This is the second entry in a tutorial series dedicated to fusing knowledge of Daz Studio with knowledge of the Unity Game Engine. Many of the techniques described can translate to other game engines and programs as well since the export format used from Daz in these tutorials is the FBX format.
I think it is important that before we get too far I tell you how to get the most from Daz. How can you stretch your money and make it really matter.
Platinum Club Plus
In general if you plan on spending more than $20 then you should always consider enrolling in the Platinum Club+ membership. It will pretty much immediately pay for itself and then some.
The platinum club plus membership gives you immediate discounts on a lot of products. It also will provide you with a coupon worth $6 towards products every month, and another for a $6 off purchases over $18. There are some restrictions on their usage but in general it is pretty easy to get some free products every month. If you are buying a lot of products and happen to be spending over $18 in a particular shopping trip that can reduce that cost by $6.
You get these coupons once per month. The discounts on PC+ items of which there are a lot of them are constant.
The plans come in two varieties. A quarterly membership which is $24 for 3 months. There is an annual membership which is $70 for 12 months.
For $24 you get 3x$6 or $18 worth of coupons which can give you free products. You also get 3x $6 off purchases over $18. Those coupons alone if you actually use them is worth more than the cost of the membership. That does not count the immediate 30% off on many products.
For $70 you get 12 x $6 or $72 worth of coupons which is more than the membership cost. You also get another $72 worth of coupons on $18 purchases. They are given out at the beginning of each month so they do encourage repeat business. You also get the 30% off.
So in general if you are new to Daz and you are planning on spending more than $20 then it is a really good idea to consider getting a membership in Platinum Club+. Depending upon how much you plan on spending it will more than pay for itself.
Here is a current example of what platinum club plus can do for you:
I am receiving some additional discounts at the moment due to the holiday and likely the large quantity of products I have purchased from this website.
Bonus items often happen on day to day sale categories and often there are extra bonuses for being a PC+ member.
That is a new release that was just released today. It is -30% off for everyone. New products are almost always discounted on release day, though you'll get a chance to get them for even less if you simply wishlist the things you want and have some patience. If you need it now for some product then the best deal is usually release day.
That screen grab there is without me logging in. Let me show you the same product with my PC+ discount.
See how it dropped the price? That is not uncommon with PC+. There is also an entire category of items known as PC+ items which is growing every month. These are heavily discounted for PC+ members.
See those PC+ items are all discounted? Again that is without me logging in. These discounts are simply due to a holiday sale.
That is the prices with my PC+ membership. As you can see if you are planning on making very many purchases it is very worth purchasing a membership to PC+ first. In fact, if I don't have an active membership to PC+ I pretty much just grab the weekly free items. If something comes along that I "need" I will renew my PC+ membership. Then I'll spend however many months I purchased using the coupons it provides every month.
Free Items
Free items are released each week on www.daz3d.com. It makes it worth checking a couple times during the week to see what products you can get. I've noticed that these are often texture packs for outfits so you can't really use them without the outfit that they go with, but this is not the only case. They also like giving out scenes, furniture, and props as free items. You can end up with characters/figures, clothing, hair, and more.
In general here is what you want to do.
- Go to the website: www.daz3d.com
- Login to your account.
- Click on Shop.
- Scroll down to the Filters and Sort Buy Section.
- Change Sort By to "Price Low-High".
- Add the free items to your shopping cart.
- Verify it shows the price as $0. If it does not refresh your browser and it should fix that.
- Purchase the item. It will tell you no payment required.
Currently without logging into my account these are all of the FREE ITEMS at Daz. Since I am not logged into my account these free items have nothing to do with my Platinum Club Plus membership. These are free now, though it likely will change with time.
If you look closely you'll see some of those items are from the first lesson. Many of them are also detailed tutorials that can empower you quickly in becoming skilled at using Daz products.
These tips will hopefully help you extend your purchasing power when it comes to Daz and you can get the most for your money. I felt it was important to share these tips before continuing with other subjects so you can benefit from the savings immediately rather than after you have read several lessons.
Previous lessons
Future Tutorials
NOTE: This may not be the precise order in which I do them. This series will not teach you everything you need to know about Unity. That is impossible. It is a very powerful engine. If you need more details on Unity there is a vast community and a tutorial on almost every topic imaginable. There are even tutorials on many of the things I am going to write about in these tutorials. I will be however, doing all of these tutorials from my own experience and based upon a lot of trial, error, and learning.
- Navigating the Generation Names, the Figure Names, etc. Order to the confusion.
- Explaining Daz Studio Licensing
- Explaining basic Daz Studio Panes
- Genesis 3 and 8 to Unity
- Bare minimum Daz products I recommend
- Some Unity products I recommend
- Dealing with Seams in Textures in Unity
- Genesis 2 to Unity
- Genesis to Unity
- Victoria 4 and Michael 4 to Unity
- Exporting Morphs from Daz to Unity
- Baking in some morphs - those damn high heels
- A study on eyes
- Using Blender to Fully enable PBR for DAZ Characters in Unity
- Making High Heels work Without Baking inside Unity
- Daz Poses and Animations to Unity
- Using Decimator in DAZ 3D to create Blend/Morph happy LODs, and to optimize
- 3D Baking Studio for Sprites in Unity
- Hair Designer for GPU Hair in Unity
- Simple LOD for Unity
- The Search for a Good Skin Shader
- Inherit Clothes, Hair, etc Scripts for Unity
- Sample Character Setup UI for Unity
- More on Mechanim
- Unity IK
- Final IK
- Emerald AI
- Instancing
- A Study on Controllers
- Various thoughts on possibilities
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