer a cut-out of real Daria on top of the reflection and kitchen layers.
A mask is added to Daria's hands, lower half, and chest so that she appears to be behind the counter and wine bottle.


Make sure you come back.
There are lots more pictures to come.
I may even figure out a way for Daria to take off her clothes.

Thanks,
scooter

[The Doll Laboratory]

Hello scooter_ca,

Great tutorial of an interesting concept...

I hope you will show us many more pictures of Daria in various 3D settings. There are plenty of possibilities to make our Dolls travel in fantastic locations and this one of them. But it is indeed a lot of work... even for your computer it seems!

[setevoltas]

Daria looks great and super happy! And you two have definitely given me all kinds of new ideas. I needed an outlet for the things I imagine the dolls being up to, especially Gabriella.

I'm finding that DeviantArt is right up there with MDC as far great freebies.