3D-Daz Give a noob some Daz tips

[Idontknowme]

After dithering on getting started with DAZ due to the enormous learning curve, I finally mustered up enough courage to get started on honing my DAZ skills. Immdiately, I had trouble posing and a couple of things that raised a few questions
1) Is there a way to display the coordinate system ? I found myself having to triall and error my way out of finding the correct direction to move the model. I have never been more frustrated with a Cartesian coordinate system.
2) For my first scene I started too big too soon. It had 5 people on /near a sofa. I watched as my brand new PC stopped and sputtered, then finally gave up trying to render the scene. I tried lowering the resolution of the render to no better results. I just wanted to render it. The final quality did not make much difference to me. Is there some way to render this scene albeit with lesser quality?
3) How do you get things to conform to a plane or surface. I want the butts of my models to be on the sofa not hovering in mid air until I am in a convenient camera angle to detect them. I was struggling to get models touching each other outside of the pose sets I was already using. How does one go about navigating this?
4) How do you keep your assets folders organized. It's fine if it is DIM-able. Daz does a pretty satisfactory job but I got lost in the maze of folders for assets that I had installed directly. Not to mention not having them be available in smart content became a hassle as I went on. Are there any ways to keep it neat and tidy?
5) I toned it down on my next attempt by trying out a scene with just 2 characters. I learnt everything I know about lighting from a course that I found here. Creating Realistic Portraits in Daz, I think it was called. It was awfully specific to portraits however. Any recommendations for a more general source?
6) WTH is dforce? Any resources for its use?
7) How do you get a part of a model's body to stay rigid while you move the rest. Say I have a model sitting on the floor and I just want her to arch her back and look at the camera leaving her waist and down in place. How do I go about doing that? Everytime I tried moving the model, they ended up horribly contorted.

I have attached a sample of my attempt I'd appreciate any and all technical suggestions regarding it.

Spoiler

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

 

[AlexStone]

7) How do you get a part of a model's body to stay rigid while you move the rest. Say I have a model sitting on the floor and I just want her to arch her back and look at the camera leaving her waist and down in place. How do I go about doing that? Everytime I tried moving the model, they ended up horribly contorted.

1. Select scene window with nodes list (right top corner of the screen in default view setup).
2. Highlight nodes you would like to leave in place (e.g. if your are changing legs pose, fix 'hip' and 'pelvis' bones, but do not highlight 'right tight' and 'left tight').
3. Better to highlight node's hierarchies too, in order to speed up the process and not occasionally touch some nodes your are not going to change. (e.g., on above example you can select 'abdomen lower' and by right-clicking on it choose 'select children': this will select all upper-body of the model)
4. Fix node hierarchies you selected by "Edit->Figure->Lock->Lock Selected Node(s)" from main (top) menu of DAZ.
5. Perform desired operations with 'free' nodes.
6. Select locked nodes (or select everything in scene, that is faster) and "Edit->Figure->Lock->Unlock Selected Node(s)" from main (top) menu of DAZ.
7. PROFIT!

 

[Idontknowme]

1. Select scene window with nodes list (right top corner of the screen in default view setup).
2. Highlight nodes you would like to leave in place (e.g. if your are changing legs pose, fix 'hip' and 'pelvis' bones, but do not highlight 'right tight' and 'left tight').
3. Better to highlight node's hierarchies too, in order to speed up the process and not occasionally touch some nodes your are not going to change. (e.g., on above example you can select 'abdomen lower' and by right-clicking on it choose 'select children': this will select all upper-body of the model)
4. Fix node hierarchies you selected by "Edit->Figure->Lock->Lock Selected Node(s)" from main (top) menu of DAZ.
5. Perform desired operations with 'free' nodes.
6. Select locked nodes (or select everything in scene, that is faster) and "Edit->Figure->Lock->Unlock Selected Node(s)" from main (top) menu of DAZ.
7. PROFIT!

Thanks mate!

 

[AlexStone]

6) WTH is dforce? Any resources for its use?

dForce is physical simulation model of DAZ. It uses CUDA, therefore your have to have a graphic card, that supports CUDA (only NVIDIA, no AMD). Also, your can emulate CUDA on CPU, but here is the same issue: CUDA supported by Intel, not by AMD anymore (therefore, if your have Ryzen processor, forget about dForce on CPU).
There are some emulation of CPU-CUDA on Linux for AMD, but I've not checked it. Sorry.

All the rest about dForce your can find in users manuals of DAZ and numerous online tutoring, made by users.
In a nutshell, the result of dForce is always a beautifully pleated dress that looks realistic on the model. Nothing more, but nothing less as well.

 

[Deleted member 1565614]

DForce is used a lot for materials that you want to have a natural fall appearance. So think hair and cloth and water. A lot of daz assets give a little tutorial on it, and also have a simulation setting. Most of my experience with it is with hair and clothes, so you'd load the asset and once you've posed your model, go to the simulation tab and run. Usually you'll want to minimize what's on the field so only what you're trying to run dforce on, so having a bunch of clutter is going to slow you down a lot. I would recommend loading environments and other stuff separately after you've ran dforce.

Hope that helped.

 

[AlexStone]

3) How do you get things to conform to a plane or surface. I want the butts of my models to be on the sofa not hovering in mid air until I am in a convenient camera angle to detect them. I was struggling to get models touching each other outside of the pose sets I was already using. How does one go about navigating this?

Select 'Hidden lines' from viewport options menu.
It helps from one side to make a viewport operations much faster, but, from the other hand, your will not be stub by a mess of wireframes in your scene.
After this your can fix all your characters feets/asses quite fast.

 

[AlexStone]

2) For my first scene I started too big too soon. It had 5 people on /near a sofa. I watched as my brand new PC stopped and sputtered, then finally gave up trying to render the scene. I tried lowering the resolution of the render to no better results. I just wanted to render it. The final quality did not make much difference to me. Is there some way to render this scene albeit with lesser quality?

You must be registered to see the links

and

You must be registered to see the links

are your best friends on rich scenes of DAZ.
Main rules to make fast and good renders:

1. Place your camera and main characters in scene.
2. Add props and environment, using fast standard scripts.
3. Hide everything, that is not in the camera view.
4. Arrange DOF on your scene.
5. Un-subdivide all the models, that are not in DOF area to level 0.
6. Give to the Scene Optimizer hands everything, that is not in DOF area.
7. Render under supervision of Camera View Optimizer.

Example of optimized scene:


Environment and props are hided everywhere, except of camera view. Needed light is emulated by mesh light sources.

Result:



Screen from original game, Dreams of Desire, same environment, but, I believe, no optimization: