Creating and applying your own textures to your 3D content puts you in a pole position to demonstrate unique artwork for your renders. It allows you to repurpose older content in your scenes, providing your assets with a fresh look each time.

In Textures Universe: Creating and Editing Textures for Daz Studio and Poser, Fain reveals essential tips on building and utilizing textures as a Daz Studio or Poser artist. She passes on her experience of switching between Poser’s material room and Daz Studio’s Shader Mixer and Surface Tab.

Fain goes through the process of creating textures for her own holographic projector prop and provides the steps for working on skin materials. 

One of the main reasons Fain wanted to create this tutorial was to help you overcome the fears of understanding the Shader Mixer in Daz Studio; she’ll take you through an approach that will make it less scary!

She also shares her texturing skills that originated from using Poser and notes her migration experience in switching to Daz Studio, so these tutorials and supplementary videos cover both applications.

Who is this tutorial set for?

• Artists who are learning to generate textures for their assets from scratch
• Artists who are converting from Poser to Daz Studio in understanding the Shader Mixer
• Artists wanting to switch 3Delight textures to Iray
• Artists wanting to use PBR materials in Daz Studio

Software Requirements

• Daz Studio (or Poser - we compare and show the same process)
• Substance Painter (we’ll touch on this)
• GIMP or Photoshop

Tutorial Content

1. Comparing Poser/Daz Studio

• The Material Room (Poser) compared with the Surface Tab/Shader Mixer
• Learning to locate materials

2. 3DS to Iray

• Tools for converting 3DS materials to Iray
• Manual method for converting
• How to fix if there are problems after the conversion

3. Iray

• Starting point: basic shaders in Daz Iray
• The Shader Mixer: a non-scary approach!
• How to use the Surface Tab
• Material Definition Language
  • Reflection
  • Emission
  • Refraction

4. Substance: PBR Materials

• Prep the materials for DS
• Where to put the maps
• How to turn a height map into a normal map
• Height maps to normal maps & when it's appropriate
• Advantages of PBR materials

About the presenter: Fain

"I’ve been using ZBrush since 2011. I create most of my 3D art in Daz Studio and I’ve used Poser before that. I use Zbrush for modeling props that I then utilize back in Daz Studio.

I love sci-fi and fantasy genres because it lets me play with futuristic technology! I think part of that stems from my background, which is in aircraft maintenance. I've also spent many years on metalworking, jewelry, and crafting. I certainly enjoy thinking about how things work, why they work, and how they were made."