Daz Tutorial General Daz tips & tricks

[SteelyDan14]

Thought I'm gonna write all of the small tricks for daz down I've learned so far, to get a better workflow and to remember myself because I tend to forget things I don't use regulary^^
Contributions welcome

This is not about rendering or creating scenes, but to make working with Daz itself easier/faster!

How to:
duplicate an asset/obejct in the scene:

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create several instances of an asset/object in the scene (instances reduce the load on the scene because unlike copys, they are not created as new objects, but are more like editable mirrors of the original):

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move the viewport to an object in the scene (very usefull if the vieport is far away from the center of the screen when you add a new object or asset):

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quickly create wet skin in iray:

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this is something I know many people don't know or simply do it the wrong way:
lock bones (keep bodyparts in place while moving others):

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create "Depth of Field" (dof):

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change the render settings WHILE rendering (4.11+):

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use only a part of a pose (thx no__name):

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render only a part of a full render (thx no__name):

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remove parts of an object/asset (e.g. a wall) (thx no__name):

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Transferring Morphs (thx no__name):

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Usefull knowledge/Mini tutorials:

Use every g3 pose on a g8 character and vice versa:

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Bloom 'basic' values & Color temperature (thx no__name):

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Iray uber base shader settings and their effect:

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More to come.

This post is all sorts of goodness! Thanks for this!

 

[Rico Caramba]

Awesome post, Rec. Some of them I didn't know yet and turned out to be very useful for me.
May I add one?

You can make a character look at the camera or at any other object, and make it keep looking while you move the character or the camera around in your scene. Very useful in animations, but also during setup. Or like now, when I'm making a series of the same image with different facial expressions and slight changes in the position of the head.

Use the bone tool to select one of the eyes.
Go to parameters and select general/misc/point at
Select the camera you are using

Do the same for the other eye.

You could also let your character look at other objects, like its own hand or another character's head. If you want it to look at a centain point in space, like a bit to the left of the camera (the hand of the camera man), you can add a null to your scene (create/new null) and make your character look at that. If you parent the null with your camera, it will move along with it.

In the same way you can make objects look at your character. Very useful for a spotlight or for a self made ring flash. Point it at the head of your character.

I use it quite a lot. Maybe you all know this trick, but I thought this would make a good addition.

 

[recreation]

Awesome post, Rec. Some of them I didn't know yet and turned out to be very useful for me.
May I add one?

You can make a character look at the camera or at any other object, and make it keep looking while you move the character or the camera around in your scene. Very useful in animations, but also during setup. Or like now, when I'm making a series of the same image with different facial expressions and slight changes in the position of the head.

Use the bone tool to select one of the eyes.
Go to parameters and select general/misc/point at
Select the camera you are using

Do the same for the other eye.

You could also let your character look at other objects, like its own hand or another character's head. If you want it to look at a centain point in space, like a bit to the left of the camera (the hand of the camera man), you can add a null to your scene (create/new null) and make your character look at that. If you parent the null with your camera, it will move along with it.

In the same way you can make objects look at your character. Very useful for a spotlight or for a self made ring flash. Point it at the head of your character.

I use it quite a lot. Maybe you all know this trick, but I thought this would make a good addition.

Another neat trick I tend to forget, thx for reminding me^^
Will link it to the op.

 

[ddeadbeat]

I'm super newbie in Daz, so pardon me for already giving tips! But this little guide that I found somewhere helped me a lot.
When your character has pretty large breast and you dress it in a tight garment, this garment will cover them very tightly and unrealistically. You can use Fit Control morphs pack, but at least for me it doesn't solve this problem properly.
What you can do is choose garment, open Parameters tab - General - Transforms - Mesh Resolution;
Change Edge Interpolation to Soft Corners And Edges;
Go to Edit - Object - Geometry - Add Smoothing Modifier (if object doesn't have it yet);
Go back to Transforms, then open new section, Mesh Smoothing;
Play around with Smoothing Iterations and (maybe?) with Collision Iterations.
In my little experience best Smoothing Iterations value would be around 50-70. If you choose highter value results doesn't really change but calculations become kinda long. I didn't see any improvements changing Collision Iterations, so I'm not sure that you should modify it, and it also slows down the scene.

But it's about half of the work for me. I also prefer to adjust garment with Fit Control afterwards.

 

[Canto Forte]

Could you please mention the distro you are most confortable with?
Quite a lot of devs keep having to start over with each update because it distroys their carefuly crafted connections to assets and projects.
Any trick to keep DAZ from switching from GPU to CPU in the middle of rendering?
Is there still a max number of chars per scene limitations to rendering each scene?
Some tips about how much GDDRAM to use (11 GB?)

I tend to forget things

Thank you very much for your thoughts.

 

[RN83]

Just wanted to say thanks for this thread Rec, helped me out loads in my adventure in to daz and keep finding my way back whenever I forget something

 

[efelo]

Thanks for the thread! Partial render to new window is great! And it's my first post haha

 

[recreation]

Oh shit, looks like I've missed some posts before >_>
Sorry for the late reply guys, gals and furries!

I'm super newbie in Daz, so pardon me for already giving tips! But this little guide that I found somewhere helped me a lot.
When your character has pretty large breast and you dress it in a tight garment, this garment will cover them very tightly and unrealistically. You can use Fit Control morphs pack, but at least for me it doesn't solve this problem properly.
What you can do is choose garment, open Parameters tab - General - Transforms - Mesh Resolution;
Change Edge Interpolation to Soft Corners And Edges;
Go to Edit - Object - Geometry - Add Smoothing Modifier (if object doesn't have it yet);
Go back to Transforms, then open new section, Mesh Smoothing;
Play around with Smoothing Iterations and (maybe?) with Collision Iterations.
In my little experience best Smoothing Iterations value would be around 50-70. If you choose highter value results doesn't really change but calculations become kinda long. I didn't see any improvements changing Collision Iterations, so I'm not sure that you should modify it, and it also slows down the scene.

But it's about half of the work for me. I also prefer to adjust garment with Fit Control afterwards.

Mesh smoothing is indeed a good way to fix stuff in Daz, it's also nice to create some fake collisions, for example, take a couch and a char, let the char sit on the couch, add a smoothing modifier to the couch, and set the char as collision object -> magic^^
This of course only works if the couch has enough verticies (polygons), and it get's ugly quickly if the char sinks in the couch.

Could you please mention the distro you are most confortable with?
Quite a lot of devs keep having to start over with each update because it distroys their carefuly crafted connections to assets and projects.
Any trick to keep DAZ from switching from GPU to CPU in the middle of rendering?
Is there still a max number of chars per scene limitations to rendering each scene?
Some tips about how much GDDRAM to use (11 GB?)


Thank you very much for your thoughts.

I'm currently using 4.12.0.86.
I do tend to go to newer versions, but I wait until everything is fixed or in a state I think it's worth to switch, just keep an eye on the daz forums release thread and changelog.
Of course I do not update when I'm in the middle of working on a game update.

There is no real trick to keep Daz rendering on gpu only, it's a guess game if the scene fits into the vram, what you can do is making sure not doing (much) other stuff while rendering a big scene, every little action, every program, every window open adds to the vram, so it increases the chance of the render falling to cpu.

I use 8gb at the moment and only hit the limits on really heavy scenes (lots of characters), but so far I was able to render everything I wanted with some teaks. More vram is of course always better, even if it's not necessary.

I'm not sure there ever was a max limit of charaters, the only limit I know of is the hardware. I've recently rendered a scene with 11 chars, and a while ago I made an experiment with instancing one char and was able to render 100 chars (99 instances) that way... it went straight to cpu though^^

 

[efelo]

From what i understand once your scene is bigger than your vram, it defaults to cpu rendering..

I use 8gb as well, and i've never done such a scene yet

I've become quite admirative at you guys' stuff, it really takes a huge amount of time to make a complete scene, pick the right angles, the right position, the right lightning, making sure the render fits in the vram, and waiting for the render, hoping that everything will be fine..

I'm a pro musician, and it's been my first time dabbling into 3d, a friend of mine is a 3d artist for a video game company, so i could share my 'oh wow you guys can do that!' moment with her haha! Our stuff is much less dependent on cpu/gpu for sure!

I'm sorry if i'm being offtopic, i just wanted to express my gratitude to everyone here, the vibe seems to be really positive!

 

[recreation]

From what i understand once your scene is bigger than your vram, it defaults to cpu rendering..

I use 8gb as well, and i've never done such a scene yet

I've become quite admirative at you guys' stuff, it really takes a huge amount of time to make a complete scene, pick the right angles, the right position, the right lightning, making sure the render fits in the vram, and waiting for the render, hoping that everything will be fine..

I'm a pro musician, and it's been my first time dabbling into 3d, a friend of mine is a 3d artist for a video game company, so i could share my 'oh wow you guys can do that!' moment with her haha! Our stuff is much less dependent on cpu/gpu for sure!

I'm sorry if i'm being offtopic, i just wanted to express my gratitude to everyone here, the vibe seems to be really positive!

Take a lot of characters, 5-6 genesis 8 and an environment for example, and you'll reach that limit quite quickly^^
But it's not only the scene that adds to the vram usage, it's also system stuff, windows alone can use a lot of vram (the more vram you have, the more it uses), add some other programs and you can easily fill half of your vram with non render stuff.

You should ask your friend for an adult version of her game/s xD

 

[efelo]

LOL she's been working on Syberia, so it could technically be possible

But yeah, since dealing with that myself, i could only congrat her for the amount of know how, knowledge and talent it takes to make a scene where the suspension of disbelief works.. I told her that our jobs are similar, make something work for an audience.. be it music, or visual, or technical.. It's always very interesting to expand your horizon, it teaches you new ways to think about how/what you do everyday, and it can trigger some genuine inspiration, which is always good to take

I'm still on osx, with a gtx 1070, i didn't wanna jump to windows yet, which is stupid since it's a hackintosh, but preferences.. It was either a rtx either a 1070, i decided to stay on sierra as my music stuff is there, but it seems that daz studio allows 1070 to render only in 4.9.. So i'll stay there lol

 

[recreation]

LOL she's been working on Syberia, so it could technically be possible

But yeah, since dealing with that myself, i could only congrat her for the amount of know how, knowledge and talent it takes to make a scene where the suspension of disbelief works.. I told her that our jobs are similar, make something work for an audience.. be it music, or visual, or technical.. It's always very interesting to expand your horizon, it teaches you new ways to think about how/what you do everyday, and it can trigger some genuine inspiration, which is always good to take

I'm still on osx, with a gtx 1070, i didn't wanna jump to windows yet, which is stupid since it's a hackintosh, but preferences.. It was either a rtx either a 1070, i decided to stay on sierra as my music stuff is there, but it seems that daz studio allows 1070 to render only in 4.9.. So i'll stay there lol

I'm using a 1070 in my render pc (and a 2070 S), and a 1060 in my second pc, both have a working Daz 4.12 while the second pc is up to date and the render pc is using v4.12.0.86 (until all the issues with the newer version are fixed).
Your issue might be the driver or... well, mac^^

Rendering is also a heck of a lot faster then in 4.9

 

[recreation]

Something I constantly forget: Hold alt + double click on a slider to set it to it's default value.

 

[efelo]

you really wanna make switch asap it's super funny, thank you!! i've plugged the windows ssd i just need to boot on it, it's been so long i wanna do a fresh install and install daz and be going with it.. I'm not biased towards windows or osx, i like both, but i'm just more used to osx UI

I'm sure it's in every way better, on osx i can use the 1070 until high sierra if i understood well.. and none of the rtx are supported.. so once again apple secludes itself from computer dependent professions..

 

[Bruno de Montdragon]

Reduce your rendering time using an Iray interior cam.

You can download Iray interior cam

You must be registered to see the links

.

Iray interior cam is generally used to shoot indoor scene with HDRI without removing things likes ceilings, windows or whatever. That alone can make it a great tool. BUT Iray camera can be also good to shoot any scenes - and the gain of time can be quite massive (around 25% to 50%). It will not render anything that is not in the camera field of view.

What you render with a normal cam :

View attachment 410963

What you render with an Iray interior cam :

View attachment 410965

Way less.
Now it comes with a cost and a drop in quality of your lightnings and reflections (water, mirrors, windows...) won't work well.

A scene-only bright scene:

View attachment 410967
View attachment 410968

A scene-only night scene:

View attachment 410969
View attachment 410970

Now I don't think it's quite useful for small scenes due to diminish return (render under ~1hour), but for "iterations intensive" ones, animations, or people on small graphic card it can be really great.

Y a t-il d'autres cites où on peut télécharger X-Ray Cam ?
Are there any other cites where you can download X-Ray Cam?

 

[Deleted member 1121028]

Y a t-il d'autres cites où on peut télécharger X-Ray Cam ?
Are there any other cites where you can download X-Ray Cam?

Tu peux pas télécharger de deviant?
Je te mets le fichier en pièce jointe.

(Sinon tu peux fabriquer la même, c'est juste 5 Iray planes superposés au champ de la caméra + derrière)

 

[Bruno de Montdragon]

Tu peux pas télécharger de deviant?
Je te mets le fichier en pièce jointe.

(Sinon tu peux fabriquer la même, c'est juste 5 Iray planes superposés au champ de la caméra + derrière)

Merci beaucoup. Je vais tout de suite faire quelques tests...
Thank you very much. I’m going to run some tests right now...

 

[Rico Caramba]

change the render settings WHILE rendering (4.11+):

This doesn't seem to work anymore since Daz 4.14. If I change anything to the render settings while rendering, the whole rendering process starts from 0 again.

 

[ShamanLab]

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.

 

[recreation]

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.

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^^