Monday, June 20, 2011

Daz 3D-Electronic Paper Dolls To The Extreme

Daz3D
I suppose it's time to get over my love/hate relation with this program and make mention of it for all those out there willing to try their hand at this quite remarkable FREE program. Okay that word 'free' does come with some stipulations but yes, Daz Studio (formerly Daz 3D) is a free program for creating simulated 3d images with models, props and such, all at your control. You can create still images or animations rendered with various settings like lifelike or cartoon finish or even sketchbook. The results are truly amazing when you take into consideration  how little time one needs to spend to become familiar with this software package.
Now for some of the side notes about this program. One of the early predecessors to Daz was a program called Poser, which is still in production today but ha since taken a back seat to the Daz Production mega-modelling favorite. Perhaps some of this is due to Poser's migration between company hands (Fractal Designs to MetaCreations to Curious Labs, now with Smith Micro) but for whatever the reason, Daz is clearly the top do of the hour when it comes to digital 3d figures. The library of humans, non-humans, animals, plants, buildings, organic and non-organic things one can download and install is practically unlimited. That ends up being the cross you must bear when using this program. It becomes too easy to fall into the habit of putting just one more model or just one more set of clothes into your library and before you know it, you're spending more time collecting items for the program rather than using all it's many features. Learning the basics of Daz takes about ten minutes but really digging into hardcore fine-tuning capabilities it has can take a while to perfect. You can easily find yourself inching a model around to get it just the way you want it to look and think, 'gee, I've just spent four hours on this one pose'-trust me, I've been there all too often.
Daz will entice you by starting you off with the program totally free (I believe they do want you to sign up for a newsletter but nothing that intrusive) and you could probably have a lot of fun and do a lot of work with the basic package they provide, but be ready. Once you start playing around with it you'll be on the lookout for more freebie and start signing up to forums that give away stuff for Daz and then before you know it you'll be totally addicted to putting out 3d renderings of muscle clad warriors or babes in bikinis. Go to the Daz site now to learn more about this magnificent-free-program.