My Daz3D Tutorial Thread

[Animal_OG]

Hello, I intended to create and work on this thread earlier, but I ended up taking a long break from LC. I do not have a lot of free time anymore, but I know some of my buddies here are trying to learn Daz, so I want to communicate my own perspective/experience with the software, which is why I'll be posting in this thread. I hope you, reader, find value in these posts too. The format will consist on short tutorials on different aspects of the software that I consider to be essential, tricky, or just simply not covered enough.
Also, please keep the thread on topic: This thread is meant to be strictly about learning DAZ Studio. "Daz" and "DAZ Studio" will be used interchangeably.
Anyway, let's begin:

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Index

1. Things to Consider Before Installing Daz Studio (this post)
2. Custom Content
3. Panes and Tabs
4. First Render: A Look Into Render Settings and Previews
5. Movement and Scene Navigation
6. Assets: Types and Suggestions
7. D-Formers

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Things to Consider Before Installing DAZ Studio
I will talk about some things I wish I knew before learning Daz.

Objectives and Alternatives
What do you want to use Daz for? Set yourself an objective, because learning the software is a considerable time investment, even if you just want to use it as a "drag and drop". I want to give my insight in what I consider Daz to be good/bad at.

Daz is good for:

• Amateur graphic artists: If you need a tool to pump out images but you're not a designer that can make it's own models and meshes.
• Rendering still images in a photorealistic style: This is why a large portion of AVNs are made either in DAZ Studio or using Daz assets.
• Low-complexity scenes: Think about "a small group of people doing some activity at a random place", with a photoreal aesthetic. While this doesn't mean you can't do a complex-looking scene, you have to understand that DAZ Studio is NOT a game engine. The software doesn't properly handle big scenes such as cities or forests, even if you have good hardware. It's just not optimized in such a way, so don't expect newer technologies to be implemented into it in the near future.
• Assets: There is an extensive history of Daz assets, and a considerable amount of new assets being made each day. You're very likely to find assets that suit your taste.
• People with money: If you like shopping, browsing through stores and spending money, the Daz store has you covered.
• People who want to try their hand at 3D for free: It would seem contradictory to what I said before, but it is a free software, and you can also... You know, share.

Daz isn't good for:

• Asset creation: While you can create objects inside of Daz, it's more of a feature than a core functionality.
• Asset consistency: Asset quality varies a lot, and you can usually find yourself in a situation where an asset looked good in the store but not in the software, or great assets (hidden gems) that are marketed like trash.
• State of the art technologies: You won't see AI, face tracking, soft bodies, or innovative techniques such as Lumen or Nanite. Daz has been the same for almost a decade, even if they try to convince you Genesis 9 is a big leap forward. In my opinion Daz devs are entirely focused on selling assets, not making the software better.
• Animation: Even the most simple animation loops are a pain to work with. You can learn, I did, but I'd say it's a waste of time.
• Generality: You're pretty much funneled into Genesis models. You can make other assets work inside the software, but not to the same depth.
• Cross-compatibility: There are several projects built around making Daz assets work on other software, but it's tedious and time consuming. The official support is lacking.
• Real-time games: Most products require a different license (way more expensive) to be used in such games, which is really scummy considering it's a gamble whether something works outside of Daz or not (yeah it's the latter one...).
• Real Pro's: If you've been working on 3D design and already understand the ins and outs, aim for a more complex software. Daz will limit you.

So, now that you have a better idea if Daz matches your objectives, I'll give you some free alternatives that you could consider learning instead of Daz:

• Blender: Way steeper learning curve, and a far larger software in every aspect. Blender is what DAZ Studio could be. You can do everything in Blender, from modding games to producing pro-looking animations. Be aware though, this is not a software for people that is looking for fast results with stock assets. You're not likely to have instant results with the same simplicity and quality as Daz can. I'm currently learning this one.
• Unreal Engine + Metahuman: While focused on real-time games, the Unreal Engine has proven to be one of the most ambitious projects in terms of new technologies and flexibility. If you're open to learning a bit of programming and have a good SSD with tons of space, Unreal 5 can be an interesting and luxurious alternative to Daz.

Rendering on Daz: Can my PC handle it?
This topic is (generally) not properly documented, and to be fair can vary considerably depending on the user. However, I will try to explain what I believe the minimum requirements are for an average user to have a "pleasant" experience when rendering in DAZ Studio.
Firstly, there are two "main" rendering engines that you'll notice inside of Daz Studio: 3Delight and Iray:

• 3Delight is a CPU-based rendering engine, designed under the Pixar philosophy of 3D simulation. It's older, and has a tendency to look cartoonish, as it handles surfaces differently. If you're aiming for photorealism you should try to avoid this one, however, if your projects are classic, or even anime style, and you have a booming CPU, 3Delight will work just fine. You shouldn't use Iray assets on 3Delight, they won't look as intended.
• Iray is Nvidia's GPU-based engine. It's a physically based rendering tech specifically designed to produce photorealistic imagery. It benefits from the CUDA cores in your GPU and has it's own denoising. Iray is not necessarily cutting edge technology today, but it works amazingly if handled properly, and can also work fine if handled poorly.

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Quick Iray render example: 1000 iterations in 5 minutes, Nvidia denoiser.​

The example above (3 min setup, 5 min render) shows how the engine is capable to produce an image without even lighting properly, and in a difficult rendering scenario (reflections, scarce light sources). The Iray engine is much more robust (and fast) than people usually give it credit for.
But what about Filament? What is the PBR thingy on the menu? Filament is another physically based renderer, and you can use it to preview your scenes inside of Daz. I don't recommend it as it works differently on surfaces and Iray assets will most likely look really strange.

From now on I'll assume you'll be working with Iray, as it's the renderer that will likely cause trouble for most users. The reason why Iray is resource intensive is because it's trying to simulate how electromagnetic radiation behaves in real life; light can be absorbed, reflected or refracted, so depending on what's going on inside your scene Iray could behave differently. The specifications I'd seriously consider in the present year are the following:

• GPU: Firstly, Iray in Daz only works with Nvidia GPUs, which means if you're using AMD Iray will default back to your CPU (significantly longer render times). If you are using Nvidia, your best bet is to go for an RTX card. GTX still works (GTX1080ti will always have a place in my heart), however, GTX will have to use part of it's memory to emulate the RTX features. The usual way of thinking is newer = better, but as I mentioned before, in Daz you only have to focus on the amount of VRAM and how many CUDA cores the card has.
  More VRAM will allow you to fit more geometry into the rendered scene; at 6GB your card might struggle with 3xGenesis8 characters with subd2 (a level of detail we'll touch on another day), at 12GB you can easily replicate almost all of the scenes you see on AVNs (unlikely to have problems even at subd3), and at 24GB you're not likely with struggle with anything (that's not a highly subdivided jungle with animals, rain, particle effects and a team of explorers trying to reach a hidden temple).
  More CUDA cores directly affect how fast the render is going to go. As a reference, using the same scene, the RTX3090 is twice as fast as the RTX3060, and the RTX4090 is twice (a bit more even) as fast as the RTX3090.
  This is why you need to reach a sweet spot, balancing operating costs, VRAM, CUDA and initial investment. I personally recommend the RTX3060 (12GB) as a good deal (or entry point), even if it's slow, you're not likely to run into issues with VRAM. The absolute best you can go for as an amateur artist is an RTX4090 (24GB).
  If you're planning on using dual (symmetrical) GPU, just keep in mind that the total VRAM doesn't add up, so 2x6BG cards are still 6GB VRAM. Also, it does NOT cut render times in half, and the more GPUs working alongside the least efficient it will get. 1xRTX3060(12GB) > 2xRTX2060(6GB).
• CPU: Daz is not CPU intensive, simple as that. If you're on a budget you're absolutely good on cutting down a bit on CPU. That said, Daz does use CPU for a couple of things, such as smoothing iterations. If you're doing a lot of smoothing (which you should absolutely not, tutorial on this later) your CPU will start to feel the strain. Any relatively high performance core CPU today will do the job. You could even go with an old 9th gen i5 and not have any issues. Consider investing into a powerful and modern CPU if you're planning on using it to render (not recommended).
• RAM: The goal here is simply not bottlenecking the rest of the system, generally your system will always benefit from more RAM, as it can comfortably hold more data in it's immediate memory. A simple rule you can follow is double the VRAM your GPU has available, and round it up to the next power of two. So if 12GB VRAM -> 32GB system RAM, if 24GB VRAM -> 64GB system RAM, etc...
  An aspect that a lot of people miss when upgrading RAM sticks is it's velocity. You should aim to get at least 3200-3733MHz sticks.
• Storage: You'll likely get addicted to downloading and trying out assets, so prepare to use the equivalent of a modern videogame title worth of storage. My advice is always try to get an SSD, but that's not always possible, so try to get a fast 2TB HDD and you're good to go.
• Monitors/screens: If you want to publish your work then consider having two monitors, from different spectrums... So basically a good monitor with good colors and a shitty monitors. The same image can look very different through different screens, so if you're into AVNs consider a big portion of your audience will see your renders on a dull 1280p. Same rule as music... Mix for the iPhone speakers lol.

Rendering Times and What to Expect
There is no standard practice when it comes to rendering. You can be one of those really hardcore artists that oversample in 4K with 12000 iterations so then they can postwork and reduce back to 1080p with no loss of detail for the upcoming contest, or you can be the average Joe that just throws in 500 denoised iterations in 1080p for his okay-looking visual novel. Both routes are valid and will strictly depend on what you want as an artist, and the budget you have to work with.
My suggestion is: Try out everything you can while you're still learning. Don't settle on the predetermined values for the software (upcoming tutorial on this) and try to figure out your style. There's a demand for everything. A render can take as low as 1 minute, and you could also leave your PC working all day for a single picture. Keep in mind everything in 3D works with diminishing returns and you just have to find you optimal point of operation.

A final thing to consider would be rendering farms, which are private services associated to different 3D software and offer you remote rendering of your work for a hopefully fair price. You upload your scenes, they render them, you download them. This could be a solution for an artist that needs speed but doesn't have access to a powerful card.

 

[mime]

Awesome! Let me dust off my DAZ learning stuff. Let me know how I can help! I'm in!

 

[Guz89]

Awesome! Let me dust off my DAZ learning stuff. Let me know how I can help! I'm in!

*starting DAZ with evil intentions*

EDIT: I'll be changing the dates of @Animal_OG future posts, so they appear before any comments, so don't trust the dates
(feel free to ask me if you need to merge, change orders etc of your posts, and thank you very much, you're already helping a lot)

 

[Animal_OG]

Custom Content
Green = Good
Red = Bad

Daz's extensive custom asset repositories and their ease of accessibility is one of the big reasons most people are using this software over other more robust alternatives. I'd like to start by looking at the default content library that you find in Daz, and explaining how to work around it. The biggest mistake people make is auto-importing everything through Daz Install Manager (DIM from now on), using Smart Content and cluttering their folders to death. We will try to avoid that.

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This is what you should see when selecting the "Content Library" pane/tab. If you don't see this, then in your menu bar go to [Window -> Panes (tabs) -> Content Library] and drag it down to wherever you want to have it. In this matter, Daz is fairly modular, so feel free to move any tabs around customize them so it's comfortable for you, or just leave it by default.
Next, I'll recommend you delete the "Smart Content" tab, yes, delete it. Our goal is to make however many libraries we want inside of the Content Library, so we can organize by project, file size, version, whatever we need. Smart is a dumbed-down version, and can be quite frustrating if it's not identifying files properly.
Okay, so far we have added a "Content Library" tab and deleted a "Smart Content" tab, so now we need to understand how the files are actually arranged inside of Daz.

Understanding Content Folders
Any content folders you create will follow the same structure:

• data: Folders that contain the morphs of the assets.
• Documentation: Folders that contain the licenses associated to the assets.
• Asset classification: Folders that contain .duf files (we'll touch on this later) for accessing the assets.
• ReadMe: Text files with information about the assets.
• Runtime: Folders that contain textures associated to the assets.
• Scripts: Folders that contain scripts installed into Daz.

We will NOT mess with how the "data", "Runtime" and "Scripts" folders are arranged, but feel free to move every other folder around. Why? Because the .duf files will look for the corresponding morphs and textures in the folders specified in their file. We don't move the Scripts folder around because it contains different file types. So, let's imagine we have this distribution in our Content Folder using the Windows File Explorer:

• data (don't touch it, you won't be able to see this inside Daz to make sure you don't fuck with it)
• Documentation (can mess with it)
• aniBlocks (can mess with it)
• General (can mess with it)
• Light Presets (can mess with it)
• People (can mess with it)
• Props (can mess with it)
• Render Presets (can mess with it)
• Runtime (don't touch it, you won't be able to see this inside Daz to make sure you don't fuck with it)
• Scenes (can mess with it)
• Scripts (don't touch it, you will see it inside Daz)
• Shader Presets (can mess with it)

Okay, but what do I mean when I say "mess with the files"? I mean altering the order and names of the folders, or moving .duf files around. The most common issue you'll see with Daz content, is that Vendors can't agree on where should assets go. So you can end up with a "Clothing" folder next to a "Clothes" folder, next to a "Clothings" folder.
The .duf file doesn't care where it is placed, it only cares about the "data" and "Runtime" folders being intact. So, if we really wanted to, we could make one big folder full of .duf files lying around.

But what's a .duf? It's a format Daz uses to retrieve information and arrange it in a certain way. They are the little clickable icons you can find inside the folders. Here's an example:

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Both the "Genesis 8 Basic Female" and "Genesis 8.1 Basic Female" buttons/icons are .duf files, but this doesn't mean that only figures are .duf. Every clickable icon inside the Daz content folders is a .duf, for instance, a hair color, a motorcycle, a whole scene preset, a pose for Genesis 3, etc... This gives you the freedom to use the Windows Explorer to manage the folders and subfolders.
The most practical example would be the "Clothing" folder for some figure; My DAZ 3D Library/People/Genesis 8 Female/Clothing. This folder is very likely to get filled with assets, so I chose to rearrange it like this:

Allowing me to easily find the correct assets for every scene. If I want a Tank Top for my scene, I just browse (inside Daz) to "People\Genesis 8 Female\Clothing\1 - Tops & Shirts\dForce Tank Top" and click on the icon.
Good organization of your content saves you hours of searching and browsing, and it's always easier if done from the start.


Importing Custom Assets

Importing manually is very simple and my preferred method. I'm not saying you shouldn't use DIM (uninstall that shit btw, and don't use that other interactive store application they offer either), but manual importing gives you so much more control over your program and it's easy.
Usually, when downloading an asset you'll get a compressed file (zip, rar). Extract it and you'll get something like this:

The Manifest and Supplement files are what DIM uses to auto-import everything into Daz, so you're free to delete them. Ignore the promo picture too. What's important is inside the Content folder.

In the Content folder you'll usually find something like this, where "People" can be whatever else (Environments, Materials, Animals, etc...), it's just a folder containing .duf files.
Now you need to find your Daz content folder location. An easy way is right clicking on the folder while inside of Daz and browsing to the folder location.

After that, you'll have two Windows Explorer tabs open, one with the "data, People, Runtime" folders, and another one with all of your folders. Now you just select the "data, People, Runtime" folders and drag and drop them onto your Daz content folder, simple as that. To avoid messing up, just make sure you're seeing the "data" and "Runtime" folders on both tabs whenever you're dragging new content into your libraries. If you get a popup message saying "are you sure you want to overwrite some files?" you click on it and select "let me choose which files I overwrite". You should always conserve the files that already were on you Daz content library, not the new ones (reduces risk of something breaking).

One final step I would like to add, is about reducing storage size. Most custom content is bloated with unnecessary files and textures, and it really depends on the vendor and what you're looking for from an asset. I'll give you an example of the "fat trimming" I do before importing:

• Click into data folder -> dev's name -> asset's name -> I'll get to a data folder for Genesis 8 and another one for Genesis 9. I'll straight up delete the Genesis 9 data folder, because I don't use Genesis 9. Then I'll go into the Genesis 8 data folder -> Morphs, and delete all of the FBM files. These are named "FBMAlexandra8.dsf, FBMCharlotte8.dsf, FBMMeiLin8.dsf, etc..." and are very heavy files that try to morph the asset being faithful to DAZ Studio official models. Completely unnecessary. Do NOT delete the "pJCM" files or the useful morphs such as "expand all".
• Click into the People folder, and delete the Genesis 9 folder as I'm not using it.
• Click into the Runtime folder -> Textures -> dev's name -> asset's name -> I'll delete all the textures from colors I don't intend on using, for instance, I'll delete the files for "slightly darker brown" because I already have "regular brown". You can also delete the corresponding .duf files on the previous step folder. A good rule to follow is always leaving the white texture (white shirt, white shoes, white whatever) as it's the easiest one to recolor inside Daz. I do NOT recommend you do this step yet, as you're not familiar with the file types that are contained inside of Runtime and your .duf files could be rendered useless, leaving you in an awkward situation where you come asking for help and I'm not online.

After this I'd go all the way back and drag my trimmed folders (200MB to 80MB in this case) to the Daz content folder.


Adding Additional Content Folders to Daz

If for whatever reason you want to get multiple content folders (I do it) you can do so by following these steps:
File -> Preferences -> Content (tab, if you don't see it click the arrows) -> Content Directory Manager... -> [+] DAZ Studio Formats -> Add...
You can also add Poser formats, or general .obj .fbx formats, but we're not going to go there today.
Keep in mind these content folders aren't where your scenes and projects are saved. Those are saved in "My Library", another content folder, but exclusive for your saves, plugins and configurations.




If you happen to be following the guides and something doesn't make sense to you please let me know. I intend to fill this thread with the things I wish someone would have taught me whenever I was learning Daz. Don't DM me though, keep it in the thread so everyone gets the answer.
Also, feel free to make requests about topics you want covered.

 

[Animal_OG]

Panes and Tabs

DAZ Studio, as mentioned before, is fairly modular, and if at some point there's a functionality you can't find, everything is contained inside the menu bar at the top. For now, let's focus on the software-focused panes/tabs that are essential to have docked around somewhere around your Viewport (also a tab), because accessibility and frequency of use:

• Content Library: The most important tab, as you're going to be bringing assets into the viewport all the time.
• Scene: This tab will show which assets are currently deployed into the 3D space.
• Render Settings: Your goal is to render an image, and you'll do so through this tab.
• Tool Settings: In Daz you'll be using several tools for different purposes. From moving to painting weight maps over meshes. You can also get familiar with the shortcut for activating certain tools (Alt+Shift+F to move around with WASD controls).
• Simulation Settings: In my personal opinion dForce simulations are essential for Daz to look great, ideally you should be simulating before every render. You can consider getting rid of this tab if your computer just can't seem to handle simulations (it can, I'll make a guide on this).

Apart from those, there's also the asset-focused panes/tabs that are essential to your workflow and should consider keeping docked all the time:

• Parameters: This is the tab that contains all the general movements, constraints and qualities associated with the asset you select. It also contains the two the tabs below, so it can get a bit bloated for models like G8. This tab doesn't lose information.
• Shaping: This is a subsection of the Parameters tab, it shows the shaping options available to the figure through morphs. Will lose some morphs tagged poorly by vendors.
• Posing: This is a subsection of the Parameters tab, it shows the movement options available to the figure through poses. Will lose some poses tagged poorly by vendors.
• Surfaces: This is where you'll see a decomposition of your asset into individual surfaces, and the texturing and properties associated to them. One of the most underused core functionalities in Daz. This tab can singlehandedly make your project stop looking like a copy+paste of the other 50 Daz project you see online every day.
• Cameras: This is where you'll adjust the lens, focus, perspective, etc... Use it. Don't get used to only using the Perspective View as the default rendering camera.

Also, you're going to use "Draw Settings" if you're on a budget PC and need to optimize the Viewport previews.

Other than that, you can consider whatever is helpful towards your project; maybe you switch poses a lot, so Puppeteer would be great to have available, or maybe you're trying to make a very real-life inspired model, so Measure Metrics (custom asset, very good one) is needed constantly.



Remember, this is my approach to the software, so if another person teaches you that "Custom Content" or "PowerPose" are essential, then feel free to try everything for yourself. My goal here is to teach you things that I feel are usually overlooked and end up as their default values.

 

[Animal_OG]

First Render: A Look Into Render Settings and Previews

Now that we've already gone over some general Daz aspects, let's try rendering a simple image.
Start by clicking on your Content Library tab -> My DAZ 3D Library (or whatever library you're using to store assets) -> People -> Genesis 8 Female. You should be able to see the Genesis 8 Female .duf file, and also 8.1 if you did install it.

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Double click and wait for Daz to load the figure into the viewport. Do NOT click around or try to do other stuff while Daz is loading assets, there is a chance it will crash and you'll lose all unsaved progress. Once loaded it should look something like this:

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Don't worry if our viewport resolution is different. I always use a 17:28 aspect ratio when working with single characters, we'll change it soon.
Keep in mind you usually don't want to use the default assets that come with the model, such as shape, skin textures, eyes, etc... They're really low quality and unnatural looking. In this tutorial we'll use it though, so everyone can follow, even if they haven't imported any assets.

Now, click on your Render Settings tab. At the top, you'll see three buttons: "Presets", "Editor" and "Advanced". You'll move things around a lot in the Editor pane when working on a project, but for now we're going to focus on the "Advanced" tab. Click on it.
Your advanced settings should look like this:

The most important thing to do is having your Nvidia RTX card active on the Photoreal Mode, while also having your CPU off. At the bottom, be sure to deactivate CPU fallback if you have a decent GPU (as discussed earlier). If you plan on relying a lot on your CPU, even after optimizing scenes, feel free to allow fallback (I wouldn't).
If your software doesn't detect your GPU don't worry, it just means your GPU drivers are not up to date. Make sure to always install the latest NVIDIA Studio Driver, it's on a separate tab from the usual game driver.
Apart from that, you might be interested in the texture compression and which values to set it to. just follow this diagram:

Textures are not compressed | | Textures are slightly compressed | | Textures are compressed
^ Medium threshold ^ High threshold​

I've messed with it before, but only really noticed the difference with hair assets. I choose to leave mine on default values.

The Render Settings Editor

This is where the magic happens. Every instruction on how to render a still image (or image series) will be done on this tab, so I'll try to make sure you understand what most things mean, but also feel free to move things around to see what happens, if anything breaks you can just default to the predetermined values.

• General: You can choose from a selection of dimension presets, or come up with your own. The "Render Type" should either be Still Image or Image series, never render a Movie (highly inflexible). Also, set "Auto Headlamp" to Never, this is very important because the default light emitted from the renderer is awful and will slow down your renders considerably.
  As I mentioned before, here you can change the aspect ratio of your renderer, which will also alter the aspect ratio of the viewport. I use 1554*2560px, an aspect ratio of 17:28. You can try it if you want.
• Render Mode: Photoreal.
• Progressive Rendering: How your iterations will be done and when they will stop. Try changing your Max Samples (number of iterations you want Iray to make) and Max Time (kind of failsafe) and see for yourself what number of iterations leaves you satisfied. Contrary to what people say on forums, I'd recommend keeping "Rendering Quality Enable" off at all times; allowing this to happen is like asking the software if it thinks your render looks good enough. Can be highly inconsistent when there's a lot of reflections and transparency.
• Alpha: Don't touch, you'll mess up your surfaces.
• Optimization: Works amazingly well in Auto settings. If you're struggling with your GPU, consider trying different Instancing Optimization settings. Max Path Length is how many bounces you'll allow light to make; the default is -1 (infinite bounces), and you could set it to 10 (6-7 lowest I'd do) if you want your render to calculate a lower amount of bounces. You should leave it at -1 if you can afford to.
• Filtering: Turning up the values for all the filtering options will get rid of the weird artifacts associated with light in your pictures, at the cost of massive loss of detail and sharpness. Also NEVER use Daz's Post Denoiser... Keep that shit off. It's an ongoing process so it will eat up some VRAM, and is considerably worse than Nvidia's denoiser (external app) or other post-working softwares.
  If you like sharp images I can recommend Pixel Filter -> mitchell, Pixel Filter Radius -> 1.0, or even lower if you like razor sharp details.
• Spectral rendering: Don't.
• White mode: Don't.
• Section Objects: Don't.
• Tone Mapping: This is another interesting tab, I would normally suggest you mess with tones exclusively during post-work on Photoshop or a similar software. For now you can just settle with "Exposure Value"; the higher the value -> less light will be captured by the renderer, so you can try moving it around for night scenes, scenes with scarce light sources, whatever you need.
• Environment: This tab contains elements related to HDRI light sources, ground and shadows. You'll be able to draw sky, only get lighting, make the ground transparent, only use manual lighting, etc... I'll touch on this when we go through lighting. For now, keep everything on their default values.

Draw Settings

After seeing so much info on the render options you surely want to try them out. The good thing is, you don't need to start 20 different renders to try out every setting, you can just activate an Iray preview in your viewport.

That icon will let you choose amongst a variety of shading options for your viewport. If you click on NVIDIA Iray you'll get a preview of how your render is going to look when actually starting the render process, but keep in mind it's just an approximation with considerable loss of detail. For this same reason, the Iray preview should not be overly intensive on your setup. If your Iray preview is lagging or not working properly, go to the "Draw Settings" tab. This tab will only show the options for the current preview method, so if you're in Texture Shaded view, you're not going to see "Drawing", "Alpha", "Optimization", etc...
So far, your viewport should look like this:

In the "Drawing" options you can choose the draw mode (I use photoreal) and how pixelated you want it to become when moving around. If 1/4 doesn't allow for smooth movement try 1/8 or 1/16.
In the "Optimization" options you can try changing the Max Path Length like I explained before, or using different instancing options to get a more fluid preview.
You shouldn't mess too much with these options, and most users will be good at this point. However, if Iray preview is still slow for you, you can try "Edit/Preferences/Interface/Display Optimization = Best".


Setting Up a Quick Render

We'll now use what we learned so far and do an example scene to try out different rendering settings, so follow these steps:

• If you didn't do it before, go to Render Settings/General and set your Pixel Size to 1554*2560px, 17:28 aspect ratio.
• Go to your Content Library and look for Genesis 8 Female Clothing, select Genesis 8 Female on your Scene pane, and then double click on "Basic Wear 01". This should load some underwear to your figure.
• Look for the Poses folder for Genesis 8 Female, and double click on "Base Pose Walking B". This will load a pose onto your figure.
• Look for the Hair folder and double click on Toulouse Hair. You now loaded her onto the figure.
• Change tabs to Render Settings, and click on Environment. We'll use Environment Mode -> Dome and Scene, Dome Mode -> Infinite Sphere, Draw Dome -> On, Environment Intensity -> 2.0, Dome Rotation -> 90. Leave the rest with default values.
• Now we'll go to Tone Mapping and set an Exposure Value ->13.5, Burn Highlights -> 0.5, Crush Blacks -> 0.5, Saturation -> 0.95
• Go into Progressive Rendering, turn Rendering Quality Enable off, and set Max Samples -> 500
• Go into General and make sure you're rendering a still image and Auto Headlamp is set to Never.
• Go back into Texture Shaded view (remember? the little ball icon upper right corner of the viewport).
• Press the blue Render button at the top of the Render Settings tab.

You should get the following image:

It took 52 seconds for my setup to reach 500 iterations. I feel I'm very comfortable working on Daz with this setup, so if you rendered your image in a similar time you shouldn't have any issues working with the software. We even made the base model look decent haha.



Well that's it for now. If you got the same image then good for you, no need to share it here lol. If you had any problems let me know though. I get that this is very basic use of the software, but with good base practices you're less likely to run into issues later on when working with complicated scenes.

 

[Landskrona84]

will look into it more when i get to my computer

 

[Animal_OG]

Movement and Scene Navigation

The Cube and Coordinate System

As mentioned previously, we have access to a bunch of tools through the Tool Settings tab or simply by clicking on the icons on top of the viewport (condensed version).

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Movement in Daz is not as sophisticated as some other pure modelling or design software (e.g. Blender), but it uses the same "box" approach to the 3D space. Look at the cube located on the top right of your viewport.

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That box represents the coordinate system Daz uses. You can click on any of the faces, edges or corners, to position your camera in the respective orientation. Alternatively, you can hold left click and just drag the cube around to make your view rotate alongside with it. The cube will ALWAYS represent the orientation quality of your selected camera. In this case, we're only using the default Perspective View, but you'll eventually incorporate more cameras into your scene, and will depend on that box to understand the orientations in relation to the scene.
By Daz standards, the orientation coding is the following:

• Blue: Front and back, or Z-axis. A positive Z-translation will mean an object moves towards the front. A negative Z-translation will mean an object moves towards the back.
• Red: Left and right, or X-axis. A positive X-translation will mean an object moves left. A negative X-translation will mean an object moves right.
• Green: Up and down, or Y-axis. A positive Y-translation will mean an object moves up. A negative Y-translation will mean an object moves down.

This is simply Daz's proposed coordinate system. By default, figures and objects will (should) load facing the front (positive Z orientation), so you might assume the usual "front" of a scene (where the spectators might seated) is implied to be the positive Z portion. This, however, is completely up to you as a designer; the coordinate system should only be used as a reference on how to navigate the scene, it should not dictate how you set up your scene. You can make your characters face wherever you want, or take the HDRI dome as a reference, etc...
An important tip you should remember is that Daz works better when closer to the center (origin) of the 3D space, i.e. where the lines intercept. At higher distance values (10.000 off-center) you're very prone to issues such as texture breaking, transparency issues and questionable subsurface scattering, especially on Genesis-based models. If you already set up your scene far from the center, you can group all the objects in your scene and just move the group around so it matches the origin.


The Basic Movement Tools

The strip of icons to the right of your cube are what you'll most likely be using 95% of the time to move around your scene. You will use every single one of them, so I'll explain in detail what they do:

• Left click (hold & drag): Orbit movement. With this, you'll be able to orbit around whatever you're currently focused on in your scene. You can do the whole spherical orbit, as if your camera was fixed to a sphere and looking into it's center. Satellites and whatever.
• Right click (hold & drag): Rotate movement. You'll be able to rotate your camera's view but without translating (moving) the camera itself. Think of it as being fixed to the center of a sphere, or your eyes looking around.
• Control + right click (hold & drag); Banking movement. You'll be able to tilt your camera while keeping a point of focus. Imagine when a jet tilts to take a steep turn.

• Left click (hold & drag): Panning movement. You'll be able to pan around a scene as if the camera was stuck to a plane.
• Right click (hold & drag): Dolly movement. You'll be able to move the camera around as if it was mounted on a wheeled cart. Keep in mind that the initial orientation of the camera will determine the orientation of the dolly movement, not the coordinate system.

• Left click (hold & drag): Zoom in/out. You'll be able to zoom while focused on a point. It's the same as scrolling your mouse wheel back & forth, but more precise.
• Right click (hold & drag): Focal zoom. You'll be able to change the field of view around the current focal point.

• Left click: Frame. The camera automatically translates to the object that's currently selected on your scene, without altering the rotation values of your camera. Your perspective view (if currently in use) will automatically focus that object. Think of it as if you're sitting looking at your PC screen, and someone picks you up and places you in front of a tree in the garden. It's the fastest method for moving around in big scenes.
• Right click: Aim. The camera will look at the selected object, without making any translation movements. Think of it as aiming on an FPS game.

• Left/right click: Reset. You'll reset your camera's view to the default Daz camera position. Use it, it saves time.

Additional Movement Tools

On the Tool Settings tab you can select Scene Navigator, an expanded version of what we saw before. You can also access it from the icon bar shown at the start of this tutorial, or by pressing Alt + Shift + F. I don't usually need to use this tool as often, but if your scene needs precision, or longer and faster movements, this tool has you covered. Play around with it.
Apart from that, you can also enable the Keyboard Navigation for the scene on the same icon bar, or by pressing Shift + K. This will allow you to move around by using the standard WASD keys.
A cool tip I can mention, is by enabling Keyboard Navigation and selecting the Scene Navigation tool, you can hold down left click on the viewport (like literally press down on the screen) and move around with WASD while you aim your view with your mouse. Gamers will find it particularly useful.



I'm aware these can be tedious to read through, but I'm convinced good understanding the basic functionality really makes a difference when setting up a scene. If someone needs a reference: When I started using Daz it usually took me over 2 hours of messing around to properly set up a scene (a passable one). Now I spend about half an hour.

 

[Animal_OG]

Assets: Types and Suggestions

Every new Daz user faces the question: Which assets should I get? (The store is so huge you'll usually end up wasting time and getting something you don't need)
There's no right answer, as everyone's got different goals in mind when working in Daz, but I'll try to go over what I believe to be essential, and also give you a couple of suggestions to point you in a direction you might find useful.
An asset will (most of the time) have it's own folder, which will have the product name (e.g. G8 Ponytail Hair), and contain multiple .duf files with various purposes. You could go into a hair folder, and inside find the hair figure, but also material settings, default styles and maybe extra props like hairbands. This would go in the "Hair" folder, because all .duf inside are associated to that specific hair asset.

Types of Assets

Remember the custom content tutorial? This section will draw from that. I'll explain where things go this time around. These folders contain 99% .duf files, so you can move them around and reorder them (as we saw previously).

The following assets (should) all go inside your "People" folder, specifically on their respective figure subfolder (Genesis 8, Genesis 8 Female, Genesis 9, Genesis 8.1 Male, etc...):

• Accessories: A not-so-necessary distinction from clothing, these are usually props specific to a figure (e.g. Genesis 8 Male), like jewelry, hats, glasses, watches, etc...
• Anatomy: Assets that modify the respective figure's body at some level, ranges from genitals to missing limbs or altered body parts (horns, elf ears). Eyebrows usually end up here too.
• Characters: Whole character packages (e.g. Victoria 8) go in here. Even if character packages include morphs, skins, LIEs, textures and other things, it's easier to access from a single folder so they end up here.
• Clothing: All the clothing associated with the respective figure is stored in here. Clothing is whatever your character wears and it's "fit-to" their figure (following it's rig).
• Hair: Hair (and body hair) for the respective figure will end up here.
• Materials: Here you can find material options associated to the figure that are not necessarily associated with a specific character, such as skins, makeup, scars, eye textures, tans, etc...
• Poses: All poses and pose presets associated to the respective figure. You could also find poses for another figure here if it's a duo pack (e.g. G8 Female & G8 Male).
• Props: Not necessary but used. Props associated with the respective figure, usually with smart-fit (e.g. make hand grab onto prop). Can be weapons, tools, gadgets, etc...
• Shapes: Morphs. Can be standalone character morphs (usually when they are not a whole package), body part specific morphs, faces, HD morphs, etc...

The following assets all go into their respective folders (the previously discussed "People" folder needed more detail):

• AniBlocks: Animation blocks used for the aniMate tool.
• Environments: Pre-made architecture or places. It can be indoors or outdoors. Here's where you'll find your houses, apartments, shops, parks, beaches, jungles or whatever you imported into Daz. They usually include standalone props, material options, cameras and render presets.
• Figures: Figures with their own skeletons, different from the Daz figures (G3, G8, G9).
• Light Presets: Anything associated to lighting, such as HDRIs, skydomes, Ghost Lights, native light presets, etc...
• Props: Standalone props. Designers tend to throw environments into this folder (such a pain in the ass), but it should contain objects and things that are not necessarily arranged in a "scene" manner. For instance, instead of having
• Scripts: Daz functionality, from optimization to animation. Don't touch these ones.
• Shader Presets: All standalone shaders and material packs, not necessarily associated with scenes or figures, the most general shader folder.

Those are the main types of assets you'll find yourself downloading for DAZ Studio. In addition to all these general categories, you can also find things such as animals, vehicles, presets, cameras and objects that might justify their own folders, but don't clutter your folder with unnecessary classifications if you don't need to.

Asset Recommendations

These are some of the assets I consider essential:

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  : Fitting clothes in Daz is ass and this asset makes it much more bearable. We'll see how to do it on an upcoming tutorial.
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  : Ghost lights are perfect for filling dark scenes with a bit of light, they don't appear on reflections and are extremely modular. This one comes with nice primitives.
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  : Fix pokethroughs, stretch skin, mold terrain... A mini sculptor tool inside Daz, very useful.
• : If you have a low-end setup this one is going to be your best friend.
• and : If you want to do porn your characters will need some genitalia. There's other options but these are highly customizable and full of extra content (purchasable).
• : Daz's look-at core functions are really bad because they lag the viewport in an insane manner. This asset lets you quickly adjust poses.
• : A huge morph package. It extends the basic Daz character creation with many missing morphs and also improves on the default ones.
• & : Default Daz makes everyone look 28.

I linked most of them to G8 Female. Other figures should be really easy to find. If you check out the links, you'll realize it's around $200 worth of basic functionality; this is what I mentioned earlier about Daz being a shopping market.

Everything else will be your choice. You know what you want out of your scenes better than anyone else, so keep in mind your most valuable asset could be the worst purchase in some other person's eyes. Don't be discouraged by opinions, but mind the reviews.
Finally, I'll quickly list some nice asset developers you might want to consider checking out: OOT, Fugazi1968, Dimension Theory, Zev0, ManFriday, Meipe, Riversoft Art, KindredArts, Jayden, Sabby, Fred Winkler, Zeddicus.



I'll make a tutorial (eventually) on how to customize and edit some of these purchased assets to give them a unique feel, and even make them unrecognizable. Mix and matching is key to make Daz look fresh.
I don't know if anyone is following the thread, but I'm still open to questions and feedback. Cheers.

 

[Beast Within]

quick question.
when it comes to tutorials, for example dforce tutorials in depth, would this be a right thread or is it advisible to create a different one for more on target tutorials?
same for blender since I am curently in the proccess of learning for my project

 

[Animal_OG]

quick question.
when it comes to tutorials, for example dforce tutorials in depth, would this be a right thread or is it advisible to create a different one for more on target tutorials?
same for blender since I am curently in the proccess of learning for my project

Sure, I've been busy for a while now, but I was thinking on doing a tutorial on dForce. It's a tricky one, because the default values are usually too stiff and lead to a bunch of issues (e.g. exploding meshes, long simulations).
You (or anyone reading) can also dm me if you have specific questions about dForce you need answers to.

I'm still not good enough at Blender to write a tutorial myself, so ask around and see if someone is down to make a dedicated Blender thread.

 

[Beast Within]

well I have been using dforce since it was introduced but never got to understand the dforce settings in the surface tab. which is what I am more interested in, to be honest.

depending on how you setup the cloth asset, either it is already in dforce or you added it yourself, those sliders make a ton of difference. I tried to find more information online and truth be told there are very few who delve deeper into those settings. and it also comes down to the asset it self.

for example, I tried to create indentetions on a bed surface and on a summer chair surface. and although the bed was a success ( I will post the image bellow) the chair was not because you had to separate geometry, make it a different object and then deforce that object ( which you can do with hexagon or blender, or just replace that geometry with a primitive but it adds to the workflow which is not bad if it for a still image/render but it is detrimental for a game pipeline)

I am also learning blender to add to my workflow, since my plan is to set the scene in daz and then move it to blender with diffeo. Marvelous designer is propably the best option when it comes to clothing simulation but, it is not a free software.

ps, if you are interested in blender there is a discord channel I follow where many blender users post both assets and tutorials on how to's for blender. you will find the discord link under any of AnimeNyan youtube videos.

bed covers/matress dforce

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[Animal_OG]

well I have been using dforce since it was introduced but never got to understand the dforce settings in the surface tab. which is what I am more interested in, to be honest.

depending on how you setup the cloth asset, either it is already in dforce or you added it yourself, those sliders make a ton of difference. I tried to find more information online and truth be told there are very few who delve deeper into those settings. and it also comes down to the asset it self.

for example, I tried to create indentetions on a bed surface and on a summer chair surface. and although the bed was a success ( I will post the image bellow) the chair was not because you had to separate geometry, make it a different object and then deforce that object ( which you can do with hexagon or blender, or just replace that geometry with a primitive but it adds to the workflow which is not bad if it for a still image/render but it is detrimental for a game pipeline)

I am also learning blender to add to my workflow, since my plan is to set the scene in daz and then move it to blender with diffeo. Marvelous designer is propably the best option when it comes to clothing simulation but, it is not a free software.

ps, if you are interested in blender there is a discord channel I follow where many blender users post both assets and tutorials on how to's for blender. you will find the discord link under any of AnimeNyan youtube videos.

bed covers/matress dforce

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Don't worry mate, I got you.
I see what you mean, but you don't need to use dForce (or other software) at all: What I would actually do is set up a D-Former and paint the influence area to your desired effect.

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D-Formers

D-Formers are a tool used to modify or transform the underlying geometry of a mesh. You can find them on the "create" tab on your top ribbon. You need to have a figure/object selected in order to create a D-Former, and said D-Former will automatically parent itself to said object.
D-Formers are composed of 3 elements:

• D-Former Base: It's used as a reference point for the initial position of the D-Former. A good practice would be positioning right on top of the surface you're trying to deform.
• D-Former: It's the actual tool/gizmo you'll move around to obtain deforming effects. It can move in all directions and even rotate meshes. It's automatically parented to the D-Former base, and it's reference (0,0,0) coordinates will be wherever you positioned your D-Former Base.
• D-Former Field: It's area/volume that will define the affected surface. The default influence mode is a sphere, which is quite useful for simple pokes and pulls. You can change the dimensions of the sphere to flatten it down, make it bigger, or whatever you need to make the volume collide with your selected object. If you need a more detailed area of influence, go to the Parameters tab and select Influence Mode -> Weight Map, which will allow you to manually define the influence.

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A cube primitive with a loaded D-Former and Spherical influence selected.

Same setup, but with D-Former pulled down the Y axis.
Notice the base and field staying in position.​

The Benefit of D-Formers

It's a simple and fast tool, I would mention that:

• D-Formers are a low intensity tool, which means your viewport won't suffer from drops in performance during any part of the D-Forming process.
• You can apply as many D-Formers as your scene needs, and every single one will be parented to their respective asset, making them easy to locate and access.
• You can create multiple instances of a D-Formed object without any performance loss.
• You can use it to replace dForce for simple deformations, and use both together for more complicated setups.
• You can use D-Formers as a moving parameter on the timeline, so they're suitable for animations, e.g. grass being stepped on, a person sitting on a bed, a face being punched.
• D-Formers are highly versatile when used with the Weight Map influence mode, and is very comparable to the script "Mesh Grabber" with all it's addons.
• D-Formers can be used together with Subdivision Modifiers and Smoothing Modifiers to achieve natural-looking deformations.
• D-Formers allow an extreme level of deformation, so pull away.

Using Weight Maps

Now this is the cool part. We can select our D-Former Field on the Scene tab, go to the Parameters tab, click on the Influence sub-tab and set Influence Mode -> Weight Map. The influence sphere outline will still be there, but the collision indicators will disappear. This means we have no active area of influence, so we'll need to go to our "Tool Settings" tab and select the "Node Weight Map Brush". Alternatively press Alt+Shift+W.
Now, click on "Add Map" (with your D-Former Field still selected) to create an Influence Weight Map. You'll notice your figure/object will change colors, to a scale of transparent (no influence) - blues (low influence) - reds (high influence).
The Node Weight Map Brush is very simple to use, the main aspect is selecting how sensible you want the brush to be when painting, and how big-small the radiuses are. To paint just left click on the object's surface. You can use Ctrl+Z to undo any mistakes. To paint negatively (substract) hold Ctrl and left click, the same as if you were painting normally. Once the influence surface is painted you can exit the tool by simply selecting another tool. You'll notice some dots re-appeared on the mesh's surface, this indicated the weight map is working.
Finally, you can use your D-Former as usual and try to get the perfect deformation your scene requires.

Weight map being painted on a cube primitive.

D-Former pulled down after exiting the Weight Map Tool. ​

 

[Beast Within]

wow a thousand thanks dear friend. in all honesty I never thought to combine dformer and weight paint! I will have to test this.
yes I know of mesh grabber a fabulous tool if I am being honest. I am waiting for mesh grabber 4 to be released which basically brings sculpting into daz. you can find a youtube demo video. it will propably be worth every penny.

will save this page for future referense

again thank you for the time you spent creating this. I greatly appreciate it