After d/l a bunch of stuff that I bought from DAZ, and going through their quick start tut in DAZ studio, I'm still unable to load and dress M3. OK, so I was able to load the props into Studio via the preferences. But where's Michael hiding. I can't find him anywhere? I can load him in Poser 5 no problem, but I can't find the new clothing props in Poser. Its like I'm stuck in 2 universes. Where I can only do some stuff in one universe that I can't do in the other. Can someone help me?

sure. Daz studio has two folders for content installed to Daz studio. One is stuff in DAZ format, essentially the content that comes with DAZ studio. There is then a content folder which is a poser runtime. That contains any poser format files that are installed to DAZ studio rather than Poser (if you have both) You can also use any valid poser runtime folder from DAZ studio. You can not get to DAZ format content from Poser. With Daz studio running look through the content tab at each listed folder. When you click on one it should show all subfolders. Navigate through these to get what you want. With a folder selected you should see thumbnails of the content in the lower pane. As for Mike he should be in content or Poser runtime depending on where you installed him. As far as I know he was never part of the Daz studio content. I install everything to Poser and access them in Daz studio from the poser runtime folders.

In the Content palette, the folder icons for D|S format items have horizontal lines while those for poser format items are plain.

You may need to direct D|S to your Poser Runtime by clicking Edit>Preferences and then choosing "Poser Content Directories" from the pull down menu on the Directories tab. There's a button there to have D|S do a search for your Poser Runtime (it's just looking for a file named "poser.exe" ;) ) or you can direct it there. Click "Apply", and then you should be able to see your Poser content folders in the Content pane of D|S. Like P5, D|S allows you to have multiple Runtime folders, but D|S doesn't care what folders contain which library files--you can mix figures (.cr2), poses (.pz3) and props (.pp2) all in the same folder, as long as the filepaths to any files they reference are correct (e.g. .obj files in subfolders of the Geometries folder or .jpg texture files in subfolders of the "textures" folder).

I am very confused also. What s the step by step way to do #D art and animation - coming as an "outsider" it is almost impossible to figure out the right procedure. I have a PC daz-studio and voarious victoria and michael + clothes. I cant export files to photoshop formats and find the clothing adjustments and morphs very tricky. step backward function etc. so if I go forward is that through poser as the second step to DAZ?

Ultratop,

You need to "render" your scene to a 2D image, which can be saved as a file that can be opened in photoshop. Look up rendering in the help, that should get you going. Poser is similar to DAZ Studio, only not free. You need to master the basics of 3D figure posing and/or animation in either application. It's not as easy as you would think, and can get frustrating at times (it doesn't matter what software you use, initially there is a very steeeeppp and frustrating learning curve).

Hang in there, and keep trying. Just keep thinking "baby steps, baby steps, got to learn to walk before I can dance". There are some fairly good tutorials available at the DAZ Studio forum at daz3d.com.

Good luck!

To save a render in D|S, you can either use File>Save Last Render... or render directly to a file by choosing that in Render>Render Options... . The file formats you can choose from are .png, .jpg, .tiff and .bmp. You don't need Poser as a second step--you can go directly from D|S to Photoshop.