A Bit of 3D Software/Technical Geekery (Patreon)

Hello everyone!

I’ve been asked by Cargo, right here on Patreon, to give a detailed rundown of the software I use for these images. As I’ve been on a very steep learning curve over the past 9 months or so with help from a few other creators out there, notably Giantess Tina, I’m more than happy to share where I am right now and geek out a little bit. All this is prefaced by saying that I work on a Mac. Sometimes this creates extra challenges as none of this software was created with Macs in mind and some things don’t work in the way they should. Anyway, now please be prepared for a long ass bit of text…

Software:

I use a mixture of Daz and Blender. I initially thought I’d just use Blender and models that were available for it, but as it turns out nothing out there is remotely as good as the Genesis models available on the Daz shop. Because of this I’ve had to use Daz for a portion of the workflow and now take for granted that I can customise so much at will, which would be very difficult in Blender.

I keep Blender up to date, so at the time of writing I think we are on Blender 3.6. The largest challenge is linking Daz to Blender, which I have got more of a handle on now. I use a programme/plugin called Diffeomorphic to transfer models from Daz to Blender. There have been plenty of challenges and at times I’ve just had to figure out how to avoid the limitations and do what I can do. I’ve just worked out how to transfer HD models across (thanks to a big update from Diffeomorphic I think) and this is a game changer in terms of being able to go back to my Daz library and get much more out of it. There is a Daz to Blender Bridge produced by Daz but the version I was initially working with didn’t transfer some materials across very well at all. There has been a recent update to go with the Genesis 9 models so maybe I will give it another go and see if it works.

Giantess Tina’s Resources:

First off the resources produced by Giantess Tina are incredibly useful, high quality, and FREE. She has made a variety of packs including Cities, Playgrounds, Destroy, Crowds, Massive… and these cover many aspects of getting you up and running in Daz. You have landscapes, cities, effects, poses, loads of low poly tinies, cars, poses for your low poly tinies… Some are also available in Blender.

Daz Plugins:

In Daz you usually need to spend a bit extra to get fancy boobs and genitals that you can buy from Renderotica. I have a few and I mix it up a bit. For G9 I’m now using Golden Palace and Dicktator with pubes from Lightblue and just trying some now from Tempesta 3D (think I got that from Renderosity). I was using NewGens for female genitals but the interface didn’t work very well with Blender or with Diffeomorphic’s handling of HD. For G9 breasts I use Breastacular but to be honest the base ones can work really well in HD. I’m interested to try some of the control morphs available on the Daz shop.

For G8 I mostly use the G8 versions of the same products. For boobs there is also Breast Utilities but the custom shader is not supported by Diffeomorphic so it’s mostly useful for morphs (and HD morphs). I have also recently discovered a plugin that treats breasts as an object that will respond to D-Force. This doesn’t always work how you want it to but can be very useful in certain circumstances.

I do also have a pose converter for G3 and G8 to G9 and G3 to G8 but they don’t always work amazingly. Same for the clothing converter I have.

Blender Plugins:

As mentioned I use Diffeomorphic which as well as transferring across models allows for a load of other functionality that I haven’t learned how to use yet. Some of this is covering for materials that don’t transfer across properly, like some kinds of strand based hair but can also be used for a pose library and animations. I haven’t got this far yet. The node trees that are produced when importing characters are nothing like what you might expect elsewhere on Blender and there are no easy tutorials to figure out what everything means but through trial and error it’s possible to work out what changing different settings will do.

Because I’m working in Blender I also have access to lots of cool plugins. I don’t use that many right now and I’ve bought a few resources that I haven’t used yet (and I’m planning to use more.)

I use the free version of Blenderkit to get models, materials, and HDRIs directly in Blender. I also use the free materials and HDRIs from Polyhaven.

Models:

For models I use a mixture of what’s available on the Daz Shop, using Diffeomorphic to transfer props and environments to Blender too, or buy models as .blend files or .obj from websites like Blender Market and CG trader. Often these need a bit of fixing when you buy them which can be very frustrating when you aren’t an expert with Blender. I’m still getting on top of this.

For character models the Daz originals (core characters) are far better than almost anything else out there. The skins are better and they are often (but not always) better sculpts. G9 is a big step up from G8 and G8.1 but there are some really great deals on G8/G8.1 characters and wearables.

Ok so that’s a bit of an overview. This may sound totally technical and intense, and on one level it really is! However I am also still learning my way around and it’s possible to get really great results without much experience. The key things to concentrate on are lighting and composition. These will really lay the foundations. It is not as simple as throwing in an HDRI and saying that lighting is done. It’s changed the way I look at lighting in movies and TV and I can see all the additional stuff that goes into making a scene look good. Your models will look shit if you don’t light them well! I’m currently adding some post effects in “compositing” and this is really helping to step things up  another level. 

If you have any specific questions please put them below the line and I’ll do my best to answer them!