Help with saving props for sale

EmotionalOutlet3D

Hi all,

I am working with a friend to make his props (mainly architecture and some vehicles) available in DAZ Studio. There are going to be two versions of each prop,1 with 3Delight materials and the other with Iray materials. After having watched or read some tutorials on saving props I have found that each has their own method. I have a couple of questions which I hope someone can answer for me.

1. I have seen a few different suggestions as to where to save props which will eventually be sold - some suggest to My Library, others directly to the main My DAZ3D Library under the vendor's name and others suggest setting up a separate directory. Any thoughts or preferences?

2. Is there a particular set up (folder structure) used when doing the 2 different versions (Iray and 3Delight)? 

Any help would make my life easier so thanking you in advance for your replies.

 

Richard Haseltine

The steps would be to set up one of them (or even set up the props without any material settings) and use File>Save as>Support Assets>Figure/prop Asset. That gives the basic asset files. The set up the Iray materials, File>Save as>Materials preset, set p the 3Delight materials, File>Save As>Materials preset. As for wheer you save, if you are hoping to sell through daz look at existing products for guidance - some things go in props, some in a particular prop type (Transport, Environment, etc.), usually with the vendor name and then the product name (for the main asset file), and sub-foldrs for materials, Poses etc. If you are aiming for the daz store make sure that any files include at least an abbreviated form of the product name so that they will be identifiable in Smart Content or the Categories list.

EmotionalOutlet3D

Richard Haseltine said:

The steps would be to set up one of them (or even set up the props without any material settings) and use File>Save as>Support Assets>Figure/prop Asset. That gives the basic asset files. The set up the Iray materials, File>Save as>Materials preset, set p the 3Delight materials, File>Save As>Materials preset. As for wheer you save, if you are hoping to sell through daz look at existing products for guidance - some things go in props, some in a particular prop type (Transport, Environment, etc.), usually with the vendor name and then the product name (for the main asset file), and sub-foldrs for materials, Poses etc. If you are aiming for the daz store make sure that any files include at least an abbreviated form of the product name so that they will be identifiable in Smart Content or the Categories list.

Thanks Richard. I did look at the way other vendors set up their files. Noticed some of them seem to save the props as 3Delight and Iray versions. But I'll just add the material presets then. I am doing this for a friend who doesn't use DS. He's mainly a Vue artist but I've been trying to encourage him to offer his models for DS as well.

Richard Haseltine

You can use Scene Subset or Character Preset to save a separate 3Delight and Iray version - I was mainly wanting to make sure you didn't end up with two different assets for the same item.

EmotionalOutlet3D

Richard Haseltine said:

You can use Scene Subset or Character Preset to save a separate 3Delight and Iray version - I was mainly wanting to make sure you didn't end up with two different assets for the same item.

OK Thanks! I've saved the props as untextured and saved the material presets for both.Hopefully this will be acceptable. I will also save scene subsets then.

SpottedKitty

EmotionalOutlet said:

I've saved the props as untextured [...] I will also save scene subsets then.

Note that these are effectively the same thing. DAZ|Studio has no such thing as a saved file called a "prop" like there is in Poser — everything is either a Scene (which includes all objects, plus render and lighting settings), or a Scene Subset (which can include one or more objects including lights, but doesn't include render settings). There are other options complicating things, for clothes or handheld objects applied to a figure, but you don't need to worry about that with the kind of things you're converting.

One other thing; in your original post you mentioned saving to the My Library content location, or to My DAZ 3D Library. IIRC the first one is the old default content location, the second one is the current one.