These are my top five fantasy women outfits, that I use time and time again in my artwork. All five were made for Victoria 4, but I use them for G2F, G3F, and Iray. One of the reasons why I love Daz Studio Iray is because there are so many great shader sets available. With them in my toolset, I can make older outfits, which have Poser or 3Delight materials, look good in Iray.
My favorite shader packs are –
- Pd Iray Shader Kit 1 by parrotdolphin, for fabrics and PVC.
- Iray Fashion Leathers by Khory, for leather surfaces of an outfit. I also have the Aged Leathers for Iray pack, but I use the Fashion Leathers one more often.
- Mec4d PBS Shaders vol.1 for Iray for metals and plastics. There are also standard metal shaders that come with Daz Studio Pro, but this pack has more options and I like the results from these shaders more. Metal is a common material in fantasy clothing, so I use these shaders very often.
- Ingenious Rock Shaders and Nature Shaders by JGreenlees. These are PC+ Club products, so they are great value for the price. I use these for environment objects, but also for some outfits. They are great for nature outfits and bone parts.
1. Dark Apocalypse: Vermillion Dawn
This outfit by IgnisSerpentus is one of my all time favorites because it is distinctive, bad-ass, and highly customizable.
There are a bunch of styles for the headgear as well as other morphs to help with fitting. In addition, the skirt has a bunch of wind and movement morphs that allow me to create a more dynamic image.
I have rendered it on both 3Delight as well as Iray, and like the results of both. In the desert hunter girl picture I have it fitted to G2F and rendered in 3Delight. In the two images below, I have it fitted to G3F and rendered in Iray.
I can use this outfit to create a bad-ass looking demon girl, a desert hunter girl, or a darker scene with shaman girl and her wolf familiar.
2. Bean Sidhe Outfit
This outfit by kaydream is arresting, alluring, easy to fit, and easy to texture. It is one of the most versatile outfits, that I can use in almost any fantasy scene.
I have used it on a demon girl, sorceress, dragon queen, and more. The outfit is conforming, and fits well on G2F and G3F using autofit.
It is also very easy to shade because the outfit only contains metal and gem/jewel surfaces.
3. Kali for V4
This sexy fantasy outfit by RDNA Pro, Nightsong, Secretheart, & Littlefox is simply fantastic! It combines both highly poseable fabrics, as well as conforming parts of metal and jewels. I especially love the headdress with its long flowing back veil.
Images that I made with the Kali outfit were the first to get me noticed on the Daz gallery, and they continue to be some of my most popular images.
The one fly in the ointment is that the skirt fabric portion of the outfit has its own bones for controlling movement. These bone pieces will not transfer using regular autofit. The back-veil in the headdress also has its own bones, but we can just parent it to the head of our figure, so it is not an issue. The simplest way to solve this problem is to remove the skirt and add on an underwear bottom.
Alternatively, I have tried adding two versions of the skirt figure. One version I conform to my figure, and the other version I parent to my figure’s hips. I then make the skirt surface invisible in the conformed item and make everything else but the skirt invisible in my parented item. This can work pretty well with simple standing poses, but since the fabric portion of the skirt is only parented, it may collide with the figure depending on pose.
There is also a way to convert and preserve the skirt rigging structure. Here is a very short summary of the steps on how to do this, which I got from Sickleyield’s tutorial.
- Make sure figure is G2F with no morphs and no poses.
- Click on the Scene Tab and select the object (e.g. Gown) we want to convert.
- In Scene Tab options select Edit > Rigging > Convert figure to weight mapping, pick Triax.
- In Scene Tab options select Assets > Transfer Utility.
- Source = G2F/CloneV4, Target = Gown/Current (Remember to set to current).
- Uncheck all except Morphs and Reverse Source Shape from Target, check Add Smoothing.
- Fit to G2F.
- Select G2F, then Gown, and do Edit > Rigging > Transfer Rigging (Figure Space).
- Save as > Support Assets > Figure/Prop.
4. Fury
When I first got the Victoria 7 figure, this was the first outfit I tried on her. It is a great looking armor set, with a bad-ass shoulder piece, 9 separate pieces of armor, hair that fits the helmet, and two swords/cleavers.
It has good skin exposure, and is great for fantasy warrior type artwork. It looks even better after applying Mec4d’s metal shaders for Iray.
5. Novariens Holy for V4
This outfit is distinctive, eye-catching, and very versatile. I have used it on fantasy warriors with dragons, on assassins with guns and explosions, and on a sword carrying angel. I have used it in fantasy art, contemporary pieces, sci-fi scenes, and more. I can texture it with leather, creating a softer, lighter, outfit; or I can texture it with kevlar or similar synthetic material, to create a more solid armor.
Although originally created for V4, it conforms well to G2F and G3F. The outfit accentuates the curves of the body, is sensual, and provocative.
Hope you enjoyed our top 5 fantasy women outfits. In this article, we specifically focused on top Victoria 4 outfits that we have successfully used with G2F, G3F, and Iray. We will deal with Genesis specific fantasy outfits in future articles.
Very cool outfits! I just found this one by Mortum Vetus outfit that would be a great male counterpart to Vermillion Dawn here: http://www.daz3d.com/mortuus-domine
It has that same bone armor.
Yeah, that is a great one and you are right! It fits well with Vermillion Dawn. I am so glad that they moved their shop to Daz. The Templar is another favorite of mine.
really enjoyed reading this – it makes me want to revisit some of my older products and try autofitting to g3.
Yeah, that is exactly what I am trying to do now. So many good V4 outfits it is a shame not to use them. My plan is to do at least one v4 outfit/hair per month. Hopefully I can keep to it. 😀
Please consider doing a tutorial on exactly how you do post work in photoshop with Daz3D. I often see this mentioned in galleries, but I’d really like to see the extent of the post work and what exactly they entail.
Yeah, that is a very good point. Postwork is a very broad term and can cover something small like adding a signature to repainting over the entire image.
For me, I mainly do color toning, softening, sharpening, combine lights, contrast, and add 2D effects where necessary. I have written a couple of tutorials on particular aspects of postwork as past Tier 4 patron rewards, and have more in my pipeline. However, writing does not come easily to me, so I usually space out my writing projects and work on different topics.