Free Video Tutorials for DAZ Studio
*Edit: I changed the title of this thread because I wish to put all of my tutorial videos here as they are made. If you are early to this thread, there is only one video, but I promise, I will add others and keep the links in this first post.
I put together a video showing how to add MetaData to any products in DAZ Studio with the emphasis being on older products. It includes instructions on assigning default compatibility bases so that DS knows what each clothing item is, allowing materials to be directed to the individual items. It also includes instructions on how to assign metadata, categories, and compatibilities to each item and the corresponding material presets. I used Stylin' for M4 as my sample product.
I really hope you find this useful and that my voice is not too irritating to listen to. :cheese:
I hope it is okay to link there, instead of a download at ShareCG or similar site. It is 133MB, so that seems too large for a direct download. I'm sure the mods will catch this if it is not TOS.
Michael 4 is wearing his default boxer brief material in this video, so it is perfectly safe for kids to watch and is safe for work.
OK, now that I have added another video, I'm going to start a list here at the bottom of this post.
Adding MetaData in DAZ Studio 4.6
Setting Up a Favorites Menu
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Comments
An excellent tutorial, thank you very much for taking the time to do it. Your voice is not irritating at all, far from it, so no worries there.
I was able to follow it easily, and it will come in very hand. I downloaded the video from YouTube using my YTD downloader, so I have it saved. Thanks again.
Slosh, this is great! I've been doing metadata for my older products (and fixing metadata for screwed up newer products) for a long time, but you taught me some efficiency techniques I didn't know. Thanks.
I enjoyed making this video, and a few that I made for some PA's to use. I don't think knowledge and "how-to" should be kept to oneself, but shared freely. I want to make more videos, as I see things come up that require some extra explanation, so if there are requests, I will consider more videos.
Anything you can teach us about new features in 4.6.1.17 would be great. DAZ always lists new thing in the release notes, but doesn't tell us how to use them. Or at least I don't know where to look to find out how to use them.
Thanks for keeping the tutorials going, Slosh. :-)
Nice vid. Watch they don't nab you for voice overs.
Don't make me drop my voice an octave or two. I consciously make sure my voice is a bit higher, or I get the Barry White thing going, which would be way too monotonous to listen to :)
Barbult, anything specific you can think of from 4.6.whatever? I actually barely skim the release notes when they are given. I'm thinking about doing a video on using DIM, since that seems to be a big problem for most people. I'm just not sure how well that will work since I already have DIM set up, and videos look best when you can start from scratch.
Here's an excerpt from the first page of the announcement of 4.6.1.17. These are items whose brief description there are puzzling to me. I'd like more info about them and how to use them. I want to learn about both "user" topics and "developer" topics.
1) Implemented the concept of a Rigid Follow Node; an Instance derived node whose purpose is to maintain a proportional relationship with specified polygons of a target mesh. Tools for creating a node and establishing reference geometry can be found in the context menu of the Polygon Group Editor viewport tool. (How do we use this? Really need a tutorial here!)
2) Fixed UV interpolation in the viewport to match/respect the Edge Interpolation of the object; what you see in the viewport now more closely matches what will be rendered. (What is UV interpolation of Edge Interpolation, and what will I see that is better?)
4) Added Advanced Filtering support in the filter field of the Parameters, Shaping, Posing, Lights, Cameras and Surfaces panes; ala Install Manager Advanced Filtering - currently limited to Syntax Selector, Syntax Modifier and Query Pattern elements of an expression - Scope is currently limited to property labels. (Need examples!!! This sounds useful, but that page they linked to is not user friendly.)
9) Updated selection highlighting to indicate the node that is causing the selection. Viewport selection now uses the Accent Color of a given UI Style as the highlight color and the Link Color of a given UI Style as the alternate highlight color. Nodes that promote selection now highlight using the alternate highlight color. (What does promote selection mean, and how can I use this new feature to my advantage in normal workflow?)
10) Significant improvements to viewport display of the Smooth Shaded and Texture Shaded DrawStyles; added a User Interface Preference for enabling/disabling Per Pixel Lighting. These DrawStyle improvements implement per-pixel lighting, rather than the vertex lighting used in earlier versions, with improved specular, reflections and gamma correction; bump and normal map support has been added but is currently disabled due to speed concerns - this will be re-enabled once VBO support for them has been added. Viewport display of the default distant, spot and point lights now match 3Delight results much more closely. These improvements are hardware dependent. (So what are the hardware requirements to see these better results?)
13) Added support for “Projection Morphs”; used to override the shape of a specific morph with an alternate shape for the purpose of auto-generated morph projections. (Huh? What is this talking about and how do I take advantage of it?)
14) Added support for arbitrary node selection helpers; parented props can now be set [within Joint Editor Tool Settings] to promote viewport selection to their parent node; allows for “handles” to be made from any object in the scene, including instances. (Need examples. When would you do this? How would you do this? Why would you do this?)
Wow, barbult! I'm not sure I even know what some of those mean (yet). There are a few you list that I don't think need a video tutorial to explain.
I am not an expert on all of this, but here are my observations:
1) Implemented the concept of a Rigid Follow Node; an Instance derived node whose purpose is to maintain a proportional relationship with specified polygons of a target mesh. Tools for creating a node and establishing reference geometry can be found in the context menu of the Polygon Group Editor viewport tool. (How do we use this? Really need a tutorial here!) This refers to rigidity such as buttons and buckles. I haven't used the current implementation of this yet, but once I do, I will try to provide some video feedback. I am currently working on clothing items that will require this feature.
2) Fixed UV interpolation in the viewport to match/respect the Edge Interpolation of the object; what you see in the viewport now more closely matches what will be rendered. (What is UV interpolation of Edge Interpolation, and what will I see that is better?) My understanding of this could best be explained by the seam lines you often see in the viewport. By using edge interpolation, the UV's will line up better between material zones and will not show seams as badly, and also textures will display more correctly. Notice how sometimes your textures can look "blurry" until rendered? Well, this should display them more closely to that rendered view.
4) Added Advanced Filtering support in the filter field of the Parameters, Shaping, Posing, Lights, Cameras and Surfaces panes; ala Install Manager Advanced Filtering - currently limited to Syntax Selector, Syntax Modifier and Query Pattern elements of an expression - Scope is currently limited to property labels. (Need examples!!! This sounds useful, but that page they linked to is not user friendly.) Not sure about this one yet
9) Updated selection highlighting to indicate the node that is causing the selection. Viewport selection now uses the Accent Color of a given UI Style as the highlight color and the Link Color of a given UI Style as the alternate highlight color. Nodes that promote selection now highlight using the alternate highlight color. (What does promote selection mean, and how can I use this new feature to my advantage in normal workflow?) This one merely refers to the selection highlight (that yellow/orange line) that is usually displayed when using the surface selector or the region selector. Whatever UI Style you have chosen uses different colors as the highlight, so selection highlighting will now use that color instead of always using the standard yellow/orange. I have mine set to blue. "Nodes that promote selection" simply means the areas on your figure that allow you to select them, such as "lThigh, lCollar, Head, Lower Body,etc." Or, in the case of surfaces, "Head, Torso, Hip, Iris, etc."
10) Significant improvements to viewport display of the Smooth Shaded and Texture Shaded DrawStyles; added a User Interface Preference for enabling/disabling Per Pixel Lighting. These DrawStyle improvements implement per-pixel lighting, rather than the vertex lighting used in earlier versions, with improved specular, reflections and gamma correction; bump and normal map support has been added but is currently disabled due to speed concerns - this will be re-enabled once VBO support for them has been added. Viewport display of the default distant, spot and point lights now match 3Delight results much more closely. These improvements are hardware dependent. (So what are the hardware requirements to see these better results?) In the beta that was out just before this public release there were two different "textured preview" modes: one that was like we were all used to, and one that was improved, showing better shadows, specularity, bump, etc. Because of some limitations, these extra "per pixel" features were turned off by default. If your hardware can handle it, they can be turned back on in your Preferences:UI settings. Try it out, it looks pretty good to me. As far as the hardware requirements, I don't specifically know, but my computer is pretty run-of-the-mill and I can see the improvements without any noticeable issues.
13) Added support for “Projection Morphs”; used to override the shape of a specific morph with an alternate shape for the purpose of auto-generated morph projections. (Huh? What is this talking about and how do I take advantage of it?) This is one I missed and sounds intriguing. I will have to investigate and get back to you.
14) Added support for arbitrary node selection helpers; parented props can now be set [within Joint Editor Tool Settings] to promote viewport selection to their parent node; allows for “handles” to be made from any object in the scene, including instances. (Need examples. When would you do this? How would you do this? Why would you do this?) Again, not sure about this one.
I don't have much, if any, more information than you but I think I can guess at answers to an extent (and if not there's an ocean and continent between Rob and me, eastbound or westbound).
I think this is a solution for things like muscle morphs adding details to the clothes that shouldn't be there. A special morph, that isn't applied to the figure in the viewport, is used to generate clothing morphs - it could lack incised detail, such as muscle tone, or could have hollows filled in, such as bridging the cleavage on breasts or buttocks.
14) Added support for arbitrary node selection helpers; parented props can now be set [within Joint Editor Tool Settings] to promote viewport selection to their parent node; allows for “handles” to be made from any object in the scene, including instances. (Need examples. When would you do this? How would you do this? Why would you do this?)
You can use a prop, such as a cone, as the thing to click on to select a bone - you don't have to have an actual attached node. That means you can add clickable handles to items that have only hidden handles, or I suppose you could add a bunch of props off to one side that could be used to select otherwise awkward to reach bones so that settings could be adjusted in a parameter pane. When you hover the mouse over one of those items, the bone they will select gets highlighted in the standard colour and the prop gets highlighted in the alternative colour.
This post brought to you by Wild Speculation Inc.
Thank you both for your observations and wild speculations! Some of it makes more sense now. I wonder, though, how DAZ expects people to figure out how to use it. Do they give special additional information to their PAs, so they can implement products with these features?
I also have an Nvidia GeForce GTS 450. (Gigabyte GV-N450OC-1GI). I also have a much older Nvidia card installed to run a third monitor. I wonder if the presence of that old card has any impact on what DAZ can display. I know I'm a couple driver versions behind, because the newest drivers do not support that old card. Time to upgrade it, I guess.
Edit: added a screenshot of my preferences settings. Any suggestions?
Nope, no special information for PA's. We get to figure it out for ourselves just like everyone else. As for your graphics setup, I'll leave that to someone better informed.
I think I've kind of veered your thread off on a tangent here. Sorry, but maybe the extra conversations will keep it on the New Posts list and attract more users to notice it. Your tutorial is very good and should get a wide audience.
Slosh -- this was VERY helpful and served to get me started on creating my own metadata.
But -- I think you missed one key step at the start.
While on the product in the content library tab, right-click and select 'Create a Product'. Put the object name in the pop-up box.
This will add the item to the Products list and enable the creation of the Runtime/Support metadata files for the object.
I was going nuts trying to figure out how to create the files in Runtime/Support until I ran into this in another thread (which I cannot seem to find at the moment).
nice tuts
nice speaking
perhaps the mouse movement a bit slower
Thanks! I thought this thread all but died. I apologize for my speedy mousing. You know, you get in your own habits and forget sometimes that people are having to follow your movements. I promise, any future videos will not have that problem :)
Very good point, namffuak. I could have/should have shown how to do this from a Product standpoint, but it didn't occur to me that anyone would want to do that. Create Product can also be done at the end of this process and will yield the same result. If you do it before, you will then have to go into the products list and update/export the new metadata to the product file. But, just in case folks don't know, having this metadata saved as a product will allow you to reimport the metadata should you need to reset your content management service (CMS).