Sincere advice and help needed from long time Poser users now using DS
Wonderland
Posts: 7,056
As you may guess, I'm a long time Poser user and I was able to pick it up easily without using tutorials or a manual, at least enough to do what I need to, still haven't conquered the hair room and some other things LOL! But over the years I have TRIED to use DS several times and for some reason my brain just looks at it the way my 7th grade brain looked at algebra.... Let's just say that wasn't my best class although I got an A+ in geometry. Anyway, I would really like to purchase the Fern Lake bundle with free Genesis 3 morphs and V7, but every time I open DS, I just CAN"T figure it out! When I check the tutorials, some seem to be for older versions because things are all in different places... I need a face camera, hand cameras like Poser, need to know how to change materials and lights, can't figure any of that out.... Poser users, please advise me if it is worth it to get over the learning curve? Is there a place that things can be explained in terms of Poser? Or people willing to do that? And how long did it take you to figure it out after being a long time Poser user? I need to make a decision tonight before the sale ends. I already have a lot of Genesis 2 content that I'm starting to use in Poser and could obviously be used in DS, but not sure if I'm ready to make the DS Genesis 3 jump to use only in DS when I'm at such a loss in the program. This is not meant to incite arguments. Just friendly advice from Poser users now using DS. Thanks! l
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
First, I can tell you that it is definitely worth it.
I use Poser (since version 6; I'm currently using 11 Pro), in addition to DAZ Studio; sometimes interchangeably, more often in combination. I'll acknowledge that there is a learning curve, and the easiest way to get through it is to recognize that Poser and DAZ Studio are dramatically different applications, and each has its own user experience. There is very little functional overlap. So it's difficult to explain the workings of DAZ Studio "in terms of Poser".
The best way to learn DS (or any software, for that matter) is bravely; just dive in and, as they say, "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger". There are, as you no doubt have noticed, a lot of panes (a.k.a., 'tabs'), some of which approximate the various 'rooms' in Poser. For example, the Surfaces tab deals with exactly that -- surfaces; or 'materials', if you prefer. This corresponds to the Materials Room in Poser. For what it's worth, I'm still learning my way around the Poser Materials Room (and I've been a Poser user for better than ten years); compared to the Surfaces tab in DS, it is almost insanely complicated. Of course, that also makes it almost infinitely customizable, and that can be both a good or a bad thing, depending on your point of view.
My biggest beef with DAZ Studio is, as you have noted, cameras; the Face camera, the Right- and Left-hand cameras, the Posing camera -- DAZ Studio has nothing like them, and you're right, they are enormously useful. It is possible to replicate the behavior of those cameras, but it's tedious in the extreme, and I've learned to just live without them. Of course, adding extra cameras is a simple matter. (One thing to note, and something I learned the hard way, is that the 'Perspective View' is not a camera; it is just a 'view' into the scene, so you should add a camera at the outset. The good news is that you can tell DAZ Studio to do it for you, so you don't have to remember every time.)
You're likely to find that lights are easier to use in DS than in Poser; Poser's habit of loading lights into a scene at pretty much anyplace it damn well pleases has always annoyed the crap out of me! DS lights come in at Location Zero (X: 0.0, Y: 0.0, Z: 0.0) and Zero rotation on all three axes. The light parameters should be familiar, since they are so similar to those in Poser. Iray lights, of course, are a whole different issue (and when I finally get those figured out, I'll let you know; assuming I live that long!)
I have also found that DAZ Studio makes more efficient use of system resources than Poser; you can load larger, more complex scenes into DS than Poser, and those scenes tend to render faster in DS than in Poser.
All in all, DAZ Studio is, as I said at the beginning, definitely worth learning, and not terribly difficult to learn, at that. You just need to come into it with an open mind, and no preconceived notions. Just remember, DAZ Studio isn't Poser; keeping that in mind will make the process of learning it a lot easier. That, in fact, was my biggest hurdle in learning it myself: I found that I had acquired a really bad "Poser accent", and it took me a while to shake it.
And you'll add an additional, amazingly powerful, tool to your toolbox. That has to be a good thing.
Good luck.
For targeted views I think the Perspective View does have advantages - you aren't generally going to want to keep the view so the fact that it isn't stored, or added to the undo stack, is useful in that you can make changes to the pose, look around the new pose, and if need be undo without having to step back through the view moves first. ctrl(Win)/cmd(Mac)-f for framing the current selection and ctrl-shift/cmd-shift-a for aiming at the centre-point of the current selection are well-worth memorising. You can always spawn a new camera from the current view or camera if desired - click More options in the New Camera dialogue.
You need to do what I finally did when I seen I was just spinning my wheels and getting nowhere.
What I decided to do was create a original character starting from a base of one of the DAZ Studio Genesis 2 Essentials. Actually, to make myself more critical of my progress I decided I wouldn't just create some random made-up character but use my ID instead. Now when I evaluate my progress I can't tell myself, 'good enough for government work' because I have the ID right before me. It's too easy the other way to spin a few morph dials, use a bought set of textures and presets and call yourself done but then you've not learned much. However if you aren't interested in creating characters, clothing, or hair then that is fine and I suggest you go straight to Puppet Master or Animation tutorials. Otherwise if you are interesting in creating characters, clothing, and hair, as part of the basics of that use an ID that is readily available and create a character based on that. And because you need to render to judge your progress you'll need to learn how to use the bare basics of iRay rendering and ignoring 3DL for now. I'll tell you as Ken O'Banion above did, that rendering a Perspecitive or other view is not the same as rendering a Camera view and that unfortunately the Camera view seems to have bugs. If you do decide to create a character as your 1st learning lesson I'll tell you for now just accept the Environment HDR DAZ Studio supplies because it makes a good portrait light. And don't bother posing as you've got your hands already full, so just use the Depth of Field Closeup Camera and a Golden Ratio Portrait or similar dimension for that camera when you set it up.
I know it's going to take me 2 months or more but shouldn't learning something as potential complex as DAZ Studio take a while? Since you've set a goal you can easily track your progress. I also know that in creating this character I'm only learning a small subset of what DAZ Studio can do. Namely alter Surfaces settings, create bump and maybe specular and normal maps (Gimp and Nik Collection from Google), create hair (nVidia Hairworks and Blender plugin (those are free) or the Look At My Hair (paid), and apply morphs from FaceGen Artist Pro (free demo with logo geometry on head or paid version). Also as part of editing the Surfaces settings I learn saving Material Presets, Character Presets, and Scene Presets. When editing in the Surfaces tab use the iRay Genesis 2 Male or Female Optimize Presets as the basis for creating your new character as those are PBR settings and they'll make it much easier for you to create a reasonably good famisile of your character. PBR shading is scientific, not artistry for you'll get setting that look more realistic in a wider variety of lighting situations. It does though mean to get scenes that have good dramatic lighting you must learn lighting basic as you can no longer depend on flattering lighting being painted directly on the character's face. HRDI lighting will play a role in you learning how to do that but it's best to save learning those techniques until after you learn to make characters.
If you base your character off a Genesis 2 Female, Genesis 2 Male, or Genesis Essental Base character than if you do an external search for Snow Sultan and DAZ templates you'll find the converted UVs you can to use to create your bump maps and such in Gimp to create your character. There are also Pinterest Notes you can follow a board for by various artists and their notes for PBR shading and human eye & skin tones. I'd of prefered to use Genesis 3 to start with but neither FaceGen Artist Pro or Headshop support Genesis 3 yet although the maker of FaceGen Artist Pro told me as a recent purchaser of FaceGen Artist Pro they'll be adding Genesis 3 support.
When that's done I want to learn to make clothing, pose, and animate in DAZ Studio and those are big standalone topics that take a lot of goal setting and doing but that's the way I decided how to get out of the preset clicking - dial setting rut. You or anybody that's interested can do the same type of goal setting or you own personal way of learning.
Also, if you are just want to learn how to generally navigate around DAZ Studio with no particular goals then look at SickYield's tutorials they are creating in a thread elsewhere in these forums. The tutorials are actually on YouTube though.
So it's a lot of work true...just writing this response took like 30 minutes.
Once you get to the point of needing to create skin textures: search externally: "creating pbr skin textures"
I couldn't agree more with Ken's post. Especially the part about old habits dying hard. That is the first and foremost obstacle to overcome. There's little that I could think to add except that there are some things that Poser can do that DAZ Studio cannot. For example, don't look for a Hair Room in DAZ Studio, or for any type of dynamics. There are plugins available for such things, but that is beyond the basic DAZ Studio itself.
Not entirely correct. the basic Dynamic Clothing control is free. And you can do quite a bit with that and never touch the full plugin.
Well, thanks everyone... Will probably spring for the Fern/Ronya bundles with V7 & G3 morph freebies, at least the hair is usable in Poser too. I will probably be in the forum a lot though asking "How do I add a camera?" "Where is autofit?" "How do I add a light?" "Where do babies come from?" Kidding. But please feel free to answer the first three questions....Thanks :)
1. Create (Alt-C) - New Camera...
2. Autofit is really nice...it will pop up for most compatible products when you load the product into the scene if it's need. You can you right click in the Scene tab view on the object you want to Autofit and eg, Fit 'Genesis 2 Male to...'
3. Create (Alt-C) - a list of several types of lights to choose from can be added
Thanks, I don't have the morphs yet, still playing with free G3 and can't figure out how to bend the forearms or full hands, I just see full arm movements, and for hands, grasp, finger movements, etc... but no full hand bends... Trying my first Lray render now on a really ugly G3 sans morphable features LOL...
Snow Sultan recently did a tutorial on the Puppeteer:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJehssiFp5a6rJReNxFR50w
I moved over from Poser in July last year, and while it does take some getting used to, I've pretty much got a handle on it now.
I had to learn the various tools needed for different purposes. If you need to modify a texture or move a bone you can't do it without selecting the right tool first. If you want to bend a hand you'll need to select it with the ActivePose tool. I couldn't even figure out how to change a texture because I was using the wrong tool LOL. It was very frustrating at first. I do miss the Poser Morph tool though. And conforming clothes work differently as you can't select a sleeve eg. and move it seperately like Poser (or I don't think so).
I'm not big on tutorials and have learnt more by playing with DS every day and solving problems as they arise. So welcome to Daz Studio and I'm sure you won't regret it.
I just open DAZ STUDIO and explore at whatever level I'm at..... when I get stuck I describe the problem in a Google Search and add DAZ STUDIO at the end.... hopefully I find a forum topic (usually one from this site) or a Youtube video or other support/tutorials. Good luck!
Thanks, well, I officially invested in some DS only product, thought that would never happen! I noticed that when I switched to "Hollywood" viewer mode, things got easier, maybe because I live in Hollywood LOL... Still don't understand why there are dials for every finger but not just for the whole hand to move, twist or bend it... Or the forearms... I still have a ton of questions which I will ask separetly, but I've discovered a lot just by clicking on things and seeing what they do, which is how I learned Photoshop and Poser...
Long time Poser user, trying to figure out DS finally.... Here is my first batch of questions, thanks in advance for all answers :)
How do I change the render dimensions?
How do I adjust the camera, not just the view? I want to create a face close-up camera that will work on any face and both left and right hand close-up cameras like in Poser, how do I do that?
How do I rotate and move the camera?
When I do a close-up (with the magnifier) and save the scene, it saves as full body, how do I save just the close-up?
Where in textures is the G3 texture? It is not under runtime/textures/DAZ... Genesis 2 is, but not 3. I want to add my own make-up (not for sale, just for myself) but can't find the texture maps....
Are there sliders somewhere to move, bend, rotate the entire hand and not just the fingers/grasp/etc... Are there sliders somewhere for moving the forearms and not just the entire arms?
Is there a way to select a body part and move it? I tried all the tools and none worked.
When I select a light that I saved, the image goes away in the viewer, so I am just seeing a gray screen... ???
There will be more! But thanks in advance for all answers :)
Here's a Camera/Lights tutorial. It was written when DS2 was current, but pretty much all the basics are still the same in DS4.9, so I'm sure you'll find it useful. The process of creating cameras and lights in DS is actually quite simple, as long as you know how. And it has some great options - like choosing a camera, then creating a light to match that view.
http://digilander.libero.it/maclean/DStutorial.htm
Another thing I'd advise in DAZ Studio is to investigate all menus and right-click everywhere. DS has all sorts of options, and they're not exactly hidden - just stored in places many Poser users wouldn't expect to find them. For example, when using the Material Selection tool, right-click a material in the scene and you get a list of very useful options - Select all surfaces with this texture, etc, etc.
mac
Are you using DS 4.9 and do you plan to use Iray for rendering?
You may want to watch Sickleyield's videos:
Yes there are dials as well as the universal tool for moving/rotating limbs, etc in Parameters. Under the root, in Parameters, you'll find Pose Controls, these will allow you to do grasps and other things. You can select a body part, such as the foot/feet and then select the hip and drag or rotate it and you'll be able to shift weight or bend the knees when you pull the hip down. Hover over the tools and look ofr the universal tool to move/rotate when you select a body part.
For textures, go to surfaces and look under the maps, under diffuse, as example, hover over the image and it will tell you the name. Textures can be found in your My DAZ 3D Library under Runtime>Textures similar to Poser. I would recommend working on copies of the textures. For makeup, you might look for information on the LIE (layer image editor).
I looked everywhere and cannot find posing controls for the whole hands (beside grasp, etc...) I just need to bend and rotate them. If you look under hands, there are a million finger controls and and grasp/spread/etc... but no way to move the hand itself. Also I still can't find a way to move the forearms. I can't find any way to select a body part to move it, tried all the tools. I used the universal tool, clicked on her hand, nothing happens.... I can't select any body part with the universal tool, it will only select the head or nothing at all. When I select the character from the panel, the hip bone shows up and all bones below that and the abdomen, but no forearms and hands. Arms just raises both arms or shrugs shoulders. No way to move individual arms that I can find... And I looked exactly where you said, under textures and as I mentioned in my first post, they are not under DAZ. Genesis 2, and others are, but no Genesis 3. Did another artist create the texture for G3??? Thanks.
If you try loading a new base figure from the library can you select body parts then? By default the node tools select teh figure, if it isn't, on the first click and then the bone when clicking on a selected figure - it is possible to set the selection mode to figure only (in the Tool Settings pane), and it is possible to make bones or other objects unslectable (Parameters pane or the mouse pointer icon next to them in the Scene pane).
General group in Render Settings, but make sure it is not set to the Active Viewport preset as that will limit you to the viewport size.
That would require a script, you can't set a camera on its own to retarget automatically as you change figure selection
Use the little widgets in the top-right corner, or hold down modifiers and drag in the viewport - ctrl-alt (cmd-opt on the Mac) left drag for orbit, ctrl-alt right drag to rotate the camera. Window>Workspace>Customise allows you to see the current shortcuts and to change them.
The perspective view is not saved (or tracked for undo). If you want to save a view assign a real camera (click the More Options button in the new camera dialogue and you can set the option to copy the curent view).
I don't understand what you mean here
Merged your two threads so that the information is kept together and replies aren't duplicated.
Yikes, so much to learn, thanks.... The real thing that disturbs me is that no matter where I look and how I try, I can't select the individual arms or forearms or full hands to make them move! I can't find their bones, although I've found all the others and when I select the parts nothing happens, only the head is selectable. Not sure if it matters, but I'm on a Mac.
Ok, I just loaded a fresh V7 and now the parts ARE selectable, but couldn't move! Then I realized I had used a premade pose that I wanted to alter and there was a "pin" on the hand, and after I removed the pin, I could move it it, but still the controls are in a very illogical place... So I guess I have to unpin all the parts to move them from a premade pose???
Please go to the Scene pane, right-click on the fiogure's entry, and then Expand>Expand all (I can't recal the exact terms but I think that's right), then scroll so you can see the arm bones. Post a screenshot of that.
Usually, you can select the single bones with a double click.
If this is not working, try the following: in the scene tab, select the character, and open the hierachie by clicking on the small triangle in front of the character name. Please note that G3 has a different bone structure compared to the older generations (V4-G2). G3 has a bend and twist bone, which work as a pair, but you can control both if you select the "bend" bone.
Then, go to the parameter tab. Here you can select the actions allowed for the bone.
Ok, thanks, I'm doing a render now but I think when I reloaded a new V7 all the bones came back, for some reason they were missing or hidden on the last one that I had injected Ronya onto and used a premade pose from G2 that I was trying to alter and use on G3, I wonder if that could have messed things up? And I noticed the new G3 premade pose that I just used put pins on every single body part, is there a way of universally removing all those pins rather than do them all individually? Thanks so much you guys! I have a thousand questions LOL... But at least I got one close-up done of V7 and doing another and she's gorgeous! I've been up all night with this LOL, almost 8:00AM and going to sleep now!
Thanks again, and here's my first render with a slightly awkward hand pose due to my lack of being able to move it!
That render looks very good!
You can remove the pins by selecting the character in the Scene tab, and then, in the viewport, unpin them through the pose manipulation ball. In the top right corner of the manipulation ball, you see a small pin. Left-click on it, and then, from the menu, select "Unpin all". That should do the trick.
I didn't know there WAS a manipulation ball--wow, so much to learn, but I think I'm doing pretty well for less than 24 hours and it's definitely more fun than algebra... I really thought I would NEVER use DS and here I am now buying more product for it while it's on sale... Eventually I'd like to learn how to do characters for sale and clothes textures, but I still haven't figured out to get into and manipulate the DS equivalent of the material room, let alone figure out how to create for Lray LOL! But at least textures are all Photoshop until I have to apply them... Oh and I figured out where the G3 textures are, not in DAZ, but Raya and the character is called Jeane... I finally figured out how to change the render size too...
Oh, another question, can I move My Daz Library to an external hard drive? If I can and do, will that screw up the ability of both DS and Poser to find it? Thanks again for everyone's help! :)
Thanks to everyone's help, got another render done! I usually don't do realism, so it was fun trying something new!
Your latter questions first:
Yes, you can, and no, not at all. In fact, I have DS installed on three computers, all sharing the same content: the 'master' library is on one machine, and I sync it to an external drive, that is shared between the other two. I also maintain a copy of my content library on one of my network drives, when I'm not 'on walkabout'.
The trick to that is to let DAZ Studio know where the content library is. You do that by selecting the 'Content Library' tab, then click that little icon in the upper-right corner, which will bring up a context menu. From that menu, select the 'Content Library Manager...' option. That will bring up a dialog box like this:
Once the tree-view is expanded, and a category is selected, the buttons become enabled. From there, you just click 'Add', and point DS to where your content is located, using the familiar folder-chooser dialog to point DS to the appropriate directories.
After that, on the same menu, there is a 'Content DB Maintenance...' option. (It has separator bars above and below it, which makes it stand out a bit.) Select that, and check the 'Reimport metadata' option, and click 'Accept'. Depending on the amount of content you have installed, this might take awhile. The content database is mostly used for maintaining the 'Smart Content' functionality; if you don't want to use that, you can get by using the Content Library. I know people who absolutely refuse to use Smart Content, but I, for one, absolutely love it, and I use the crap out of it! (Since, compared to Poser's library structure, DAZ's content directory organization strikes me as positively Byzantine! Once again, I've been spoiled by Poser!)
As for the rest of your comment, if you're serious about creating content, you're going to need a good 3-D modeling application. There are scads of them out there to choose from, but the one I always come back to is Blender. Be warned, however: if you think the DS user interface is intimidating, the Blender UI is downright terrifying! On the up-side however, it's extraordinarily powerful, extremely versatile..., and it's free!
One thing to keep in mind...if you never have used a 3D modeling program before you are probably better off when first trying Blender than if you are used to something else. It is different than most others and as such those familiar with something else tend to be very down on the Blender UI.
Thanks for all the advice! As for creating content, I want to do mostly textures, so I can do that in Photoshop, but have to figure out how to do them to render in lRay.. As far as characters, I was hoping to just use Handspan morphs which are merchant resources, I love the morphs for V4 so I'm thinking they're similar for G3... I have a bunch of skin resources I originally got when I thought I was going to do V4 characters and can probably adapt to G3 maps. I never figured out how to do I NJ/REM poses in Poser so never did characters. I'm MUCH more comfortable in Photoshop than all 3D programs, so I'm thinking textures are the way to go, if I can figure out how to get them in the DS version of the material room, I guess Surfaces? Which I haven't tackled yet... But thanks everyone for all your help. So much more to learn, I'm just thrilled I could at least get some renders done!