Hello Supporters!
I have started recording the first 5 episodes of the new Marvelous Designer series and it’s flowing well. I got some editing done and am pleased to share the first episode with you, in which we’ll use the Modular Configurator to create a shirt. This needs to happen on the default MD avatars with a special pose, but I’ll show you how to swap it out in the next episode (should be with you by tomorrow).
Have a good weekend, ...
2023-12-15 18:28:44 +0000 UTC
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Hello Supporters!
Today I have an early access video for you in which I’ll show you how to install legacy versions of Daz Studio without Install Manager. This is useful if your existing scene files don’t render properly anymore with an updated version and you’re in the middle of a project, or you’d like to refine existing scenes without a major re-work.
Old installer files a...
2023-12-04 18:06:32 +0000 UTC
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Hello Supporters!
I’ve had a busy few weeks and wanted to give you a quick update on what’s been happening, what I’m currently working on and what’s about to be released in December.
First of all, I did something I’ve not done for several years: I took a few days OFF for Thanksgiving. I usually work all the time, because playing with 3D software almost doesn’t feel like work, but I’ve been doing a bit too much of that lately, and my brain was getting frazzled, ...
2023-12-04 01:26:34 +0000 UTC
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Wow! Thanks for watching everyone, I really appreciate it!
2023-11-12 18:17:36 +0000 UTC
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Hello Supporters 👋
Today I have an exclusive video for you all about something I've been experimenting with today. It's a lip-sync system called AccuFace that lets us record head movement, pupil tracking and lip syncing all with a regular web cam or from video files. It's an add-on for iClone and only came out this week. I've been looking for su...
2023-11-08 03:14:27 +0000 UTC
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Hello Supporters!
Last week I got roped into an interesting experiment that required rudimentary knowledge of Godot, the open source game engine that I keep hearing so much about. I literally knew nothing about Godot's inner workings and had no real reason to use it for future projects, but seeing just how quickly ecosystems can change, I thought this was a good opportunity to jump in and take a peek.
The result is this cute little project ...
2023-10-26 14:06:59 +0000 UTC
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Hello Supporters!
I wanted to share some sweet renders I've made today, and also let you know about some changes our friends from Patreon have introduced. This affects how we can/have to communicate going forward. Grab a drink and have a quick read, or scroll ahead to the pictures if you're in a hurry.
The New Patreon
So Patreon (like all other tech companies) are in a constant state of flux. It's been 10 years since they came to be, and countless platforms have now native...
2023-10-13 00:31:44 +0000 UTC
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Yesterday I've been tinkering with exporting a non-human non-standard character from UE over to iClone so I could animate them better. We want to use these wolves for our cinematic project, but they're made to be controlled live in a game, so I'm going to need better character animation tools than I can find in Unreal Engine. iClone might be the answer, but I ...
2023-10-03 17:54:01 +0000 UTC
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Happy Spooktober everyone!
Daniel from the Daz Dev Team asked if I had any comprehensive videos about how to use the GoZ bridge that connects Daz Studio with ZBrush. The ones I have are a bit old and don't explain all the gory details, yet they seem to attract many comments and questions, so I thought I'd address it all in a very comprehensive new video. And here it is!
I'll explain the basic concepts, including installation pitfalls, morph crea...
2023-10-03 14:59:02 +0000 UTC
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Hello again my people 👋
I've finished editing two of three videos that I can give you here as an early access weekend treat.
I've had this question several times recently: "How can we split a full body morph into a head and body slider? I've tried Shape Splitter but it didn't work with Genesis 9". It's true: Shape Splitter is a little hit and miss with G9. If you've been digging through the folders in the starter essentials on both G8 and G9, you may ...
2023-09-30 15:19:55 +0000 UTC
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Hello supporters 😁
I was going to post a couple of early access video about Daz Studio, but sadly after an hour of editing we had a power cut and Premiere didn't store any auto saves. I thought perhaps it's a sign to call it a day and switch over to my laptop. It only has UE and iClone installed, and I thought I'd show you this rather unremarkable animation instead.
While it won't win me any Michael Eisner awards, I'm still super excited about it: ...
2023-09-28 23:36:53 +0000 UTC
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Hello again!
I managed to record and edit the third batch of Daz to Unreal videos and thought I'll share them long before the general release. Here's what I've added:
Hello Supporters!
Today I have a few more instalments in my Daz to Unreal mini series for you. They're all short and snappy:
Hello Supporters 👋
I've made some progress on Digital Jay, here's "Iteration 4" as I'd like to call him. Previous conversions featured a terrible hunch and all kinds of issues, but this one behaves well in Unreal Engine. The hunch was happening because the figure was rotated a little on the Z axis before rigging (left/right when viewed from the front), something that can creep in when wrapping scanned humans onto symmetric geometry.
Jay v4 is ba...
2023-09-07 15:48:05 +0000 UTC
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Hello Supporters! 👋
Julia and I went on an adventure this week and had our bodies scanned. What a crazy idea indeed! I've been working with body scans for a while and have come to appreciate how important the concept of a digital double is becoming. I thought for a laugh, it would be hilarious to make a version of myself for Daz Studio and Unreal Engine.
Here we have the first rendition of what I'd like to call Digital Jay, or perhaps Jay 51 (based...
2023-08-24 22:47:07 +0000 UTC
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Happy Thursday my people!
I have several early access videos for you today that I'll drip-release over the coming weeks on my various channels. I'll see if I can convince Midjourney and the new Photoshop AI tools to whip up some snazzy thumbnails for them.
The first batch is a small series on bringing Daz characters into Unreal Engine and making them usable with the third person template. I've been meaning to make one or perhaps two videos on th...
2023-08-17 20:57:15 +0000 UTC
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Hello everyone 👋
Over the last few weekends I've been chipping away at these little animations I want to add to my 2023 holding loop that run before my streams start. Here's the first one that was made in Unreal Engine 5.1 with the Messenger Ancient Mountain asset by Hivemind. You can still get it as part of the Unreal Essentials Humble Bun...
2023-08-11 15:21:52 +0000 UTC
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Hello Supporters!
It's Early Access video time again this fine Sunday: In this episode I'll show you how to pick random accessories for your Synty Characters. We'll see how to give them different hair styles, outfits, skin colours and body shapes with the magic of arrays. This will make your crowd scenes stand out from... the crowd.
I've been meaning to make a follow-up to my earlier Synty videos and nearly forgot, until a friendly viewer remind...
2023-08-06 15:42:22 +0000 UTC
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Hello Supporters 👋
I've had a great and busy week, in which I've managed to record several videos that I'm excited to share with you. The first one is an early access tutorial about creating tattoos on the Daz characters with Substance Painter. There's no way I can turn that into a catchy title though, so I hope the above will suffice as.
Tattoos aren't difficult to make in Substance Painter, but exporting the maps with transparency and no un...
2023-08-01 15:37:31 +0000 UTC
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Hello folks! Today I have a quick video about the Playstation 5 for you. The reason is a bit of a longer story, so bear with me.
I've recently invested into a couple of SanDisk USB 3.2 sticks I wanted to use as external storage, with the intention of comparing read speeds between USB 3.0, 3.1 and 3.2. That was supposed to be the video.
By accident though, Amazon didn't send me the 3.1 version and I ended up two 3.2 versions of the sticks. What a...
2023-07-20 15:21:24 +0000 UTC
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Sad news: we have to move, and this time we really really have to do it. There's no sweet talking my way out of it. Our landlady is adamant that she wants to sell the place we're currently renting, and this time we have to bite the bullet.
We've had a fantastic time over the last 10 years here in Miami Beach, in an area known as South of Fifth. Admittedly the time is probably right to set sail for new adventures and leave the proverbial comfort zone (...
2023-06-19 14:50:15 +0000 UTC
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Hello Supporters!
Today I have an early access video for you that shows how to create your own HDRIs with Unreal Engine. This is a super easy process that requires literally no knowledge about the engine at all, and it'll let you make great use of all those free environments you've been collecting on the Unreal Engine marketplace.
I'll explain how to setup the HDRI camera object, how to export the HDRI and how to use it in Daz Studio as an examp...
2023-06-11 14:57:58 +0000 UTC
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Hello Supporters!
Today I have not one but TWO early access videos for you, and a bit of exciting news I wanted to share. Also, where has the month of May gone? Did it even happen? Time is speeding up at an exponential rate, and I'm reminded of this by the fact that I've turned 51 this month. That's great news actually, considering that a few years ago I wasn't sure if I'd make it to this point. Just in case I wasn't already last year, I believe I'm n...
2023-05-31 16:37:01 +0000 UTC
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Hello Supporters!
I have an early access video for you today in response to several viewer comments I've had. It's about retro-fitting Genesis 9 characters onto the Genesis 8 shape. The steps are similar to my previous conversion methods and can all be done inside Daz Studio, but there are some differences and I thought a new video is in order. We can even make use of the Genesis 9 developer tools, and it's nice to show this tool here. Enjoy!
Th...
2023-04-21 16:50:58 +0000 UTC
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Hello Supporters!
As promised, here's the second part of the Unreal Engine video for you, in which I'm showing the two ways you can render animations out. The first tool (Movie Capture) is enabled by default, it's been around for many years, it's easy but not very good. The second is a relatively new plugin called Movie Render Queue, it's intimidating to understand, but the results are fantastic compared to the first.
I've rendered out the same ...
2023-04-06 10:00:02 +0000 UTC
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Hello Supporters!
It's taken me a while, but I finally managed to understand how to do multi camera animations in Unreal Engine. While it's fresh in my mind, I thought a video about the process is appropriate.
The concept is a little different than in other 3D apps I'm familiar with, as UE doesn't have a default global timeline object. Although we can create one called a Level Sequence, it can easily get messy if one such timeline were to track ...
2023-04-04 10:59:01 +0000 UTC
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Hello Supporters!
Today I have a quick Photoshop tip for y'all: sometimes we need to convert an opacity map into something that has an alpha channel. Different apps deal with this concept differently: Iray uses opacity maps, whereas Blender and Unreal Engine can use the transparency in a PNG file. I'll show you how to turn the "black" in such a map into an alpha channel in Photoshop.
Gimp has a great feature called Black to Alpha, we'll use Ble...
2023-03-31 10:00:04 +0000 UTC
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Hello Supporters!
I've made this video for Seb, who had trouble with how the default eye controller behaved after he imported a custom eye morph. I haven't covered the Property Hierarchy Pane, and thought this would be a perfect opportunity. I'm showing two options, an easy/fast and a "dangerous" option. Take it as a starting point to explore.
Enjoy!
2023-03-29 04:00:02 +0000 UTC
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Hello Supporters!
This is a clip from the Sunday stream, in which I'm showing the new Unreal Engine Fortnite Editor. It allows PC players to use a modified version of Unreal Engine to build and test custom levels, collaboratively, together with console users. I'm showing how to bring in Fortnite assets, import your own OBJs and drag in objects from the brand new FAB Marketplace.
This is a huge milestone for the EPIC team, and it will undoubtedly...
2023-03-27 14:28:53 +0000 UTC
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Hello Supporters! In this episode I'll show you how to attach some hair and glasses to a modular Synty character. We do this with a socket and a node in the construction script. This method can be used to randomise a variety of assets, as we'll see in a future episode.
Enjoy!
PS: I've actually recorded this video twice, because I've made a small mistake in the first pass. It ended up being a bit shorter and has a different energy, if you like you can 2023-03-24 23:56:30 +0000 UTC
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