HULK Smash

[nicksilva]

This is my latest 3d model of a HULK. This was a 3" woodworking model I made with a thickness of about 1/2" and is the 1st picture.
It was done in DAZ3D studio and Hexagon, with the finishing touches done in Aspire.

I have to reduce this to at least 0.12 inches to work on leather. Picture #2 is the resulting impression on leather. You can still make out the muscles but it is not as imposing as the original. After it's painted its still pretty recognizable though. Cheers!

[Phil]

Excellent modelling. How does modelling with DAZ3D compare to modelling with Aspire?

Phil

[nicksilva]

thank you for the kind words.

well in Daz3d - if you're using the built in base models and the morphing capabilities of the body, props, etc it is very good. The main thing you get is an easy
way to pose the figure and make body changes in real-time. Something you can't do in Aspire without redoing the vectors. For non-character modeling I will work in Hexagon. It's got
all the tools for building something from the ground up. And what you end up with is a true 3d model not just a front side. the nice thing
is that they are bridged together. You can take a mesh from DAZ - send it over to hexagon and fairly easily add new morphs by just grabbing
and pulling on the mesh.

In this case the character used was Freak5 base in DAZ. I got him into position, scaled it some, fitted the pants and added and morphed the hair. Changed the expression and sent it over to
HEX where I squeezed it in the Z plane as much as I could before exporting it. I could then bring it into Aspire where I can do the positioning
and the finishing touches on the height using other techniques and then create the tool paths.

So to answer the question, there is a bit of learning curve to using both. But they work rather well and there are tons of videos on YouTube to help. Keep in mind that the whole point of this combo is for character creating and
animation. I'm only using a subset of the tools as they pertain to woodworking. So pretty much ignore anything to do with lighting, color, or animation. If I am creating new non-people models I will probably do them in Hex before I do them in Aspire simply because I find it easier. But in the end, I'm using all 3 tools together to create the models. I wish I could show more, but they aren't exactly G rated. cheers!


Followup: Here is a simple teddy bear done in Hexagon. Started with a flat plane that I added thickness to. Then created the other shapes and simply merged them into the bear body plane.

And if that wasn't easy enough, doing stacked text took about 2 minutes in hex.

[Phil]

Thanks for the explanation.

Phil

[TReischl]

I have not had the time to work with DAZ much at all but have been using Hexagon quite a bit.

Hexagon is a bit finicky and will crash a lot until you understand that you cannot just click like a crazy person. When I first started I could crash a new model within a few minutes. Now that I got the hang of it crashes are very rare. One thing I avoid in Hex is booleans.

There is another program I use called 3D Coat. It is both a voxel and surface modeler. One really nice feature is that it will export a bitmap viewed down the Y axis which relieves a lot of the Z axis scaling problems associated with full 3D models. However, it does not do any perspective so things like houses look a bit wonky.

Mostly I use this stuff for doing rotary work. For the reasons mentioned above, designing a model in real time without having to redraw vectors.

The other thing everyone should know about Hex is that it is apparently a dead product, no updates in years and years. But it does work and is fairly simple to use and has some features missing from a lot of the other lower end modelers.

Does it replace Aspire, oh heck no. They are two very different animals.

Nick: Thanks for the post, your discussion about using DAZ will more than likely get me off my dead rear end in regards to DAZ.

Here are some things done with Hex, the lettering and model on the bolt was done in Aspire:

[scottart]

Have you ever worked with Z BRUSH, or Rhino? I picked up Z brush for some of the reasons you mention, true 3 D design, so you can simply rotate it to create different 2.5 D looks. But It is going to take a lot of training to get good at it..

[nicksilva]

I've seen the Z brush demos in a comparison to Hex and it looks to be a very good program.
I looked into Coat3d and it looks promising. Just have to wait until I can afford the license.