Another quick question: can you customize right-click menu?

SnowSultan

Is it possible to customize the menu that appears when you right-click a figure's body part or an object? I'd like to add options to select children, zero their pose, etc, but I haven't seen an option in the Customization menu to do this. If it's possible, could you point it out? Thanks, and I hope these little questions might help other people too.   :)

L'Adair

I don't know if it's possible to customize the right-click menus.

What I have done is create keyboard shortcuts for the things I use the most. For example, you could create a shortcut to Select Children. Then anytime you needed to select the children, just use the shortcut instead of a right-click.

SnowSultan

Maybe Richard will chime in with a definite answer, but yeah I plan on using shortcuts if necessary. I don't really like using them because I have a lousy memory, but it's better than nothing.   :)

Syrus_Dante

What the right-click menu will look like first depends on the Viewport Tool that is currently selected and second on the Node that is selected in the Scene pane. Most of the time with different tools activated it dosn't matter where you right-click on the viewport the context menu will look the same. Also the right-click dosn't change the selection like a left click on the viewport does. I think the only tool that is realy "context sensitive" with left and right-click is the Surface Selection tool.

In the Customize dialog Menu tab on the right you can add Main Menus and also add actions to the Main Menus and Pane Menus (this lined button on all the panes also called the Option Menu). There is no option to add actions to the right-click context menu. I think the best you can do is to add more main menus with the actions you need the most and add or change shortcuts to key combinations you can remember. It can be good practice to add a menu that shows your actions with the shortcut behind. I think in the beginning the menu can serve you as a reminder for the shortcut but the more you use the menu the more often you see the shortcut and it can help to remember them.

I've added the some shortcuts for the actions found in the Action List under Scene Hierarchy that includes Select Children. Those combinations I use are just a suggestion but they are easy enougth for me to remember and not far away from each other so I can reach them with only my left hand.

Ctrl+Shift+E : Expand From Selected (start with a double left-click selection in the viewport on a figure node for example otherwise you expand from the root node)

Ctrl+Shift+C : Collapse Selected

Ctrl+Alt+C : Select Children

Ctrl+Alt+V : Unselect Children (I ended up with V because it's next to E, don't try to assign Ctrl+Alt+X ;) it will close DS immediately - Ctrl+Alt+E as an easy to remember opposite didn't work eighter on my keyboard layout because of the € character)

On the right side of the dialog in the Menus tab you can see I've added alot of actions in extra menus. The better you organize them the better the usability. But who am I telling this it was a screenshot of you SnowSultan on deviantart from where I got the idea to add seperate Zero, Memorize, Restore and Clear menus for Figures and Items, Pose and Shape.

https://www.deviantart.com/snowsultan/art/Customizing-DAZ-Studio-Interface-Menus-310684759

In case you wonder the additional & in front of the menu name makes the letter behind it a new shortcut to open the menu. For example if I press Alt+S the scripts menu opens, if I release the keys and press Alt+S again the next menu in the line "Scrips Pose" opens, if I release the keys again and press the shortcut once more my "&Shader" menu further on the right opens up. Now I can quickly navigate the highlighted menu entry around with the cursor keys and press enter to execute the selected action without even moving my mouse.

See another example in the attached screenshot, the menu "Node Weight Map &Brush" I've added opens if I press Alt+B (made sense to me B stands for tool with a brush) and offers all kinds of actions that are usualy found somewhere in a sub menu of the right-click or some pane menu. Then again I found the default Paint/Smooth Shift+P and Shift+S too far away from each other so I changed that to Shift+A to Paint that I can reach with only the left hand and both letters are next to each other at least on my keyboard layout.

In my custom menus I've added seperators for the readability but made less use of sub menus because I found navigating sub menus can be tedious if they open slow and its sometimes hard to point the cursor to the one you want to open while suddenly a nearby menu opens instead, that happed to me far too often as I used the right-click menu.

I've dedicated a whole thread to the customizations I made in Daz Studio: How to Customize Daz Studio - to speed up Workflow!? [WIP]

You can download an old version of my extended main menu from there if you like so you don't have to start from scratch with customizing.

SnowSultan

Wow Syrus, that's sure to help users who aren't really familiar with customizing Studio.   :)   Very helpful and detailed. I'm glad my tutorial could help a little too! I have a large Favorites menu with links to zeroing poses, useful scripts, and other stuff too with lots of separators and sub-menus. I'll probably just try and stick the Select Children options in there somewhere (thank you for pointing out where to find them in that massive customization list too).

LenioTG

Thank you @Syrus_Dante , I'll read those tutorials! :D