Who wants to know my Daz Studio "secrets" ? ;)

[Rusty Shackleford]

Hi Aiko,

Thank you for asking - I've been following your work for a while and really enjoy it. This is a little more technical than a general DAZ tutorial, but I'd be interested in how you construct your bogs, from models used to texturing. I've been working in Carrara for years, but I'm making the switch over the DAZ Studio soon (mainly to take advantage of all the great Gen8 content) and I'd really appreciate pointers working with QS modelling in that.

That might be more specific than others are looking for, so happy to discuss over private message.

Thank you for your posts, really love your work.

Rusty

Do you mean specifics about the shader for the bog's surface? That shader I currently use for the quicksand will be available for download once I have the article on muddy skin done. It's entirely procedural (no texture image needed, so I guess I don't do any "texturing" ).

Or do you want to know how I build the entire environment around the bog? That might be worth an article of its own to cover all the methods I have used so far. Is there a particular scene you want to know more about?

Happy holidays!

Thanks for the response, it is definitely the latter I'm interested in. The models I use for bogs now are edited terrains combined with very old morphing grounds for the pits. I'm pretty happy with them, but given 10+ years have passed I was curious how people are making them these days. I'd really like to work with the Gen8 figures, but I'm reteaching myself DAZStudio. I moved away from it because it wasn't good for making our type images, but again that was a long time ago.

Here's a good image where I'd be curious how you did it - the interface between the ground and the bog is great! download/file.php?id=56753&mode=view

I'd also be interested in the shaders, always good to see how others construct these.

Thanks,

Rusty

[Aiko]

Hi Aiko,

Thank you for asking - I've been following your work for a while and really enjoy it. This is a little more technical than a general DAZ tutorial, but I'd be interested in how you construct your bogs, from models used to texturing. I've been working in Carrara for years, but I'm making the switch over the DAZ Studio soon (mainly to take advantage of all the great Gen8 content) and I'd really appreciate pointers working with QS modelling in that.

That might be more specific than others are looking for, so happy to discuss over private message.

Thank you for your posts, really love your work.

Rusty

Do you mean specifics about the shader for the bog's surface? That shader I currently use for the quicksand will be available for download once I have the article on muddy skin done. It's entirely procedural (no texture image needed, so I guess I don't do any "texturing" ).

Or do you want to know how I build the entire environment around the bog? That might be worth an article of its own to cover all the methods I have used so far. Is there a particular scene you want to know more about?

Happy holidays!

Thanks for the response, it is definitely the latter I'm interested in. The models I use for bogs now are edited terrains combined with very old morphing grounds for the pits. I'm pretty happy with them, but given 10+ years have passed I was curious how people are making them these days. I'd really like to work with the Gen8 figures, but I'm reteaching myself DAZStudio. I moved away from it because it wasn't good for making our type images, but again that was a long time ago.

Here's a good image where I'd be curious how you did it - the interface between the ground and the bog is great! download/file.php?id=56753&mode=view

I'd also be interested in the shaders, always good to see how others construct these.

Thanks,

Rusty

For that particular environment I started out with the Jungle Construction Kit (https://www.daz3d.com/jungle-construction-kit-02). And then I modified the terrain geometry with a D-Former to create the pit and put a plane for the quicksand surface in there (with plenty of divisions so I could apply D-Formers to it as well as needed). I applied my mud shader to both - the terrain geometry and the quicksand plane. To make them look slightly different I merely tweaked some parameters (I think it was just the color and tiling I changed).

However, the way I create and populate the environment still varies quite a bit. Currently I would probably no longer start a new environment with the Jungle Construction Kit plugin, because I find it too limiting. For the terrain geometry I tend to pick something from my library and modify it a bit (inside Daz witzh D-Formers or the Mesh Grabber plugin) to suit my needs. And I prefer to use Ultrascatter (another plugin) to populate the environment with plants as it gives me the most flexibility.

[Aiko]

This might interest some of you:
http://thegreatswamp.xyz/posts/22_daz_s ... uddy_skin/

I could have done a better job with the layout of the article (it got cluttered quite a bit with all those screenshots in varying sizes), but I think I packed all the relevant information in there. Let me know if this is useful to you, whether you find any mistakes, or have other suggestions!

[Rusty Shackleford]

Thank you for sharing, I'm looking forward to working through the tutorial!

[DangerousWill]

I have another secret that may be of use, but before i go too far I achieved this 2 years ago, lost the file and haven't had the time to repeat it since.

Anyway, have you tried using dForce on the quicksand layer?
What this does is form a grid of movable nodes that are interconnected. Used for dynamic clothing it allows blankets to be draped over objects using the computer to simulate for you.

However in our use, with the actor being a dropable object and the edges of the quicksand layer clipping other scenery, it becomes a responsive bog. Where the actors hands go, imprints are left and the surface deforms where they sink.

The secret is getting the number of nodes right. Too little and sharp creases appear. Too many and the layer vacuum forms around them.
More nodes = more calculations = more faces = more rendering

Yes, big holes apear around the actor looking like one of those physics pictures of "gravity and a black hole". But you add a second flat layer at water table depth to hide these. Then use the same texture but darkened to make it look like the mud that has welled up.

If your pit is too large the quicksand layer may drape. Add a doughnut polygon, enlarge to surround your scene, then place under the qs layer. The qs blanket then drapes over this. However, the drape effect works perfectly for dry sand, especially in some sand filled ancient tomb and can add a depth to a scene without too much background scenery.

Im sorry i can't give pictures or a tutorial but I figure the more adventurous will figure this out. There are plenty of tutorials on making a blanket which give the setup, the rest is an artform anyway.

[Aiko]

I have tried to use dForce for quicksand very briefly without success. The problem back then was, that the simulation does unexpected things when objects intersect and that's what I was basically doing. Then I tried and mostly failed with Fluidos (as well as Fluidos 2 later on). The best simulation result I got so far are from Blender's fluid engine, but I have never been able to get those animated meshes back into Daz Studio for rendering.

But after reading this, and having learned quite a bit about dForce since those first feeble attempts, I think I might give this another shot. I think there is a good chance this might work well for stills, but what I am really hoping to find someday, is a good solution for animating quicksand. Have you tried to use dForce for stills or also for animations?

[DangerousWill]

I did create a 2/3 minute film of a naked girl tied to a pole sinking in quicksand where it worked quite well. I have lost the movie now though. It did appear on pornhub but I felt that it was a bit too extreme to advertise so left it and forgot about it. That site has since wiped the account.

I'm relearning what I did back then, and like then it is trial and error.
I did one yesterday but was too lazy to find a shader and used green slimy wax. The scene had too few polys for a clipping to hold the surface so it deformed. Ironically the whole thing ending up looking like and behaving like jelly.
A bit more experimenting and I'll try to share my workflow.

[Aiko]

So I gave this a try as well. The dForce plane for the bog's surface has 256 division and size 5m. I tried without the torus at first, but that resulted in a large portion around the model being dragged down. I also inverted gravity and applied a dForce Modifier Weight Node to the surface so I could edit the Influence Weights and keep from forming one giant "pillow". With a bit more tweaking work this might look pretty good in stills. I have yet to try and apply this to animations.

[DangerousWill]

okay, so I've figured out how to get to the level I was at, and without using torus. However, the ground can still be a bit clingy, as can be seen at her right elbow. (the animation used to create the bog disturbance has her moving forwards, thus creating the spikes).

ENVIRONMENT
Gravity -0.05
Air Resistance 0.11

SURFACES
Friction 0.4
Dynamic Strengh 0.21
Stretch Stiffness 0.23
Shear Stiffness 0.23
Bend Stiffness 0.46
Buckling Stiffness 5% Ratio 19.5%
Density +186
Damping (all) 0.11

this website was good for understanding each parameter: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion ... start-here

Going forwards I think I'm going to hide the figure from the dforce simulation and then use primitives to depress the ground, therefore allowing me to dictate where impressions happen and for how long they sustain and most importantly allowing any movement without those clingy spikes.
Then I'll write these up into a step by step guide.

By the way, thanks for the shader and muddy skin tutorial. Haven't had time to apply it in my scenes yet as I kind of jumped the gun with this Dforce stuff, but its something I haven't been able to do before and very much look forward too.

Oh and checked out your website, very good. Your guide showed me around but she wasn't very good: she kept on disappearing... You've got some good ideas and good art.

[Aiko]

Thank you for sharing all those parameters. I have also thought about "faking it" with some hidden primitives. That's an approach I have previously tried with Fluidos as well. I still think that the main issue with using dForce with the actual figure is that you either end up stretching the surface to extremes or have the figure intersect with the surface geometry - both of which tend to lead to unexpected simulation results. Need to do more research on this topic as well...