3d character modeling

The human figures from DAZ 3D are quite good, though a little high in poly count. And while DAZ Studio does have an exporter, the EULA on the figures does not allow their use in games without purchasing an additional Game Developer License ($500 for Indie developers). There's also the Game Developer Toolkit for DAZ Studio that includes a decimation tool (to reduce the poly count before export), texture atlas creation tool ( for merging all of the textures used on the figure into a single image file), and the FBX exporter for $100-150 which can be a huge help as well. I didn't include DAZ Studio in my list since it isn't a modeler, it uses pre-built character meshes as a base which you can then morph in various ways and export. However, it can also be linked with ZBrush or Hexagon to create a fairly quick character pipeline. :)

Hey, you really can vote-up my answer when you like it! At the end I spent quiet some time to get all the links. I'm pretty surprised further usage of your creations can get forbidden in an EULA. But when the characters are pre-built as you said, it makes sense. Question is if someone would notice. Make model, reduce polys, export to blender, modify it a bit and the final model in unity is "yours".

Well, the EULA itself is re-asserting U.S. copyright laws governing distribution of derivative works. Essentially, the EULA isn't forbidding their re-use/distribution, but rather is clearly stating that it is not granting their re-use/distribution, which is already forbidden under existing copyright law. I also know that DAZ 3D puts a relatively decent amount of effort into watching for and pursuing copyright violations.

As for the reality of anyone noticing, it depends on how much effort someone spends modifying the original mesh. If little to no modifications are made (and instead using the existing morph packs and such for the characters) it's fairly easy for people who are familiar with the figures to pick them out without even seeing the wireframes of the mesh. An example of this is that DAZ 3D offers a store voucher to customers who send in uses of their characters in advertisements, promotional images, etc... created by other companies. There are usually several submitted and many are confirmed by the creator as using the meshes to create the image.

When more effort is put into modifying the meshes, it obviously becomes harder, but there have been a few cases in the realm of Poser compatible figures that meshes have been chopped up and only pieces of them used and the violation was still noticed and resolved. Whenever a mesh is built there tend to be idiosyncrasies unique to those meshes that can be fairly easy to spot.

In any case, I tend to try to respect copyrights, since I would like mine respect with the various projects I've released. But, I also know a lot of people have different views on what is fair and we each make our own decisions in that regard. :)

Are you working for daz3D? I didn't know the meshes were so detailed that you can pick them out. That allows an interesting question regarding to copyright: How long is a mesh a unique mesh? Meaning, when polygons are just got reduced enough you just should get the shape of a body....well, I think you got what I mean. Nobody is reading the EULA. It's unusual that you can't use the data a program is putting out. What do you pay 50 bucks for, when export is forbidden? Why is the function implemented nevertheless? Maybe for hobby-purpose. OK, I understand it. I found a good software for redeye then. I think he is training and just wants to put some characters in his first games. @redeye: DON'T SELL SUCH A GAME AFTERWARDS!

Somebody red the Poser-EULA? Is there such a trap in the shareware as well?

Yeah, I got that program the 2nd week I had blender. It's pretty decent. Probably better than decent, don't know, I didn't mess with it much. I only made one guy with it real quick just to learn rigging in blender.
Edit:
Yes, it will work with unity. I remember it will export .obj, but not sure about other formats. From there you can put the obj in unity or throw it in the blender and puree it awhile before exporting as obj/fbx/whatever.

Just realize, the slow-speaking guy in the video only shows the obj-import too. Shouldn't MHX make rigging in blender becoming unnecessary? They made blender-mhx-plugins for both versions 2.4x and 2.5+. He titled his movie "how to make human in blender", uses MakeHuman to show a few sliders, forgets to export and finally doesn't even use the special blender-importer. LOL I bet he was forced to do that video! :-D

Idk... the obj I exported from it to learn rigging with was just the default mesh you start out with. I didn't do anything in the makeHuman app other than exporting. It didn't have a rig or texture or anything ; nothing but bare mesh. ...and lol @ "Making a human in a blender" ... makes me think of genetics cloning and/or throwing a person in one.

When I tried it yesterady, it did export meshes not even shown in the scene. E.g. Hair, jeans, shirt. I could combine them with the character in blender, importing them one after another. Guess for the rigidbody this special blender-plugin is necessary.

However, it's quiet obvious MakeHuman is still alpha. Many functions are just not finished. E.g. when changing the pose, you only can rotate the left arm. LOL. At this window they just must have stopped coding in the middle. It's obviously a linux-program!

A few impressions from quick-testing:

123D looks quiet promising with it's modern interface, it's CAD-abilities and the well-known brand as prefix. However, with 700MB it turns out to be quiet heavy on harddisk. Memory- and CPU-usage are problematic too. It's no fun using 123D on a 1,6GHZ-AMD when the context-menu needs 1.5 secs to open.

When starting, the firewall complains about connection-attempts to google-analytics. Afterwards a bug welcomes you, complaining some file wasn't found and needs re-installation. Object-movements, menu-clicks and overall response-time are just not smooth. The memory-indicator in the lower-right corner shows green numbers though. The many functions for editing and creating objects keep undiscovered. Too slow and painfull was the attempt of moving a midpoint of a spline to another position already. Still didn't figure out how to move a box instead of it's parts. Next installation: Google-Sketchup.

Truespace: Wow! What a download. 90MB for the file and 270MB afterwards on disk. The program comes with a couple of example-projects preinstalled. The interface invites to play around but is not intuitive. Moving objects already makes you searching around. The program is divided in several editors. One of them allows the combination of objects, filters and devices (e.g. lights and cameras) in a mind-map. The related demo-scene shows a live projection of a camera's view onto two different screens in the scene. One with a beamer as source and another, reacting on the input by itself. I guess like blender, truespace has countless of features - but their usage I just don't want to learn at the moment. Worse a look.

DAZ Studio is even slower as 123D. Additionally it is packed with just too much stuff. The 800MB on disk are wasted in so many functions that someone just feels lost when trying the program. They made the impossible real: Pre-defined meshes, like body-parts and clothes automatically get applied to the character. No wonder DAZ studio is slow as hell - all parts get applied to the model in realtime, including rigging, scale, position and everything else. The assets bundled into the program however, are too few to really be of use. The free version indeed is just a demo. New clothes needs to get bought from the online-shop. Simple things like face-modification are propably possible but no fun to find due to slow speed. Dislike!