How to create a BB FanArt Scene in DAZ3D

First things First. Install the Software DAZ3D Studio Pro. I expect you to know how Google works here. After that, you can install the Assets needed for your Project. In this case I will help you: f95Zone Forum / Popular Games / Big Brother / Big Brother : Art Assets Here you can find anything you need, to get access to the Assets.

What you basically needs are: The characters, the Materials to customize the characters, Genitals and Hair Hair. Here you have to make your very first important choice. What will be your base Figure.

The important Basefigures for us are called "Genesis 3" and "Genesis 8". "Genesis 3" is the original BB uses. Most Assets are ready to go for it. But you can run into some difficulties b/c since 2017 "Genesis 8" is the new kid on the block and a lot of new stuff is designed for exclusive "Genesis 8".

"Genesis 8" on the other hand, is compatible with the older stuff, but for a lot of things, you have to do extra work. But you get quite a few benefits in the posing and shaping department,and the Figures itself, are more refined.

Hence I prefer "Genesis 8" over "Genesis 3" I will work with "Gen8" here.

Okay, now that you know that some extra work is needed, here it comes. We can't use the vanilla characters for "Genesis 3" gladly some dedicated Fans provide Character Morphs in the Art Assets Thread I mentioned before. I use the Morphs, Assets and Materials from "celtic1138","FunFiction" and "bubbas". And as far as I understand "bubbas" provide a MEGA Account, were you can find all the morphs and materials we need. Download them and install them in your library. For an easier workflow you should create a shortcut of your library under favorites. "celtic1138" made it easy for us. Just drop them into the library. If you want to be nitpicky, drop them manually under presets inside the library.

Don't let you fool you by the datapath. I have mine set away from the standard location. Yoursshould be on the c:. If you are in doubt, open DAZ3D Studio right klick on any prop and choose, "Browse to file location. It should open a browser window into your library. On this way you can also find every location of a prop and identify the basic figure. Very handy when your library grows big enough.

Install the Materials for your characters the same way. My location is /DAZLibrary/People/Genesis3Female/Characters/BB/"character name". Hair would be also veryuseful. My location is /DAZLibrary/People/Genesis3Female/Hair/"Hair Style name" or "Author name". Be aware of Ann's Brady Hair, it is a little bit bitchy, but you can fix this by shaping thescalp or use a "Hair Fix Morph". Sadly I forgot the name of the Author, so I can't provide you atip here. But it should also be somewhere in the Art Assets thread. And if some knew the name, please let me know, so that I can name him/her here.

Okay. Time to do your first BB Render. I will use Ann in this tutorial, but you can use any character you like. The simple stuff first. Load the Basefigure. I prefer the smart content panelwhenever it is possible, but often the Assets you get from other sources than DAZ3D, you didn't get the needed metadata. So we will also use, the content library panel. I assume that you already know what the panels are. If you don't have the panels I use here, you can find them in the window menu under pane(s). If your workspace looks different than mine, don't bother with it. DAZ3D is highly customizable and I have changed it to fit my current workflow. You can use every workspace variation that suits you.

Load the Basefigure "Genesis 8 Female" into your scene: Smart Content Panel / Figures/People/Female

We will stick mainly to three panels in this phase of our project. You can see all of the above. Scene, Content Library and Smart Content.

Now the trickiest part, load the Charactermorph. Under "Edit" you choose Figure and then Morph Loader Pro:

Make sure, that the Gen8 Figure is selected in the Scene Panel and nothing else or different.

In the Morph Loader hit the Button "Choose Morph Files" and browse to the location of your character morphs and choose the one you like.

Hit Accept, and in the following window hit Ok. If everything was done right you should now have the morph loaded but not applied. That we do somewhat later.

Okay now load the hair. You can see, that my Smart Content Panel isn't reduced in any way. That is b/c I didn't checked the little box in the lower left corner. To load the brady hair for Ann, you have to unchek it as well. We are using Stuff that isn't designed for Gen8 so the context didn't identify it as available, that is why we uncheck it here.

You can Find the brady hair, under Hair/Short. As soon as you start the loading proces with a selected figure, a script kicks in. The Autofit. Choose the decendent Genesis Iteration, here Genesis3Female. I also use the second option and choose hair/short hair. But often it is not needed or even possible. So you can let it be at "none"

One last step is needed here, set the materials for the brady hair to black or dark brown. Depending on your taste and how close you will be to the original Game characters. I choose adark brown here. I assume that you now what render engine you are using, if you don't know,don't worry. In this tutorial I use Iray. You can find the needed materials for your Hair under Materials/IRay/Hair. Make sure that you have selected the Hair in the Scene tab and not the Figure. To make your life easier, check the box in the smart contet for filter by context. The smart content will now only show the stuff you can use on the hair. That is, why I use it whenever I can.

The materials for your characters itself, can be found in the content library panel. Just load them with the figure selectet. People/Genesis3Female/Characters/Big Brother/Ann/Materials. Do the same for her Genitals. They are normally located under /People/Genesis8Female/Anatomy/"product name"

Now let's start the next phase in our project, Posing and Shaping.

The keen reader should now recognize that my workspace is indeed categorized by those phases. So you can now assume how this tutorial ist structured.

With the figure selected you should see in the Parameters Panel the button "Morphs" that is were your character morph should be located after you have loaded it via the morph loader.

Ignore the other morphs you can see here, that are additional morphs I purchased from other sources and they didn't matter in this tutorial. Dial the character morph to 100%. So here it is,our Ann ready for action.

Do the same thing for the brady hair fix, if you have it. Select the brady hair in the Scene Panel. In the Parameter Panel, Choose Brady Hair and scroll down to the Morph called "G3 HairFix" Dial it up to 100%.

Now let us pose her. In the content Library you can choose every pose available for Gen 8 and every Expression for Gen 8. Don't try to use poses that aren't for Gen 8 now. Conversion of poses and expressions is something we didn't cover in this tutorial.

I will use a Base Pose here.

People/Genesis8Female/Poses/Base Poses/Base Pose Laying B

Easy, n'est-ce pas?

The Expressions can be found in the Pose Panel under Genesis 8 Female / Pose Controls / Head / Expressions. Mix and Match the Expressions available to you, till you like the result. Forsimplicity I go for 100% flirting and that's it.

If you like what see, you can go to the enxt phase. Or you can play with different poses, shapes etc. And don't be afraid to mess things up. You can always use Ctrl+Z.

We don't touch anything else here so we change to camera and lighting. All we do here is, we change the angle. Oh and the yellow gridlines is called "rule of thirds" to activate them or the white frame, you can check them in the view menu. You can find it in the right corner of the viewable picture.

Use the Yellow lines as a guideline. Pose the Main-Axis of your object of interest on one of those line. And you are golden for now. (pun intended).

If you want to go fancy, add a new camera. Hit the "Add Camera" Button above the picture, maybe you copy the current view or you pose the camera from its zero position. It doesn't matter.

Now starts an interesting process, the reevaluation of your work. I think a background would be fine. So let's do a very basic one, that didn't mess with us. Create a primitive plane and scale it somewhat up. Also rotate it by 90° so that we can use it as a backdrop.

To rotate, scale and pose the plane, select the plane in the scene panel use the posing panel for the transitions. Create a second plane und scale it up. This will be our floor.

Sweet. Okay, now lets make a first test render.

In the Render Settings Panel I choose NVIDIA Iray. It's my preferred Render Engine.

With Iray you can everything at it's defaults. Iray is only recommended when you have a NVIDIA . Otherwise your CPU have to do all the work, and that would take forever.

Now hit the shiny turquoise Render button. That's it. After the render is finish you can decide ifyou want to keep it, or if you want to change things. Congratulations, you covered the basics for your BB Fan Art projects. The rest really is trial and error.