DAZ Studio eBook

vanishvanish Posts: 39
edited January 2023 in Daz Studio Discussion

Before I put too mch effort into this project (I started it as a place to put all of my knowledge and things I've learned over 17 years of using DAZ Studio), I was wondering if there would be much interest in a product like this? Knowing that will help me decide if I want to keep writing it in the beginner-friendly manner I have started, or just switch to a note-like format for myself and a few friends who asked me to do this. If you could take a look and let me know your opinion, I would appreciate it. It takes considerably more work to write it the way I am than it would take to just convert my notes into a book.

You can grab a copy of the start of the book here

I appreciate your interest and help in making a decision. Thanks!

Post edited by vanish on

Comments

  • vanishvanish Posts: 39

    I am having problems with my SSL certificate to my CDN at the moment. It is safe to proceed to get the PDF but that's only if you trust me. If not, please wait until I notify that the SSL certificate has been corrected.

  • vanishvanish Posts: 39

    I copied the pdf to another CDN that should work without a security error. You can find it here.

  • I definitely found it interesting and useful. I learned DS by just jumping in, not necessarily the best way, and so a reference to fill in the gaps is welcome.

    Do you have a donation link?

  • Looks really good. I myself would be happy with a note-like format but I'm like you, been doing this for years. However, I'm still finding out stuff all the time that I didn't know so I'd probably get the beginner's style anyway. Most important thing is that it's easy to search and find what you need.

  • vanishvanish Posts: 39
    edited January 2023

    Just realized I uploaded an old format with page spread view. I have replaced it with a page by page view using the formatting tweaks. Content is the same as before.

    Post edited by vanish on
  • vanishvanish Posts: 39

    Doesn't appear to be much interst in this. That tells me what I wanted to know. :)

  • SofaCitizenSofaCitizen Posts: 1,859

    vanish said:

    Doesn't appear to be much interst in this. That tells me what I wanted to know. :)

    That may not entirely be correct - I have seen plenty of people mentioning that they were after a written/PDF manual instead of video-based tutorials so there is an audience out there. Only just seen this thread myself so perhaps those that were after this also missed the thread the first time too?

    Only had a quick look so far and it looks very nice so must have taken you a while to put together. One small thing I'd suggest is to maybe tweak the "Important Note" colours a bit - the white text on a light yellow background doesn't quite stand out enough on my screen, even with the drop-shadow.

  • GreybroGreybro Posts: 2,500
    edited January 2023

    You actually do get into a topic I find interesting and that hasn't been already covered in spades in other tutorials. The conversion of old Poser Content. i think that is a great subject and could be the focus of a tutorial project. It would need to go deep into converting materials and potentially even re-rigging clothing items. \

    Great Avatar btw.

    Post edited by Greybro on
  • vanishvanish Posts: 39

    SofaCitizen said:

    One small thing I'd suggest is to maybe tweak the "Important Note" colours a bit - the white text on a light yellow background doesn't quite stand out enough on my screen, even with the drop-shadow.

    Yeah I keep playing with the yellow hue on that. I may need to use a completely different color. Whenever I get the text to be easily readable the yellow looks muddy. :(

  • I would have definitely liked being able to find that info, which took me years to accumulate, and like others, I learn something new everyday!! Just because there isn't a flood of responses doesn't mean it's not being viewed. I have created some step by step tutorials and appreciate all the work.  Hope you can finish. and yes the white letters on yellow are a bit hard to read at times.  TD

  • alexhcowleyalexhcowley Posts: 2,383

    vanish said:

    I copied the pdf to another CDN that should work without a security error. You can find it here.

    Excellent so far. 

    As a ten year veteran of DAZ Studio and a forty year veteran of commercial software development and maintenance, I would pay serious money for the complete manual.  

    Go for the beginner-friendly format. The experts don't need your help, those of us who are only dabblers do. 

    Cheers,

    Alex.  

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 24,223

    It may be the thread title that is not attracting interest, not the project itself. I ignored this thread for days, because I interpreted it to be an announcement of some superhero graphic novel made with Daz Studio. blush

  • vanishvanish Posts: 39

    barbult said:

    It may be the thread title that is not attracting interest, not the project itself. I ignored this thread for days, because I interpreted it to be an announcement of some superhero graphic novel made with Daz Studio. blush

    LOL! I hadn't considered that.

  • jjoynerjjoyner Posts: 615

    @vanish - Hello.  I don’t know how I missed this thread a few days ago, but I discovered it this afternoon. There is very little in the way of published books on Daz Studio and the possibility of your eBook interested me.  I'm a dabbler/hobbyist (I retired three years ago.) who discovered Daz Studio back in 2008 (Poser in 2009).  In 2009, I searched for any books on Daz Studio and found nothing (or almost nothing) except for the paperback book/CD Figures, Characters and Avatars: The Official Guide to Using DAZ Studio to Create Beautiful Art which was published in 2009.  I bought it at Amazon.  There are a few more Daz Studio books now at Amazon including The Essential Beginners Guide to DAZ3D: 2023 Edition.

    I've downloaded what you have made available at will look at it soon.  Thanks!

     

  • Joe2018Joe2018 Posts: 254

    Looks very interesting for me. Hope you will publish the whole book.

  • vanish said:

    Doesn't appear to be much interst in this. That tells me what I wanted to know. :)

    You got 200+ page views already, I'd say there's interest. I'm definitely interested myself, I would MUCH prefer a written tome over a video. Marking this thread!
  • TaozTaoz Posts: 9,938

    vanish said:

    barbult said:

    It may be the thread title that is not attracting interest, not the project itself. I ignored this thread for days, because I interpreted it to be an announcement of some superhero graphic novel made with Daz Studio. blush

    LOL! I hadn't considered that.

    You can change the subject title by editing your first post.

    The book looks great, I know many have asked for such one.  

  • vanishvanish Posts: 39

    Taoz said:

    You can change the subject title by editing your first post.

    The book looks great, I know many have asked for such one.  

    Yeah, I already changed it. Thanks everyone for the interest.

  • I just saw this thread as it was just mentioned in another thread that I follow, "Printable User Guide/Manual": 
    https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/556366/printable-user-guide-manual

    I downloaded the start of your e-book (i.e. PDF) and it's looks great so far, with good screenshots and explanations.  I like the fact that you also use both Mac and Windows (as do I), since there are many Daz Studio users on both platforms and I believe the Mac user base will increase a lot once DS5 is released.

    I think this is something a lot of people not only want, but need, and I hope you continue with this invaluable product as the offiicial Daz Studio user guide is pretty dated and not as easy to read as your eBook. Daz should consider hiring you to complete this project. 

  • vanish said:

    Before I put too mch effort into this project (I started it as a place to put all of my knowledge and things I've learned over 17 years of using DAZ Studio), I was wondering if there would be much interest in a product like this? Knowing that will help me decide if I want to keep writing it in the beginner-friendly manner I have started, or just switch to a note-like format for myself and a few friends who asked me to do this. If you could take a look and let me know your opinion, I would appreciate it. It takes considerably more work to write it the way I am than it would take to just convert my notes into a book.

    You can grab a copy of the start of the book here

    I appreciate your interest and help in making a decision. Thanks!

    Thank you! It looks very good. I am just getting back to working with Daz after a very long hiatus and have found the learning curve pretty steep. I am currently not too fond of Genesis, as I feel V4 was much easier to work with and seemed to make use of older content much easier. I am slowly getting used to Genesis but have a much harder time with things like textures (which I used to be fairly good at customizing). I used to mainly do re-creations of my (and other people's) characters from an superhero MMORPG I play and used the V4 and M4 Supersuits to recreate the look of the ingame costumes. Now it seems like it's impossible to find the files to modify the textures or maybe I am just not looking in the right places. It's very late for now, but I fully intend to read through your book tomorrow. Hopefully it will help with my rather difficult adjustments to the huge amount of changes from when I used to use Daz to what is currently in use. 

    ~ D.

  • MickFMickF Posts: 9
    edited January 19

    vanish said:

    Before I put too mch effort into this project (I started it as a place to put all of my knowledge and things I've learned over 17 years of using DAZ Studio), I was wondering if there would be much interest in a product like this? Knowing that will help me decide if I want to keep writing it in the beginner-friendly manner I have started, or just switch to a note-like format for myself and a few friends who asked me to do this. If you could take a look and let me know your opinion, I would appreciate it. It takes considerably more work to write it the way I am than it would take to just convert my notes into a book.

    You can grab a copy of the start of the book here

    I appreciate your interest and help in making a decision. Thanks!

    How can I access this as I keep getting the following on every browser I use

    "

    Secure Connection Failed

    An error occurred during a connection to cdn.v2.nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com. SSL peer has no certificate for the requested DNS name."

    Post edited by Richard Haseltine on
  • StratDragonStratDragon Posts: 3,167

    Paulo Ciccone, the programmer who developed the Reality plugin back in the day is the author of the book that Amazon sells. His documentation for that was extensive, but the book still concentrates on the Reality plugin for rendering, not Iray. While he made this revolutionary product years ago it is nowhere near as flexible as Iray is now. What I'd be interested is a breakdown of the Iray settings 

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,508

    I only just found out about this, and it's gone already? Bummer!

    Don't just pull it because a forum thread doesn't get noticed, and don't only do it if there's an immediate audience. There is a Much Larger audience out there looking for Daz Studio help who refuse to come to the forum. So don't base your work's usefulness a single forum thread question.

     

    My Site has been up for several years now and was originally mostly a Carrara Zone. Getting into Daz Studio, it's now showing my adventures in that - but nothing like what you're talking about, which I think would gather a huge audience once it's Live and people can buy/view it. But we have to give these things time to be discovered - especially beyond this forum!

    I know an impressive handful of friends who have been scared away already, never to return. 

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,508

    Oh... and I was going to mention:

    I'd buy it. So would several of that handful of friends I was just mentioning. One in particular will never come to these foums again. He uses internet searches to find his resources. So make sure you give it a good title!

     

    Again, it's a real bummer that it's removed so quickly.

  • vanishvanish Posts: 39

    MickF reached out to me about it. I apologize for the link dying. I switched hosts and never thought to update this thread. I haven't been able to get back to the book. Life got in the way. Hopefully sometime soon though. My friends and family are still nudging me about it too. You can grab it here: https://vanishsvault.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/DAZ-Studio-Zero-to-Hero.pdf

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,508

    Cool! I'll check it out. Sorry about that... I thought you took it down or something.

     

    You know, the more info that folks can find about using Daz Studio the better. True.

    We'll Always be looking for work like this - Always!!!

     

    If this is a labor of love for you, keep it up whenever you can - but always taking your time to be You! 

    ============================================================================

    Oh... I just did a quick scroll through... Wow!

    Beautiful work!!! Just Beautiful!!! Nice!

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,508

    I really love the writing style and the beautiful illustrations, with cool Killer Tips and Important Note bubbles... So Very Cool - and it makes it So easy to read! 

    I love that the final product is going to come with your Killer Viewing Style!!! Nice touch! 

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