Creating Custom Art with Daz Studio Models, Part Three

Previously: Part One, Part Two, Copyright and Daz Studio

In this last section we’re going to talk a bit about how to do some basic customisation on both figures and clothing. This just touches the surface of this software, of course – if you were creating a main character model for a series, for example, you could completely create body/face morphs and bespoke skin textures including custom tattoos, scars and so on. This is too complex to handle in a basic post like this one, however.

Reese Gets A Makeover

We’re going to take our model Reese from the previous two installments and change her into someone new. Select your model as usual, and then from the Content Library find a different model. Use the dropdown to find her Iray materials and double-click to apply them to the existing model. You’ll have less trouble if you use skin, eye and makeup textures from the same model, rather than trying to mix and match here.

Now in the Shaping menus on the right hand of the screen you can (hopefully) see that I’ve gone to Head and dialed down the Reese head, then dialed up Pepper for a mix between the two. You can do that with bodies as well. On individual body parts Shaping allows you to change various features, adding elf ears or tilted eyes, a more lush mouth, older faces or younger ones, just as the Posing menus allow you to move parts of the body and clothing. Here she is a mix of two models and I’ve changed the body to be a bit more curvy, and added some bodybuilder muscle definition.

In this section I’ve added some new hair, as well as clothing from several different sets: a fantasy corset armor top, along with more modern studded pants and boots. We’re going to do some quick surgery to make it match a bit better (you would have to do a lot more to anything that you actually planned on using).

I’ve selected the top, and then in the Surfaces tab on the bottom right of the screen I’ve selected bits of the fantasy armor that I’m going to hide: bottom skirt and the armor cap sleeves. Go to Geometry, and turn the Cutout Opacity to zero. (Some clothing will have an actual Opacity setting, but it works the same way.) I’ve also selected the top level of the shirt in the Surfaces tab and darkened the base colour, which will darken the entire thing. If I wanted to change colour on just one section, I would do that in the sublevel.

Again, there are a lot of really cool and complex things that you can do including applying shaders to various things (turn a cloth item to glass, or metal, for instance), but for the sake of this basic tutorial I won’t go into that.

Parameters Tweaks

One last thing before we’re done – the tweaks that you can make in the Parameters tab. As in the screenshot below, click on the Parameters tab for the item that you want to change. In this case, since she’s wearing formfitting clothing, I’ve chosen the hair.

If you can move it around, there will be an Actors submenu with all of the parameters that you can change. Here I’ve made the hair longer, and windblown it to the side.

And we’re done. :) Here’s a quick side-by-side with our original model and a more finished render of our customised one. Have fun!