Playing Around with New Toys

I have been working on all the various points of the story for the prologue. I currently have 18 different decision points that are still in progress and will directly impact how you proceed into chapter 1.

In the meantime, DAZ has released some new tools to bridge your DAZ Genesis 3 and Genesis 8 models, hair, and clothes into your animation/render studio of choice... as long as your choice is 3D Studio Max, Maya, Blender, or Cinema 4D.

The images in this post are using Blender with Eevee render settings, Blender with Cycle render settings using GPU/CPU combo, and DAZ 3D with iray settings.

I'm surprised at the stark difference in the render quality and the way certain elements are displayed. For example, the hair in the eevee render is almost transparent, making the scalp textures too prominent for my taste, and the skin is very glossy... but the clothing looks better. Cycles is difficult for me to get the quality good enough right now (still learning the settings) so the image is a bit grainy... however, I really like the way the eyes came out in this one compared to the DAZ render. But, iray seems to do better with the texture in the hair, and while I prefer the face shading there, but the hands look better, IMO, in the Cycles render. Lots to consider for each.

Since I am primarily focusing on stills, currently, I will continue to stay in DAZ. Once I get more comfortable with rigging and animation in Blender, then I may go there for that. I can animate in DAZ, that's not too big of an issue as long as I keep it simple, but Blender does have a built-in game engine and more flexibility on exporting from Blender for other formats than what DAZ allows.

Anyway, just wanted to give everyone an update on the goings on in the world of nFoManiacs!