The Complete Guide to DAZ Studio 4, great idea, but probably again just to basic...
Fixme12
Posts: 589
New daz book
you can find it on amazon, by Paolo Ciccone
What you will learn from this book:
Pose human figures in a natural and believable way
Use morphs to create new characters and install new content in DAZ Studio
Understand the building blocks of a 3D model and modify the DAZ Studio materials
Build a complete scene, with a character in a full environment
Frame your shot and use the camera effectively
Understand the basic principles and approach for lighting a scene
Create geometrically accurate images with photo-realistic rendering
Achieve photo-realism in DAZ Studio with the Reality plugin
Create your own content in DAZ Studio and sell it online
Animate your characters and create movies with DAZ Studio
Great idea of the writer, but still don't read parts like
about Dazstudio & zbrush, dazstudio weightpainting, dazstudio triax, dazstudio creating new morphs, new cloth creation, daz scripting,..
what i mean...
the more advanced stuff in figure & content creation.
getting tired of reading the basics again & again, people now how to pose a figure & load content after a few minutes.
what people would like to know & learn is the more advanced stuff...
it would be great to see such kind of books, tutorial vids appear more here.
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Comments
Wouldn't that fall under "Create your own content in DAZ Studio and sell it online"
Have you read the book? I, personally, am waiting read it before I offer up a review. And while loading a model and posing can be pretty easy, effective lighting can be tough to get down. If you are looking for content creation guides, I know there are a few here, and several good ones over at Runtime DNA. Lady Littlefox's is one I'm particularly pleased with. And believe me, if you want to read a TERRIBLE guide to Poser/DAZ Studio, read ANYTHING by R Shamms Mortier. Also, not everyone has ZBrush, or knows how to model in Blender, which have plenty of guides for those programs on their own.
And I would say it's neither wise, nor accurate to report what "people" want, since that is kind of presumptuous. Granted, I agree, it would be nice to see a few guides for the more complex intricacies of DAZ Studio, I can't pretend to know the full contents of the book without reading it. And using ZBrush with DAZ Studio, while fun, it pays to know more about ZBrush than a book of this scope could dare to tackle, especially with all the recent additions make to ZBrush since arriving at 4 and beyond.
Also, knowing how to do something, and knowing how to do it well are two different things. Especially when it comes to lighting, framing, and effectively using materials beyond just the "double click here, move here, adjust here."
nothing wrong with littlefox tutorials.
to bad that they are almost the only tutorials about these kind of subjects on the net.
m not talking about the done vids by darkedgedesign vids zbrush and poser.
but it would be nice, if daz have it's own learning section of tutorial vids (to buy or not) about all these more daz advanced subjects.
there are only a few here, that knows how to work in the more advanced parts of the software.
mostly those are the content creators that don't have time to create such kind of teaching/learning stuff.
If daz would hire more people to create such learning tutorials, platform..
more people know how to create content, more useful content would been made available to all of us.
I agree, however.. Many vendors were able to work out and discover their way to get content effectively into DS, and a lot of what I've managed to pick up, aside from a few guides here and there, was mostly due to trial and error and these very forums. In fact, I would go so far as to say that creating the content to be imported into DAZ Studio requires the most learning, and then it is just a matter of setting it up to be compatible with DS. That's not to say that is an entirely easy task, but regardless of how well you know how to set something up in DS, it's not going to make a lick of difference if your modeling and texturing skills aren't up to snuff.
Personally, I would like to see DAZ dedicate a few people to effective documentation and upkeep of said documentation so users have a convenient place to get their answers regarding custom content generation.
a few guides here and there...
if it all was centralized in one great section, people don't have to search the net for all this stuff.
and then it also would be more clear about what sections are still missing to have great tutorials for.
lot's of time is lost to search on the net or searching thrue forums.
time that could be used be creative.
seems i was a little to fast, taken the whole conclusion,
there is a little part that seems nice to explore in the book...
Chapter 11: Creating Content
Creating clothing
3D modeling with modo
Rigging a figure
Box modeling or retopology
Dawn of a new era
A surprise for you
Layout of the tutorial
Making a dress for Dawn
Exporting a figure as an OBJ file
The Transform tool
Assigning a material
Defining UV maps
Getting the dress out of modo
Rigging the dress
Importing the dress
Distributing your work
Choosing a file format
The distribution hierarchy
Getting down to business
Summary
We have just finished an 86 page User Guide for DAZ Studio 4.6. The guide is in the final review stages and should be available in November. The guide will be free to everyone. Here is a sneak peek:
https://helpdaz.zendesk.com/attachments/token/c6orzkakfv9pxdn/?name=DAZ+Studio+User+Guide+Sneak+Peak.pdf
That, my friend, is the nature of the beast. You can look up tutorials on ZBrush on Pixologic's site and find some tutorials on the basics of the program (especially before the revamp, they've since gotten more complex in many cases) which is great to get the user started, however, the more complex intricacies of the program were covered by other artists at numerous other websites, regarding numerous other techniques and workflows. Is Pixologic criminal for not pointing to every single tutorial available on ZBrush? Absolutely not. You will find the same thing with Autodesk's software, Luxology's software, The Blender Organization, and countless other software packages, ranging from word processing and operating systems to 3D modeling and texturing.
People of differing levels of skill require different instruction. Everybody has their own workflow for doing things. DAZ's responsibility is to support their software, iron out bugs, and make sure things work as advertised. They owe nothing to you, to me, or to anyone else beyond that, and even if they decide to stop support for Bryce 3D, DAZ Studio, Carrara, or Hexagon, that is their prerogative, so I would go so far as to say their responsibilities to the end user are indeed finite.
Any user that wants to learn something beyond the basics, is largely up to the user. Yes, it would be easier to have all information localized in one area, but the world doesn't work like that. Even in a library, if you want to find information, you must browse through numerous tomes of information to potentially find what you are looking for, and even then, the library may not contain all the information that you are looking for and you may have to look elsewhere. Akin to going to a grocery store: I like Asian foods, and sauces, they make up about 50% of my grocery purchases. When I go to Safeway or some mainstream grocery store, their selection of such items is vastly limited in my area. If I want to get what I am looking for, I typically have to go to the local Asian markets to get it. It is not the mainstream grocery store's responsibility to have what I want, their goal is to provide for the status quo. In order to get what I want, I have to go looking.
If you want all the information centralized, instead of complaining about it, why don't you take the time to look and centralize it into one neat little thread. That way, you're actually doing something about it, instead of saying someone else needs to. Who knows, maybe other people will join in and add that wacky stuff that takes so much time to look for and find.
without enough resources, you can only learn to some level and never grow up & do more.
certainly not if you have life, kids, a job,....
if your a pc nerd with lots of computer time, may be that could be possible.
for me that 's not, sorry. and 'm pretty sure, 'm not alone in this kind of situation...
again, that seems not a part to the users, but more to the company that release such kind of software.
why else we do have mods & admins?
that sounds like another right step in the good direction to me!
after a launch of almost 2 years... lot's could be happen.
were waiting hopefully,
Ps: and i hope the IK/FK hip/feet error is finally fixed at daz 5 launch time to for all the animators around here.
I like this because you are now explaining the parameters (which are notoriously mysterious and intimidating and generally left in their default settings) with examples that demonstrate what they do. More importantly you gave a real world examples (3 point lighting system) to tie it all in. This is crucial and often omitted and thats a huge mistake since all the info in the world will not help you if you don't know the basics of the theories of how to and why to apply it.
so continue doing the book in this format is what I'm saying!
I'll probably get Paolo's book too. Paolo has always been a walking knowledge-base of 3d software and a higly adept instructor so I'd be shocked if his book is anything short of amazing
Imagine that! Developing skills takes time! All the information in the world isn't going to help a person if they don't have the skills or abilities to apply it. Skill takes time to develop. Having knowledge and knowing how to apply that knowledge are two different things. If you cannot afford to take the time to develop your skills, don't blame or put it off as someone else's responsibility to give it to you. That is hugely arrogant and self centered. I learned by looking, studying, and reading. I learned by searching and experimenting. I didn't look in just one place to find what I was looking for. I've dedicated an decent amount of time to my craft, and I'm still learning. "And 'm pretty sure, 'm not alone in this kind of situation..."
Mod (short for "Moderator"):
(definition taken from dictionary.com)
mod·er·a·tor
[mod-uh-rey-ter]
noun
1. a person or thing that moderates.
2. a person who presides over a panel discussion on radio or television.
3. a presiding officer, as at a public forum, a legislative body, or an ecclesiastical body in the Presbyterian Church.
4. Physics. a substance, as graphite or heavy water, used to slow neutrons to speeds at which they are more efficient in causing fission.
This may be a surprise but that is exactly what the Mods here do, they moderate. At no point does it require the "collection and centralization of information."
Admin (short for "Administrator"):
Definition also supplied by dictionary.com
ad·min·is·tra·tor
[ad-min-uh-strey-ter]
noun
1. a person who manages or has a talent for managing.
2. Law. a person appointed by a court to take charge of the estate of a decedent, but not appointed in the decedent's will.
3. Also called Informal, admin. Computers.
a. a person who manages and supports a computer system or network, as in a business or other organization: the company’s system administrator; a database administrator. Compare system operator.
b. a person who manages an Internet discussion group or other interactive Web site: a forum administrator.
c. a user account on a home computer accessible only by the user who manages the computer system. Compare root1 ( def 11b ).
d. a user who has access to this user account.
As can be evidenced by this definition, a forum admin has no responsibility to scour the web to find, locate, and centralize all information regarding the product for which the forum was created. To say this is the case seems an overwhelming sense of entitlement. An admins primary purpose is to make sure that the forum operates as needed, to make sure that rules are obeyed.
nothing wrong with littlefox tutorials.
to bad that they are almost the only tutorials about these kind of subjects on the net.
m not talking about the done vids by darkedgedesign vids zbrush and poser.
but it would be nice, if daz have it's own learning section of tutorial vids (to buy or not) about all these more daz advanced subjects.
there are only a few here, that knows how to work in the more advanced parts of the software.
mostly those are the content creators that don't have time to create such kind of teaching/learning stuff.
If daz would hire more people to create such learning tutorials, platform..
more people know how to create content, more useful content would been made available to all of us.
I do quite a few tutorials on my deviantart blog, and Patience55 has done a huge volume of tutorial work on making clothing in Hex for DAZ Studio for the Genesis figure. All the information one needs is available for free. The problem is when people decide they can only learn from videos or things that are packaged in a certain way.
You can always look at Blondie9999's tutorials here in the DAZ store. I've heard they're very good.
You forget shaders...i.e, renderman
The title for this must be "The Bible of DAZ Studio 4 and DAZ scripting", being a book with 1000* pages. "Complete Guide" is good for the current book...but... I want the "Bible" just now, not a "complete guide".
*I used number of page from an old coreldraw very very complete book, I think this is a good ambition...or not?
Great news. Hope there's a proofreader in at least one of those stages, though: "...even someone who isn’t a trained artists will..." — and please, turn off auto-hyphenation, it's splitting words in pla-ces it sho-uldn't.
Edit: Just noticed the bit about the Use Scene Lights tool on p.66. No mention of the keyboard shortcut? That's a lot easier and faster than hunting out an icon on the toolbar.
That's awesome, DAZ_jared! A user manual has been needed for some time. Please consider making it available via POD (lulu.com, cafepress.com, et al.) for those of us willing to pay for a hard copy! (And you don't have to pay for, manage, or ship inventory!)
Thank you, and this is long overdue. I've attempted to turn a number of people on to DAZ Studio in the past, but the lack of a coherent manual for the only version available has made it a really hard sell... which is quite a trick when a piece of software that does everything DS4P does is literally free. :-S Now if we can just finally get some of the old plug-in makers to either update their products to work with DS4 or to clearly label them in the store as pre-4 compatible only, I'll have less qualms about sending people here again.
That's awesome, DAZ_jared! A user manual has been needed for some time. Please consider making it available via POD (lulu.com, cafepress.com, et al.) for those of us willing to pay for a hard copy! (And you don't have to pay for, manage, or ship inventory!)
You could just take the pdf down to your local copy/binding shop. Bound to be significantly cheaper than cafepress and it's ilk.
It wouldn't cost much at all to have it printed out. I'm guessing about $6-$10.
Since there's a Kindle version and I can write off a software manual, I went ahead and picked it up. On the good side, the crappy black and white photos shown in the online preview did turn out to be in color on my Kindle for PC and Kindle Fire. (I make no promises for the printed version.) Edit: In fact, the text specifically says in several parts that the art in the printed version is in black and white, though a link is provided to a PDF containing the color images. However, unless you want to use up several ink cartridges and a ream of high quality paper, you'll still have to use a computer or tablet to see the color images, so I'd definitely recommend purchasing the Kindle version and saving yourself the extra $25.
Unfortunately, once I began reading, it quickly became clear that my initial gut impression that the book should probably be called "A Basic Guide to DAZ Studio 4" had been overly optimistic. Rather, a much more accurate title would be "How To Use DAZ Studio Like Poser," as a good portion of the unique aspects of DS4 are either completely ignored or dismissed.
Let me be clear: it's not that this is a bad book on basic 3D, per se, but rather that it is a very poor overview of Studio by someone who clearly doesn't care for a lot of what DAZ has done over the last few years. That's quickly exemplified by the author's repeated advice to NOT use Genesis due to it's lack of popularity in the marketplace and to instead focus almost exclusively on Gen 4... which would be an acceptable statement of personal preference if the author had at least then gone on to talk about using such basic things as auto-fit. Unfortunately, auto-fit isn't discussed, let alone necessary tricks like geometry shells, with smoothing being demonstrated on V4 instead, and while V6 is mentioned as a name, the differences between Genesis and Genesis 2 aren't. Nor are there any details to be found on a number of basic DS processes like the Layered Image Editor, Photoshop Bridge, PowerPose, the human surface shader and Uber Environment, or such popular plug-ins as the subsurface shader, decimator and Fabricator. Rather, Studio's own shader mixer is given a complete brush off in favor of rhapsodizing over the wonders of LUX. Added to the already noted issue of the modeling section being focused around a piece of software that costs three times as much as Carrara 8.5 Pro, double Z-Brush and the same as a full Lightwave suite, it really makes one wonder who this book was being written for. It simply doesn't service the needs of someone for whom DAZ studio is their introduction to 3D, nor does it cater to someone who wants to know more about the ins and outs that make DS4 its own unique creature that haven't been covered elsewhere better.
To be fair, there ARE some very good tips in the book, such as the section on adjusting Poser materials for use in DS, and at $14.95 for the Kindle version, it's a passable investment for the section on Reality and the included coupons for HiveWire's Dawn. However, as a whole, it simply misses far too many important points and skips over too many functions to be more than a very cursory introduction.
Thanks for the review Cybersox13. Best book? The forums:) The link DAZ_jared posted as well looks interesting.
Looking forward to the official DAZ guide. November is less than a month away. Good stuff.
WOW, great review. I had a funny feeling about leaving that book alone and now I know why. Aside from completely writing off such a brilliant figure such as Genesis but ignoring important tools as you mentioned and no mention of ZBrush which ALLOT of the content creators use regularly for content creation is a huge disappointment for me. I'll wait for DAZ to finished up their 80+ page PDF and look over that when it's published. Thanks again Cybersox!
I, for one, bought the book, and I can't wait for it to arrive. I am strictly a hobbyist, and a very limited one at that. I have tried to get into Daz Studio for many years, but as a former escrow officer, "I do it per instructions." And I am sure I am not offending anyone if I say that "instructions" have been sorely lacking in the past.
So, I think it's great that Paolo has put his effort and time into giving the Daz Community something more than trying to hunt the forums for answers when a question arises. Maybe the book doesn't answer every question I might have, but I am sure it'll get me further on the way to understanding D|S than my current state.
I hate to see all Paolo's efforts being shut down before the book even has a chance to get off the ground. No book of instructions can possibly meet everyone's desires, and there is always going to be someone who wishes "this" or "that" had been included. I say this because I feel pretty sure that many members of the Daz community respect the opinions of the authors of the reviews given this book, and thus won't give the book a second thought.
I guess I just recommend the book be given more of a chance. Wait until a few people have actually received it, and a few more reviews can be given.
You could just take the pdf down to your local copy/binding shop. Bound to be significantly cheaper than cafepress and it's ilk.
I have a printer. If I wanted a print out of the pdf, I could very well do that (as I did waaaay back for D|S 1.xx --or was it 2.xx). Anyway, I specifically asked for a BOOK.
Yes and I said you could get it bound which would make it a book. Do you also have a binding machine at home?
I would say this is long overdue, and though it is short compared to what is possible with DS, when it is released, I will grab it. It would argue this point with those that say it is not the responsibility of the producers of any such program to provide good information on how the app works and what can be done with it. It cannot be better explained than by the people who create the app. I understand that there are multiple people that work on each build; however, there are other creators of software who provide either a written manual, or built in instructions on how to use their product. It boils down to who is best suited to provide the information, and no one is better suited for that than the creators themselves.
When I bought my Microsoft Office 2007 suite of apps, I was given links to web locations where I could find all the information on how to use every app, and I also had access to a number of handbooks. Because of this, I know nearly all there is to know about most of the apps in that suite. When 2010 was released My sister bought it for her computer, and it too has full instruction publications.
My point is that you cannot produce anything of considerable complexity (and we have to admit that DAZ Studio is now quite complex), and expect the end user to be able to find all the hidden features without at least some indication of where and how to look. There are so many features in DAZ Studio now that most of us would never be able to find them all, and the trend is toward even greater complexity with upcoming builds! Thus I contend that those who create the program and those whose create the plugins, content, or what have you, should be the ones providing basic knowledge on how to use the parts they create. Also, since a lot of these features are included with the download package, all the instruction on how to use the things included in the package should have instructions included on their use. Otherwise, most end users will never be able to reach the full potential of the app.
:roll:
I shall unsubscribe from this thread. Hopefully DAZ_Jared or someone else with DAZ_ in front of their name saw my request and are able/willing to attempt to accomodate. To everyone else, which ever route you take, enjoy your read.
I think I love you!
Come 'ere ya big chunk of loveliness, gimme a kiss!
And after 2 years of ds4 launchtime, where all finally here and know how important information "a manual" is needed to work with the software.
Else why waste all that developing time and develop a program, that only a few knew how to use it
"probably mostly those that build the content here"
or there was some hidden inside information available that 's not shared to the community. (a secret forum) :)
else how can you find all that info? it can't be all try & error... :cheese:
Yes, real complete manuals are very hard needed. (the idea behind the wiki was may be great, but isn't working well for the mass)
- a basic version
- a more advanced version, for those that would create content. (that means dazstudio vs zbrush, else why created GOZ?, content design tips no difference what modeler, better use one that's not dead, is alive and get's updates) else i would said "silo", but that 's to bad another great dead project.
If you're writing a book about DAZ Studio 4+ you can not ignore the Genesis framework that ships with it and is included as part of it. And yes I'm an early Reality/Lux adopter and user.