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I agree that the lack of docs is frustrating.
I think everyone learns differently. I prefer documentation, personally, and I can relate to the lack of Daz documentation. I dislike buying a new product, and finding it poorly documented, or have to ask questions on how to use it,. I realize many people love using the forums to get questions answered, and I have always found them helpful when I've had to. But I still would prefer to read the documentation and answers on my own, before having to ask. I have never particularly liked asking for help. I do it- but I admit I am somewhat shy, and would rather exhaust other resources first.
I will avoid buying products if there are complaints about how to use 'em or the poor docs.
This reply is over the top, Where do you expect people to come with these questions? This is the Software makers forum and as such the RIGHT place.
It's not a dead horse if the subject is still out there no matter what you say, do you represent the corporation? You are a User just like the OP.
Honestly in your zeal to quell debate you only add fire to an already thorny subject and as to whether DAZ views this forum or participates I have seen them here quite frequently myself and see nothing wrong with this inquiry.
I'd like to watch you learning higher Mathematics or quantum Physics without any books and lecturers. Or some neurosurgery, especially from scratch. Yeah, no mentors, just experimental material under your scalpel, whatever it squeals from under the edge. Feel free, no damn books, no damn theory.
Can we dispense with the extreme straw-man arguments, please. The discussion needs to be conducted in civil tones, and to address the issues rather than anyone's perceived character flaws.
1. It is extremely unlikely that there will ever be a manual for DAZ Studio 4. It's been out too long.
2. There seems to be a market for a printed manual (or book) explaining Daz Studio.
3. It makes sense that nobody at DAZ would be interested in writing such. Daz has programmers and marketers/sales staff. Neither are qualified or interested in producing a manual nor should they be. That is probably why the wiki fizzled. It would cost money to hire a technical writer and there is no proven benefit to DAZ for paying that money for a free product.
Therefore the greatest hope is that some enterprising individual will write a book. They would have to have access to the DAZ technical staff for info and DAZ would have to be convinced that it would be in their interest to do so. Time is money.
The writer would have to be convinced that there would be enough books sold to make it worth their while. The book would have to be on DAZ 5 or it would be out of date before it was released.
I do not hold out much hope.
As much as we bemoan the lack of a manual, those are the facts as long as DAZ Studio is a free product.
Ok it's time for an end to the free software argument. Version 1 of DAZ studio was free(if you recommended it to 2 other people) and it came with an artist guide. Although it wasn't comprehensive it was more than adequate.
Don't assume anything by the moniker free as the precedence was set long ago all the way to version 3 which also had a free version available. Granted on from version 2 on you could purchase an advanced copy but both used the same guide and version 3 was more comprehensive.
Can we please defer the free argument from these discussions.
There was a call out for user expertise to contribute to a work-in-progress Daz manual back in the old forums . . . . .
As I've posted elsewhere, anyone trying to construct a manual would need at least some support from DAZ, because some of the features are really only understood by the engineers who created them. And writing a good manual is a professional skill of its own.
I would prefer that customers with functioning logins, e.g. with a working credit card or paypal account, could directly edit the manual on the wiki. I think we could get a lot done that way. But DAZ had some bad experiences with the "ArtZone" wiki before they shut it down, so I don't think they're about to open up the documentation wiki again. :(
I think what's important is that DAZ Studio is meant to be an entry-level program, and it's given away free for the express purpose of getting new people interested in 3D so that they will hopefully become DAZ customers. I mean, it's not just out of the goodness of their hearts, correct?
Therefore, if people try DS4 and DON'T become customers, then it's fair to say that it's at least partially failed in it's purpose as far as those particular individuals are concerned, right?
So, with that in mind, whether some people can learn to use the program without a manual, can find the info on the forums, internet, or by praying to higher powers, is really besides the point for as long as there are also a significant number of other people that DO have problems. Because, in the end, those are people who will end up buying less DAZ product.
And less DAZ product bought = less dollars for new product development = not as much good new stuff for everybody.
It's not really a hard chain of logic to follow. The fact is that none of the players in this industry are doing as well as they could be, but by embracing Genesis DAZ has really made it an imperative that people learn and use DAZ Studio to some extent in order to use the majority of the company's future product..
So, when I repeatedly steer people towards DAZ Studio, because it's good and free, and instead they end up paying for Poser or iClone, switching to Blender or whatever, successfully, and frequently blame DAZ's lack of documentation as a key reason for giving up on it, then that's an issue that ultimately affects the entire DS user base in the simplest, most basic way: less new content and fewer software upgrades.
(And honestly, if I knew enough about DS4 to write an e-book, I'd do it in a heartbeat, as without physcial printing and storage costs to deal with, it's bound to be fairly profitable. Unfortunately, I know just enough to know how much I don't know and how bad that book would be...)
Well I am getting pretty good at organizing content, so you can count me in on helping in that aspect, but for most anything else, I am lost.
Yikes! If people are finding Blender easier to use than DS, that really says something!
(And I agree with everything else you said.)
Yikes! If people are finding Blender easier to use than DS, that really says something!
(And I agree with everything else you said.)
I tried Blender, like I said, I tried. Not very user friendly. I use Autocad on a daily basis, extremely friendly software.
The lack of documentation and the fact that each update is an entirely new version with a new, less intuitive interface, ds has no place in any of my computers. Blender may not be the most user friendly interface, but once you have a list of the hotkeys, it's easier to learn and does much more. The only certainty with ds is about the time you learn the interface, the next update you can start all over.
Here are some links for folks wanting to get a start on figuring things out. I'm hoping DAZ puts what they have in these and other updated info into a PDF file. It sounds like where they went wrong is making a Wiki that takes a lot of drilling down to find stuff when users seem to want something they can print out and look at when not online
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/userguide/start
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/start
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/videos/start
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF26E7AB601772F0A
Also, another tip I often give to even non-noobs… use Google! e.g., search term site:daz3d.com
and for older stuff - search term site:forumarchive.daz3d.com
I use that instead of the forum search most of the time.
Note: the forumarchive site is on an older server and takes a while to load but it does load.
To see images that no longer display in posts because the URL changed, just copy and paste the link starting postimage with http://forumarchive.daz3d.com/ in front
And for folks wondering about render settings, Adam's great tips and script which will help you get to where you want to go with your renders in less time:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/16085/
This is why I really wish there was a reference manual. It's easy enough to find tutorials, YouTube videos, etc. on basic concepts and some specific advanced tasks. But I'm the kind of person who reads a reference manual from cover to cover, because I want to know about the features I didn't even know I wanted to know about. It's good to learn from other experienced people, but I don't necessarily want to be limited by their preconceptions or by what features they find useful. I want to be able to exploit settings in new ways based on precise definitions of what they do and how they work, and not be limited to using features in the same way everybody else has thought of using them by copying their tutorials, or tinkering without knowing if the feature I'm tinkering with is even capable of what I'm trying to do.
One example I have for why I would really like a manual is the smoothing modifier settings (weight, secondary weight, lock distance, and length influence). There appears to be a grand total of one forum post on the entire Internet that mentions all of these settings, and it boils down to "fiddle with these settings and it might improve the results, sometimes". Which is understandable, since it was another end user just trying to be helpful. But somebody at DAZ decided it would be useful to add all these settings to the smoothing modifier, yet there isn't even a hint to the end user as to what any of them actually do. I don't need tutorials or examples of how to use them. I just want a straight-forward definition and explanation of how each of these settings affects the smoothing function. How can I plan when and how to use these settings to their full potential without even a rudimentary explanation of what they are supposed to do?
I just find it strange that DAZ would create these powerful tools and then not think it is worthwhile to provide an explanation of the more advanced features. If I created a powerful software tool, I'd want to explain all of the features in such excruciating detail that you'd have a hard time shutting me up about them.
Beginner's tutorials written by users can't be expected to cover every time-saving hint and feature, either. Three years into using DAZ Studio, I finally realized by accident that you can copy and paste the transform, rotation, and scale settings from one object to another just by clicking CTRL-C and CTRL-V, like a word processor. Never thought to try it, certainly never saw it mentioned anywhere, but would have saved a lot of clicks along the way if I had known about it. A reference-style manual would make things like this obvious, but who would think to explain something like this in a tutorial?
Not trying to sound condescending and I can understanding wanting to know what these do, but did the thought of trying the sliders to see what they did first and make note of it so you can "plan" for next time ever come into play? I never understood deformers till i saw what each slider did and now they are a no brainer.
it was not free at launch time, remember?
I am still searching for answers why it's been made free, that is another story.
guess near future versions (specially the pro version) will not be free, as soon the new platform is up & running out of beta.
it is free now to discover.
the last thing i want is another rush clone program like poser.
I bought poser pro 2012 (my biggest mistake) never update it again,
i saved my money and bought me a version of modo (it's great).
learn any program with only test and try with no good documentation (frustrated not?)
it can chase people away to use these software for a longer time and never look back.
only if you have lots of free time and no job may be.
Time is very important these days,
time that many people no longer have today, because of jobs, kids,....
the world wide crisis, people have to think twice to spend $$$.
Maybe this will help? http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/9823/
Not trying to sound condescending and I can understanding wanting to know what these do, but did the thought of trying the sliders to see what they did first and make note of it so you can "plan" for next time ever come into play? I never understood deformers till i saw what each slider did and now they are a no brainer.
It really isn't obvious what the sliders do in many situations. When I write tutorials, I spend a lot of my time building a good test scene that will be able to illustrate clearly what each of the settings do. Furthermore, having every user have to fiddle with each of the settings on their own is hugely inefficient. Even if they share what they find on the forum, many other users will never see that and will still be left with trial and error.
It really would be best for everyone to have a full-time tech writer embedded with the developers, documenting everything as it's developed. Just imagine all the cool innovative uses people would have come up with on the forum if the basics were already documented! I really don't understand why anyone would argue against this, other than recognizing that DAZ doesn't seem to have the funds to do it.
Not trying to sound condescending and I can understanding wanting to know what these do, but did the thought of trying the sliders to see what they did first and make note of it so you can "plan" for next time ever come into play? I never understood deformers till i saw what each slider did and now they are a no brainer.
Yes, I have played with these dials and tried to figure out what they do. I'm not saying there's no value to experimentation, or that you can learn every aspect of something from a manual without trying it for yourself. In this case, experimentation didn't help much. The results were either so subtle I couldn't determine what had changed, or they quickly made a mess of the mesh. Maybe the smoothing modifier dials aren't very useful after all, or maybe they are only usable in a limited set of circumstances. A basic reference should be available to at least answer what the developers intended for the dials to do, even if it didn't get into the level of specificity that I would prefer.
In some cases, trial and error is sufficient to get a working knowledge of how something works (I actually had a similar experience to what you described with deformers). But I think the real "a-ha!" moments come from knowing what the intent of a feature is, and then experimenting to see how it works in practice. Experimenting with minimal knowledge of the intent of each feature may be an interesting intellectual exercise, and discovering something on your own can be rewarding and fun. If an alien handed me a box, I'd love to try to reverse engineer it to figure out what it does and how it does it. But it's not the ideal path to mastering complex and powerful software.
Maybe this will help? http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/9823/
Thank you, but unfortunately the only sliders I see being discussed there are the ones that are fairly well "documented" by the user base. I at least have a working knowledge of those dials (although good documentation from the developers might reveal other aspects of these settings). I was specifically referring to weight, secondary weight, lock distance, and length influence.
Thoreandan, those sliders are only visible if Show Hidden is checked. Having experimented with them I came to the conclusion they where hidden because they are not something that should be changed. The values are what DAZ's techies have determined to work with the majority of meshes.
Just a reminder not to turn this into another app war - the issue is documentation for DAZ Studio, while there may be occasion to mention other applications we don't need an argument over their relative merits.
I understand your situation.
One of the main reasons I think documentation is important, probably moreso with 3D applications is the effect might not be noticeable until rendered (which can be a long process).
I still don't use some functions and found the "hunt and peck" method eating up too much of my time.
Yep, just a little explanation as to what this does, when to use it and what to be careful of would certainly help.
I know what you mean, I'm in the group of read first then learn crowd and learning new things every time I open Studio, I hate just stumbling along like that and I don't have the time or patience to Google without knowing that EXACT name of a function or feature to put in the search engine. Be nice if it was all in one place with no need to search or even go online at all.
Speaking of Manuals the Bryce 7 Artist guide is about as detailed and informative than any Reference I have ever used at 1,312 PAGES. It goes deeper into the program magnificently and is quite thorough.
If DAZ can produce that Manual they are surely capable of producing one for Studio(although they had a head start with Bryce when they purchased the rights to it, if they did that in house, KUDO's!!). Come on DAZ I'm pulling for ya to pull this one off when possible.
Looks like this could be used as a starting point:
http://3d.wikia.com/wiki/Daz_Studio
What do we want for main topic areas?
Hmm, it seems like I was JUST posting about this in another forum.. it's deja vu all over again. ;) After much searching and hunting and asking and begging and combing and research and... well, you get the idea... I DID find out that there WAS a 3.0 manual. So here's the question... how much of that is actually applicable to the version we have now? Some? A little bit? An eensty bit? More than that? What?