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Partial render = Spot Render. You can activate it from Tool menu - Spot Render. When it is activated, go to Tool Settings tab and activate Render to - New Window.
Love this tip!
Ah! Thank you!
I've been locking the EV and adjusting the ISO.
D-Form!
I tinkered with using D-Formers a couple years ago, but didn't really understand what I was doing, even with the really good YT video I watched on using them. (I needed them for my first ever published render... and what a poor job I did, too! lol) It was last December when I needed to modify the reins for this image that I really spent the time needed to understand the tool, at least to the extent needed to get the job done. Since then, I've used D-Form a lot. Here are some of the things I've learned, (some of which are quite basic, but included for anyone who's never tried to use D-Form):
Now that I know what I'm doing, somewhat, I use D-Forms a lot.
Yup, I named it incorrectly; corrected my post.
Great tip about the color. Thanks.
Remember that the base is the centre for any rotation or scaling applied with the dForm.
HOw do you remove it? I couldn't get it to turn off lol.
This thread should be stickied-- so many great tips. And thank you all!
I've not noticed it making any difference where I put the base, or if I scaled the base to better fit in my viewport. Or did you mean something else?
Assuming you mean the D-Form and changes it makes, you need to delete the D-Form. But the best way is to use the Spawn Morph button... (and now I have to open DS...)
Okay, I'm back. It's the "Spawn Morph..." button at the bottom of the pane. There are three checkboxes. You can leave all three unchecked, but I prefer to at least check "Delete Applied D-Former(s)"... The spawned morph shows up in the Morphs folder under Parameters when you have your object selected. Now you can use the dial to add as much of the morph as you need. Or, if you checked "Apply Spawned Morph," you can dial it down. Set it to zero to remove any affect it has on your object.
Thank you very much!
Just to be clear - alt-click resets the value to its default (which is usually zero but has other values in, for example, the surfaces tab)
Been using DS for years - thanks to this thread I've finally got the align tool in my list of commonly used tabs - thanks and keep 'em coming :)
Ah, documantation - and the lack thereof. The problem is that there are two base, fundamental types of documentation: functional and procedural.
Functional documentation is what Rob provides- apparently after hours, for the most part, although some seems to appear on months with a 'Q' in them or six Thursdays. This goes into complete detail of each and every parameter, option, value, and/or tool on what values are valid and what they do. This needs to be written by the developer OR a skilled technical writer with physical access to the developement staff. Any attempt to write this just by poking around the interface will have gaps and holes in it.
Procedural documentation is what we're doing here, and answers the question "how do I" and is best written by someone with an in-depth understanding of the process. See the various threads on Iray lighting, or Iray skin optimization, or ... well, that should give you the idea.
And yeah, I'd contribute to BOTH kickstarters - one for good procedural documentation and "best practices", and one to fund proper functional documentation.
I mean if you scale or rotate the dForm, the effect is centred on the base.
When I was starting with Studio I found the option to make it create a default camera and switched it on. I don't understand why this isn't switched on by default, I would have made it the default option and called it the Main Camera or the Render Camera. I usually setup the default camera for the render and use the perspecive camera as a roving director's camera to move around the scene adjusting things.
But I started with Poser so I'm used to having lots of cameras. When I'm using Studio I miss all those cameras. Trying to get a character to hold something? switch to the hand camera. Not sure the expression is right? switch to the face camera. Want to check the pose of a character somewhere in the background? select the character and switch to the posing camera.
You can create as many cameras as you like in DS, you can even parent them to things so if the object is moved, the camera moves with it. :)
The great thing about the Poser cameras is that the figure cameras apply to whatever figure is selected. For example, you have one Left Hand camera in the list and it always shows the left hand of the figure that is selected. In Studio you'd have to create and parent a set of cameras for each figure in the scene and I can never be bothered to do this. If I ever get around to looking into scripting I'll see if it is possible to write a script to do it.
Agreed! Useful tips in there all OVER the place!
Peter Wade,
Here's a link to an old tutorial of mine on using cameras and lights. It was written for DS 2, but the basic principles are still exactly the same. It pretty much assumes you know nothing about cameras/lights, and goes through it step by step.
http://digilander.libero.it/maclean/DStutorial.htm
I don't think I've ever not had the "create default camera on new scene" turned on. This includes way back in the very first D|S versions, before I really knew what I was doing, or the limitations of the Perspective View (it isn't a Camera) — so it must have been an active default option 10+ years ago, then switched to default "off" at some later time. (Settings like these are preserved when you update D|S.)
What Layers do in Puppeteer. Not that I've done a lot of animating in Daz Studio, but it would have been nice to know sooner.
not always, I used to have 24 FPS as my default until the last beta where it is back to their default 30
I may need to save a default start up scene again.
I got one. I got one.
You can drag n drop directly from Explorer into your scene. Even the alt-drag trick works to place it where you want. Poser and DAZ formats both.
I use it especially to order by date so I can quickly find something I installed recently. Other uses too and I'm sure you can think of tons of uses for it.
(re Alt-drag remember it comes in at ground level, so if your scene has hills, for example, keep that in mind.)
Thank you for that link, there's a lot of useful information there, certainly a few things I wasn't aware of.
BTW if you are the maclean who is a PA here and used to sell Poser stuff in other places, I've got some of your sets and I think they are very good.
Thanks for the nice words. Yes, that's me. Although I've never sold anywhere but here at DAZ. Been here since June, 2001 - longer than most of the DAZ staff. LOL.
Exactly, Spit. I do the same, which allows for all of the searching/sorting/ordering in Windows. It also has another huge advantage in that you can have multiple explorer windows open at once. I resize my DS window to be a bit smaller than full screen, and then leave various explorer windows open underneath sticking out a bit like tabs for easy/quick access.
- Greg
Aux Viewport.
I use it a lot for rendering tests, but actually something as simple as undocking it, resizing it to a size I can see what's going on, and then move it to another monitor.
... why didn't I think of this previously?
(Of course, I'm currently going deaf in one ear from the graphics card fan; normally I don't notice but it's been running for hours as I do this scene; every silver lining has a cloud.
)
Not something that I just discovered, but I do have one thing I do to keep the aux viewport from making my computer hot enough to cook eggs I made up some presets to set the max render time including one for 10 seconds, I then right clicked > add custom action to send it up to the scripts menu. I then got fancy and created a custom toolbar that sits right above my aux viewport, (I say got fancy, but its actually pretty easy to set up)
All you have to do is remember to change it back before the final render. Now If you could set different max render time/samples for the aux viewport and final render I would be in heaven.
...And speaking of, something I discovered not too long ago that I wish I'd known years earlier. Customize Workspace is the best. Once youve added something to the scripts menu (right click > create custom action) you can move it to any other menu, or create a new menu, or new toolbar. For instance, I have a dropdown menu for all my favorite lights (its even organized with submenues) I now rarely ever have to go into the content library for lights. Its amazing how much time I save by just not having to scroll to lights and then back to people.
But seriously you can control almost everything with Customize workspace, every shortcut, every toolbar. Its glorious
Oh wow, what a great idea! I can well image you saving a lot of time that way - I seem to spend ages hunting down the light sets and hence losing my place on whatever I previously had in the content tab. I didn't realise new menus and submenus could be created - I have several things pinned to the "Scripts" menu item, but they are a random mess (order of addition as a custom action). I must try this.... thanks!