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If you open a support ticket with Sales, quoting your order number, they can probably set up an order to let you buy the other tutorial as if you'd bought both together.
I'll give it a try, thanks.
Because everything is better if you have already read the spoilers or perhaps opened every Christmas present by November 1st? Or are you under the impression that we have a magic tribunal that conjures up all the necessary information for Studio projects? If so your wrong. I know that almost everything I have learned from other people was via the general forums or my own testing. I read the PA forums fairly regularly and I can promise you the information that Blondie slaved to produce was not culled out from the pa forum. In fact much of it I had never seen before myself. The key difference is that rather than read around and fuss that they are not getting it she was willing to take the hours to fully understand the process. Not only that but she was willing to take the additional hours to write a comprehensive and easy to understand tutorial that is beneficial to so many of us. And really the hard part is writing so that a wide variety of people with different skill sets and knowledge can both follow and learn from the information. I think she nailed that pretty well actually.
HAHAHAHA... you so funny Khory! :P
WOOT!! I've been waiting for this. Thank you, thank you, thank you Blondie!!! :coolsmirk:
We are not the illuminati. We are ordinary people and mostly talk about ordinary and often dull things. Bacon is a highlight of many discussions.
... and most of our conversations frequently end up in the gutter. I have almost nothing to do with that though.
But while we did that, Blondie put together this informative guide from her own experiences. If she pulled it from our discussions, you'd be reading about penises instead of geografting and what to fix when your clothing behaves a certain way.
"Super secretive"? I have to chuckle at that notion.
:gulp: There's a super secretive PA forum? Lol.
What Khory and Male-M3dia have said are true. We're ordinary people, talking about ordinary things. Although, I MUST protest. There is nothing ordinary about bacon. Just sayin'. :coolgrin:
We discuss, on occasion problems that come up on products, but it's no different than in the Commons or in the software forums when someone has a question on how something works. People ask questions in places where they feel comfortable asking. No secret forum for that.
OK, back on topic. Blondie, I am so pleased that you made this tutorial. It will help a lot of people get further in their rigging skills. You did an excellent job, particularly with the Geografting (and I know that most of the knowledge here was hard won). You always get to the heart of the matter and present the material clearly so that anyone can understand. I whole heartedly recommend this tutorial. Buy it. You won't be disappointed.
We are not the illuminati. We are ordinary people and mostly talk about ordinary and often dull things. Bacon is a highlight of many discussions.
Stop it!!! Your knocking each other off your pedestails and destroying my dearly held beliefs, misconception, and conspericy theories about the Published Artist forum. Is nothing sacred!?! :-P :-P :-P LOL
Yeah, sorry to disillusion you...
It's kind of like all that crap about "secret agents." Most people who work in the CIA and other such government organizations are just drab little bureaucrats in cubicles, pushing paper and writing CYA memos. Depressing, eh?
Kinda like finding out that Santa Claus is really just some ordinary guy dressed up in a silly costume.
But on the serious side---
No, there isn't any "super-secret" anything. Vendors are not some elite "inner circle." Most of us are just ordinary people who put in a lot of time learning this stuff and being frustrated and tearing our hair out and putting large dents in our desks from beating our heads against them.
When I was getting into all this, I spent countless hours combing the Internet for tutorials on various aspects of creating stuff for Poser. About 95% of the "tutorials" I found were crap-- they covered only one tiny portion of the overall process, or they were badly written and left out important steps, etc.
After about a year of beating my head against the wall, I broke down and bought B.L. Render's Secrets of Figure Creation with Poser 5. And after buying it and reading it, I wanted to kick myself black and blue for not having bought it much sooner. I could have saved myself a stupendous amount of frustration, confusion, and wasted time.
The book was fairly expensive, but it was worth every penny, and would have been worth every penny even if it had cost five times as much. Even if all it contained was an explanation of what all the "stuff" in a .CR2 file is, it would have been worth it.
The manual that came with Poser 4 was notoriously crappy. The manual that came with Poser 5 was considerably better, but it didn't give me a fraction as much useful information as B.L. Render's book did. I've recommended that book many, many times-- and I STILL recommend it. It's old and out of date, but much of the information it contains is STILL relevant and useful to anyone using Poser.
Here's the big difference: Poser's manuals are written for the end user, not for the content creator. There are many things that a content creator needs to know that an end user does not. That's what makes Render's book so valuable-- it's written for content creators.
Anyway, the bottom line is this: even if DAZ had issued a manual for DS 4, that manual would likely have been focused on end users, not on content creators. It would not have explained how to rig a figure from start to finish, because most end users don't rig figures; they just load and render them. It would not have explained how modeling for Genesis and DS4 is different from modeling for Poser-based figures, because most end users don't model stuff, they just buy it and use it. It would not have explained how to save morphs, because most end users don't create morphs. It would not have explained how to create ERC channels, because most end users don't create ERC channels and haven't the slightest interest in learning how to do so.
In short-- user manuals are usually exactly that-- manuals aimed at the end user, not at someone who really wants to go farther than that.
Here's a comparison. I have Microsoft Word. Not only is there no actual manual, but the "help" feature is woefully deficient. Even with earlier versions that had a manual-- even a real, printed manual-- there were limitations. The manual might tell how to use the "document wizard" to create a business letter-- but it didn't tell how to create an effective business letter; all it did was give you the formatting "framework." Same for PowerPoint-- the manual didn't tell you how to create an effective presentation; all it did was show how to add slides and insert captions and so forth.
What I'm saying is this: if you want to go beyond the basic, end-user stage with any software, you have to be willing to put in the time to learn the things that most end-users don't need to learn, and if necessary, you have to be willing to spend the extra time and money to obtain the knowledge that most end users don't want, don't need, and aren't willing to pay for.
I've run into that with every software program I've ever used. If, for instance, I wanted to become a real "power user" of Excel, I had to go buy a separate manual for Excel, one that went beyond the Microsoft Excel documentation that was aimed at "the typical end user." Same for WordPerfect, Same for any other software I've ever encountered.
Thanks again for pointing this out. I followed Richard's suggestion and Britney was very helpful. I now have both manuals :)
This paragraph deserves some serious emphasis. I've really gone out of my way to try and learn as much as possible about creating content and trawled through dozens of tutorials and resources alike. Guides like this one are invaluable for guiding people over a lot of the bumps which can halt their tracks if they were blindly milling through it. There's only a limited amount a user manual can tell you, but an endless wealth of knowledge can be gained from other people's experiences.
It's one of the reasons I spend so long on the forums. To gain wisdom and impart some of my own onto those who need it.
Without to interrupt this commercial thread, as i prefer to have this conversation in the other...
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/16705/P30/
I have the book (Secrets of Figure Creation with Poser 5), played from poser4 till poser 2012... and still very dislike the poser program today.
actually i never created content for poser before, (still dislike the program very hard, powerpose in studio really awesome tool)
thank God the creation of a new program called Dazstudio.
'm learning Zbrush, Silo, Modo and Maya. It's all just a hobby for me that i do in my very little free time i have.
I like the 10000's of available content you have for daz or poser figures.if i could use the genesis features in the highend versions without to re-rig or bring in all the morphs manually i probably not used studio or poser.
if you know how to model your own content, you still don't know how to use your content working in studio.
that's where a set of manuals, tutorials free or to buy would be great to have. Littlefox did a great tutorial about clothes in modo, but now with the new tools in studio... hope we get an updated version soon...
and
(that's where i like your idea Blondie, you give it a try to create those missing manuals/tutorials!!! and it's a great start! I really hope more PA's would follow in this)
at the other part to have a main studio manual that explains you all the tools in the software, sounds normal to have that?
maybe someone have to re-write the old poser book to a new today studio version.
books are getting old today, think combination of ipad/ebook/pdf with included videos to see it in action and visualize sounds better to have today.
So the PA forum exists, >:( and it's not the platinum membersection on the forum?
I always tought that i would find that kind of info about the content creation proces more in the membersection of the platinumclub. to bad it was not!
I find this view interesting, end users vs content creators. What if all users want to be content creators, if I look at DS4 1st and 2nd level menu items i see plenty of content creation functions so it would seem that end users and content creators are one and the same.
My other reference point is the Blender community, not eveyone wants to do physics, not eveyone wants to do game creation, not everyone wants to do python, but the instruction do do so is in the user manual because they are in the core program.
This is not a poke at you, i'm sure the pdf is a good read, but it is something DAZ should provide. DS4 should be considered more that a side item to a storefront.
When I very first started out (before I even knew you could buy models) I started out with a copy of Blender. Back then the online documentation on Blender was thin on the ground. I remember going to the book store to look at the huge and expensive manual and realizing that it still was not going to give me enough information to sort everything out. 7 years later there is a full online manual and tons of information, but it took a long time for that community to get to that point. And don't forget that a large portion of the blender developers come from an academic community where documentation and so forth is still part of the grade.
When I very first started out (before I even knew you could buy models) I started out with a copy of Blender. Back then the online documentation on Blender was thin on the ground. I remember going to the book store to look at the huge and expensive manual and realizing that it still was not going to give me enough information to sort everything out. 7 years later there is a full online manual and tons of information, but it took a long time for that community to get to that point. And don't forget that a large portion of the blender developers come from an academic community where documentation and so forth is still part of the grade.
Please be careful with this argument. Two wrongs do not make a right.
Perhaps Blender wasn't such a good example. Just because Blender wasn't able to get their manual right in the beginning doesn't mean that it is acceptable for DAZ to fail at putting together a manual for their software. What is important is that Blender did eventually get the manual right and that DAZ should continue to work toward providing a proper manual with all due haste.
There should not have been a need for PAs to provide information that would have been readily available in a manual. The PAs should be concentrating on new and insightful ways to use the tools and not their basic operation.
Brilliant tutorial Blondie. Thank you for taking the time to do this.
I have already sorted out problems I had with four items I was making, which I couldn't have done without it!
Well worth the money spent:-).
Thank you "3d-username" for voicing a concern that I share.
Manuals are important! I don't care who the end user is, a manual should exist and document all the features built into a product unless the product is entirely self explanatory. This whole argument about how a manual for Studio should cater to one type of end user and not another is fallacious. A manual should teach the basics and be a stepping stone to the mastery of the product no matter how the end user wishes to use said product. Period. You do not leave your end user guessing and stumbling in the dark regarding features built into a product.
votes up +5
i vote and share this full statement.
make the information available to anyone that wants to learn this and no selective club.
You can't "create" content in DAZ studio, except for poses, morphs, material presets, and the like. To create "content" such as clothing, scenery, etc., you need a modeling program, a UV mapping program (if your modeler doesn't have one), and a paint program to create textures from the UV maps. DAZ Studio is not a modeling, mapping, or painting program, so there's no reason that a manual for it would include material on those subjects, even if a manual existed.
That's what I meant when I said that a manual is written for end users, not content creators.
Poser has a manual, but it's written for end users, not content creators. A content creator needs to know far more than what's included in the Poser manual.
Anyway-- yes, there should be a manual for DAZ Studio, but there isn't. And since hashing that topic over again here isn't going to accomplish a thing, I'm going to ask that people refrain from discussing it further in this thread. This is, after all, a thread to promote my rigging manual, not a thread for complaining about the fact that DAZ hasn't produced a manual.
where can we download the manual daz content creators?
and great tutorial blondie9999.
I don't know-- you could always start a new thread: "Why Isn't There a Manual for DAZ Studio?"
ok thx
@blondie9999... Point taken.
Again, thank you for all the effort and time that went into producing your rigging manual. I really, really appreciate it! ;-)
There is no single manual for content creators. That is the problem.
You have to search around for bits of information here and there. There is the DAZ Documentaion Center (Wiki) and thankfully tutorials/manuals put together by PAs such as Blondie9999, not to mention information scattered here and there across users web sites and the DAZ Forums.
Also, I don't think there is a need to start another thread about the lack of a manual for Studio 4. There have already been several threads in the past on this topic and DAZ has responded that they are working on fleshing out a manual. It takes time and is no small task. If you feel the need to voice your opinion in a new thread or submit a support ticket voicing your disappointment at there not being a manual, however, I won't discourage you.
Edit: BTW: There is no "selective club". *wink* As has been stated, It is a myth created by a series of unfortunate events and sometimes by laziness or ignorance on the part of those seeking information on how to become content creators.
I don't think you understood what I said. There was a blender manual at that time. It was about 40 dollars and you could order it or get it at a local book store. There was little to no online documentation or tutorials and when I looked at the manual it didn't have enough information about the things I needed to know then to make spending $40 worth it. There were about 12 pages on setting up surfaces and how all of that worked in Blender for example. Nearly 8 years later there is an online manual and loads of tutorials and other documentation. But it took many years to reach that point. As far as that goes I would be happy to spend 18 dollars right now for a tutorial on painting in blender that was as easy to follow and understand as Blondie's.
Bobbie, in an earlier response you said "To clear things up—the first manual is about rigging original figures, not working with existing figures such as Genesis."
I do not have the first manual as I am not intending to produce original figures, just work with Genesis and make clothing for Genesis. I take it that I do not need the first manual in these circumstances?
@ Khory... Your post read to me as if you were arguing against the statement '3d-username' made. If this was not the case, then yes, I misunderstood what you were trying to say.
If I misunderstood you then I am sorry for the confusion. I'm afraid I very likely still don't understand fully your response to '3d-username'.
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@ Everyone... I hope my posts haven't come across as being harsh. They were not meant to be. Nor was I trying to bash the topic of there not being a Studio 4 manual all over again. I brought up the lack of a manual to make another/different point and not to dwell on the fact that it didn't exist.
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@ Blondie9999... I purposely tried to keep this response very brief in respect of your thread topic.
Heh-heh... well, the sad lack of documentation for DS4 has been a stumbling-block for everybody, including content creators.
I've been thinking that maybe I should write a manual called "The Basics of Using DS 4"....
My itemized purchased list doesn't indicate an update more recent than last September and is still a Legacy DS4 file, but it is v.1.2 rather than 1.0, so I've reset the download. Thanks for the heads-up.
First off I wanted to thank Blondie9999 for all the excellent manuals, I've been learning a lot from them!
I've been running into some issues and have some questions regarding Geo-Grafting. I've been doing a lot of trail and error and have found solutions that involve doing things contradictory to what is instructed in the manual. This concerns me, as I want to make sure I'm doing things properly in case I distribute products in the future. I'm not sure if it makes a difference but I'm working with the latest DAZ Studio (4.6.0.18), I wonder if changes were made to how Geo-Grafting works?
1. When I perform the "Set Graft Faces for fitted Figure" on the Geo-Graft, & finish the rest of the setup, the Geo-Graft does not subdivide with Genesis and the seams do not line up perfectly. If I perform the "Set Graft Faces..." on Genesis instead it usually works perfectly, the graft subdivides and is seamless with genesis.
2. When I exclude the graft loop from the Auto Hidden faces, the surfaces clash and also hard edges become visible along the graft loop. I can resolve this by including the graft loop with the Auto Hidden faces, then it blends seamlessly.
3. I don't think this was covered in the manual but I wanted to mention it because it can also cause the issue with the Geo-Graft not subdiving or aligning properly with genesis. When exporting Genesis for copying the graft loop, make sure it's Resolution is set to "Base" & that it is NOT just set to a Subdivision Level of 0 with Resolution left on high. Otherwise the vertices will not line up perfectly and it may cause issues.
I've also noticed these Issues with "From the Deep Aquatic", I have the latest update. None of the parts are lining up perfectly and they are not assuming genesis' Sub Division Level as they are supposed to. I was able to fix the head crest, the hands and the feet by doing the "Set Graft Faces..." on genesis. The ear fin graft loops seem to be aligned with Genesis set to High Resolution with the Subdivision Level of 0. So to fix them I had to redo the graft loop, that however messed up the Uvs, so I would need to snap the existing verts into place I guess.
I would greatly appreciate any feedback and would love to hear what is working for everyone. I want to make sure the solutions I found are a proper fix and that they will work consistently when distributing Geo-Grafts. I'm really concerned that Geo-Grafting might not be working consistently for everyone? I can take screen shots if it helps. I've also been discussing this on another forum with help from Richard & Hiro: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/24555
I'm adding screenshots to more clearly convey the issues. I'm really curious as to if these findings can be repeated and work consistently for other users. I'd really like to get to the bottom of this so we can setup Geo-Grafts that look good consistently for all users. Is it a bug in DAZ Studio? Has the way Geo-Grafting works changed in newer releases of DS? Or is this just the result of DAZ never being clear on how to properly work with Geo-Grafts?