Rendering models of living organisms

File:Four characters.png

Figure 1. Example of a rendered scene from DAZ Studio

Welcome to the learning project about software for rendering and animation of human figures and other similar 3D models.

Daz Studio

DAZ Studio is available as a plugin for Bryce and it can also be downloaded and run by itself, without Bryce. Figure 1 shows an example made using the sample character models and props that come with Bryce 5.5 and the Poser/DAZ Studio 3D Models Pack that is also available for free download at several websites.

Figure 1 uses the "Victoria" character that comes with Bryce 5.5 and the Michael, Aiko and Hiro characters from the "Poser DAZStudio 3D Models Pack 1".

Animation

File:Frame DAS Studio animation.png

Figure 2. View a three second long example of a DAZ Studio animation video with sound in OGG file format. Help with ogg format video play. (dowload OGG format video file)

For the sample animation (Figure 2) made using DAZ Studio, the "Victoria" character that comes with Bryce 5.5 was used with the "fairy" clothing and the mushroom and dragonfly props. DAZ studio has two ways of associating props with characters. In the is example, the hair prop was associated with Victoria's head by a drag-and-drop of the hair item onto the head item in the list of elements in the scene. For the clothing, the "fit to" property of the prop was set to Victoria.

For this animation there were 30 frames per second at 320 x 240 pixels. Preset body poses were used about every second then adjustments were made for body, limb and wing position as needed. Not every frame needs to be done manually; DAZ studio will automatically interpolate movements for frames that are between the frames you actually edit.

Clothing

• Figure 3. Examples of polygon mesh models.
• 3a. Human figure.
  3a. Human figure.
• 3b. Clothing. Click images to enlarge.
  3b. Clothing. Click images to enlarge.

File:Renderedclothingexample.png

Figure 4. Example with clothing props applied to characters. This is a scene from the video teaser you can download at The nanoepitaxy of Susanne Marie.

In Figure 1, no clothing props were used. DAZ Studio allows each surface element of a character to be colored and textured. The appearance of "skin-tight clothing" was created using preset coloring patterns that come with these characters.

Figure 3 shows examples of polygon mesh models for a human figure and an article of clothing. Figure 4 shows an example of human figures with clothing props. You can see that clothing models provide unique surfaces to which colors and textures (think of a bumpy fabric weave) can be applied prior to rendering an image showing the model. When you use DAZ Studio, the mesh of an article of clothing does not always automatically take the shape of a character. There are several methods for making sure that a clothing model conforms to the shape of a human figure.

Fitting clothing

Fitting clothing to mesh models of human characters is one of the annoying details that you have to deal with when you use Daz Studio.

Figure 5 (below) shows an example of fitting a clothing model to the mesh model of a human figure. This example uses one of the clothing models made by Serge Marck. The first panel shows pants that were matched to the "Victoria" model that comes with Daz Studio (this is the same character shown in Figure 2, above) by using the "fit to" function. You can see that the fit was not good on parts of the legs. Right below the download link for the pants, there is another link that allows you to download another file (v3legs.zip) that contains a tool for making the mesh of the pants model correctly fit to the legs of the Victoria model. Panel 5b shows the much improved fit after using this tool. Panel 5c shows that the fit is retained after applying a new pose to the Victoria model (the "Hovering" pose that comes with Daz Studio).

• Figure 5. Example of fitting clothing and character mesh models.
• 5a. Clothing mesh fails to fit character mesh.
  5a. Clothing mesh fails to fit character mesh.
• 5b. After applying the fitting tool.
  5b. After applying the fitting tool.
• 5c. The fit is retained in a new pose.
  5c. The fit is retained in a new pose.

Activities

• Do the introductory tutorials from the DAZ Studio manual.
• Read this animation tutorial then make your own animation.
• Explore this list of websites and find a mesh model for an article of clothing.

See also

• Landscape rendering - 3D computer graphics software that can render digital images that look like landscapes.