Questioning, preliminary reference image created in Daz|Studio

you know the situation, it’s 2am and you’ve just been struck with inspiration. but you need to work out the details, you need help to bring your masterpiece into fruition. you need a model.

but where are you going to get one at a moment’s notice at this time of night? and how much is it going to cost? you look glumly at your wallet and decide that the masterpiece must wait.

but what if you can get the perfect model, at any time? one that will pose for as long as you want, will stay there for hours while you change the lighting and fiddle with the angle. what if this perfect model is available to you 24/7 and what if this model was completely free?

Painting and drawing from life is very important. you need to understand the three dimensions of a figure to get it right. photographs are excellent resources but sometimes you need greater control over the angle and posing and sometimes you need to think of the figure in three dimensions rather than two.

Luckily, technology brings us the perfect blend of convenience and control. the ease of photographs with the necessity of the three dimensions and the minute control. 3D modelling has come a long way since it’s inception and it is now easy and fun to create lifelike human images to do your bidding. in fact, all the hard work has been done. models like Victoria and Michael are waiting for your inspiration. Daz Studio is a free 3d modelling program that works with human and animal figures to create beautiful and realistic rendered scenes.

Daz Studio comes with some basic models all ready to go. you can add additional models by paying, waiting until they are free, or finding freebies online. to those models you can add different skin types and makeup (textures), you can add hair and clothing and props to make your characters do anything you want. you can change their figures and faces, and buy add ons to increase your control over the appearance of your models. you can pose them in anatomically correct ways or you can turn of the limits and let your imagination run it’s full course. you can light your creation with many lights in different colors, control the shadows and angles then finally render your piece with all the reference you need to create your masterpiece!

over the next few weeks I will be writing a series of tutorials on using Daz 3d as an artist’s reference tool. I’ll cover how to find free content, how to pose and light models, how to morph and apply textures, what bump maps are and how they add to reality and how to use your images as references.