What features would you like to see appear in dazstudio 5?

jdfox

Silver Dolphin said:

Bigger icons and text so people with vision problems can see what they are doing.

And a sensible colour scheme - something like DS3.  It shouldn't necessarily look pretty. You should be able to use the program for long periods without eye strain.

SpottedKitty

jdfox said:

And a sensible colour scheme - something like DS3.  It shouldn't necessarily look pretty. You should be able to use the program for long periods without eye strain.

Very yes. I was never able to understand the explanations we were given at the time D|S4.0 came out as to why we could never have the option of a colour Style like the D|S3 Classic — it seemed to be almost grudgingly we were given Darkside, and it was close but never felt quite the same. In fact a lot of niggly little UI details changed in such a bad way from 3 to 4 that it put me off getting used to 4's foibles for a long time.

There are still a lot of things I'm actually more comfortable doing in 3 than in 4. For just one constantly-annoying instance, using the mouse scroll wheel in the Content/Parameters/Surfaces tabs to scroll down a long list. In D|S3 it works exactly the same as in Windows and every other program I have installed on my computer, scrolling in discrete little <clunk-clunk-clunk>s. Try the same in D|S4, scrolling one wheel click, and the list goes wheeeeeeeeeeee and 90% of the time zooms right past the thing I was looking for. Please don't everyone tell me it's supposed to work like that and everyone else likes it...

Silver Dolphin

How about a bridge for Daz studio and Carrara Pro. I really like the instancing and built in landscape in Carrara Pro 8 but want to use them via bridge to daz studio iray rendering engine. Daz has a paid plugin for instancing but it is not as good as Carrara Pro. Instancing like it works in Carrara would be a boon for New Daz Studio 5.

IceDragonArt

SpottedKitty said:

In D|S3 it works exactly the same as in Windows and every other program I have installed on my computer, scrolling in discrete little <clunk-clunk-clunk>s. Try the same in D|S4, scrolling one wheel click, and the list goes wheeeeeeeeeeee and 90% of the time zooms right past the thing I was looking for. Please don't everyone tell me it's supposed to work like that and everyone else likes it...

Now that you mention it I hate that.  I spend a lot of time trying to land on what I am trying to land on.

AlienRenders

Finally fix selections in the scene tab. I know, I know. I ask a lot.

 

aaráribel caađo

A bridge for Modo Indie would transform my experience massively. GoZ is great, but Zbrush is outside of my budget. Modo Indie fits nicely with room to spare and offers me a even more options. I suspect a bridge would be a huge win for the Foundry, too, since I suspect I'm far from alone in wanting some brush-based tools for fitting fixes, etc., but who can't afford Zbrush or who don't like the quirky interface.

aaráribel caađo

This has probably been mentioned before, but I'd really like to be able to lock a camera so it doesn't move when when looking through it in the viewport. I sometimes forget that I'm in my camera set-up, move to check on something (or accidentally click the center button), and my shot set-up is gone. If you've got too many figures to fit into memory for render, so render them out in passes (via the spot render tool), a shift in camera can be a disaster, especially since undo doesn't undo it.

Petercat

SpottedKitty said:

Petercat said:

A way to rename characters in the Scene tab so that they are not Genesis (1), Genesis (2), etc.

Right click on the name in the Scene tab, select Rename from the dropdown menu.

Alternatively, click twice to directly select the name for changing. Note, not a fast double-click, that's "open to see sub-parts" — click, pause a second, then click again. Exactly the same way as you'd do it in a Windows Explorer window.

Note that the object name in the Parameter tab doesn't immediately show a name change, you must select something else, then re-select your renamed object to see the change.

Thank you, "Rename" doesn't show in the drop-down menu, but clicking twice did it! Is there a way to do this so that character will always load with that name? I re-use a lot of characters (webcomic).

Petercat

Richard Haseltine said:

Petercat said:

I'll add this:

A way to "change parent" for more than one item at a time. Sometimes I want multiple items to move together, and parenting them individually to one main item can be pretty tedious. For example, if I want all of my characters to load in a certain place, I have to parent everything in the scene to the ground and then move the ground so that the place that I want to load them is at the center, which can take a lot of time.

Drag-and-drop in the Scene pane works, I'm not sure why the command in the Edit menu doesn't but would think it was a bug.

I don't understand. Drag-and-drop? How would I do that? And Edit-Object-Change Parent doesn't do anything if multiple items are selected in the Scene pane.

namffuak

Petercat said:

SpottedKitty said:

Petercat said:

A way to rename characters in the Scene tab so that they are not Genesis (1), Genesis (2), etc.

Right click on the name in the Scene tab, select Rename from the dropdown menu.

Alternatively, click twice to directly select the name for changing. Note, not a fast double-click, that's "open to see sub-parts" — click, pause a second, then click again. Exactly the same way as you'd do it in a Windows Explorer window.

Note that the object name in the Parameter tab doesn't immediately show a name change, you must select something else, then re-select your renamed object to see the change.

Thank you, "Rename" doesn't show in the drop-down menu, but clicking twice did it! Is there a way to do this so that character will always load with that name? I re-use a lot of characters (webcomic).

Save the renamed character as a character preset or a scene subset.

Petercat

Wonderland said:

Again, a comprehensive detailed manual with all the bells and whistles with screenshots. Even things like how to create your own slider for a character, or how to save characters for redistribution. Also Mac user instructions included.  I've tried to watch the video tutorials but I like to watch on my iPad and the font size on the menus is too small to see in the videos and everyone has a different UI set up so I have no idea what is actually being clicked and I'd like something I can refer back to easily rather than remembering where in the video tutorial it was. Also hand and face cameras as part of the UI. A way to have parameter limits off by default instead of having to uncheck them individually each time. (Which may already be possible but without a manual I have no idea if it is.) Roll over pop ups wth everything in the menus explaining what it does in layman terms briefly with a link explaining more about it. I'd add more but I'm still learning the program and don't even know what I don't know yet to change because half of the usability of the program seems to be a well hidden secret and you have to dig deep to find out what everything actually does and you don't find out till later that some products you paid quite a bit for, you could have done yourself in minutes if you knew the program was capable of doing that i.e.: saving autofit clones... So, yeah, mostly a complete user friendly users manual with step by step screenshots and a lot of visual references when dealing with shaders, Iray and lighting, showing visually the differences each setting makes. Detailed instructions for the advanced capabilities, sub-d, geographs, shader baking, and so many things I haven't even found yet but I see mentioned in the forums by advanced users. I don't even understand what half the things are that people are requesting here, but I'd like to know what they are, what they do and how to use them. I feel like DS is part of a secret elite club and you have to go on a scavenger hunt to figure out how to get in... I suggested before in another thread, maybe making a manual available on Amazon if Daz wants to make money on it and is afraid of piracy of a PDF.  I have spent a lot of money on products, I would certainly pay for a manual on how to actually use them to their full capacity, I'd even buy a hard copy if that was available... If the program is expanding and adding more bells and whistles, great! But please have a way new users can actually learn the program. Thanks.

Yes!

Richard Haseltine could probably write the manual himself, given a year or so. Hey, Richard, start a Kickstarter! I'd buy in!

Petercat

aaráribel caađo said:

This has probably been mentioned before, but I'd really like to be able to lock a camera so it doesn't move when when looking through it in the viewport. I sometimes forget that I'm in my camera set-up, move to check on something (or accidentally click the center button), and my shot set-up is gone. If you've got too many figures to fit into memory for render, so render them out in passes (via the spot render tool), a shift in camera can be a disaster, especially since undo doesn't undo it.

Click on your camera in the Scene tab, go to the Parameters tab, >General, and move the cursor to each Translate and Rotate tab in turn, clicking on the little unlocked padlocks to lock that particular movement. You really only have to  lock the first six, the Move and Rotate parameters.

Petercat

namffuak said:

Petercat said:

SpottedKitty said:

Petercat said:

A way to rename characters in the Scene tab so that they are not Genesis (1), Genesis (2), etc.

Right click on the name in the Scene tab, select Rename from the dropdown menu.

Alternatively, click twice to directly select the name for changing. Note, not a fast double-click, that's "open to see sub-parts" — click, pause a second, then click again. Exactly the same way as you'd do it in a Windows Explorer window.

Note that the object name in the Parameter tab doesn't immediately show a name change, you must select something else, then re-select your renamed object to see the change.

Thank you, "Rename" doesn't show in the drop-down menu, but clicking twice did it! Is there a way to do this so that character will always load with that name? I re-use a lot of characters (webcomic).

Save the renamed character as a character preset or a scene subset.

Thank you. That will be a great help in keeping my people straight. Is there a way to do that for my existing saved characters, without calling everyone up in DS? I have hundreds of the little darlins'...

namffuak

Petercat said:

namffuak said:

Petercat said:

SpottedKitty said:

Petercat said:

A way to rename characters in the Scene tab so that they are not Genesis (1), Genesis (2), etc.

Right click on the name in the Scene tab, select Rename from the dropdown menu.

Alternatively, click twice to directly select the name for changing. Note, not a fast double-click, that's "open to see sub-parts" — click, pause a second, then click again. Exactly the same way as you'd do it in a Windows Explorer window.

Note that the object name in the Parameter tab doesn't immediately show a name change, you must select something else, then re-select your renamed object to see the change.

Thank you, "Rename" doesn't show in the drop-down menu, but clicking twice did it! Is there a way to do this so that character will always load with that name? I re-use a lot of characters (webcomic).

Save the renamed character as a character preset or a scene subset.

Thank you. That will be a great help in keeping my people straight. Is there a way to do that for my existing saved characters, without calling everyone up in DS? I have hundreds of the little darlins'...

I've never looked at that - but I suppose you could uncompress the .duf file and edit it -- check one you've saved to see what entry to change. But overall, I'd say load/rename/save in studio would take about the same time . . .

make3dcomics

I would like to see better content management. Specifically I would like to be able to see all clothing/accessories/props in the same smart content window as all the other newer content that I have. I'm not sure if this was already stated but a feature like that would make DAZs workflow all the more streamlined.

mtl1

DAZ_Spooky said:

mtl1 said:

A non-spherical D-Former with the ability to change the strength of the effect as a function of the D-Former radius aside from the default :(

It already exists. Change it to weight mapping. 

O_O is there a tutorial for this?

marble

aaráribel caađo said:

A bridge for Modo Indie would transform my experience massively. GoZ is great, but Zbrush is outside of my budget. Modo Indie fits nicely with room to spare and offers me a even more options. I suspect a bridge would be a huge win for the Foundry, too, since I suspect I'm far from alone in wanting some brush-based tools for fitting fixes, etc., but who can't afford Zbrush or who don't like the quirky interface.

I read this and thought "Modo Indie, now that looks interesting" but a search revealed it is only available on Steam. Instant no for me. I'll just keep repeating the mantra: Bridge for Blender.

Silver Dolphin

marble said:

aaráribel caađo said:

A bridge for Modo Indie would transform my experience massively. GoZ is great, but Zbrush is outside of my budget. Modo Indie fits nicely with room to spare and offers me a even more options. I suspect a bridge would be a huge win for the Foundry, too, since I suspect I'm far from alone in wanting some brush-based tools for fitting fixes, etc., but who can't afford Zbrush or who don't like the quirky interface.

I read this and thought "Modo Indie, now that looks interesting" but a search revealed it is only available on Steam. Instant no for me. I'll just keep repeating the mantra: Bridge for Blender.

Wow, a Blender bridge would be great but I don't think Daz wants anything to do with opensource software. Carrara belongs to daz and they don't have a bridge for it. Hexagon bridge works but Hex is 32bit only.

maclean

SpottedKitty said:

There are still a lot of things I'm actually more comfortable doing in 3 than in 4. For just one constantly-annoying instance, using the mouse scroll wheel in the Content/Parameters/Surfaces tabs to scroll down a long list. In D|S3 it works exactly the same as in Windows and every other program I have installed on my computer, scrolling in discrete little <clunk-clunk-clunk>s. Try the same in D|S4, scrolling one wheel click, and the list goes wheeeeeeeeeeee and 90% of the time zooms right past the thing I was looking for. Please don't everyone tell me it's supposed to work like that and everyone else likes it...

That's been another major irritation for me for a long time now. I've mentioned it before, but no one else seemed to consider it an issue. I was beginning to think I was the only one who had an uncontrollable scroll function.

RobotHeadArt

aaráribel caađo said:

This has probably been mentioned before, but I'd really like to be able to lock a camera so it doesn't move when when looking through it in the viewport. I sometimes forget that I'm in my camera set-up, move to check on something (or accidentally click the center button), and my shot set-up is gone. If you've got too many figures to fit into memory for render, so render them out in passes (via the spot render tool), a shift in camera can be a disaster, especially since undo doesn't undo it.

You can lock the camera to prevent this.  Select the camera, go to parameters, click the padlock icon that is to the left of the gear icon on X Translate, Y Translate, Z Translate, X Rotate, Y Rotate, and Z Rotate.  Now the camera will not move when looking through it.  There might be a way to script this but I haven't looked at the API.  If you can, it would then be possible to create a script that you could bind to a custom action and put it on a toolbar.

Richard Haseltine

Petercat said:

Richard Haseltine said:

Petercat said:

I'll add this:

A way to "change parent" for more than one item at a time. Sometimes I want multiple items to move together, and parenting them individually to one main item can be pretty tedious. For example, if I want all of my characters to load in a certain place, I have to parent everything in the scene to the ground and then move the ground so that the place that I want to load them is at the center, which can take a lot of time.

Drag-and-drop in the Scene pane works, I'm not sure why the command in the Edit menu doesn't but would think it was a bug.

I don't understand. Drag-and-drop? How would I do that? And Edit-Object-Change Parent doesn't do anything if multiple items are selected in the Scene pane.

Select the items, click on one of them in the Scene pane and drag it onto the Scene pane listing of the thing you want to parent the selected items to.

Richard Haseltine

aaráribel caađo said:

A bridge for Modo Indie would transform my experience massively. GoZ is great, but Zbrush is outside of my budget. Modo Indie fits nicely with room to spare and offers me a even more options. I suspect a bridge would be a huge win for the Foundry, too, since I suspect I'm far from alone in wanting some brush-based tools for fitting fixes, etc., but who can't afford Zbrush or who don't like the quirky interface.

As far as I recall modo Indie doesn't support plug-ins which would put the kibosh on that.

DAZ_Spooky

Wonderland said:

Again, a comprehensive detailed manual with all the bells and whistles with screenshots. Even things like how to create your own slider for a character, or how to save characters for redistribution. Also Mac user instructions included.  I've tried to watch the video tutorials but I like to watch on my iPad and the font size on the menus is too small to see in the videos and everyone has a different UI set up so I have no idea what is actually being clicked and I'd like something I can refer back to easily rather than remembering where in the video tutorial it was. Also hand and face cameras as part of the UI. A way to have parameter limits off by default instead of having to uncheck them individually each time. (Which may already be possible but without a manual I have no idea if it is.) Roll over pop ups wth everything in the menus explaining what it does in layman terms briefly with a link explaining more about it. I'd add more but I'm still learning the program and don't even know what I don't know yet to change because half of the usability of the program seems to be a well hidden secret and you have to dig deep to find out what everything actually does and you don't find out till later that some products you paid quite a bit for, you could have done yourself in minutes if you knew the program was capable of doing that i.e.: saving autofit clones... So, yeah, mostly a complete user friendly users manual with step by step screenshots and a lot of visual references when dealing with shaders, Iray and lighting, showing visually the differences each setting makes. Detailed instructions for the advanced capabilities, sub-d, geographs, shader baking, and so many things I haven't even found yet but I see mentioned in the forums by advanced users. I don't even understand what half the things are that people are requesting here, but I'd like to know what they are, what they do and how to use them. I feel like DS is part of a secret elite club and you have to go on a scavenger hunt to figure out how to get in... I suggested before in another thread, maybe making a manual available on Amazon if Daz wants to make money on it and is afraid of piracy of a PDF.  I have spent a lot of money on products, I would certainly pay for a manual on how to actually use them to their full capacity, I'd even buy a hard copy if that was available... If the program is expanding and adding more bells and whistles, great! But please have a way new users can actually learn the program. Thanks.

When was the last time you looked at the docs here? http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/start

 

More gets added on a regular basis. 

Mythmaker

After some hours re-familiarizing myself inside DS, even found a few happy old & new posing anim gems, am getting a feel of an imbalance: the weirdly absent 'environmental physicality'. 

I missed the whole 4.8/ 4.9 Iray revolution/ Genesis 3, only just catching up...

The recent YT vidoes for example showed Genesis 1/2/3 not only pose well but animation ready too! Amazing Genesis deserve a DS floor they could do their fun & sexy IK FK moves on! 

Physical photorealisitc system deserve actual lively physical physssssiques colliding against physical reality! 

Petercat

Richard Haseltine said:

Petercat said:

Richard Haseltine said:

Petercat said:

I'll add this:

A way to "change parent" for more than one item at a time. Sometimes I want multiple items to move together, and parenting them individually to one main item can be pretty tedious. For example, if I want all of my characters to load in a certain place, I have to parent everything in the scene to the ground and then move the ground so that the place that I want to load them is at the center, which can take a lot of time.

Drag-and-drop in the Scene pane works, I'm not sure why the command in the Edit menu doesn't but would think it was a bug.

I don't understand. Drag-and-drop? How would I do that? And Edit-Object-Change Parent doesn't do anything if multiple items are selected in the Scene pane.

Select the items, click on one of them in the Scene pane and drag it onto the Scene pane listing of the thing you want to parent the selected items to.

Ahhh... Thank you. I'll try that.

kyoto kid

..the ability  to select and change the resolution of textures from within the programme rather than having to do it in a 2D app.

Petercat

Richard Haseltine said:

Petercat said:

Richard Haseltine said:

Petercat said:

I'll add this:

A way to "change parent" for more than one item at a time. Sometimes I want multiple items to move together, and parenting them individually to one main item can be pretty tedious. For example, if I want all of my characters to load in a certain place, I have to parent everything in the scene to the ground and then move the ground so that the place that I want to load them is at the center, which can take a lot of time.

Drag-and-drop in the Scene pane works, I'm not sure why the command in the Edit menu doesn't but would think it was a bug.

I don't understand. Drag-and-drop? How would I do that? And Edit-Object-Change Parent doesn't do anything if multiple items are selected in the Scene pane.

Select the items, click on one of them in the Scene pane and drag it onto the Scene pane listing of the thing you want to parent the selected items to.

Finally remembered to try this, and it worked beautifully. Thanks, Richard!

Now if I don't forget...

nonesuch00

I would like the renderer interface changed to work like one of those Point & Shoot prosumer cameras. There would be two layers of prosumer camera UI - one for consumers that bought it to make nice pictures.

As part of that capability DAZ Studio would need to come with a 24/7 daytime - nighttime, seasonal, hemispheric, weather HRDI simulation system that let one configure the date, time, and weather, and sky (moon phase and such things) for a 'camera shoot'. Preferbly the the UI for such a thing would be made comsumer centric with an underlying more expert profession UI settings. The skies rendered then would be procedural.

eg -

1. you select landscape and the camera changes to take a picture of your viewport according to how you selected in the viewport with the camera viewfinder...

2. you select nighttime scenery and the camera changes to take a picture of your viewport...

3. you select macro

4. you select portrait

5. you select action / sports

6. you select soft-skin portrait

7. and so on...consumer style camera presets...

and so on. The mouse cursor acts like the focus on subject cross-hair in a camera viewfinder.

Underneath that UI is the access to professional style camera settings like F-Stop and a bunch of things I don't know anything about.

Underneath that would be the choice of render engine that the was most appropriate for the texture set being used. This layer would mostly be inconsequential and invisible to 3D novices like myself. The results would depend on the 'prosumer camera settings' and the 'time, date, weather settings' and not the render engine.

outrider42

kyoto kid said:

..the ability  to select and change the resolution of textures from within the programme rather than having to do it in a 2D app.

Absolutely. I think somebody is working on this, but it really should be in Daz from the start. 

Also, for iray to be able split between vram and ram, as well as multiple gpu configurations. It is ridiculous that iray drops to cpu mode when exceeding vram. And iray is super wasteful with memory as it is. Iray should also be able to discard pixels that are not in the picture, like an engine inside a car. I don't know how much control Daz has over that, since, you know, they have to license it from a 3rd party. Just like people are waiting on iray drivers for the 1000 series. Honestly, I really wish Daz could just develop their own physical based renderer, or maybe they could buy one outright so they could have full control over how it works. That would make some Iray people mad, but if it is better than Iray...

Daz needs built in tools to get people up and going faster. How about a Community Uploads section for preset settings built INTO the program? It would be a great excuse to push Daz Connect as well, lol. TOTALLY OPTIONAL (so not to freak out long time users afraid of change,) this would allow people to download and try settings that other users upload, such as lighting and skin, which are constantly debated and discussed here. Obviously, no one setting is universal, we all know that, but being able to get a jump start on things is something Daz should strive for. All light needs to be in ONE single place, like what V3Digitimes Iray Light Manager Pro does, but it should be built in. Perhaps Daz could buy his product outright since it is great. It wouldn't be the first time such a thing happened.

Usability is something worth stressing. Being a free program, the best way to grow is to make show that people who try your free program fall in love with it. Great tutorials are a must (and I am happy to see the video tutorials that popped up recently,) but the program needs to be easy to use right off the bat. That first impression is so important. Ease of use would make Daz ever more popular, and all the PA's a lot richer. Daz is decently easy in some ways, but oh so maddening in others. This means, among other things, better tool tips. It should be possible to click a help button on every single setting that Daz throws at you, from morphs, to lights, to cameras, you get the idea. I am no photographer, so those settings that refer to cameras sometimes confuse me. I could look them up, but would it be nice if just hovering mouse over the setting name gave me a tool tip that reminded what this or that is? Or exactly what increasing a certain setting does.

Daz could also use some built in features for rigging imported objects easier. And it should be possible to add plugins for Daz to accept objects rigged in other programs that don't use Daz standards, like games. This might sound like a wild idea, but this is something that could draw more people to Daz.

Iray pixel fill mode. What is that? How many times have you got to 90% convergence and just wished Iray could just get those last few pixels? This can do that. Once you get to a desired convergence, you can click this option. What then happens is the engine seeks out the specific pixels that have not filled yet, and then use the surrounding pixels to approximate a pixel to fill it. Its sort of like downsampling but you're doing it inside Daz. I know I'm dreaming here.

Something like nvidia hairworks, but for Daz. Hair tech in Daz has not changed in years. Its time.

Taoz

Ice Dragon Art said:

SpottedKitty said:

In D|S3 it works exactly the same as in Windows and every other program I have installed on my computer, scrolling in discrete little <clunk-clunk-clunk>s. Try the same in D|S4, scrolling one wheel click, and the list goes wheeeeeeeeeeee and 90% of the time zooms right past the thing I was looking for. Please don't everyone tell me it's supposed to work like that and everyone else likes it...

Now that you mention it I hate that.  I spend a lot of time trying to land on what I am trying to land on.

You can adjust that under Control Panel > Mouse > Wheel tab. Default is 3, try 2 or 1. If you have a special mouse driver you may have to change the setting there.

Though it might be handy if you could alter the setting from within DS, e.g. if you press ctrl while scrolling it will used an alternative, user defined setting, so you can scroll at another speed when you need it.