It’s been a ride going back and forth between Bryce, Carrara and Daz Studio but I think I am settling on Daz Studio. It is so more intuitive to use. Carrara and Bryce are easy to use for certain things. But Daz does it so much better. It all depends on what you want to do. If you just want to make landscapes then from what I have seen and read I would go with Vue8, then Bryce and then Carrara. These are just the ones I know about (a little) there are others. If you want to do studio type of art work then Daz or Poser should be ok. Both have their pros and cons. I haven’t used Poser for some years so I won’t comment on something I don’t know about. In the New Year I will be upgrading to Daz 3 Advanced, the benefits out way the $105 price tag (that’s the Platinum Club price).
Coming back to Daz. Well it is what it says it is a studio. So like everything in a studio you have to get creative with backgrounds. I have made a terrain in Bryce then exported it as an .obj then imported that into Daz and textured it in Daz. That worked well as a test. I have also used a render from Byrce as a background and again with fairly good results. Readymade Props are the favoured choice but in the future I would like to make some myself. Oh and what a bunch of generous people of at the Daz and Renderosity forums giving some choice content away for free. Most of my images have freebies in. The one below is no exception.
I suppose the best thing I like about Carrara is that it can make use of the content Runtime that Daz uses. I can also pose the figures as I would in Daz. One aspect of Daz that I like is the lighting. Bryce and Carrara I seem to have more trouble with. Also some textures don’t work the same between Daz, Poser and Carrara and Bryce which can be fiddly to get right. Again they all have there really good points. Sometimes I use Daz, Bryce, Carrara, Photoshop and Gimp for one picture. Get the best out of all and put them together. Next to include is Blender. Time to get another monitor. LOL
All this comes with a warning though. It can be tempting to buy a load of content, some of which you may never use. I started with a flurry as it was the time of some serious sales at Daz but still I spent a little more than I intended. Though I am careful what I buy I still made some bad choices. But when starting this late in life I had no idea what direction this could head. So now my mantra is “Will I use it, do I need It, can it wait until I know I will use it”?
Recently I came across Teo (pictured here) and I bought him, got a load of freebies with him also. This one little figure has sparked something that could point me toward the type of art I want to do, we shall see. Ideas are coming thick and fast. So much I haven’t got the skills yet to do him justice. Need to learn more, bye for now.
