SickleYield Tutorial And FAQ Index

This has been requested more than once, and I'll probably have to delete and repost it periodically to keep it from falling out of sight over and over again, but at least this gives me a place to link.

FAQ's:

Brand New To Daz Studio FAQ1.  How do I use this?
Here's my YouTube starter series!
And here's a tutorial index, although it can be harder to find things if you're brand new to the program.
Searching for "Daz Studio" on YouTube will also find you a LOT more tutorial content both by Daz staffers and by other Published Artists.
2. What's the difference between Victoria 4, Genesis 3, Michael 5, etc.?

This confuses a lot of people new to our market.
SHORT VERSION: Basically Daz has "figures," and Daz has "characters."  A "character" is usually a dial or set of dials that changes the shape of a "figure" within the program.  Characters with number 5 after them are dialed morphs of Genesis (Victoria 5, etc.), 6 are morphs of Genesis 2 Male or Female, and all t

Making A Living at DAZ3DThis was updated on 9/23/20.
Every so often someone asks if this is possible, how hard this is, and how to do it.  I'm writing this journal entry so I can just link them back to it instead of typing the same post or forum PM repeatedly.
I'm putting these down in the order they are usually asked, not in the order I think they should be asked. 
Q: How much money can I make?
A: I make a good living for the Western USA selling in the Daz market.  I have a lightly used car that's paid off and I own my own three-bedroom home in a high-income part of the country.  I also sell at Renderosity and on deviantart, but I would describe that as a "hobby" or "bonus" income; it would be hard to do without it, but it's not what pays the rent every month, either.  For the most part you will make back according to the time you put in.  Only a few top artists get into six figures in American dollars in our market, and they are the biggest names who sell the bigg Making a Living At DAZ3D Part 2: The First ProductMy previous journal entry on this topic is still being read and commented upon, and nearly every week someone contacts me about some step in the process of becoming a new vendor, or submitting their first product.
I always try to help, if I can; but the thing that strikes me the most about this is that people often omit the most important questions. 
The ones I see the most are:
1.  How do I convert this item I made in Maya, Zbrush or another program to work in Daz Studio?
Followed by:
2. How do I package it for release, and where do I send it?
The answer to the second question is here followed by here.
 The first one does not have a short answer, because it varies by the product and its rigging t 


Why I Don't Do CommissionsPeriodically I have someone ask me to do a modeling commission.  When I was doing this as a hobby, I would accept one once in a while, but I don't any more as a rule.  Here's why.
1.  I can't afford it, and neither can you.  After around 9 years of experience, my present earnings at DAZ normally average out to about $50-$90 an hour.  Making a full outfit, with multiple pieces, good morphs, and good textures, takes more than 20 hours.  Most people think they're spending a lot if they offer $30 and resale rights, and the resale rights aren't worth much because the outfit is one I wouldn't be able to sell (because it's a very niche item, or for reason #2).  Compared to spending that 20 hours making something I know will sell 200 copies in my DAZ store, plus catalog sales, I literally can't afford to do most commissions. 

2.  You want something of questionable legality because IT IS ILLEGAL TO CHARGE FOR FAN ART.  The United  Top 20 Products By Numbers And EarningsToday Daz 3D is having a Top Artists sale promoting the work of some of its highest earners (some, not all).
I thought it would be interesting to go back over my product catalog from 2012, when I first had a product accepted, to now, and publish a couple of top 20 lists of my own highest earners.  I'm not going to tell you earnings numbers or sales numbers, but I will say by rank what did the best.  I'm partly doing this so I have somewhere to link folks on the forums who seem constantly confused about why Daz PA's make the product decisions we do.
(Excluded: A few buyouts (I've never done many), for which I was paid ahead of time and not by copies sold, and two freebies, which I'm not counting because freebies always move more copies.  Basically I'm not showing you things I don't earn money for per copy, because they don't affect my future business decisions in the same way.)

There will be a discussion below the numbers.
----------------------------------  Products By Gendered SalesIntroduction:
This is a compilation of data from my sales history.  It's based on a forum post that I thought a lot of people probably missed, but I want to address this because it's a frequent complaint on the forums at Daz3d that there is less male content than female content.  Complainants frequently reject the Published Artist claim that male products just don't sell as well.
These figures are the female sales of a gendered product as a multiplier of the male's sales.  That is, if it's 2.00x it's because the female sold twice as much as the male product; 1.79 the female sold 179 to every 100 of the male product; etc. 
A "gendered" product in this case is a product where there were both male and female equivalent versions.  We have this data nicely split for Genesis 2 and 3 since they were not unisex like the first Genesis.
Items where the female version sold more (SF are co-products):
Clothing Smoother for Genesis 2 Female: 2.

People of Earth: Faces of Europe And Race And EconToday my Faces of Europe sets came out at Daz3d.
 
The female version for Genesis 3 Female.
The male version for Genesis 3 Male.

This next bit is a long sales discussion that also talks about race and our market, so you probably want to click away if you're not up for that.  I doubt it will be very controversial, but I'm prepared for that possibility.
Here is the sales curve of each Genesis 3 set so far.  The lines flattening represents the fact that I do not yet have data on the full 24 hours of Faces of Europe, because I cannot travel through time (except by the conventional method we all use); but from the shape of the other two curves in their first 24 hours we can make a reasonable guess. I've sketched that in.  The sketchy black line is where I composited in the Faces of Asia Genesis 3 Mal  Why isn't there more male clothing?This is one of the things that greatly limits my forum participation, because the same conversation happens over and over every time a new user asks about it, and it's incredibly frustrating.  A more mathematical discussion of this issue can be found here:
https://www.deviantart.com/sickleyield/journal/Products-By-Gendered-Sales-662159959
In essence, it always goes like this:
New user: Where's the male stuff?  I need some large detailed male outfits that the market does not have.
Old users: There isn't enough because PAs are jerks who are witholding awesome male clothing from us because they hate money and success.
PAs: No, we're not.  Big clothing sets are financially risky already, and male content sells half or less what female content does.
Old users: You're clearly lying because you hate making male things that don't suck.  If you made male content as good as your female content, it would sell.
PAs: What about X male outfit I made that didn't sell?
Old users: C  Why It's All SkimpwearThis is another one of those questions that comes up on the forum a lot, always starts the same argument, and anyone who's been working in our market for more than a couple of years is heartily sick of it.  It's parallel to the Why No Moar Mans? discussion, which I've already covered on this very journal.  I hope you'll forgive me if I seem crankier than really seems merited by the question.  The average forum newbie who is asking this for the first time means no harm and has no idea what sort of can of worms they're about to open.
So, in brief, any time you have the question "why doesn't the market have more X?" the answer is one of two things:
1.  Daz will not accept that type of product.  Usually it's not "family friendly" enough for the tyrannical Paypal and credit card processors, which is another explanation for another article.
2.  Vendors aren'


Tutorials:


My YouTube Channel.



[Tutorial] Getting Started With IrayIntroduction
Here is the tutorial on YouTube.

Here is a .pdf version.
This is for those of you who are looking at the interface going, "Now what?"  This covers how to convert existing shaders and how to set up lighting for your render. 
This is a text version that, while different from what I'm saying in the video word by word, contains the same information. 
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To use this you need DAZ Studio 4.8 Pro or later.

Part 1: The Environment and Camera Settings
Before we get started, we need to check the environment, camera and render settings.
The Render Settings tab has an Editor and an Advanced section.  Advanced is where you check or uncheck your CPU and graphics cards.  I render with just my cards most of the time, and if you have good cards with lots of CUDA     [Tutorial] Creating Dust And Atmosphere in IrayA video version is here.
I learned this method from jag11 on the DAZ3D forums, who is thanked for permission to use it in this tutorial!
In 3Delight there's no way to create atmosphere or godrays (the rays that are visible when light passes through dust or particles).  There are products to facilitate (one of them mine), but most are either not the easiest to use or ultimately just a faking of a feature the engine lacks.  Many artists use postwork instead.
DAZ Studio 4.8 Beta's new Iray engine also lacks a native mechanism for creating atmospheric volumes - but it can be easily convinced to produce them!  They will come from your lights and react to objects in your scene.  I did a test image of Jack Tomalin's Chapter House Iray scene (free to Plat Club members  [Tutorial] Transferring Character Morphs G1G2G3G8The first version of this workflow came from Kattey on the DAZ forum, for which I acknowledge credit. 
Here is that (lengthy) thread: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewthread/24093/
First of all, however: there are two ways to recreate a character.  There is the easy way, which is not redistributable, and the hard way, which is.  We'll discuss the easy way first.  I'm sorry, but I can't do anything for those of you who absolutely can't learn from text.  This is what I have time for right now.
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PART 1: CREATE A SINGLE DIAL
Load Genesis 1.  Dial in your character morph.  There cannot be anything in the scene except the single figure while we do this.  No hair, no clothes, no props.  Or if they are there, you must hide them by clicking the eye next to them in the Scene tab.
Go to Parameters-General-Mesh Resolution.  You should always have a Parameters tab.  If you don't, you aren't ready for this tutorial because you are still [Tutorial] Lighting and Tone Mapping In IrayVideo is now live at YouTube!
I forgot to mention f-stop on the scene cameras and the exposure value chart on that one, so it may be worth looking at the bottom of this one for that even if you wait to watch the video.

Here is the infographic I used.  Special thanks to fuseling and Lyoness1 for helping me find online resources.
This tutorial will discuss adding more realism to your lighting by balancing your light and tone mapping settings.  It is not identical to the YouTube tutorial, but it will cover the same information.


I. Render Settings, Default HDR Lighting And Tone Mapping
a. Camera And Render Settings
First let me discuss the camera and render settings, though render settings in general is where you will find nearly all of the controls relevant to this tutorial.
Always render through a "Default Camera" or add one; do not use [Tutorial] The Map Transfer UtilityThe Map Transfer utility in DAZ Studio 4.5 Pro is used to convert textures from one UV to another.  In this instance I will use the example of converting M4 textures to the M5 genitalia UV, since that's what I've been using it for recently.  I've used this to create M5 gens from the m4 textures I did for all of my character packs as well as to convert M4 Albane's gen textures for M5 use.
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You will need:
The M4V4 UV Mapped M5 Gens (here: https://sites.google.com/site/crblackthorne/downloads  )
The M5 Gens from DAZ3D (we won't be using them directly, but you have to have them to use the above)
The GIMP or Photoshop, for cleanup.  Instructions will be for the GIMP.
OR if doing this with another figure: You need the figure to have BOTH the original UV you're converting FROM and the new one you're converting TO.  So if you're using Genesis, you probably can convert Gen 4 to Gen 5 UVs, but not Gen 3 to Gen 4/5 (unless you know of a Gen 3 UV for Genesis set I'm un [Tutorial] Three-Point Lighting In IrayI've covered this at more than sufficient length elsewhere, but I still get asked about lighting in Iray, so I wanted to do a quick set of text basics for those who have trouble ferreting out the relevant bits from the videos. 
Here is a reference set of lights and a Sunny 16 preset you can download and use for practice.  These are the lights I use as starters in 90% of scenes now.  If you want to know more about tone mapping I've gone into that here as well.
THREE-POINT LIGHTING: WHAT IS IT?
Wikipedia covers the photographic theory of three-point lighting here, if you would like to know more about that.  The short version i 
[Tutorial ]Saving Gen 4 Custom Bones on ConversionTo convert from M4 or V4, you need M4 or V4 for Genesis 2.
There is a huge amount of clothing content for Michael 4 and Victoria 4.  Some of it is by really outstanding artists who do not or have only recently worked with G1 or G2, and some is quality work that was never updated but is available cheaply, including many of DAZ's Platinum Club items.  You can take best advantage of this by using Transfer Utility in addition to AutoFit. This tutorial will show you how to use Transfer Utility to preserve skirt handles, fancy sleeve rigging, or basically any extra bones that are normally lost in the conversion process.  I've done a different tutorial for converting custom bone items between G1 and G2 already and a post on [Mini-Tutorial] Iray Progressive Render SettingsThis weekend I got a chance to talk to the DAZ 3D developers about the progressive render settings and what they do.  Here's some clarification on those settings.  I did not know some of this myself until I had a chance to ask this weekend!
The progressive render settings are found in the "Render Settings" tab in DAZ Studio and the "Editor" portion of that tab.  The important settings are:
Max Samples:  Short version: The Max Samples count is the maximum number of samples Iray will achieve before it stops the render.  The default number is 5000.  How long it takes to get to 5000 samples varies by what kind of hardware your computer has - it will get to 5000 much faster on an Nvidia graphics card than a CPU or an AMD card.
Longer version, as best I was able to learn from web research: In any kind of rendering, the engine is trying to depict a 3D image as though it were in real space; in real space your eye views all images as continuous, but in the r  [Tutorial] G1G2G3G8 Clothing in Blender 1NOTE IN 2021: This is obsolete owing to changes in Blender's control scheme in versions after 2.79.  Please use this one instead:

NOTE ON THE 2017 UPDATE: I'm going back through this tutorial series and updating it with notes on Genesis 3 and 8.  Not a lot will be changed, mostly having to do with normal maps and JCMs.  At this point it's unlikely I'll do a video version because of the sheer amount there is to cover.  If you really want to do clothes commercially and can only do it via video, there are tutorials in the Daz store (I don't own any of them, because I don't buy tutorials in order to ensure I am never accused of learning from them and then giving away that info free, but esha is an amazing artist, I would expect her to do a great tutorial).
There's also [Tutorial] G1G2G3G8 Clothing in Blender 2Here is Part 1.
In Part 2 we'll take a look at some good practices for the mid-poly stage of your mesh, creating materials, and how to get your mesh over to DAZ Studio.
To recap, at this point in Blender you should have a low-poly base mesh that is UV Mapped.  If it is tightly overlying the body from use of snap tools, use alt+s to scale it along the normals away from the body.  If this doesn't seem to work right, Ctrl+N recalculates normals outward and should fix it.
Make sure you assign one or more materials. 
You can create materials using the right-hand panel.  Click the round ball icon (the orange one more to the right, not the blue one more to the left) and click the "+ New" button.  Clicking on the word "Material" next to the orange ball in the dialog that appears will let you give it a name.  If you want to add more than one, just click the plus s [Tutorial] G1G2G3G8 Clothing in Blender 3This text tutorial continues the series on creating clothing for Genesis 1 and 2 for DAZ Studio in Blender.  Previous links:
Part 1
Part 2
In this tutorial we will explore texturing and, more specifically, using Blender to create sculpted normal maps and/or displacement.
From Part 1 and 2 you should have:
-A UV-mapped mesh, with materials assigned, at a poly count between 16k and 100k polygons (less is okay, more is not); at this point  you should have done your "base" sculpt and it should look basically like a piece of clothing, not a paper cutout overlying the body.  Buttons, lacing, etc. should be finished and a permanent part of the clothing, and you should have done your base rigging in DAZ Studio and saved it to the library as a .duf using the File--Save As--Supp [Tutorial] G1G2G3G8 Clothing in Blender 4Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
In this section we'll talk about applying textures and generating materials in DAZ Studio.
From Parts 1 through 3 you should have:
-A UV-mapped mesh, with materials assigned, at a poly count between 16k and 100k polygons (less is okay, more is not) that is already saved to the library with a basic rig in DAZ Studio.
-A sculpted normal or displacement map created in Part 3 and saved out to .jpg or .tiff format.
-A diffuse and bump map created using layer modes in your image editor.  Having a scanner or a good camera to create your own base textures for clothing is not a bad idea (a scanner that can create 4000x4000 images is available cheap at many thrift st  [Tutorial] G1G2G3G8 Clothing in Blender 5Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
In this section we'll talk about creating custom icons and morphs.  The morphs section of this is covered in video form here.
From Parts 1 through 4 you should have:
-A textured and rigged clothing item with materials set up that use your diffuse, bump, and high-resolution displacement maps.  It should already be saved to your People/Genesis or Genesis 2 Male or Female/Clothing/YourName/Your Item folder, and there should already be a Your Item/Materials folder with at least one material   [Tutorial] G1G2G3G8 Clothing in Blender 6 (JCMs)Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Download the .pdf version of the entire series here.
In this section, new to the 2017 update to this lengthy tutorial series, I will discuss how to set up joint-controlled morphs for your clothing.  This is especially important if you are working with Genesis 3 or 8.  Genesis and Genesis 2 were TriAx rigged figures. This means that each bone has th  [Tutorial] Requested: Loading Morphs in DAZ StudioThis is useful even to those working with Generation 4, because you can create and morph Gen 4 clothes in DS4.6 just as you can Genesis 1 and 2 clothes, and its free built-in creation tools are more robust and powerful than those that come by default with most versions of Poser.  So even if you want to render in Poser, it makes sense to do your morphing in DAZ Studio.
The first thing you will need to do is to load the clothing item you would like to morph in DAZ Studio.
If it is set up with multi-resolution (I have no clear idea whether Poser can do that), you need to set the resolution to Base and the Subdivision to 0.  You can do this in the Parameters tab to the right of the screen.  If there is no Parameters tab, you can create one using Window--Panes/Tabs.
If it is morphed or posed by default, you should also set those dials to 0.  Most clothing is not, but just to cover my bases.
Once the figure is fully zeroed and at base resolution, go to File--Export.  [Tutorial] Creating A [Smart]prop With DS4.5 ProRequested via note.  This is the method I use.  Not everyone is this thorough, but I firmly maintain that everyone should be.  This will work for regular props as well, just disregard the part about putting them in the character's hand.
I will refer to Genesis, but this will work with any figure in DS4.5 Pro.  Gen 4 and 5 have the same bone names so smartprops for them are interchangeable for the most part.
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First, in your modeler:
Model your item flat on the ground.  Yes, I said flat on the ground, not in the hand.  If you've already modeled it in the hand, move it back to the ground and redo the object center.  Trust me, you'll thank me later.  Export it flat like this.  Name the obj ItemNameCTR or ItemNameCenter.
Second, in DS4.5:
Import your new mesh.  
Load an UberEnvironment light and render it from different angles to make sure the normals are correct.  If they are correct it will render white.  If it renders black [Tutorial] Creating Dialed Projection MorphsA dialed projection morph is one that you can dial into the character's body and have it only show up in the clothes they wear, not the character themselves.  This tutorial was requested.  Please feel free to leave questions and I'll do my best to answer them and/or edit the tutorial to be clearer.
This is the method I used to create the Female Clothing Smoothers.  I am not concerned about sharing it because it's quite a bit of work to get it working correctly; this I consider an "advanced" tutorial.  You need to already know how to use modeling software and Morph Loader Pro in DS before you even think about trying this.
You will need:
Modeling software, and intimate knowledge of how to use its sculpting and modeling features; I use Blender.
DAZ Studio 4.6 or later.  You should have loaded a morph at least once at some point using Morph Loader Pro.
A TriAx weight-map [Tutorial] Creating Clothing Morphs in BlenderNow on YouTube, this teaches you to make morphs in Blender and load them on clothing items in DS. It covers some different categories (special character fits, FBM replacement fits, custom movement morphs). [Tutorial] Making of Kasper On The BeachUPDATE: An outdoor lighting video tutorial is here.
Here is the render.  There are better ones, definitely, but there are worse; and what I am about to explain will hopefully be of help to those who are still confused about skin and lights. 

I loaded the Ultimo Paradiso product from DAZ3D via the "Build Island" and "Few Plants Only" scripts (I may be getting their names a little wrong).  Most materials I did not convert, just the ocean (to the DAZ Water shader, with the aqua color added to the glossy color) and the Island itself (so that I could add metallic flakes to the sand).  If anything, this ends up looking less realistic than the character even after I added SubD to all the meshes that are visible close up.  It wasn't really made to be seen this close.  I deleted the sky dome to use DAZ Studio's Sun-Sky. 
The amount of geometry in the scene doesn't slow down the render much, b [Tutorial/Clarification] Wearables PresetsI've seen some incorrect information being spread about these.  Here is DAZ's word on the subject.  
The purpose of a Wearables preset in DAZ Studio is to save an entire small wardrobe that is already conformed or parented to Genesis or G2. 
It is not for saving clothing items themselves to the library.  When you wish to save an Autofitted or Transfer Utility-converted item to the library, you should use File--Save As--Figure/Prop Asset.  This is for clothing, smartprops, rigged props, characters, and basically everything similar to these.  The .duf format encodes all of them rather than having them as separate types the way .cr2 and .pp2 files are encoded in Poser.
Now, if you are interested in creating Wearables presets for their intended purpose, they can save a lot of time when loading bi [Tutorial] Rigging A Door In Daz StudioI'm still going to continue my Intro series with the Surfaces tab, but until I have the energy to do that much longer tutorial, this one was requested specifically by CrissieBrown. 
This is an intermediate tutorial.  It assumes you already have modeled, textured and have completed material setup of a mesh in your modeler. [Tutorial]Creating Custom Rigging TemplatesThis will not have a video.  It is intended for advanced users of DAZ Studio.  You need to know how to use your modeling software and how to rig a clothing item in DS before you even think about trying this.

I get asked about this occasionally, but usually I place it with reverse projection morphs in the category of "things that are too hard for the average user," so I just answer the question one on one.  The purpose of this tutorial is to create a reference for future vendors, and to remind myself if I forget in future.
You can turn any item into a rigging template in DAZ Studio.  You shouldn't, because a lot of items will work very poorly for that.  Some things will also never produce good results with a template, because rigging them properly is based on doing an unusual procedure correctly (high-heeled shoes) or because their geometry is to  [Tutorial]: Packaging/Testing Your Own ProductI often get asked how to package products before offering them to Daz3D.  I was asked again today, and it occurred to me I should just do a tutorial I can link.
As I've said elsewhere, how you package the product does not matter initially because Daz is going to accept or reject it based on your renders alone.  But should your product be accepted for testing, you need to have it correctly set up in its own directory so that you can easily zip it and know that all the files are in one place.
Separate from my Daz3D library, on a totally different drive, I have a folder called Daz4Test. Beautiful Skin Iray G2F goes into its own subfolder folder called "testbeautifulskinirayG2F". The data, library and Runtime folders of my product all go in testbeautifulskinirayG2F. 
Then, in Daz Studio, I right-click on the words "Daz Studio Formats" in the Content Library tab. Then I choose "Add a B  [Tutorial] Installing Content in DAZ StudioThe purpose of this tutorial is to provide a reference for those new to DAZ Studio and just learning to install products without the DAZ Install Manager for the first time.  Please feel free to link to it!
This comes up frequently on the forum and in my private messages.  Usually what happens is that I get a message to the effect of "Hi!  I bought a product from Renderosity/downloaded a freebie from ShareCG, and now I get a "missing file" error when I try to use it."
It is always possible for errors in packaging to happen, and in that case of course we want to fix it on the vendor end, but most of the time this happens because the product is not installed correctly. 

Let's start out by suggesting some good practices for organizing your folders.
1. Directory And File Management (IMPORTANT!)
I suggest having a separate directory set up in your DS for each vendor (DAZ, Renderosity, Freebies, etc.) so you can always tell what you got where and how it is l  [Mini Tutorial] Hierarchical Presets in DAZ StudioRemember!  You can pose not just Genesis or Genesis 2, but all of the things that are conformed or geografted at a given time.  The Minos set of poses for Genesis 2 Male Minotaur 6 uses hierarchical poses, and you can expect to see a lot more hierarchical sets in the future as DAZ continues to come out with awesome creatures that have geografted parts.
To use this option, first create your pose on the figures in DAZ Studio (always the hard part).  If you're creating to try and sell, remember that DAZ wants a minimum of clipping of the figure with itself, although you can't avoid clipping the thumb with the palm when making a fist in most figures.  When finished, select the main figure, not any of the geografts.
Go to the folder in your Content Library in DAZ Studio where you want the pose saved.  Remember that you can right-click on Poses and choose Create Subfolder to make a new one from the library.
Click the plus sign at the bottom of your content library ta [Tutorial] Custom Bone Rigs G2F to Genesis ConvertI'll be using Esha's lovely Triton mertails, which are only for G2F, and which I wanted to use on Genesis.  For this tutorial you need:
-A G2F item with custom bones
-The G2F clone for Genesis, here: http://www.daz3d.com/genesis-2-female-clone-for-genesis
(Or one of the free ones; you can try this without one, but it will work poorly.)
-DAZ Studio 4.6
-An external folder to export geometries
And that's it.
Import Genesis and the Triton tail into your scene.
Start the Transfer Utility.
Transfer from Genesis to the tails (don't worry about rigging yet, we just want the shape reversion on this pass).  Choose Clone--Genesis 2 Female from the left dropdown, and make sure "reverse source shape from target" is checked.
When the process is done, delete or hide Genesis (it's important that the tails are not conformed to it).  Export the converted tails as an .obj to the folder of your choice.  Make sure you add a G in the name or some other indicator that it's different.
Delete this first conve [Tutorial]Keeping Bones On TU Conversion, Fast WayI've done a previous pair of tutorials on keeping bones when converting items between figures, as for instance between Genesis and Genesis 2.  That method takes a few steps and an obj export/import.  This way is faster, although it doesn't work well with Generation 4 conversion.  This will not work with converting to weight-mapped figures such as Genesis 3 and 8.  At present there is no easy way to retain rigging in conversions from Gen 4 - G1 - G2 to G3-G8.
You will need:
-The figure you want to convert TO.
-The piece of clothing or hair you want to convert.
-Any relevant clones.  For e.g., you will need to purchase the Michael 4 for Genesis 2 Male and/or Victoria 4 for Genesis 2 Female to convert items between Gen 4 and Gene [Tutorial] Prepping .CR2 Gens for G2MAdzan's Hirogens (link to adult site) are a fantastic free set of genitalia, originally for Hiro 3, that are still great now.  You can't use your Genesis 2 Male genitalia textures with them, but you won't need to - you just need to buy this product from Jepe, which has every natural skin tone imaginable in it and is cheap, and I do mean cheap, at the price he sells it for (certainly more so than buying a pro bundle to get the DAZ gens). 
He also sells such a set for the UlfGens and one for the M4 Gens (same freebie link for UlfGens, expansions at the same store as the linked one), giving you even more options.  The UlfGens also have an M4 mapped option (again, same freebie page) for use with Michael 4 UV textures.
An advantage to, say, Adzan's Varsity set is that they have a lot more bones than the G2M gens, allowing for more realis [Tutorial] Sculpting in Blender 2.6x for Poser/DAZSkiriki asked for this.  I've been putting it off because it's very involved, but it is a good workflow to know if you're doing Poser/DAZ props and outfits on a budget.  Blender is free and, while it has notable shortcomings in terms of painting across contiguous nonidentical UVs (which is why it doesn't compete with Zbrush and 3dCoat in those areas), it is great for base meshing and many kinds of sculpting.
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Some preliminary controls in Blender:
Viewport:
Scroll Mouse Wheel: Zoom in and out.
Hold Mouse Wheel/Drag: Rotate view dynamically.
Shift/Hold Mouse Wheel/Drag: Move view horizontally/vertically.
Numpad keys: different orthographic views; 5 switches orthographic/perspective.
Tab: Switch modes.  You can see the Mode dropdown just below the 3d window.  It will say Object mode when you start up Blender.
Object control:
Right Click: Select an object.
G: grab an object to move it.
Right-click after G: Let go of moved object, letting it snap back to its original [Tutorial] Seamless Texture Painting In Blender[October 2014 edit: In the current version, Blender's texture painting is severely laggy on many systems, making it nearly unusable.  The devs seem to be working to fix it.  I'm afraid I've had to mostly switch to Zbrush and 3d Coat in the meantime; but this tutorial will hopefully work for those who have no options, or when it's been fixed.]
I just found out this was possible, so I did some quick proof-of-concept work and am now prepared to share it.  This is more for content creators than the casual user, but if you're interested in getting into our market but can't afford 3dCoat, Zbrush, or other more expensive painting apps, this is absolutely for you.
Blender has been able to do texture painting for a long time, but initially it was only with generated textures or plain color painting, and for some while it could not paint across the seams of multiple UVs on one object, making it useless for character painting of DAZ figures.  Well, that is no longer the case.& [Tutorial] Blender Fluid Simulation for DSNOTE IN 2021: This is obsolete for Blender after about version 2.79 because of changes to the interface and the inclusion of Mantaflow.  I'll be doing a new tutorial for that sometime soon and will link it here when I do.
Here is a YouTube video version!

Introduction
Blender has one of the few free fluid simulators out there, a rare treasure when such an add-on can cost thousands of dollars.  This tutorial explores working with it to add fluids to your DAZ Studio scenes.
This is a challenging area, and it is hard on your hardware.  Don't get into this unless you've got some time, you're willing to work in Blender, and you have at least an Intel quad core.  I have one of these in my work machine, and and it's still time-consuming running fluid sims.  AMD made an octo-core a while back.    [Tutorial] Making an Adjusted FBMBy an "adjusted" FBM I mean one different enough from the base to require adjusting the rigging.  You've seen these for Genesis - the Troll, the Freaks, and Mavka are examples.
For this example I'm using Blender and DAZ Studio 4.5 Pro, but it should work with other modeling software if you can figure out the scaling.
This was another request.
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First of all, it is necessary to export a "base" Genesis to morph.  
Load Genesis into your scene, or whatever other figure you wish to use.
Go to Parameters and turn the subdivision level down to 0 and the resolution to Base.  This is very important.  If you do not do this, your new morph will not load.
Now file--export--wavefront/obj.  I choose to work at Poser scale on import and export because it works with Blender's base import/export scaling, but that is completely up to you.
Choose a location where you will store this morph base.  I have a "UsefulOBJ" folder containing all my FBM bases in my Blender direct  [Mini-Tutorial]Posing Long Bone ChainsSince the smartprop tutorial got me an astonishing number of faves, watches, and page views, I gather the forum is not filling everyone's tutorial needs.  Please feel free to request additional text tutorials for DS4.5 and Genesis here.  I'm fully of the opinion that information should be free and competition should be based on merit, not on knowledge control.  With that said, it has to be something you're willing to see in text-only format, and some requests will be declined ("Build A Working Giant Mech From Start to Finish" is something I technically know but one, I've never done it, and two, it would take too long to do a tutorial).  
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Many of you probably own items such as the Genesis Fantasy Wrap, which has a ton of bones but no ERC pose controls.  Here's an easy way to manage those.  Hopefully some of you already know about this, because you bought the Chain Blades, which basically include this tutorial written on a giant prop that loads from the [Tutorial] Quick Tip: The GIMP Can Do Lens Flares!If you use the GIMP for the 2D portions of your texturing, it has some useful scripts and features for the render artist, including in the area of postwork.  I recently ran across this feature after completely missing it for years, so I just had to share it with you all!
Here's a before and after look using our BSI set and the Jax textures from Daz3D (the morph is Legacy Darius plus Legacy Gianni 6).

Here's how you do it!
1.  Open your rendered image in the GIMP.
2.  Click on the Filters menu option, then Light And Shadow.
3.  Choose Lens Flare or Gradient Flare.  Gradient Flare has a lot of different options where Lens Flare is much simpler.
4. A dialogue box pops up.  For Lens Flare, just click the point in the preview where you want the lens flare to go, and then click OK.
5. For Gradient Flare, pick a flare option from the Selector list, click where in the preview you want it to go,  3D Modeling an Alcove in BlenderThis was requested on the DAZ3D forum and is now available here.
I haven't done a lot with architectural modeling in previous tutorials, since my catalog is more oriented toward figures, clothing, morphs, and other organic squishy things, so I figured why not.
This is for beginners in Blender.  I've used the screen recorder plugin that tosses up what key combos I'm using on the lower left part of the screen, as well as tried to tell you verbally the combos and shortcuts I use.  This is very important in this particular program because Blender is not very friendly to the clickaround method of learning and using it (a big reason for its lack of popularity).
[Tutorial] Indenting Skin Where It Touches Objects(I will link a YouTube version when I have one.  Hopefully I can fix my mic's current issues soon.)
Today I'm going to show you how to force a figure in Daz Studio to indent when in contact with clothes, ropes, or other objects.  This is not a feature of the program at the moment (figures having physics is still a long way out, I suspect).  We can use a kludge to make it happen.
I was asked about this via PM, and I realized I hadn't actually tried it on the assumption that it would not work.  When I did try it, it actually DID work.  It's very unstable and somewhat crash-prone in my testing, and the higher poly the colliding object is the more unstable it is, but it works.
Here is the workflow I used.
1.  Load a figure into the scene.  I don't know if the geometry of Generation 4 is too different or not, but it might still work.  Definitely any Genesis figure will.
2.  Set up everything else in your scene: the clothes, the props, the lightin  [TUTORIAL] Character Skins G2 to G3 Via SkinsuitThis technique also works with things like Jepe's Jewels and Tears (don't do the culling method suggested in "Refinements" if you want to use a transmapped product).  It's a kludgy workaround, but it's free.  I may do a video or I may not.  I've been ill and my voice is still not at 100% yet.  If I do I'll link it here.
This should also work in the reverse direction if you have purchased G3 clones for G2.  If you want a V4M4 skin on G3 I recommend you apply that skin to Genesis 2 and use it for this process; the shapes are too different for even clones to work very well.
Here's a proof of concept showing Elite V4 Arianna on RawArt3d's Massive for Genesis 3 Male.

You need:
Genesis 2 Male or Female.  G3 already has clones for both of these natively.  Use the male for the male and the female for the female because their shapes are closest.  If you want to get a female skin onto the [Tutorial] Convert Clothing G3 to G8, G8 to G3WARNING:
This will only work between these two figures or between their male counterparts.  It will not work between any previous figures, or between these and previous figures.



Here's the YouTube video.
For this tutorial you need:

Genesis 3 Female from Daz3d.com.
Genesis 8 Female from Daz3d.com.
An item of clothing for one of them that you want to convert to the other one.
Scene Tab and Parameters Tab in Daz Studio 4.9+.  If you lack a tab, you can add it using Window--Panes (Tabs) and clicking the one that you need.
THE CONTENT MANAGEMENT/SMART CONTENT HAS TO BE INSTALLED AND WORKING TO USE THIS METHOD.  IF YOU CANNOT SEE THE COMPATIBILITY BASE IT IS NOT ON.  CHECK THE BOTTOM OF THE SMART CONTENT TAB FOR A "START CMS" BUTTON.  IN YOUR DAZ INSTALL MANAGER IT'S CALLED POSTGRES SQL CMS OR SO Tutorial: Lighting and Rendering Night ScenesHere is the YouTube version of this tutorial, and here is the accompanying tutorial on using Canvases.
Working with the Iray render engine, and seeing what people do with it on deviantart, over time I've seen the same mistakes repeated many times.  One of the most common that I see has to do with rendering night scenes or other scenes that are meant to be dark.
The thing is that the human eye is bad at seeing in the dark.  If you render literally what someone would be seeing, your scene will look terrible, but this is exactly what I see many people doing.  Hollywood movies often use two specific techniques to create night scenes: lit foreground objects against dark backdrops and "blue-for-night" lighting.  There's a third option (used more in horror) that I will also cover, the use of strong specular highlights and/or rim lighting.  Let's take them one at a time.
Fo   Dress Making and Rigging Tutorial Custom Bones 01Please find the video on my YouTube channel here. For those who prefer a text reference, I'll do my best to replicate the important points here. Link to Part 02 Link to Part 03 (Just use this one if you already have a mesh with vertex groups and just want to rig it)WHAT YOU NEED:-Blender 2.82 or higher-Daz Studio 4.15 or higher-Genesis 8 Starter Essentials installed; these should come with your DS installation or be available in Daz Install Manager as soon as you have signed up on daz3d.com. A WARNING AND DISCLAIMER:Making clothing is very time consuming and something of an elaborate multi-step process. Save a lot. Don't get discouraged. It gets faster as you get used to it. The methodology you would use to create a garment in Blender is also very different from what you would use in Zbrush or Marvelous Designer, so if you already have a workflow for those or another modeling program and an exported obj with vertex groups assigned, feel free to skip to whatever part we actually start the rigging in Figure Setup Tools in Daz Studio.GETTING STARTED WITH BLENDERFirst of all, you'll need a human figure to work with. If you export one to wavefront/obj from Daz Studio, make sure it is set to Base resolution and 0 subdivisions in your Parameters first. Make a note of the scale you use for exporting. I use Daz Studio's own scale because the Blender preset is broken and has been for some time.When importing to Blender using the File--Import dialogue, make sure to check "polygroups" and "keep vertex order."Now you're looking at a naked figure such as Genesis 8 on a plain gray grid. Whatever figure you're using, the instructions I'm about to give should still hopefully work. There may be a point where Daz3d moves away from dual quaternion weight maps (or "General" rigging, as it's called in Daz Studio), in which case there may be instructions needed that I don't yet know about here in July 2021. I'm going to say "Genesis 8," but just know that this works just as well with Genesis 3 or any future "General Weight Map" figures.In order to start your clothing item, go to the top left of your screen and click Add--Mesh--Plane.,Now there's a tiny plane at the bottom center of your screen. You can select it by left-clicking on it, right-clicking if you're old-school and have changed your controls to old Blender style.Scale this until it's around the length of Genesis 8's thumb. This is going to be our first simple polygon. You can scale by typing S and then dragging your mouse. Left-click to finalize the new size. Now if you hit R, you will activate the rotation control, and typing 90 will rotate the plane 90 degrees. You can move it by hitting G to grab and then drag it up to the upper chest area. Now we need to change the object center of our polygon so that we can mirror it and save time. Click on Object--Set Origin--Origin to 3d Cursor. Origin to Center would also work. We just want to have the center right at the center of the screen for now.,Now go to the right side of your screen and the little blue wrench icon, your Modifier panel. Click on it and choose "Mirror.",It defaults to X, which is what we want right now. As you can see, I've left Merge on but raised it to .01. You might go as high as 0.1 depending on what scale you used on import (if you used Poser scale that's going to be too big). Now Blender creates a mirror of our one polygon we created. You can also see the tiny magnet that is now blue at the top of the screen, and if you click this you can activate the Snap controls and choose Face, making sure Project Onto Other Objects is also checked. Now when you select the polygon and hit G, it snaps onto the body of Genesis 8. If you select the middle edge by using alt and right click, you can scale it to be very narrow and drag it over until it merges correctly. Hitting Object--Shade Smooth will help with this.Now we have a polygon that is mirrored by the program, and we can extrude it in various directions to create our dress. To do so, you can enter Edit mode by hitting Tab, or by clicking the dropdown at the top left of your screen that currently says "Object Mode." With alt-right click you can select any given edge, and then hit E to extrude. Pressing Enter both finalizes the extrusion and snaps it onto the body. It'll be clipping into G8 at first. That's okay, we're going to fix that as we go along.,In the above I've extruded around to the back to merge the edge of the polygon with the center line to make sure it merges with the mirrored half. Again, s-x and .001 to make your line straight, then drag it until it merges with the mirrored side. Then you can extrude up and down the back and the center line of the body to create a frame work for your garment, and extrude up over the shoulders to create straps or the base of what will be your bodice.When it's time to join polygons on the same side, you can select four vertices around the empty area and click F key to fill them. F can also be used to create a new edge as well as a face, if needed.,Once you have a bodice with straps, a complete waist circle, a complete circle around in the chest area, and a straight line in the merge area in front and back, then you can fill in the blank areas. Select a row of vertices, but not the verts on the very end of the row. Here you can see there was a four-poly gap, so I selected the two middle polys and extruded those around the body. Each drag I try to make sure it lines up with the rows above and below, so that filling in between will be easy. ,When I've done this, I will fill in by selecting all but the very end edges of a gap area (alt right click, and use ctrl b to create a negative bounding box to unselect the end bits). Then I hit CTRL+E and select "Bridge Edge Loops." Now I only have square four-vertex poly holes to fill by selecting their edges and pressing F, and I have a complete though overly clippy bodice. Then you can go back to your modifiers panel and find the tiny dropdown arrow on the right that allows you to choose "Apply." Now both sides of the geometry have been created. Hopefully you kept your middle lines nice and straight so everything merged and there are no holes. This is a good time to turn off the snap tool by clicking the currently-blue magnet button.,You can see where I've also used G to grab on selected verts to smooth out the edges of the strap area, too.Now I will use A (you may have to tap A twice in some versions of Blender) to select all, and Alt+S to scale the garment outward. I may want to stop scaling before all the clipping is fixed to keep things from getting too loose (almost certainly in the bosom area). In this case I will select individual verts and drag them outward. There's a little blue circle at the top of your screen that activates the proportional editing, which lets you pull connected polygons like putty. This can be turned on and off at different points when you need it or don't need it. Scrolling your mouse wheel after something is grabbed with proportional edit on lets you scale the area of influence of the edit.Here you can see me doing this with the bum area. You also have the option to turn on mirrored editing, because we created a mirrored mesh that is perfectly symmetrical on both sides. This option is visible on the right side of the image. It is found in the very top tab in the options on the right, where you can click X by the word Mirror. Here you can also see the little blue circle of the proportional edit, beside the now-gray snap button.,Now that the bodice is done, we can create a skirt by alt-right clicking the bottom row of edges and extruding it downward (with e and g). You may need to pause and tug the buttock area around to achieve full coverage during this process. Here is another time-saving tip. Extrude your skirt only once, as shown. ,At this point I selected and deleted some of these very long side faces because I wanted to create a loincloth dress. Remember, you can create a bounding box with b or a bounding circle with c. Then I alt-right clicked the bottom edge, front and then back, and hit CTRL+R. This creates a little preview line and you can type a number to subdivide into the desired number of polygons (what this pic calls "loop cut and slide").,Now I have a crude loincloth dress. I tweak the curvature of the verts at the connection area of the flaps by dragging them around, hit A to select all, and it's time to subdivide. You can find this option under the "Edge" panel up top. I will hit Subdivide enough times that I feel the polygon count is high enough for smooth deformation, but also high enough to show folds and wrinkles for realism.,Now we're ready for cloth simulation, UV mapping, and materials and vertex group assignment, which we'll start on in Part 02....