Magic_Man posted at 12:37PM Mon, 21 September 2015 - #4229791

Couple of related questions, also new to Studio.

I've noticed that some characters show at the base level of the appropriate character directory branch, e.g. genesis 3 female, and have an icon. I can import the complete character from that file at that level. However, some characters don't have this top level file and rely on the 'morph' etc. in a named sub-directory. Is there a way to add such a top level file to these to make them show at the same level as the rest?

Additionally, some characters, e.g. Victoria 7, have their materials in a separate sub folder outside of their character sub folder whereas others just put everything in the character folder. I assume this is just down to how the vendor has decided to 'pack' their character and there is nothing stopping me re-organising them manually to follow the same format?

Same sort of thing with some hair and pose packages - they get installed as sub folders of a character rather than at a higher, global level. Again, I assume this is just down to the particular package and there is nothing stopping me re-organising where they actually sit in the folder hierarchy to tidy things up and reduce things being split up in different folders?

Thanks.

I am not sure why DAZ has not standardized some of this organization, but these inconsistencies you point out have been there for years.

While it is possible to move things around, you have to know what you are doing. Some files can be moved and some cannot. Also, if you start moving files around, then the Daz Install Manager (DIM) will get confused. DAZ does regularly send out up updates to fix problems with content. If you have moved your content around, DIM will not be able to update it correctly.

What I have done is use Categories in the Content Pane (not smart content) to create my own organization. Stuff from the DAZ store usually comes with default categories, which is the organization you see in smart content also. I created my own top level category and created my organization under it. By creating my own top level category, DAZ will not mess with it. I tried re-organizing the default categories, but that was hopeless, because every time I installed something new, it screwed things up again.

The category data is saved in a data base along with the smart content information. You can organize things how ever you like. In DAZ older poser items are organized totally differently than the newer DAZ studio content, but I have both Poser format and DAZ format content in a single organization.

It is a lot of work to organize all your content every time you buy something, but I could never find anything until I did.

An aniblocks is similar to a series of character poses. An aniblock is made for a specific character. Most of the free aniblocks that come packaged with animate are for V4. Those aniblocks will work to some degree with G3F, but they will need lots of adjustment and tweaking to look good.

There is "Animation Conversion V4.2 to Genesis and Genesis 2 Female" by DraagonStorm. This is a script that will convert a V4.2 animation to G1 or G2, but not G3.

There are a number of aniblocks for G2F sold in the DAZ store and some here at Rendo. I have seen work in progress animations from PAs for G3F, but as far as I know nothing has been released yet.

I have used aniblocks as starting points for parts of animations, but the size of the market for aniblocks means there is a pretty limited selection available. You cannot expect to create a whole animation by just combining aniblocks. Much of the animation you will need to do manually. The essential plugins for doing manual animation in DAZ Studio are keyMate and graphMate. I don't think you can create good animated motions manually without these plugins. They are both in the DAZ Store.

I can try to answer 1. I'm guessing you are using Iray. Look on the render tab in the Environment section. By default, Iray sets the Environment Mode to Dome Only or Dome and Scene with a low resolution HDRI on the Dome. The Draw Dome property also defaults to off, so you cannot see the Dome in the render (but you will see it in reflections if you have a hightly reflective object). To render with only scene lights, set the Enviroment Mode to "Scene Only". This will turn off the dome.

Don't be surprised if your scene then renders rather dark. Spot lights are not very bright by default in DAZ compared to the Sun. You can turn up the light intensities or you can adjust the Tone Mapping properties on the render tab. Turning up the ISO will make the scene brighter.

Rather than doing an actual render, you can use NVIDA Iray display mode instead of the default Texture Shaded mode. This will give a preview of lighting and lets you adjust it more quickly. You can do this even if you do not have a Nvida graphics card, although it will be slower.

V4 was a base character. Other Generation 4 characters were morphs of V4.

For Generation 7, Genesis 3 is the base character and is free, although the morph packs to create a variety of features is not free. Victoria 7, Eva 7, Karen 7 ... are custom morphs of the Genesis 3 base. These DAZ characters each have custom UVs for their skin. These UVs are suppose to be optimized for their body shape. I can see this with an extreme body shape, but the benefit with the normal body shapes is modest. In any event if you purchase Victora 7, then you can use the Victoria 7 skin on any Genesis 3 based character shape. You can use the Victoria 7 UVs on Eva or Karen body shapes, even though the skins for those characters use different UVs.

While Victoria 4 only supported one UV set, Genesis 1, 2 and 3 all have multiple UV support. Genesis 3 comes with support for the Genesis 3 base female UVs. If you purchase Victoria 7, you get V7 UV support on any Genesis 3 character shape. Now the only skin I know of that uses the Victoria 7 UVs is the Victoria 7 skin. Even the other characters that come in the Victoria 7 bundles all use the Genesis 3 base female UVs. For generation 7, characters that require Victoria 7 means they use the Victoria 7 body shape morph as part of the body shape. If you do not own Victoria 7, you can still load the character. There will probably be an error about missing Victoria 7 morphs and the body shape will be different. The skin will work because it uses the base female UVs.

In generation 5 and 6 this was not always true. Some other characters that said they required Victoria 5 or 6, used the Victoria 5 or 6 UVs. You could not load the skin correctly unless you had the Victoria 5 or 6 characters. As far as I know PAs have stopped doing this in generation 7, but it is always possible that a character will be released in the future that uses the Victoria 7 UVs.

Check your Environment settings on the render tab. I believe by default the 'Environment Mode` maybe set to 'Dome and Scene' or 'Dome only' with a default low resolution HDRI on the dome. The 'Draw Dome' property is probably set to 'Off' so you don't see the dome in the render.

I suspect most of the light in your scene is coming from this default HDRI and your spot lights are probably not bright enough to add much light to the scene.

If you set the 'Environment Mode' to 'Scene Only' that will turn off the HDRI dome. Don't be surprised if your scene then renders very dark.

http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/interface/panes/render_settings/engine/nvidia_iray/environment/start

You can turn up the intensity of your lights, but make sure you do this in the photometric sections. A simpler way is to change the 'Tone Mapping' on the render tab. You can turn the ISO up until your get a render you like. You can use the "Nvida Iray" display style rather than the default 'Texture shaded' in the preview window to show you the actual lighting rather than doing a render. You can then change light intensities or Tone Mappings settings and see the results quickly, even it you do not have a Nvida graphics card. Just switch back to texture shaded once you get things setup.

http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/interface/panes/render_settings/engine/nvidia_iray/tone_mapping/start

I think you are getting confused with how shaders appear in the preview and how they render. These are completely independent and each shader behaves differently. Genesis 3 skin uses the AoA SSS shader. This shader displays in the preview as if it has very strong ambient. I think this is suppose to be some simulation of the SSS, because if you turn the SSS strength down, it gets weaker. This preview has nothing to do with how the skin looks in the render.

Also the AoA SSS shader is a 3Delight shader. If you are using Iray to render, the shader is being auto-converted to an Iray shader for the render. DAZ Studio will not show you the parameters of this auto converted shader after the render, but if you apply the Iray Uber Base to the skin surfaces that is probably similar to what was used.

The DAZ Default shader is an older, more basic shader that is use for most props and some older characters. It does not support SSS and has a more basic preview. If you load a prop/character with only Poser material (.pz2) the Poser material is auto converted to the DAZ Default shader. This conversion is fairly good on older Poser material, but DAZ cannot completely convert the newer Poser material with complex shaders. The results with newer Poser material is hit or miss.

The DAZ Default shader is also a 3Delight shader. It is also auto converted to a Iray shader if you render with Iray. You can apply the Iray Uber Base to do the conversion.

When you convert surfaces to use the Iray shader, it will change how the preview looks, but Iray character previews mostly look shinny and are misleading as far as how things look in the render.

If you are using Iray , you can use the nvida Iray display mode in the editor window to get an idea how surfaces and lighting will really look. If you are using 3Delight, you can use the AUX view window and an IPR render to see how surfaces really look.

This is a common problem with autofit.  I have seen this a lot with V4 clothes on Genesis or G2F.

You can send the dress in Hexagon or some other modeling tool and smooth the dress out, creating a morph to fix it.

When you first apply the G3F genitalia to a G3F based character it will have no skin texture and usually looks grey.  With G1 and G2F the genitalia also looked grey when you applied it, but you could just apply the normal full skin mat for the character to the genitalia and it would be textured. With G3F this is no longer true. As Richard Haseltine indicated, the G3F genitalia has its own UVs and needs its own textures. V7 herself comes with textures for the genitalia, at least in the pro bundle that includes the genitalia, and so do the other characters that were included in the pro bundle. 

Not all G3F/V7 characters, however, include genitalia textures. You have to read the description of what is included carefully and if they do not mention a genitalia texture, it probably is not included. Some PAs have included a genitalia morph instead of a texture. This morph applies to G3F without the genitalia add on and is probably good enough for artistic renders, but not for hard core porn.

Some PAs have indicated that they are not doing genitalia textures because they include tattoo options and the genitalia with is own UVs makes doing the tattoos very difficult if the tattoo crosses the boundary. 

If your smart content is still empty, start up DAZ Studio and go to Help -> Troubleshooting -> View log File ....

It should open the log file in a note pad.  Scroll down through this file looking for something about "CMS".  In my log file I see:

Connected to CMS: PostgreSQL 9.3.4, compiled by Visual C++ build 1600, 64-bit

See if there is an error connecting to CMS.

I have been using Girabaldi hair since it was first released. Girabalidi works well with 3Delight. My avatar here is a render done with Girabaldi hair.

Girabaldi and LAMH both generate hair as 3Delight curves. Iray apparently has some curves but not equivalent and apparently not useful for hair. Both can generate an Obj file that can be used in Iray or Luxrender, but you have to reduce the number of stands generated.  You cannot do 100,000 curves, which is what I normally do with 3Delght.  The other issue is the shader. Girabaldi has a special 3Delight hair shader and a lot of the appearance comes from that hair shader. When you use an Obj to render with Iray or Luxrender, you are on your own as far as shader. I have never seen a Luxrender or Iray render of Girabaldi hair that looks as good as the 3Delight renders. 

The My DAZ 3d Library is located in public documents on a PC and is the default library used by DAZ Install Manager (DIM). I leave that library alone and let DIM manage that library. I install all content from other sources in My Library.

DAZ Studio supports both DAZ Format libraries and Poser Format libraries. The My Library and My DAZ 3d Library are folders that contain a DAZ Format library. Inside the folders for these libraries you will find a Runtime directory which is a Poser Format library.

If you get a vendor zip files with only a runtime with geometries,textures and libraries etc you can merge this into the Runtime folder under the My Library directory.

DAZ format products frequently also contain a Runtime folder, sometimes under the My Library or Content directory. This Runtime usually only contains Textures. Most DAZ Format products still store their texture files in the Poser Format Runtime library inside one of the DAZ Format folders.

Long time poser user here. Started with poser 4 .. I have Daz 4.7 and upgraded to 4.8 .. I am using the users manual to muddle my way through. Its difficult to get used to the Daz format. The download manager does not work all that well at times either.. Just purchased an item at Daz and tried to use the download manager ..says there is nothing there to download...I have the latest download manager..   You have great products but ......sigh.  

I have been using DAZ Studio for several years. There is now more documentation than there was a few years ago when I started, but there is definitely room for improvement. You can usually get most questions answered on the DAZ Forums, at least that has been my experience. I have been using DIM since it was released and think it is a big improvement.  DIM only looks for new products to download when it is first started or when you hit one of the buttons in the upper right corner of the window.  That said, it seems to take a little while between when you check out at the store and the information finds its way into whatever data base DIM uses. I've never really tried to measure how long it takes. It maybe in the 5 to 20 minutes range.  It may depend on the load on store website at the time.

There are download and installation instructions here:

Downloading and Installing DAZ Studio: a guide and FAQ

I would recommend using the DAZ install manager.

The category data is saved in the same data base used for smart content. A few releases back, DAZ changed from using the old Valentina data base to using PostgreSQL. At the time PostgreSQL was released there was a conversion utility that was a (free) product in DIM. It did not really install anything, but it created a PostgreSQL data base from your Valentina data base.

For a few bug fix releases DAZ Studio supported both data bases and you could pick which you wanted to run. PostgreSQL is faster and more stable than the old Valentina data base, but with the 4.8 release DAZ seems to be phasing out support for the Valentina data base.  It is apparently no longer shipped with DAZ Studio, although they say it is still supported. 

My guess is your categories are in the Valentina data base, but you 4.8 DAZ Studio is using PostgreSQL or else something went wrong in the conversion between Valentina and PostgreSQL.  

Did you install DAZ Studio 4.8 using DIM?  Did you install a product like Valentina to PostgreSQL data base conversion?

Now that I'm home, I tried to reproduce this, but I could not.

Also there is an update to Genesis 3 starter essentials in DIM that you might try first.