I searched you tube for a tutorial on rigging and found part 1 and 2 of a fundamental layout tut on the setup tool.. except it was not too fundamental I could not really understand much...

I'm looking for some rigging instructions..like setting up bones in an object model...  I have 1.5 setup tool.. also,  is there an update or better setup tool.  for Daz 3 studio?

Try Here:

http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=98085

hope that helps some

Thank you;;; 
I just took a look... not read yet...    it seems to cover some interesting points....  but I can already see that there aren't a lot of good tuts for Daz 3...  bone setup..

I haven't found any good tutorials for figure creation at all, either rigging or morph adding, erc's or any of that.

Bone setup can mean two things - grouping the OBJ, to indicate which bits of the mesh go with which body part, is a function of your modeller and is the same whether you are rigging in Poser or DS. I think this is what you are asking about. Creating the skeleton and attaching the grouped mesh is what you do in DS, and that is covered in both the videos and in Cliff Bowman's tutorial thread among other places.

Heh, someone just gave me a link to Chris Bowman's Tutorials, those are very handy. forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php & forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php
What about adding morphs? say I made a shirt and want to add some standard morphs, is there a process or tutorial covering this, or do most content makers just use an app?
I suppose I could quit being lazy and do a forum search cough

Yes....
I guess I was asking for the theory in idiot terms and perhaps the sequence of events in easy terms ..

I'm not working with a object model in a poser runtime folder.. as the tutorial asks you to have...   I'm working with an object model I made in Hexagon..  So it is not in a runtime folder structure... This was needed to be explained to me...  I guess!
How to put a model inside a runtime... I'm sure you just don't drop one in arbitrarily...
I wanted to just learn to rig a model.. and now I see that rigging is an enigma  inside of a mystery to me..;)
The image above shows two models... The simple model I used learn from the tutorial and the more complex model  I hope someday to rig....  LOL...

As for the tut...
So I manage to get some bones into the sausage model but it needed the next lesson.. but I needed it to be in a runtime folder structure...  Anyway am not the only one that says Daz is lacking a good decent tutorial... 

You don't absolutely have to have the OBJ file in RuntiemGeoemtries, but if you don't (or if it isn't made to Poser scale) then you won't be able to export a cr2 you can share with others. If you want to do that, it is simply a matter of putting the OBJ in RuntimeGoemetriessomefolder before importing it into Skeleton Setup.

As for your helicopterish thing, you'd want to assign everything you want to move to a separate group - in Hexagon cut it to a new layer, if it isn't already on one, and name it to reflect what it is. Then import that OBJ into Skeleton Setup  by right-clicking in the  top-right panel (or if you modelled to Hexagon scale, import the OBJ into DS using the Hexagon preset, then export using the Poser preset but before clicking Accept make sure "Use existing groups" is selected and then import that into Skeleton Setup). In Skeleton Setup drag the importted OBJ from the top-right panel to top left and rearange the hierarchy by dragging and dropping. You probably don't want any welds on, but you may need to change some rotation orders (the rotors would be yxz or yzx, for instance). Once done, create the figure 9from the palette's option menu - triangle button at top-right). Now, for a mechanical object you probably aren't going to want any parts to deform as they bend, so seelct all the bones of your new figure and in the parameter palette tirn Bend off. Then it's just a question of using the Joint editor tool to put the origins and end points where you want them, clicking Align to snap the rotation axis to them for things you don't want spinning about one of the orthogonal axes, and then using the Parameter palette to sel limits and hide unneeded parameters by double-clicking the parameter label.

*"You don't absolutely have to have the OBJ file in RuntiemGeoemtries, but if you don't (or if it isn't made to Poser scale) then you won't be able to export a cr2 you can share with others. If you want to do that, it is simply a matter of putting the OBJ in RuntimeGoemetriessomefolder before importing it into Skeleton Setup."

Thank you,,,

OKay....   I did not know I could just make up a runtime folder structure....   I will try again to rig something a little more like a figure...  The tutorial should be re-written much better than it is on Daz... 

I use exclusively Daz's Figure Set-up Tools and Hexagon to make all my Freebies... give me a sitemail and i'm sure i can give you some pointers...

to set up a runtime folder.... i do this with mine... i just made a folder for whatever project i'm working on in my documents... inside the project folder i created the apropriate folders..... 

1. create a folder labeled "runtime"

2)inside that make 3 separate folders "geometries", "libraries" (inside this folder you will also need to create a folder titled "character"), and "textures"

the libraries folder must have a folder labeled Character inside (this is where you put the folder in the next step and where your finished cr2 will be saved to and it absolutely must be set up this way if you want the new cr2 to work)

3)  create a folder with the name of your project as it will appear as if a finished item for download (ie bob's robot thingy) and copy it  so that each folder ("geometries", "libraries" > "character", etc) has a copy of this new folder in it.

1. copy (or save) your obj. file into the folder (ie bob's robot thingy) inside the geometries folder

2. cr2 gets saved in the folder in runtime>libraries > character > (bob's robot thingy for example)

3. textures and uv maps get saved in the internal folder you created inside the runtime>textures>(ie bob's robot thingy) folder

this full runtime set-up can be stored anywhere on your comp... but for the items and cr2's to work the basic structure within the runtime folder must be maintained...

Quote - Heh, someone just gave me a link to Chris Bowman's Tutorials, those are very handy. forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php & forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php
What about adding morphs? say I made a shirt and want to add some standard morphs, is there a process or tutorial covering this, or do most content makers just use an app?
I suppose I could quit being lazy and do a forum search cough

 
There's a handy free script for adding morphs to a item that was done for daz... and the daz to hex bridging function auto generates morphs based on changes to the base mesh of the model... check around the daz site for info in there forums.... and i've got a little experience with the workflow for it... after i do my tut on conforming items i'd be willing to try and help you sort it out...

also i should note that you don't need to export from hex or what ever to daz and then from daz out... if you use hex you only really need to save the grouped obj from there... any obj file regardless of the program it was created in can be loaded straight to the skeleton set-up and scaled during the load-up process...

Cool. I just picked up the figure setup bundle for $62 US (roughly $64 Canadian). The only thing that's got me a bit puzzled is adding standard morphs, like Bodybuilder, Amazon and whatnot. Will those have to be made using the hex bridge? I know Daz has the morph loader and whatnot, but they aren't categorized the same when they're added, they all get lumped together. In fact, I've never tried to export a pose file that's been fit using daz tools. This is where I really wish Daz had a real cloth dynamic system, In Poser, you can load a welded mesh, run cloth sim, than save as a morph target.

Funny, I've had Hex for quite a while and I've never used it. No excuse now, lol.

Edit...I'm just having a look at your sharecg page...wow, nicely detailed models!

Quote - Cool. I just picked up the figure setup bundle for $62 US (roughly $64 Canadian). The only thing that's got me a bit puzzled is adding standard morphs, like Bodybuilder, Amazon and whatnot. Will those have to be made using the hex bridge? I know Daz has the morph loader and whatnot, but they aren't categorized the same when they're added, they all get lumped together. In fact, I've never tried to export a pose file that's been fit using daz tools. This is where I really wish Daz had a real cloth dynamic system, In Poser, you can load a welded mesh, run cloth sim, than save as a morph target.

Funny, I've had Hex for quite a while and I've never used it. No excuse now, lol.

Edit...I'm just having a look at your sharecg page...wow, nicely detailed models!

Ty... my ships made it into 3dArtist Magazine last fall... and i'm currently working out with them for some of my tanks to be in issue 15 soon.. i'm also working on my first possible merchant item (take a look in the Chris's wip thread) which i'm hoping to have done soon... right now a friend has it for testing to to look for poser related issues that may need to be fixed....

Over in the official Daz site forums there's a free script called "morph to cr2 exporter" which will transfer morphs created using the daz-to-hex bridge into the cr2 for any items you've created... it's a great script and i've even used it to transfer morphs from one daz character to another... (i actually used it to transfer some morphs to the free Decoco figure by Akatora to combine it with the morphs from a re-done version if it from another artist so that all the origional morphs and the new ones were all on one figure plus some i made with hex/daz added as well)

Also... if you hunt around the Daz forums there are a few tuts for stuff like that if you dig enough...

Ah, I remember that script, thanks I forgot to go grab it again after I redid my system.
Good luck with your soon to be product!

Yw and Ty Madbat...

basic instructions for rigging.. lets see..

Step one... build your model as though for poser... grouping items into groupings as you model (these will be used as the "bone" groupings in skeleton set-up to rig the skeleton) and save the model out with the groupings saved (do not merge the groupings on export!)

make sure when you export the model you export at 1 to 1 scale (100% size) and that when you created it that it is in scale at that point with what ever figure it's intended for... also make sure that you set the siz relationship to "Feet" or "ft" so that it will be saved in poser scale (i covered this in my mini-tut for conforming items briefly and most of the instructions i give there apply to standard rigging as well)

Step 2...Import your new model into Skeleton set-up in Daz (as per importing the object in my mini-tut) and drag the new geometry into the "relationships" window... this will display the bones groups of the figure as a skeleton...

once you have the basic bones showing... drag each bone and drop it on whichever bone it should attach to (ie drag the "foot" bone down to the "shin" and drop it in place)... this creates a child bone with the groupings... continue this till all bones are fitted to those they need to attach to untill all your "bones" are in place...

Most of the instructions in my mini-tut also apply to rigging save that you have to group the skeleton yourself rather than importing one from a pre-rigged character...

after all the bones are set select "Create Figure" and follow the instructions in my mini-tut for saving the cr2... and that will have the basic figure set... works basically the same as the way you do conforming items in my tut up till this point... export the new cr2 as "base figure" and save as per instructions...

After that comes the hard part... i'll have to do a full tut at some point here because trying to explain this next part gets tricky and it'll be easier to follow with some pics and examples... you'll need to use the joint editor tool to set up joints and set the rotations and such properly so that things will bend where they should instead of flying all over the screen... lol

to edit the joints you'll have to load your newly created cr2 in daz (as you normally would for a pre-made figure (import the cr2 from daz's main menu) then open your joint editor tool and select the joint you wish to edit... that will give you the edit options... from there it's a matter of shifting the center-points for the joints so that they match with where the joint should be (all joint centers and ends start loaded on the "floor" of the scene and need to be moved into place using the X, Y, and Z position sliders...) and it becomes even more fun from here... lmao... you'll have to tune up the center and end points and establish rotational orders etc...

I'll do a full tut on this at some point but i'm pretty well tied up with other projects just now.. bear with me and i'll see what i can do...

The entire process needs to be placed in its own tutorial...  Not in pieces here and there...

Thanks for talking the time in writing this so far.... 

Yeah, if you have the time (stop laughing) stick it in the tutorials section. I may mess with it and turn it into a pdf too if that's ok with you.

go ahead and turn my mini-tut into a pdf if you like... i've already sent an email asking for my account here to be discontinued... but other users will get some serious bennefit from it i'm sure and i don't wanna see it lost... i'll continue to add new items to sharecg in my portfolio there and will be continuing to post from time to time over on the Daz site forums

Hmmm....methinks you are a bit disgruntled about something?
Personally, I've never actually been gruntled, so I don't know what it's like to be dis-gruntled.
I'm over at daz with same name, I'll keep an eye out for you.