Daz 2021

How long to render an image?

It has been almost 9 years since I last used Daz Studio. I'm now using the 64-bit software (version 4.15) and I'll confess that this is a 10-year-old Macintosh with only a 512k graphics card. The default "Barefoot Dancer" tutorial is for Iray, and it has a step for learning about some lighting settings. However, in that 6th part of the tutorial you are told that your graphics card needs to have at least 4Gb of memory. Um, they could have told me that at the start, no? I'll count myself lucky that the software even runs on this computer.

Iray rendered

A major change since I last used Daz Studio is that the first thing that gets downloaded now is called "DazCentral". Once DazCentral is running then it can install Daz Studio and other resources. The basic tutorial uses the Genesis 8 female figure, but then I got an error message in Studio saying that an older pre-Genesis 8 resource was not available. I had to install some additional resources for the tutorial using DazCentral. There were other annoyances with the basic tutorial such as it saying to find the "Standing A" pose under Poses>By Region, but I found it under Poses>By Function.

How much memory do you have?

A. Niel and Eynta. Image made with
 Elena17 by Eclesi4stiK
available under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0.

They claim that the Studio software needs 1.1 Gb of disk space, but by the time I had everything installed that is needed for the first tutorial, Daz was using over 4 Gb of space. The skimpy "rocker outfit" for the tutorial takes up 157 Mb of space. The "rocker outfit" used in the introductory tutorial comes included with the free Daz Studio software download (as do all the other Daz resources discussed on this page).

Why am I using Daz? It has always been a big challenge to illustrate my science fiction stories. I wanted to make an illustration for a particular scene in Chapter 12 of "Meet the Phari". Eynta gets "invited" into the secret underground world of the Plesypy-human hybrids on the planet Ottengla. Eynta meets the robot Niel, who is a Notteng model robot manufactured on Triskelion.

Sci-Fi Siren outfit

For the image (A) shown to the right (above), I was not really happy with the preset lighting settings. The lighting settings can make a huge difference for what a rendering ends up looking like. For image A, I used the 3Delight rendering option for Eynta. I don't think Iray rendering has any real advantage for my old computer.

A watched render never finishes

The answer to the question "How long will it take to render this image?" is "It depends." Some wardrobe items and some environments take much longer to render than a basic human figure. The default rendering settings are pretty good, but you can tweak them and try to get a little more quality at the cost of greatly increased rendering time. A major annoyance is that the provided estimates of how much rendering time remains can be way off. My advice: have something else to do during renders. 

B. Carylyne and a Plesypy.

Providing Eynta with her purple skin (she's a human-Iidi hybrid) was done in Photoshop. I also inserted Niel the robot into the scene and tried to make it look like he is emerging from his research lab (image A, above).

Before visiting Ottengla, for the previous 20 years, Eynta worked on Yerophet helping to design human-Plesypy hybrids. However, during all the time she spent on Yerophet, Eynta never saw a pure-blood Plesypy. While talking to Niel, she whirls around and suddenly sees her first Plesypy (image B, right). A Plesypy-human hybrid, Carylyne Ebernal is also there, in telepathic contact with the Plesypy.

The image shown to the right was made using the Daz sample scene "Elvish Fury". On Ottengla, most of the original human human settlements on the planet's surface were abandoned centuries before the events described in "Meet the Phari", so the ruins in this Daz sample scene were useful for my story setting on Ottengla. I combined images A and B (above) to make a wraparound book cover:

Wraparound cover for Meet the Phari. This image made with Elena17
   by Eclesi4stiK available under the CC BY-NC-SA 3.0.

 

using the beach "environment" that comes with Daz

When Grean's helpers are assembling on the planet Ottengla and making plans for how to capture Captain Tirret the starmenter, they spend time at Ebernal Ranch. I wanted to make an illustration showing some of the Ebernal children. The human-Plesypy hybrids of Ottengla have blue skin.

The image shown to the right was made using figures, clothing and a beach "environment" that comes with the basic Daz Studio download.

 A different background (exoplanet) made with Photoshop.

To change this scene (above) into a more science fiction-oriented setting on the fictional planet Ottengla, I used a different background (shown to the left). I used Photoshop to change the skin and hair of the children to a blue color. I also adjusted the positions of some of the figures so as to match features in the rocks. I used a preset lighting set, but had to brighten it from the default setting.

Back in January when I was writing The Alastor Network, I wanted an image for a scene in which one of the cats at the Palace of Lusz would be shown with some of the main characters in the story. For the image shown to the right, I used the Genesis 8 female and male figures as well as the older Genesis 2 female figure (far right) and "millennium cat". The cats who reside in the palace are sometimes used as "cover" for probots who need to influence the behavior of the royal family. 

Next: planning part 11 of "Meet the Phari".

Related: more for Daz including an animation example.

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