How do I rename, stick together and save elements?

odastein

Is there a way to give a new name to elements when I'm making a scene? For instance, I make a prop whose parts are called : cylinder, cylinder (2), plane, etc... and I'd rather have them be "handle", " prong", etc... Or I modify a figure I use in the scene, and I'd rather have it be "John G8" or "long nosed elderly G8" than "Genesis 8 (2)" for future reference.

Second, how do I make elements stick together? I can put them all in a group that I name the way I want, put if I click on the wrong part, then my book cover or my wall will move separately from the rest. It happens often and it's a bit annoying. So, how do I make sure that DAZ Studio will see the assembled elements as a single item?

Finally, how do I save something, like a figure or a prop to be included in my library for future use? That's a pretty basic question I guess, but until now, I've been saving these things as "subset scenes" that I merge with the current scene when needed, and it's a quite inefficient way to proceed.

Thanks in advance.

Syrus_Dante

1. give a new name to elements

In the Scene pane you can simply click an already selected item a second time to rename it in place. This does change the so called Node Label but every node like a figure a bone or a prop has its internal name and a user facing label. To change both the label and the name use the Joint Editor tool select the item and right-click the viewport, in the menu choose Edit>Rename Node. With a genesis figure I would only change the label not the internal name who knows what issues it could lead to if you change the name.

 

2. how do I make elements stick together?

At first I would say you can't make your assembled elements a single selectable item as you described it with "stick together".

Otherwise you could export them all together in an OBJ file and import them again this would combine all elements to a single selectable object. The downside is you can't manipulate the individual elements anymore they will be all static also the shader settings gets lost and have to get reapplied. Other issues not mentioned may occure.

Make all elements "unselectable" and get used to select the group you made from the Scene pane would be a more practical solution I guess.

There is a way to prevent you from selecting the individual parts in the viewport by accidently clicking on them by turning the Selectable property off. You can do this by clicking on the cursor icon right behind the eye icon in the Scene pane. Or you select all of the items at once in the Scene pane and in the Parameters pane there is the Selectable On/Off button in the Display>Scene View section that does the same as the Scene pane icon. To turn the Selectable property off for all selected items some settings have to be set in the Parameters pane Option Menu. Consolidate Properties On and Display Seperate Items Off - see the screenshot.

 

3. how do I save something?

You may already know in the menu File>Save As or in the Content Library pane save button menu you will find various Presets you can choose from. Honestly it took quiet some time to understand the purpose of all of them and some I never used.

The example save a figure or prop is very vague but I try to explan it anyway. If you have set up a character you can save a Character Preset that will include all Shape and Material/Shader settings. If you want to save all clothing, hair or even parented props like a sword in the hand that belong to the character save a WearAble Preset. But before you save a WearAble Preset the figure that "wears" the items have to be selected. Then the save options will let you choose what to include in the WearAble Preset.

For Props I would stick with saving them as Scene SubSets. Ofcourse there is an option in File>Save As>Support Asset>Figure/Prop Asset this is meant for saving self made content as a Product to the library.

odastein

Wow! Thank you a lot for this long and detailed explanation. 

 

However, regarding the point 2) , I don't know how to export stuff in an OBJ file. But from 3) it seems that "save as support asset" would do the trick better, no? Will saving in this way keep the shaders? 

Roman_K2

It should be fairly self-explanatory. At the top left of DAZ Studio there is "File, Edit, Create, Tools..." and so on.

Under "File" choose Export; it's the fourth choice from the bottom. So click two or more things and group them, or Export them individually. I would suggest creating a new folder for the exported items - choose a name that will help you to remember that this was were you put "your first exported objects in early 2019" sort of thing.

Very often exporting as .OBJ will cause you to lose stuff like your custom surface settings if any, not to mention available morph controls. Soooo... I'm not 100% sure but overall it's probably best to keep things as a scene or subset. For example on my copy of DAZ Studio 4.8 here my personal things (like the piece of pasta) are up in the top left corner of the "Content Library". I mean who can forget the "macaroni"... that was a great prop and so on, etc. etc.

Remember that you can always "merge" two of these basic scenes together... or "merge" something you have on file into the scene you are working on at any given moment.