Daz Tutorial General Daz tips & tricks

[ShamanLab]

Ok... you din't repainting skins on photoshop or other editors?

 

[recreation]

Ok... you din't repainting skins on photoshop or other editors?

Yesno, I changed colors, edited details, added details, etc. and I made a skin from scratch (but it wasn't really good). The best thing I can advise is to take the best skin you can find and add your own flavor to it. Several Daz skins are made from RL photos, so the textures are good, but often it's the shader that kind of destroys it.

 

[Rico Caramba]

Hmm, I'm honestly not sure what to tell you. If I see something that I don't like on a skin I edit the texture in an image editor, if the shader looks off I change some values, but it varies from shader to shader and it's not like there's a "best for everything" setting, every shader needs to be tweaked fitting to the texture. I experiment a lot and save what I like.
Often I start with a skin I like, change the things I don't like and save it. That could be bump which is often too strong, or glossyness, top coat, somtimes metallic flakes, etc., but I even change my own skins a lot, even my characters skins are not the same anymore since when I started developing^^

Bump and normal map values may be OK for a wide angle, but they are often too strong for a close-up. Lowering their values is an easy trick that often improves a close-up shot.

But... every skin is different and reacts differenly to light. Using different skins on different characters is important to make them stand out from each other.

 

[Deleted member 1121028]

Hello!

Maybe offtopic but i think is better ask here: any tricks, tips, tutorials or links about custom skin and eyes textures? Or skin and eyes settings.

Because it seems like custom textures is your models trademark.

For eyes I would say Victoria 8.1 are a good base to work with. Far I know, maybe the best setup in a while (?). See how it's done and iterate around it. For skin, it's more problematic, as every CG artist bake their maps differently with different workflow (way more variance). You need to dig a bit into Uber Iray/PBRSkin and choose yourself a path.

 

[m4dsk1llz]

Since we are talking about eyes, I have a solution to the 'Eyes move in opposite direction' after converting a character from Genesis 3 to Genesis 8.1. It was something I flushed out after a conversation with TTrick (Long Story Short). It has to do with the fact that there was, what I would call a fuck up in the way Genesis 3 was built as the eyes on DAZ models is 180° out of orientation for no explicable reason. When you convert the morphs then orientation to the bones is added to the ERC and it 'fixes' the orientation, as no orientation data is provided in the original Genesis 3 morphs.

Now what happens is that a lot of content creators take into account that every Genesis 3 character has this 180° shift and built their expression morphs with this in mind. When Genesis 8 came along, DAZ decided to keep that 180° shift in the eyes. Where it makes everything go fubar is that when you convert a character and use the expressions the eyes move in a wonky direction. But the problem is not only restricted to the eyes; eyelids and lips can also suffer from the same issue.

TTrick showed me how he fixes this by changing the orientation of the eyes using the Tool Settings for the Joint Editor, but that seems like way more work considering most models require all sections of the eyelids also be rearranged.

Here is my easier way to fix this. I am almost 100% sure that if orientation for the bones does not exist then it inherits them from the base model, in our case Genesis 8 Male/Female or Genesis 8.1 Male/Female. So if we simply don't include the orientation for the eyes and eyelids it should be exactly the same as our starting base. This is very easy to do when you are freezing ERC.

I have tried this several different ways, just unchecking XYZ Orientations for the eyes and eyelids, unchecking XYZ Orientations for the whole face, and unchecking XYZ Orientations for the entire morph. I have not seen any visual difference in the way it handles both poses and expressions with any of the methods. You uncheck these in the dialogue box 'ERC Freeze Options' when you freeze the ERC. Then once saved, the morph can be used with confidence that the eyes now move in the DAZ direction and the eyelids move in the DAZ direction based on the Genesis 8/8.1 kinematic.

Here is one caveat, I have not tried this on super morphed characters, I have mostly done Fan Art conversions from Genesis 3 to Genesis 8/8.1. If you have a character that is very plump or has extra large breasts it might not work 100% of the time. I simply don't know.

I hope I am not repeating what has been said before and that people will find this helpful. I tried searching the interwebz for this information but it seems that a lot of DAZ users just live with the issue and just complain about it on the DAZ forums without actually finding a solution. If anyone finds a scenario where this doesn't work, please let me know.

 

[DitaVonTease]

Since we are talking about eyes, I have a solution to the 'Eyes move in opposite direction' after converting a character from Genesis 3 to Genesis 8.1. It was something I flushed out after a conversation with TTrick (Long Story Short). It has to do with the fact that there was, what I would call a fuck up in the way Genesis 3 was built as the eyes on DAZ models is 180° out of orientation for no explicable reason. When you convert the morphs then orientation to the bones is added to the ERC and it 'fixes' the orientation, as no orientation data is provided in the original Genesis 3 morphs.

Now what happens is that a lot of content creators take into account that every Genesis 3 character has this 180° shift and built their expression morphs with this in mind. When Genesis 8 came along, DAZ decided to keep that 180° shift in the eyes. Where it makes everything go fubar is that when you convert a character and use the expressions the eyes move in a wonky direction. But the problem is not only restricted to the eyes; eyelids and lips can also suffer from the same issue.

TTrick showed me how he fixes this by changing the orientation of the eyes using the Tool Settings for the Joint Editor, but that seems like way more work considering most models require all sections of the eyelids also be rearranged.

Here is my easier way to fix this. I am almost 100% sure that if orientation for the bones does not exist then it inherits them from the base model, in our case Genesis 8 Male/Female or Genesis 8.1 Male/Female. So if we simply don't include the orientation for the eyes and eyelids it should be exactly the same as our starting base. This is very easy to do when you are freezing ERC.

I have tried this several different ways, just unchecking XYZ Orientations for the eyes and eyelids, unchecking XYZ Orientations for the whole face, and unchecking XYZ Orientations for the entire morph. I have not seen any visual difference in the way it handles both poses and expressions with any of the methods. You uncheck these in the dialogue box 'ERC Freeze Options' when you freeze the ERC. Then once saved, the morph can be used with confidence that the eyes now move in the DAZ direction and the eyelids move in the DAZ direction based on the Genesis 8/8.1 kinematic.

Here is one caveat, I have not tried this on super morphed characters, I have mostly done Fan Art conversions from Genesis 3 to Genesis 8/8.1. If you have a character that is very plump or has extra large breasts it might not work 100% of the time. I simply don't know.

I hope I am not repeating what has been said before and that people will find this helpful. I tried searching the interwebz for this information but it seems that a lot of DAZ users just live with the issue and just complain about it on the DAZ forums without actually finding a solution. If anyone finds a scenario where this doesn't work, please let me know.

I've had the 'lazy eye/crossed-eyed' outcome a few times, the other way to 'fix it', is open up the parameters tab for your figure, scroll all the way down to 'eyes' & manually move one or both of them, takes about 2 minutes if your slow/or on a ''potato powered laptop'.......

 

[m4dsk1llz]

I've had the 'lazy eye/crossed-eyed' outcome a few times, the other way to 'fix it', is open up the parameters tab for your figure, scroll all the way down to 'eyes' & manually move one or both of them, takes about 2 minutes if your slow/or on a ''potato powered laptop'.......

Even with a 'Potato PC' freezing the ERC after making your eye adjustments is fairly fast. Baking the ERC takes what seems like forever, even on a R9-5950X. Of course DAZ doesn't help itself with it's spectacular multi-threading.

 

[Shinita]

Here are a few of my tips I've found over the years, some might be a bit newbie but some hopefully useful to more experienced artists:

Content

• Install Manager is fastest way to download content (one compressed file vs hundreds of separate)
• Keep Install Manager and manually-installed content in two separate content folders for ease of manual uninstall
• The more morphs (characters/shapes/expressions) you install for a model the slower figures load whether you use the morphs or not
  • So uninstall what you don't really need or use Turbo Loader to disable it
  • Poses and texture installations do not affect load time though
• DAZ have daily deals which they send emails out for you can subscribe to
  • But also a lot of unannounced fast grabs/specials about ~12 hours later you have to visit site to see
• DAZ freebies aren't always listed in the freebie section
  • So set the order to price lowest to see all the free content from the main store page.

Characters

• If you're creating a game with a bunch of characters create a scene and load them all in
  • Compare heights, skin tones etc. so they all look like they might be from the same world
  • Try a few facial poses on each as some good looking faces look weird with expressions
• You can tweak the overall look of a characters skin just by tweaking diffuse colors and transparency level
• Load a character and then switch the skin for a quick way to create somebody different
• Some characters without nipples have an "_ALT" texture with them in the content folder
  • Set them for both Diffuse and Translucency textures
• If you get solid white breasts/genitals then it's a shell node (wet, crying, freckles) etc.
  • If the shell shouldn't apply to that area go toggle that area off in the shell properties
  • If it should then modify the shells surface for that area - set it to Iray Uber and copy from shell's torso or face and tweak
  • Sometimes these shell properties/surfaces need resetting due to bugs in DAZ
  • Hiding characters often leaves lashes/hair/body parts - create a group and put char + hair etc into it to show/hide everything easily

Clothing

• FitControl is essential for moving clothing around easily
  • Remove any unused FitControl morphs to keep save/load times manageable
• Mess around in the surface settings to change colors or opacity quickly
• MeshGrabber is great for moving clothes by pulling them but it can crash - save often
• Clothing clipping through?
  • Hide underwear when it shouldn't be visible to avoid clipping
  • You can even hide full body parts if they should be fully hidden by the clothing
  • If you want underwear partly visible then try setting the clothing on top to collide with the underwear instead of the character
• Clothes without smoothing/collision? Use "Add Smoothing Modifier" from the Edit > Figure > Geometry
  • You can also find options to add them there and as well as ones for D-Force
• Turning on smoothing modifiers for figures themselves can make DAZ slow down to a crawl quickly
• Simulate D-Force to just specific objects using "Simuate Selected" via pop-out menu to the right of the Simulate button

Posing

• Use some "zero" poses (or grab some if you don't have any) to quickly reset parts (much faster than Figure > Reset Pose)
• Press Ctrl-D to lower/raise characters so they are touching the floor
• Camera Magic + is essential for having a lot of scenes within a single .duf file
  • Much quicker than loading/saving all the time
  • No option to save render settings tho so save those by hand to a duf and switch between the files
• Mix and match poses using the "Partial Poses" section for some less common positions and feel free to adjust

Scenes

• Alt-drag items from the content library to the scene to position where you want it instead of double-clicking to origin
  • Alternatively install mjcComeHere script to bring stuff from elsewhere in the scene to you
• If using environments/sets consider dragging the whole group/scene on the Y-Axis so that the floor is at 0
  • Characters will now Ctrl-D "stand" to it properly
  • Doing so might mean you need to turn off "Draw Ground" in iRay to stop it clipping on the floor
• It's easy to create multiple copies of an object (edit > duplicate node)
  • Do this for objects (non-figures) that will move around the scene and just hide/show
  • This works especially well with Camera Magic + as the right one gets captured in show/hide and you can just use "Capture DAZ figures" instead of "Capture everything" to save on the JSON size
• Consider turning off DUF compression in DAZ if you have plenty of space but want to jump between scenes

General

• Add regularly used things to the custom menu by right-clicking the content and saying "Create Custom Action..."
• Do this on the "Iray Uber Base" so you can switch textures from the DAZ Default one to Iray quickly
  • This is useful as copy-pasting surfaces doesn't work unless shaders are the same
• Running out of disk space will cause corrupted overwritten scene DUF files. Do not let this happen!
• It's often quicker to quit DAZ and relaunch it to load a new scene rather than wait for it to unload a big scene first

Rendering

• Switch to Iray in the viewport to check final orientation/camera position/lighting
• Iray routinely fails to render properly when content has been hidden so activate Iray mode again
  • There is no need to toggle to texture or Filament first to fix it
• Save everything as PNG so you can scale/downsample to jpg or webp later
  • Convert everything to WEBP quickly using parallel and webp (Linux tools available on macOS and in Windows WSL)
• Black marks/circles on forehead?
  • Hide hair to confirm it's that (usually is)
  • Try switching Instancing Option to something else in Rendering Settings
  • Check hair matches body for resolution level, render subd, subd algorithm, edge interpolation etc.
  • Still no luck? Just just scale hair - e.g. 100.2% or 99.8%