Jay Versluis

Getting Started with Volumetrics in Daz Studio 4.20

In this episode I'll show you what I currently know about rendering with  volumetrics in Daz Studio 4.20, which was released to the public only  yesterday. I'll show you the Ground Fog and Volume Shader options, and  where to find some sample VDB files to get you started. Have fun  experimenting with this new feature!

I did this as part of my Saturday morning stream earlier today and managed to edit and upload it in time for a YouTube Premiere.

Enjoy!

Accessorising my Alexia Portrait in DAZ Studio

In this stream excerpt I'll show you how I've put the finishing touches on my Alexia render. I wanted to replace the default orange material on the Strappy Top and add some earrings by Matty Manx. I had anticipated for this to take much longer, and it's nothing spectacular, just a quick "over the shoulder" peek at how I've done it. 

Enjoy!

Crash Course: Animations in Daz Studio

I recently helped Camilla get started with animations in Daz Studio during a Twitch stream. It turned out really well and I thought I'd preserve and  share it with you. I've tidied it up a bit in editing, and it's a great  springboard into the world of animating in Daz Studio. This is going to premiere on Wednesday, join me in chat if you're free.

Here's what I'm  covering:

00:00 Timeline Basics 2022-02-07 14:30:53 +0000 UTC View Post

DAZ Studio Masterclass Outline

I had great plans for expanding my DAZ Studio 101 series over time, but as life happens I never got round to finishing it. Things move fast, and I feel I've literally missed the boat adding bits onto it. Hence, I feel it's time for starting afresh with a new series that covers how to get handsome looking renders out of DAZ Studio, specifically character portraits. I've learnt so much since then, and there's currently no cohesive Masterclass type course on DAZ Studio - I'd like to change that....

R3DS Wrap Series in German

As promised for all you German speakers out there, here are all 5 episodes of the Body Scans to DAZ Studio series in German. While it was fresh in my head, I thought this would make a nice test to see how well I could deal with technical German these days. While I do speak the language regularly with my Mom and friends overseas, I've picked up all 3D terminology after leaving for London in 1999.

An interesting aside: I've exported all episodes in 4K to see if this improves the playback ...

Billboard Thumbnails (and a really funny Patreon story)

Remember the two Billboard Videos I've made recently? I've just premiered them on YouTube. Sometimes a video is ready, but I can't put it live because it's lacking a thumbnail - like in this case. In a flash of inspiration I turned to Canva, one of my favourite inspiration tools. It's excellent for making anything from presentations, finding clip art or even full blown graphics - all inside a web browser. 

Partly these thumb...

Weekend Renders

Here are two renders I've started this weekend during the Daz+ Live Stream. We let the audience vote which head scan I should convert into a portrait, and it was a close tie between Matthew (here seen as a pirate), and young Alexia. We had a bit of time so I made both - one a little faster than the other. The details always take the longest, and I took some time this evening to finish them both off. You're officially the first people to see them.

And because pictures apparently say more...

Kassandra Promo

This a promo I've made for the series about R3DS Wrap on the DAZ Channel, I thought I'd show you some background screenshots I've during the workflow. I've added the hair, outfit and textures in DAZ Studio, with a few detail adjustments in ZBrush. There's a video on my channel that shows how I've put some of it together: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpCp3xL-0ZI 

The lighting was a custom setup ma...

Dreamscape Meadows - Unreal Engine Animation

Here's a little animation practice I did the other day. Certainly not a  masterpiece, but what I thought was remarkable was the speed at which I  was able to throw this together. It took less than an hour from start to  finish, not including render time (that was about 20 minutes - but still not shabby for 2000+ frames at 1920x1080, and with 16 anti aliasing sub samples).

I was thinking that I could use this for a new title sequence, but the style didn't work for the proj...

Orien Tubbs - Liner Notes

I was doing some more testing in R3DS Wrap, this time with just a head scan from 3D.sk instead of a full body scan. This model is Orien, who is available for free to play with.

The trick here was to get inventive with selecting the correct parts of the Genesis figure, namely the face, neck, upper neck, ears and lips, but de-select the internal mouth bags and eye sockets. It's a little tricky to mix and match...

Tonya Promo - Liner Notes

Here's an early access treat for an Artstation post - is that a thing? It is now!

This is a promo I've made for a live stream this Saturday at 4pm EST, in which I'll play more with that Russian 3D Scanner software. I'll demonstrate how to use a 3D head scan and bolt it onto the Genesis figure. There's so much R3DS Wrap can do! The stream is for Daz+ subscribers, you'll receive an email with a link from Daz sometime ...

The Relicta Paintings (and how I've made them)

This week EPIC had a free game on called Relitca. I liked the look of it and started streaming it on YouTube, which means I had to come up with some handsome looking screenshots. 

Usually I head over to the publishers press section, then add my logo and a title - but on this occasion I decided to zoosh those pictures up with Corel Painter. Ever since I've bought it I've been fascinated with turn...

Portrait Lighting Test in Unreal Engine: GR Female Demo 427a

This week I've been busy delving into Unreal Engine and was able to make the above image with it. It's certainly not a master piece, but it shows in principle that portrait lighting can be done, even though the process of getting there is a little difficult. I thought I'd share with you what I've learnt, and perhaps turn it into a feature-length video. It might not look like it, but considerable time has gone into making this picture. Read on to find out all the gory details.

I didn't u...

Creating Billboards with Billboard Builder

In this episode I'll show you how to create billboards with the Billboard Builder script by Code66. It's a special project for me, because according to the developer (Hi Totte 👋) I have inspired him to create this product in the DAZ Season Pass.

I'm using the same render as in the previous episode, so I'll skip over the shadow implications here.

Billboard Builder requires the C66 Graphics Plugin for its calculations, here are both links if you want to pick them up:

• ...
  2022-01-19 15:59:05 +0000 UTC View Post

Creating Billboards in DAZ Studio with Photoshop

In this episode I'll show you how to create your own custom billboards with Photoshop. Any graphics application will work, as long as you can create a cutout opacity map with it (i.e. black background, and a pure white silhouette). 

The concept of a billboard is that instead of placing a full high-res character in your scene, you use a rendered image that's projected onto a 2D plane. With a bit of thought and practice you can render multiple characters, even large crowds without ov...

Vivian Pumps - Jay MAT's (5x)

I have a freebie for you all today: 

I've made these 5 additional glitzy glamour material presets for Chris Cox's stylish Vivian Pumps. I've made these in Substance Painter during a recent Twitch Stream. I had fun painting in the bottom treat, add the official Chris Cox logo and learnt a lot about how Substance Painter works. It wasn't meant to be a commercial endeavour, but worked out nicely so I thoug...

Winter Forest - Unreal Engine Animation

I've made an animation with this month's Winter Forest freebie from  the Unreal Marketplace. I hadn't used Unreal Engine in over a year and  wanted to know how much I'd remember, and practice the new way of  rendering out animations with the new Movie Render Queue. 

Thankfully it  worked out well enough for this to come out. My vision was to make a pan through the landscape, and render at a higher frame rate to slow down time dramatically, like the Apple TV scre...

Sold Out Bear - Workflow Time Lapse

In this workflow time lapse I'll show you how I've built this Sold Out Bear portrait. I did this after hearing that the NFP Project had sold  out, and I wanted to commemorate the occasion. It took me about 2 hours to complete with a quick coffee break in between. 

I had never tried the  Teddy Bear character by JoeQuick and wanted him to have a big smiley  expression. I sculpted this in ZBrush and made the eyes "pop" with the  Liquify tool in Photoshop and Clip S...

DAZ Bumpers 2022 - Intro and Outro

I'm currently working on a mini series for official DAZ channel, in which I'm explaining how to create a Genesis figure morph from a body scan provided. It's some serious magic, and I can't wait to share it with you. We're planning more collaborative content, and as such I needed an animated DAZ branding. In the broadcast world, we call these things bumpers, station idents or simply intro/outro. 

Premise

These bumpers need to be short, fast and snappy to look...

Vivian Pumps - Substance Textures

My buddy Chris Cox modelled a new pair of shoes in Blender, for use in DAZ Studio. I really like his work and watching how his projects come together. I thought these shoes would make a nice little practice piece for me to hone my Substance Painter skills. I love what Substance can bring to the texturing party, although I must admit that the interface and its lack of features leave quite a bit to be desired. 

Be th...

HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone!

2021 was fantastic for me, I've met so many  nice people, made some great industry contacts and had a blast learning  more 3D tips and tricks along the way (because the learning never  stops). I'll continue sharing with you what I know, and I'm looking  forward to all the exciting things 2022 will bring.  

Thank you SO MUCH for all your comments, your questions, your likes and  your support! 

😍🤗☕️

Synty Santa

Merry Christmas everyone!

I've put this little Synty Santa together yesterday and thought it would make a nice holiday greeting. It was quite a process to bring this little guy to live, including re-shaping through R3DS Wrap and re-rigging in DAZ Studio. I had envisioned a still image at first, but thought an animation would be even better, so I borrowed the background from a Core game Julia is currently working on. It worked great! Check out this ad-free version of my 2021-12-25 18:02:01 +0000 UTC View Post

Spider Bot rendered in Iray with Substance Painter

I've discovered that we can render images directly in Substance Painter using NVIDIA Iray! There's a wide choice of HDRIs and a ton of settings,  including a one-click depth of field option (ALT + Middle Mouse  Button). 

This was my first attempt, with a little bit of postwork in  Photoshop applied to the spider bot. He looked a bit dark and didn't  stand out from the dreary landscape (Canopus Ground according to the  HDRI), so I used the Object Selection t...

Young Minto - Workflow Time Lapse (Daz Studio, Photoshop, CLIP Studio Paint)

I've shown this workflow time-lapse on the DAZ Stream this Saturday.  It's a good example how a portrait comes together, and I thought I'll  split it out with narration. I've added the part in which I'm creating a  speech bubble in Clip Studio Paint, which is available on my ArtStation Page together with the clean ...

Workflow Timelapse Series

I've been inspired by some of the workflow time lapses I've seen  around, and thought I'd make some of my own. I was working on a thumbnail  image for the next DAZ Live Stream this coming Saturday, which is going to be a "boot camp" for new users  who want to create their own NFP-like PFPs (that's short for ProFile Pictures by the way).

I  thought it would be fun to create some of my ...

Substance Spider Bot

I had a wonderfully productive stream this morning, in which I was  trying to remember what I've recently learnt about Substance Painter.  This little animation was the result of testing, experimentation and  plenty of community input (thanks guys 😊). I started with the Adobe  Spiderbot, then built up the materials and grunge shaders, and finally  exported it into DAZ Studio for ren...

Migrating and Organizing Brush Libraries in Corel Painter

In this episode I'll show you two ways of migrating and consolidating your Brush Libraries in Corel Painter. I've had as many as three versions on my various systems recently, with 30 custom brushes from Humble Bundle, and it quickly became apparent that installing them all from scratch for every system would be too mind numbing. 

Painter has ways of importing and exporting individual brushes, categories and libraries, but it's much faster to do this directly via the file system (i...

Mars Rover Animation - PSP Retro Pop Edition

Here's another exciting experiment for y'all: I've tweaked my Rover Animation with  some super fancy AI effects courtesy of PaintShop Pro! I've just picked  it up as part of the latest Humble Bundle, and thanks to Brian's  instructions I had it batch process every frame of my animation with the  Retro Pop effect. It took a while for all 1500 frames, but the result  is amazing! It looks like a hand drawn cartoon, giving my little rover a  whole new look.   2021-12-07 15:42:52 +0000 UTC View Post

Installing DAZ Studio with Install Manager

I spent the whole day rebuilding my main rig, and aside from it being a lot of work, everything went well. Most of my apps are back in action, most of my data is saved in various cloud services, and the rest of the pieces are slowly falling into place. 

While I was at it, I thought it would be helpful to show how to install DAZ Studio on an otherwise empty system. Even though I've done it countless times, there are pitfalls that can be daunting to newcomers. I'm taking you through ...

NFTs for Noobs, FBX Importer for DAZ Studio and Computer Trouble

Hey there folks, today I have an early access video for you that is an enhanced version of a Twitch stream Nate and I did last week. Nate knows so much more about NFTs than I do, and this is a chat in which we all learn from him. I've modified the audio levels a little bit in post production, doing a live mix in Premiere. Very fun and informative this was! 

It's going out as a YouTube Premiere tomorrow, complete w...