Always discovering new stuff in Daz Studio

PixelPie

McGyver said:

At another site's forum they have a thread called the "The D'oh! Thread" where people contribute their "D'oh!" moments where they discovered some features of the software that they didn't know existed... over the years its accumulated enough info for them to have compiled an eBook... it would be cool to see something like that for DS.

But I guess searching the internet for random information is part of the fun and adventure of CG art.

No?

Yes it is an adventure!--I started a list for my favorite app Bryce which I had no clue had all of the keyboard shortcuts that it does, .. and just recently got my computer a little more up to speed to handle renders.  My problem too has been time to spend on the hobby :-(

Cybersox

richardandtracy said:

Does anyone think a manual would hold this sort of info? Be nice if there was one & it did, wouldn't it?

Golly, what an idea.  Even just a cheat sheet of keyboard shortcuts would be a huge benefit.  DAZ's continued unwilingness to update, release a current, complete, and comprehensive manual is so utterly inexplicble and so completely detrimental to the functionality of the product as a whole that it's basically a work of self-sabotage.  And yet, everytime it's suggested, it's like we were asking for the Great Wall of China or putting a man on Mars.  Seriously, how much could it actually cost versus the benefit it would be to the users?  Just grabbing the programmers, having them scribble out rough notes and hiring a technical writer to make it legible would certainly cost a fraction of what gets spent on the constant pointless revisions to the store's appearance.       

Wonderland

JQP said:

I've been using DS forever. At least 10 years, on and off. And there's still a ton of stuff I don't know about. For years I've been grousing about having to go back and forth, saving wearables to the Content Library and Saves to the Save Folder, and having to navigate through the directory structure with the File Explorer dialog. Then a couple days ago I realized that's what the little plus button in the Content Library window is for; it saves stuff right to the window you're looking at, in any format you want, so you can use the File>Save menu to take you to whatever project you're working on.

It's already saving me a bunch of time.

:D

I figured this out because it's the same in Poser. BUT, how can you add that to Smart Content? I often create my own shaders and textures for purchased products (for personal use) and want it easily available in Smart Content because the Content Library is such a pain to use and I forget which products I have added to unless it's in Smart Content.

Sevrin

Cybersox said:

richardandtracy said:

Does anyone think a manual would hold this sort of info? Be nice if there was one & it did, wouldn't it?

Golly, what an idea.  Even just a cheat sheet of keyboard shortcuts would be a huge benefit.  DAZ's continued unwilingness to update, release a current, complete, and comprehensive manual is so utterly inexplicble and so completely detrimental to the functionality of the product as a whole that it's basically a work of self-sabotage.  And yet, everytime it's suggested, it's like we were asking for the Great Wall of China or putting a man on Mars.  Seriously, how much could it actually cost versus the benefit it would be to the users?  Just grabbing the programmers, having them scribble out rough notes and hiring a technical writer to make it legible would certainly cost a fraction of what gets spent on the constant pointless revisions to the store's appearance.       

New users are such a priority that DIM is being deprecated, but not enough of a priority to provide documention for Daz Studio?

Wonderland

carrie58 said:

cherpenbeck said:

That is one very good reason why we users need a manual!

Not having one is the one thing which annoys me the most!

 

Ya but most of us don't even read the ReadMe's  for products how many would actually read a manual?

 

ME! I've been begging for one ever since I started Studio and there's still so much I don't know. If Daz had created a manual and sold it on Amazon (as Kindle so it could be constantly updated) they could have made a fortune off it and brought in many new users. 

Richard Haseltine

Sevrin said:

Cybersox said:

richardandtracy said:

Does anyone think a manual would hold this sort of info? Be nice if there was one & it did, wouldn't it?

Golly, what an idea.  Even just a cheat sheet of keyboard shortcuts would be a huge benefit.  DAZ's continued unwilingness to update, release a current, complete, and comprehensive manual is so utterly inexplicble and so completely detrimental to the functionality of the product as a whole that it's basically a work of self-sabotage.  And yet, everytime it's suggested, it's like we were asking for the Great Wall of China or putting a man on Mars.  Seriously, how much could it actually cost versus the benefit it would be to the users?  Just grabbing the programmers, having them scribble out rough notes and hiring a technical writer to make it legible would certainly cost a fraction of what gets spent on the constant pointless revisions to the store's appearance.       

New users are such a priority that DIM is being deprecated, but not enough of a priority to provide documention for Daz Studio?

DIM is not being deprecated.

Richard Haseltine

Cybersox said:

richardandtracy said:

Does anyone think a manual would hold this sort of info? Be nice if there was one & it did, wouldn't it?

Golly, what an idea.  Even just a cheat sheet of keyboard shortcuts would be a huge benefit.  DAZ's continued unwilingness to update, release a current, complete, and comprehensive manual is so utterly inexplicble and so completely detrimental to the functionality of the product as a whole that it's basically a work of self-sabotage.  And yet, everytime it's suggested, it's like we were asking for the Great Wall of China or putting a man on Mars.  Seriously, how much could it actually cost versus the benefit it would be to the users?  Just grabbing the programmers, having them scribble out rough notes and hiring a technical writer to make it legible would certainly cost a fraction of what gets spent on the constant pointless revisions to the store's appearance.       

You can make your own cheat-sheet, which has the advantage of accomodating any changes you have made (or that something else has added): http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/scripting/api_reference/samples/actions/action_accelerators/start

Wonderland

Cybersox said:

richardandtracy said:

Does anyone think a manual would hold this sort of info? Be nice if there was one & it did, wouldn't it?

Golly, what an idea.  Even just a cheat sheet of keyboard shortcuts would be a huge benefit.  DAZ's continued unwilingness to update, release a current, complete, and comprehensive manual is so utterly inexplicble and so completely detrimental to the functionality of the product as a whole that it's basically a work of self-sabotage.  And yet, everytime it's suggested, it's like we were asking for the Great Wall of China or putting a man on Mars.  Seriously, how much could it actually cost versus the benefit it would be to the users?  Just grabbing the programmers, having them scribble out rough notes and hiring a technical writer to make it legible would certainly cost a fraction of what gets spent on the constant pointless revisions to the store's appearance.       

Maybe even paying PAs to write a section of tips and tricks they use in their area of specialty too. I guess they want people to buy tutorials but it's a pain to sit through full tutorials when you just want to look up a specific issue and free YouTube videos are often just as good or better than paid ones. I am not a fan of video tutorials in any case. If it was a Kindle manual (with screenshots,) we could hilight, search, and more. If it was a big totally comprehensive manual that was updated with every DS update, I'd be willing to pay $100 for it. I waste too much time trying to google how to do things or find out years later there are simple ways to do things that I did in a more complicated way or there were things I never knew DS could do. 

Cybersox

Richard Haseltine said:

Cybersox said:

richardandtracy said:

Does anyone think a manual would hold this sort of info? Be nice if there was one & it did, wouldn't it?

Golly, what an idea.  Even just a cheat sheet of keyboard shortcuts would be a huge benefit.  DAZ's continued unwilingness to update, release a current, complete, and comprehensive manual is so utterly inexplicble and so completely detrimental to the functionality of the product as a whole that it's basically a work of self-sabotage.  And yet, everytime it's suggested, it's like we were asking for the Great Wall of China or putting a man on Mars.  Seriously, how much could it actually cost versus the benefit it would be to the users?  Just grabbing the programmers, having them scribble out rough notes and hiring a technical writer to make it legible would certainly cost a fraction of what gets spent on the constant pointless revisions to the store's appearance.       

You can make your own cheat-sheet, which has the advantage of accomodating any changes you have made (or that something else has added): http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/scripting/api_reference/samples/actions/action_accelerators/start

Er, yes.  So, a new user can solve that lack of documentation problem by using an advanced function of the program which is not even mentioned in the "current" user manual, for which there is nothing resembling a basic how-to guide in any of the current documentation, and for which the only vendor who ever sold tutorials on that subject has been gone from the store for several years?  And this assumes that someone might think to look for those exact answers in the first place.  What this and other similar threads, where long-time users are still discovering things that have been buried in the program for years, repeatedly prove is that there are a huge number of features of DS that either have never been properly documented, or, if they were, where that documentation was lost during one of the many repeated mass-losses of data that the site has suffered over the years.  This is supposed to be a program to assist in the creation of art, not the software equivalent of playing Where's Wally. Sigh...  

Cybersox

Wonderland said:

Cybersox said:

richardandtracy said:

Does anyone think a manual would hold this sort of info? Be nice if there was one & it did, wouldn't it?

Golly, what an idea.  Even just a cheat sheet of keyboard shortcuts would be a huge benefit.  DAZ's continued unwilingness to update, release a current, complete, and comprehensive manual is so utterly inexplicble and so completely detrimental to the functionality of the product as a whole that it's basically a work of self-sabotage.  And yet, everytime it's suggested, it's like we were asking for the Great Wall of China or putting a man on Mars.  Seriously, how much could it actually cost versus the benefit it would be to the users?  Just grabbing the programmers, having them scribble out rough notes and hiring a technical writer to make it legible would certainly cost a fraction of what gets spent on the constant pointless revisions to the store's appearance.       

Maybe even paying PAs to write a section of tips and tricks they use in their area of specialty too. I guess they want people to buy tutorials but it's a pain to sit through full tutorials when you just want to look up a specific issue and free YouTube videos are often just as good or better than paid ones. I am not a fan of video tutorials in any case. If it was a Kindle manual (with screenshots,) we could hilight, search, and more. If it was a big totally comprehensive manual that was updated with every DS update, I'd be willing to pay $100 for it. I waste too much time trying to google how to do things or find out years later there are simple ways to do things that I did in a more complicated way or there were things I never knew DS could do. 

And that's before one starts to add in how it can interface more efficiently with other programs like P3DO. 

By the way, for those who DO want a list of shortcuts, you can find most of them by going to your top menu bar and opening Window > workspace> customize and then going through the action and menu options to see what is currently assigned. 

Richard Haseltine

Cybersox said:

Wonderland said:

Cybersox said:

richardandtracy said:

Does anyone think a manual would hold this sort of info? Be nice if there was one & it did, wouldn't it?

Golly, what an idea.  Even just a cheat sheet of keyboard shortcuts would be a huge benefit.  DAZ's continued unwilingness to update, release a current, complete, and comprehensive manual is so utterly inexplicble and so completely detrimental to the functionality of the product as a whole that it's basically a work of self-sabotage.  And yet, everytime it's suggested, it's like we were asking for the Great Wall of China or putting a man on Mars.  Seriously, how much could it actually cost versus the benefit it would be to the users?  Just grabbing the programmers, having them scribble out rough notes and hiring a technical writer to make it legible would certainly cost a fraction of what gets spent on the constant pointless revisions to the store's appearance.       

Maybe even paying PAs to write a section of tips and tricks they use in their area of specialty too. I guess they want people to buy tutorials but it's a pain to sit through full tutorials when you just want to look up a specific issue and free YouTube videos are often just as good or better than paid ones. I am not a fan of video tutorials in any case. If it was a Kindle manual (with screenshots,) we could hilight, search, and more. If it was a big totally comprehensive manual that was updated with every DS update, I'd be willing to pay $100 for it. I waste too much time trying to google how to do things or find out years later there are simple ways to do things that I did in a more complicated way or there were things I never knew DS could do. 

And that's before one starts to add in how it can interface more efficiently with other programs like P3DO. 

By the way, for those who DO want a list of shortcuts, you can find most of them by going to your top menu bar and opening Window > workspace> customize and then going through the action and menu options to see what is currently assigned. 

or

Richard Haseltine said:

Cybersox said:

richardandtracy said:

Does anyone think a manual would hold this sort of info? Be nice if there was one & it did, wouldn't it?

Golly, what an idea.  Even just a cheat sheet of keyboard shortcuts would be a huge benefit.  DAZ's continued unwilingness to update, release a current, complete, and comprehensive manual is so utterly inexplicble and so completely detrimental to the functionality of the product as a whole that it's basically a work of self-sabotage.  And yet, everytime it's suggested, it's like we were asking for the Great Wall of China or putting a man on Mars.  Seriously, how much could it actually cost versus the benefit it would be to the users?  Just grabbing the programmers, having them scribble out rough notes and hiring a technical writer to make it legible would certainly cost a fraction of what gets spent on the constant pointless revisions to the store's appearance.       

You can make your own cheat-sheet, which has the advantage of accomodating any changes you have made (or that something else has added): http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/scripting/api_reference/samples/actions/action_accelerators/start

 

pjwhoopie@yandex.com

There are some good tips here.... but trying to find it again was "almost impossible", so my crappy tip of the day is to make a comment in the thread so that you can at least search through your post to find that vital thread you once saw but forgot.

Silent Winter

Chumly said:

There are some good tips here.... but trying to find it again was "almost impossible", so my crappy tip of the day is to make a comment in the thread so that you can at least search through your post to find that vital thread you once saw but forgot.

Or bookmark the thread (click the star at the top)

nicstt

I agree, although as often as not it's a character/outfit/prop I didn't know I had.