My initial run of Behind the Scenes posts spanned July 2023 to February 2024. Now that we're nearing two years since I finished that original series, I've decided to create a new series of posts to go over all I've learned between then and now, using the content I'm currently creating as examples.
We're going to start with several posts covering the creation of a CG that will be in the upcoming Getting to Know You Update, Part 1. This post is dedicated to posing the 3D figures, while future posts will cover lighting and the final editing process.
This is partially a tutorial, so there's a lot of inside baseball to help other creators who use or want to use Daz Studio, but anyone who's curious about my process may find the details interesting to read!
The Concept
In the update, Matt can potentially describe hooking up with his freshman year roommate, Henri. Naturally, Connor imagines the scenario while Matt shares all the naughty details. The CGs being detailed in these posts take place towards the end of the tale when Matt talks about dicking down his roomie.
Since this is all in Connor's imagination and his only frame of reference for a dorm room is his own, I chose to use that set for these series of CGs. He also imagines Matt as he looks now rather than how he would have looked around 6 months ago, in part because I didn't want to have to create a different model for Matt than the one you're used to.
Connor doesn't have to imagine what Henri looks like, however. Before Matt tells the story of his sexual escapades, he finds a pic of Henri on a public social media profile to show Connor what he looks like:
References
Something I've done more and more as the years go on is use references from adult movies so I can make sure what I'm posing is physically possible. This is a no-brainer for anyone who does a lot of art, but when first starting out, I relied on a combo of premade poses and my imagination, which didn't necessarily produce the most realistic images.
I don't copy the reference snapshots I take one-for-one. Rather, the pics help me study how real, live guys position their bodies when fucking. However, the scenes I watch can be inspirational when I don't already have a clear image in mind. That was the case with this CG since the flowchart description merely read "Matt fucking Henri missionary."
I can't show screenshots of the scene I used as a reference due to content restrictions here on Patreon, but if you'd like to find it yourself, the scene is from a flick featuring Dante Colle and Ty Mitchell called Gaybors.
Getting Started
With the basic idea in place and 10 snapshots to reference, it was time to launch Daz Studio, open up the dorm room set, and load in the models for Matt and Henri.
One of the very first things I do after loading the models is set their SubD level to 1. "SubD" is short for "subdivision surface." Basically, how detailed the mesh is. The higher the SubD level, the longer posing takes since the program reloads all those details with each movement you make.
The SubD level can be changed in the Scene pane by selecting the figure, then in the Parameters pane, select Mesh Resolution under General.
Figures may also have attributes like body hair that can slow down posing, too. Hiding those parented assets in the Scene pane helps a lot. This is done by clicking on the eye icon next to the asset.
Another way to speed things up is hide all the portions of the scene you don't currently need. As I got started with this CG, I only needed the bed, so the rest of the set was hidden until I needed to frame the image with a camera.
Initial Posing
Sometimes I'll create a pose from scratch based on a reference image. A very handy shortcut, however, is to use premade poses close to what you want the final pose to be. The creators of higher quality pose packs use references themselves to make the poses as realistic as they can. PA (Product Artist) Zeddicuss on the Daz store has a lot of pose sets that I find helpful.
I also like poses by Faber Inc, who is a PA that specializes in male figures. I love their products and use them a lot. Figures like Henri, Jordi, and soon-to-be-introduced Professor Zeno are based on models they created. (The figures are Menfis HD for Genesis 9, Novak Revisited HD for Genesis 8.1 Male, and Nahuel for Genesis 9 HD, respectively, though not used as-is; I combined morphs as discussed in Behind the Scenes #1.)
Using the reference screenshots, I looked through my collection of poses until I found two that more or less matched the positions I wanted. I decided on these two, one from Amazing Summertime Poses for Genesis 9, 8 and 3 by 3D Sugar and the other from White Mustang Poses for Genesis 8 Male by Faber Inc.
Initial Blocking
To begin with, I moved the posed figures where they needed to be on the set. I started with Henri, since his position would determine Matt's position.
Using the translation tool and translation sliders in the Scene pane, I lined Henri up with the top of the bed. In the final image, I wanted him to be sunk into the mattress, so I placed him inside the mattress prop rather than perfectly flush with the top. (Later on, I'll go over editing props and using shadows to give the illusion of pressure.)
Partially Resetting Poses
Right off the bat I knew I wasn't going to use the head positioning or expression for Henri's pose, so it was time to reset just that portion of the pose.
To reset part of a figure, first select the highest level bone you want changed. In this case, it's Neck 1. (Henri is a Genesis 9 figure, which has different labels for some bones. Genesis 8 & 8.1 have the bone labeled Neck Lower.)
The easiest way to select the bone is do it right in the viewport. However, if I use the translation tool or universal tool, Daz sometimes registers that as me trying to drag the figure around from that joint, which makes the program lag. If you find that happening, using the node selection tool prevents that entirely.
Once the bone is selected, move over to the Scene pane. Right-click on the bone, then click Select > Select Children. Now every joint lower in the hierarchy from the neck is selected.
There are now several ways to reset these. One way is to right-click on the Parameters tab, then select Restore > Reset Selected Item(s) Pose.
You can also do this in the viewport by switching to the translate tool, then click on the person icon that appears next to the tool or in the top left of the viewport.
Once that's done, the selected portions of the model are now reset to their base form, ready to be edited.
With Matt, I only wanted the bottom of the premade pose. For him, I selected the Abdomen Lower joint before selecting all of its children, then reset it as above.
Applying Partial Poses
Some pose packs you can purchase include poses for just a portion of the figure rather than the entire thing. For instance, just the top half of the body, an arm, a hand, etc.
While this is handy, there's an easy way to do this for any pose regardless if it's already been broken down into its parts via the pose creator.
After resetting Matt's top half, I looked through premade poses again to find something closer to my reference pics. That ended up coming from the same White Mustang pose pack.
To apply just a portion of a premade pose, first select the highest node in the hierarchy. Then, hold down the Ctrl button * and double click on the new pose you're using. A box will pop up with some additional options.
(* I use a PC; if you're on a Mac, Ctrl is usually replaced with CMD on the keyboard.)
The default options can be kept as is except for the Nodes drop-down menu. That must be changed to Selected. Keeping it as Root will change the entire figure rather than the portion you want.
The Limits drop-down menu refers to limits placed on how far individual joints can move. We're keeping it as Respect here so the upper body doesn't move into an odd or impossible position.
The Propagation drop-down menu tells the program what bones you want posed. Recursive will change every joint lower in the hierarchy from the one selected. Selected Only does what it says—changes just the selected bone.
Once Accept is clicked, the model's pose is updated.
...And after doing that with Matt, he ended up leaning awkwardly to the side.
The Hip Bone
The reason for that is because the person who made the original pose rotated the Hip bone to put the legs into position. The Hip bone is the exact center of the figure and the highest in the hierarchy of joints, so it is often used to move a figure into a position within the figure's bounding box rather than his position in the full 3D space.
I use the Hip bone a lot, so I'll touch on it again later. At this point, I just needed Matt to stand up straight, which meant I had to determine what joint needed to be moved. In this case, it was the Pelvis bone.
Joint Controls
When a bone is selected in the Scene pane, controls are shown in the Parameters pane that are used to make it move into certain positions. For the Pelvis bone these controls change how it bends, twists, or moves side-to-side. You can reset a position either by clicking on the number at the end of the slide and manually typing in a value, or if you're resetting to its zero position, hold Shift and click on the slider bar.
Using my references as guidance, I moved the pelvis and legs into the approximate position I needed. I also decided I didn't want the upper pose after all and reset it once more. There's a lot of trial and error that goes into figuring out how everything should look!
Built-In Posing Tools
I went through the same process with Henri, resetting parts of the pose and rotating him using the Hip bone controls. His arm positions no longer made sense, so I started fresh. After resetting his arms, I adjusted their pose using some of the handiest tools in Daz—the limb posing controls.
These are easy to access. First select the figure, then open the Posing pane and expand Pose Controls. Once Arms is selected, we can see the sliders. What's brilliant about these is just by moving a slider, an entire limb adjusts position in a way an arm would actually move in real life.
Looking at the reference pics, I could see how the real life model was propping himself up. To start with, I needed to move Henri's shoulders up by moving the Shoulders Shrug slider. Then it was a matter of moving each arm back and up.
Posing Bone by Bone
The sliders can only do so much, however. When it comes to arms, it does not adjust the forearms at all. Positioning joints like the forearms is one of the reasons I started heavily using references. It's very easy to make a pose look off if, say, you twist the forearm but not the upper arm.
Studying the references even closer, including watching the video, showed me how I should move the upper and lower arm in a natural way. I only really used the twist slider for the upper arm, however. All the upward and backward movement I controlled using the limb posing controls for arms, shoulders, and back.
Everything with Henri was now in its approximate position. Meaning, not their final position. Larger bones like arms I move at this stage, but they're not set in stone yet, so messing with smaller joints like fingers will come later.
Lining Up Figures
Creating an image with just one figure is fairly easy, especially if you slap on a premade pose and call it a day. Posing figures that are interacting can be much more complex, especially for scenes like this where the guys are gonna be fucking!
With Matt and Henri now in their initial poses, I needed to line up Matt's dick to Henri's hole. Except Henri's model doesn't have a hole.
This is where third-party assets come into play. The dick asset I used for Henri is the one Daz provides modified by morphs the creator of the figure made. But to give the guy an anus, I had to snag further morphs off of Renderotica, which is where you can find a lot of the adult assets that aren't sold on the official Daz store. (Renderotica has a lot of graphic content, so be careful if you click that link!)
The hole was applied... and to my eye it didn't seem in quite the right position on Henri's body. In this case, it was fine since we won't be seeing his hole anyway. It was only here to act as a target.
Using the translation tools, I placed Matt, but things weren't lined up just yet. I had to move in close to get the view needed to do so. There was just one problem—the rest of Matt's body was in the way, blocking what I needed to see.
Hiding Parts
Same as you can hide the set, you can hide portions of a model so you can see what you're doing. Problem is, if you click on a figure and Ctrl + click on the eye icon, every part of the figure disappears, which in this case included Matt's dick.
This is when the Hip bone came back into play. The dick asset is parented to Matt but not within the joints that make up the rest of his figure. So rather than click the eye next to Matt's name, I selected the Hip joint and Ctrl + clicked the eye next to it, leaving behind just the body part I wanted.
Pole Into Hole
With my view unobstructed, I could position Matt's dick. The dick asset has its own pose controls which I used to change how it's bent and angled. Even though Matt was hidden, I could still use the translation tools to move his entire figure to further get things into place.
Later on I'm going to be making a CG to follow this one which will have Matt thrusting deeper into Henri, so to start off with, I wanted to show a good portion of his shaft. Matt made this easy since he has a lot of length on him!
Although I didn't need to do it here, one handy way to line up dicks and holes is to change the viewport to Top view rather than Perspective view.
Being in the Perspective view lets you move around the scene, which can make it hard to judge alignment within the 3D space. The Top view, as well as the Back, Left, Right, and Bottom views, are fixed in place, making it easier to get the top guy between the bottom guy's thighs before moving in closer to pose the dick.
Repositioning Interacting Figures
Now that all the basic posing was done, I could look at the bigger picture of how the guys were arranged in the scene. First, I made Matt visible again and used the limb posing sliders to move his arms into a place similar to the reference. Then the full set was made visible so I could better consider where in the space Matt and Henri need to be positioned.
I've used this dorm set a lot, so I already knew that to light this in a way where both guys looked good, they shouldn't be perpendicular to the striped wall next to the bed. But wouldn't moving one guy mess up the positioning of Matt entering Henri that I just spent so much time on?
The solution in instances like these is to group the guys together. To do this, in the Scene pane, Ctrl + click on each guy to select them both. Then under the Create menu on the top left of the program window, choose New Group. It doesn't matter what you name it unless you're making multiple groups; I usually just type "The Boys" on the off chance I forget what the group is.
After following those steps, both guys were together in their own bounding box—a bounding box I could move without affecting their position in relation to each other.
I went to the Top view for this one so I could better see how they were arranged around the bed. I'll go over lighting in more detail in a later post, but it's relevant here in that I wanted them positioned so the final lighting will flatter them both.
By this point I already had an idea of where the camera would be positioned, and I knew I wanted the light from the small hallway to backlight them. I also wanted the primary light to come from the direction of the windows. That lighting needed to be bright enough to illuminate Henri's darker skin but not so bright that the front side of Matt got washed out.
Essentially, I needed the side of them that'll be opposite the camera facing the hallway, and I also needed Matt's back to be angled towards the window wall. That meant rotating them 45 degrees and moving them to the corner of the bed.
Framing the Scene
Before I went any further with posing, I needed to know how the guys would look from the camera view—the view which you'll be seeing in the final CG. Knowing what needed to be visible, I could now hide specific parts of the set rather than the entire thing. Anything you won't see in the final picture didn't need to be there, and in this case, the walls were blocking where the camera would be as well as the main light source.
So it was goodbye to the window wall and the wall behind the bed's headboard. That done, it was time place the camera.
For this part, I moved around in the Perspective view until I could see in the viewport approximately what I wanted to see in the final CG. I then created the camera by clicking the camera icon on the top tool bar.
Doing so brings up a pop-up box. I ticked the circle next to Copy Active View : so that it did exactly that, then clicked Accept.
After loading in a camera, two important settings need to be made in the Parameters pane. First is to select Headlamp and then change the Headlamp Mode from Auto to Off (this will be covered more in the lighting post). Second is to select Camera and change the value on the Focal Length slider to 85.
Cameras in Daz mimic real world cameras. A focal length of 85 is often used for portrait photography, and I like to use it for most of my CGs. (Over the years, I've watched a lot of videos on photography and cinematography to learn how to light and shoot a scene. It's been very helpful!)
Framing the scene within the camera view comes next. A good way to frame a scene is to use the Rule of Thirds, another photography concept. It's so commonly used that Daz has guides built in, which can be turned on by clicking the hamburger menu next to the view drop-down menu at the top right of the viewport.
For the CGs in this game, I don't really want to focus on body parts at the expense of seeing the guys' faces. I also try to take into consideration what part will be blocked by the dialogue box while playing, so I tend to place guys higher in the frame than I might for a non-game CG.
So my goal for framing this CG was to place the guys in the center in a way where I would be able to see both of their expressions as well as Matt's penetration.
I settled on this position to start with, which let us see all of Henri's body. Matt's lower legs were cut off, but that's fine—I didn't want to pull so far back that the guys became miniscule.
Temporary Lighting
Up until this point, I was only looking at the models in Texture Shaded mode, which is a lower detailed view that makes posing a lot faster. Now I wanted to see how the guys looked in a preview render, which I could do by selecting the spherical icon for the Texture Shaded mode next to the view drop-down menu, then NVIDIA Iray.
Two of the walls were hidden, as was the roof, allowing the scene to be illuminated by an HDRI that was saved with the base set. (HDRIs are basically giant domes around a scene that projects light inward, and since they're often made from photos of real scenery, they're good for mimicking sunlight.)
I could see enough to know I was on the right track. But to continue refining the poses, I wanted light that was a little brighter and positioned in a way that was closer to what will be used in the final image. With new lighting chosen, I repositioned the camera once again.
This lighting was nowhere near final. It was way too bright for one. But it would work for now!
Eyeline
In the screenshot above, you can see both guys are looking over each other's heads. Now that I could see the positions of their heads and faces in the camera, I wanted them to actually pay attention to what—and who!—they were doing.
I had a couple choices. One was to have Matt focus on penetrating Henri while Henri was lost in ecstasy, which when set up, looked like this.
I instead decided that I wanted eye contact, which is something you see in a lot of the hookup CGs I make. Trying to do this manually is incredibly difficult, but luckily there's a utility for Daz that makes this super simple called Look at Me II Pose Control.
With this utility, all you need to do to have two figures meet each other's eyes is select them both, then run the script to make it happen. You can also use this tool to move the torso and chest to angle the guys towards each other, but in this case I didn't want to mess with the body positions, so I only used the eye and head sliders.
And voilà! We've made contact!
Expressions
The guys seemed rather unenthused about what was happening, though, which meant it was time to give them facial expressions.
I rely heavily on premade expressions and don't tweak them nearly as much as I do body poses. Expressions are determined by so many moving parts that what I can do manually often isn't nearly as good as what the pros can make.
Daz provides its own built-in, basic expressions, but there are a ton available to buy. One I go to a lot is called 101 Expression Library with Dials for the Genesis 8 Male. The dials in the title (sliders) are key because I almost never use an expression at 100%. Full expressions often look wildly exaggerated.
Generally, I'll start with an expression dialed in at 35% and go up or down based on how it looks. To customize it further, different expressions can be dialed in at the same time, and there are also a ton of built-in sliders for individual features that cover everything from the flexing of cheeks and flaring of nostrils to the curl of a lip and squint of an eye.
It's very easy to veer into a cartoon-y realm when it comes to expressions, which isn't the vibe I want for this game. So I take a lot of time adjusting and readjusting these until I either get something I think looks good or I decide is good enough.
In the case of Matt and Henri, here was what I settled on for the time being:
I started out by looking at the expressions the real models had in the reference scene, then messed around with a variety of expression dials to get a similar vibe. Matt's expression was from the above mentioned expression pack, one of the "seductive" expressions dialed in at 40%. Henri's was from a pose pack called NG Faces of Sadness and Pain for Genesis 9 with one of the "pain" expressions dialed to 35%.
(There's a whole series of "Faces Of" expressions by the same creator which are ostensibly to cover all sorts of basic emotions, but to my eye, every single one of the expressions are tailor made for sex scenes. If you're using Genesis 9 figures, they come in handy!)
Hands
We've reached the point where we should really have the guys' hands actually grabbing something. Hands are notoriously hard to draw, and turns out they're difficult to pose on 3D models, too. So like expressions, I rely a lot on premade hand poses.
One pack I use all the time is FeralFey's Get a Grip Poses for Genesis 8. The "pole" poses in particular are a perfect starting point for grabbing a dick, and there are a variety of other gripping poses to use in other situations.
But like all premade poses, these are just a starting point. Hands always need further refinement, which means I've gotten very familiar with how to adjust each individual bone on each finger.
For this CG, I first applied basic hand poses that are closest to what I ultimately needed.
Then it was time to zoom waaaaay in and use the node selection tool to click on each joint and begin the finer modifications. This included the knuckles, which aren't something you can click on. Rather, after you click on the first finger joint, you can select in the Scene pane what's labeled as Carpal on Genesis 8/8.1 figures and labeled Metacarpal on Genesis 9 figures.
It takes a while to learn how to get hands looking correct, but here are some tips based on what I've learned over the years:
Fingers do more than just bend. Don't forget the twist and rotation sliders. This is especially relevant when it comes to the first thumb joint.
Hands can only move so much, so if positioning doesn't seem correct, try adjusting the forearm and/or upper arm position as well.
Finger positions are rarely uniform in real life, so to make them look more realistic, don't have every finger posed the exact same.
Remember that you can hide parts of the body that are blocking your view. Once one finger is done, Ctrl + click on the eye icon next to its first joint to hide the entire finger, then edit the next finger in line.
Lastly, use references. This helps so much, especially when it comes to something like holding a phone. Below, compare the hand position in one of the first selfies I made to how it's positioned in a recent remake.
Posing hands is one of the finickiest aspects of posing a figure, but it's one of the finer details that really make an image seem polished, so I don't recommend skimping on it.
Out of Sight
...Unless you won't actually see the hand, in which case you don't need to pose it all.
You may still want to move a full limb into its approximate position, however, since it can affect how the figure's musculature looks. For instance, I didn't bother posing Henri's left hand since it's not in view of the camera, but I did do a basic pose for his left arm since its position affected how his chest and other arm were posed.
This goes for everything in a scene. If it's not in the camera's view, it can be hidden unless having it is necessary to make what is visible look good. An example here is the ceiling. You can't see it, but before rendering the final image, I'll still unhide it so it blocks the light coming from above.
Posing by Shaping
Sometimes, you may want to have a body part flex or change in another way but there is no actual pose for it. For instance, Genesis 9 figures have a pose tool for flexing a bicep, but Genesis 8/8.1 figures do not. If I'm using a figure of the latter generation, I use the shaping tools to make muscles flex instead.
Shaping tools are the morphs used to refine a figure's base shape, so while they're not technically meant to pose a figure, adjusting something like the tension of an arm or size of a muscle can work in a pinch.
As always, references help with this a lot. Paying attention to how someone clenches their glutes or tightens their grip adds detail that may not be super obvious at first glance but would look off were it missing.
The Finer Details
Before I consider a pose more-or-less finished, I do a final pass to adjust all the other details not handled by premade poses or broader adjustments. This includes things like how a dick lays on a stomach, if balls are dangling or tightened, if hair assets like pubes got moved out of position during the posing process, and so on.
I say "more or less" because the lighting isn't completed yet. Shadows may make an expression look off, or shifting the camera to adjust the view may make an unposed hand suddenly visible and in need of fixing.
As we reach the end of this Behind the Scenes post, here's where our CG stands:
Looking good so far, but there's still much to do!
There's one more aspect of posing that I want to go over, which is transitioning between two CGs to "animate" something like thrusting. However, I only do this after the first CG in the sequence is 100% set up, so that will come in a future post.
If you have any questions—or your own tips about posing in Daz Studio—feel free to comment below!