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For a shader prset you need to seelct both object and surface(s) - that's simplest with the Surface Selection Tool from the Tools menu.
I read instructions like that when I started using Studio and honestly it all confused me. Eventually I realised all I needed to do was have the Surfaces tab (pane, whatever) open and it'd list all of the material zones available on the object currently selected. Click on appropriate one, drag opactiy or something to check it's the right area, then click on a material from the library or adjust whatever.
It is, however, possible to have a surface selected in the Surfaces pane without having the item it belongs to selected in the scene - and then the Shader Preset won't work.
Right - it's just the 'switch to selection tool and select the right area' thing that gets me confused. Most things in Studio already require the object selected (or not selected) so I just follow that rule.
I know there are a bunch of other tools I could be using for things too (like all of the clothing creation type stuff) but honestly it just gives me a headache to try and muddle through it or follow the few random posts I've found so I just stick with the simple stuff.
Here are some recent good written tutes I found with Google. http://thinkdrawart.com/category/daz-studio
And here's a link to a PDF you can buy that has detailed information on posing. http://www.winterbrose.com/Studio-Master-Advanced-Posing-In-DAZ-Studio.html
And their beginner's PDF tute: http://www.winterbrose.com/Get-Started-In-3D-with-DAZ-Studio-4-7-DS4.html
There's also Paolo Ciccone's The Complete Guide to DAZ Studio 4 from a couple years ago. The Kindle version is affordable.
Found another one at Amazon for a Kindle. Published in 2015 https://www.amazon.com/Primer-DAZ-Studio-rendering-animation-ebook/dp/B00X1JB9NY/ref=pd_sim_351_2?ie=UTF8&dpID=51VWhgB3VgL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_OU01_AC_UL320_SR248,320_&refRID=EPW1J2ENX6TGF136JBA8
I figured out why the Iray material would not apply - I had the wrong surface selected.
Anyway, once I figured out that the glass surface was not the one I wanted and that the visor that I did want had TWO materials, one for the inside and one for the outside, then things started to work. Unfortunatly, with having two materials assigned as the glass made the figure's face look weird unless the camera was pointed centered on the visor, so I ended up using one of the car paint materials, That gave me lots of nice reflections.
Now, next question - what do you do when the Iray materials render a bit "grainy". I let the render run for over an hour. Everything else looked great in less than 10 minutes except for the Iray materials. What do you adjust to get better resolution, but not extend the render time?
How about better tool tips in side Daz itself? Perhaps a script or something could be made that allow users to see relevent details on each item as the hover their mouse over it. There is a "What's This? Interactive Help" button in Daz...but it doesn't actually do much of anything. So this could be an opportunity. Make it so that the tool tip not only gives a brief detail on what the setting does, but also, the user can enable tool tip links. Tool tip links work as a link to a more descriptive FAQ on the subject. That means instant access to exactly the information you need. Just knowing what X or Y does in the settings can be quite helpful.
It can be a pain to try and locate where something is covered in any subject. Where do you look in that huge user document for these explanations? Here, the tool tip link can take a user directly to that subject. This is a vital element in learning, making that connection to something you are looking at. "Oh, this does that! Ok!"
And when I say everything, the tool tip should work on everything. Let me explain.
Say you are looking at the surfaces. The tool tip can activate on every single selectable feature in that surface tab. Hover over DIFFUSE COLOR, it will tell you what that is. You can additionally click a link that takes you to a document explaining surfaces. It skips directly to the parts covering DIFFUSE COLOR, how you can edit colors, load up textures of your own, and use shaders. You don't need to search, you don't need to ask other people. It takes you directly to the information. Obviously I would guess most of us know a little about that option, but this same action can be done for every setting. DIFFUSE ROUGHNESS, OPACITY STRENGTH, ect, every item that can be selected can activate tool tip. The tip also explains what the value does, going up does this, going down does this. That part is super important!
So regardless of your skill set or knowledge, you can always look and see what a setting does. I am not a photographer. So the camera settings always trip me. I keep forgetting what this or that does, even after using them a few times. I can be absent minded sometimes. A handy tool tip to remind me what FOCAL POINT SCALE or which way DEPTH OF FIELD goes up or down to focus would be a nice reminder. Do you forget the what color temps are? The tool tip can take you directly to a chart. Most importantly, this can be done without dumbing down the software. Its all optional. Wouldn't that be a good thing?
Obviously, this would take a while to create. It could be an add on product for people to buy. But I predict that if its done right, and promoted by Daz, it would be a big seller.
Video guides are also very helpful to me, personally. Everyone learns differently, I always learn more by watching them than anything else. I don't learn too well reading a text based guide that has few or no pics. I'm sorry, that's just how my mind works. Sometimes, when reading a guide, it will say to click this or open that, and I have to look up what they are talking about. That drives me crazy. Looking up a guide for a guide, when a picture or video could have shown how its done. I don't care if a video guide moves fast, after all, I can just pause and rewind. I prefer that over a guide that moves slow, as long as everything can be seen.
Suggesting that because $800 software don't ship with manuals as a reason for Daz to not need one is absolutely ridiculous, and frankly kind of insulting. Just because others do something is NEVER an excuse to do the same thing. Daz can break out beyond what those products do, and by being different, they can attract a whole new audience that those products can never reach. Do you want this product to grow, or forever remain a niche product? I was under the distinct impression that Daz itself exists because it is an easier way to create humans in 3d, and being availble as a freemium product only solidifies the suggestion that this is intended to draw the largest audience possible. Why would you purposely close that product off by creating artificial ceilings from learning barriers? If this really is going to be the easiest way to create 3d art, then make it so. That does not have to detract at all from the advanced users who seem to know everything like certain people here. I wonder how many people have downloaded Daz, only to give up because they couldn't "get" it, and ended up feeling put off. Does that mean those people are just too stupid, or does it mean Daz lost a customer because they couldn't teach them properly? (Spoiler, I will say Daz lost a potential customer.) You can try blaming the customer, but how well does that work? That's not exactly a good for business.
It sounds like you are using a specular material(s) for the visor, which will typically take longer to render. I realise in the age of "got to have it now", and hour to render may seem like a long time, but it really is quite fast for a PBR/unbiased render. Let the render run longer, and it should clear up (maybe 2 hours). Keep in mind that for CGI animated films (like Pixar, Disney, Dreamworks, etc.) it's not uncommon for each frame to take 24 hours to render.....quality takes time. I seldom have a final render (other than "test" renders or fun renders) take less than an hour, usually they are in the 1-4 hour range.
If waiting isn't an option, try making the inside surface completely transparent (set cutout opacity to zero), and use your glass shader on the outer surface, that should speed up how fast the visor clears up.
You have to go to the Surfaces tab, select the surfaces you want, then double click the shader. This hasn't changed from 3Delight.
Thanks for the tip on cutout opacity. I'll give that a try.
2 hours for a render is not bad at all. I'm experienced with Vue Infinite and have renders take much, much longer... The first grainy version finished at about 1 hour. The little window that shows how long it was rendering was hidden under the render, so I never even knew it existed until one of the later versions. Now I know a little more each day on render setting, lighting, and tone mapping, so things are coming alone. I'm pretty happy with my final version. If you look really hard, there are just a few sections with some grain, but 95% of the picture turned out looking really nice.
Next I'm going to tackle one of Stonemason's Sci-Fi interior sets. I have never liked how they looked even after days of working on the lighting with Vue. So, keeping my finger crossed that Iray will give me the results I want.
...for me they are almost useless as I have retention issues that I don't experience with printed material .I find myself spending more time replaying a video over and over than working on the specific issue addresses.whereas in print/PDF format, I can keep the page that discusses the process open indefinitely as I work through the steps.
Maybe we really are heading to a "Fahrenheit 451" society.
I think the one point of having a manual is one that people tend to take for granted, and that is that for new users a manual is sort of like a syllabus for the best order in which to learn the different aspects of a program in a logical fashion so that you don't waste time on stuff you're simply not ready for. Having a bunch of tutorials all over the place is great, but for a new user which tut do you start with? At what point should you get into sub-surface scattering settings, or shading, or lighting? Not having a structure is one of the reasons lots of people give up -- they simply get overwhelmed with where best to start (and I'm pretty sure we all know people who downloaded Daz, tinkered around with it, and gave up because they'd reached the extent of what they could figure out on their own).
Maybe if someone who's fairly knowledgeable with the program actually published a Daz syllabus then a person could go out and find the tuts they needed when they needed them -- that is if the information is out there already as some people claim. Also you can't look for info if you don't know that you should be looking for it. The best tut in the world doesn't help anybody if it's dealing with an aspect of a program they didn't know was even in there in the first place, or for controls that they had no clue as to what they were for.
It's also about how easy those tutorials are to access. Yes, a person may stumble across some amazing information here if they happen to find the right thread at the right time, but are they going to trawl through the forums looking for that one secret, or are they going to go to another program that has a wealth of information easily able to be looked up at any time? I'm sure some people will pick option one, but most of them? Will a growing audience do that? Trends in all parts of entertainment and technology of late suggest no.
Exactly right.
Another thing that I started to discover is that many tutorials simply tell you how to plug in numbers, but they don't go into detail as to why you're doing it, or what effect those numbers are having on the final render. Even if you start "playing" with the percentages, that is an awfully inefficient way to go about learning something. It simply boggles my mind that anybody subscribes to the idea that software doesn't need a manual, as if every customer who downloads Daz is already knowledgeable about things like radiosity, gamma, and raytracing for example and is going to intuitively discover what those settings will do by just "fooling around with them".
That paragraph points out a problem I've mentioned before: All of my software documents included a section called "Philosophy of Operation" that did describe the "why's". I will admit though that sometimes the "why" can't be said in a reasonable number of words within a single document. In which case I made reference to external documents or books that went into the science behind the control parameters. Is this difficult to do? Of course! It also presupposes the programmer/writer actually knows why it is important to describe the "why's".
I'm curious - when people want these "whys" is it considered sufficient to "Explain it like I'm 5" ? I'm okay with not having a novel for each setting if someone says "makes it lighter or darker" which is the part I actually need to know.
(Then again I've just realised I know that exposure, shutter speed, and f-stop all "make it lighter or darker" but I don't know the practical differences between them beyond what they represent, so maybe a bit more than a one line answer is needed for things.)
I have comprehension issues when someone reads to me...I have enormous reading comprehesion, but don't read to me. Or tell me...I don't get it the way I do if I am reading it. You are not alone.
There are way too many manuals written by Captain Obvious. They're easy to write and are often written by the new guy on the staff.
For a trained person, the knob label on a well designed control panel will give sufficient clues to reason out what's supposed to happen. But for an inexperienced person, a manual with only a one sentence explanation about each control's function will work for an Etch-a-Sketch but an oscilloscope needs a little more explanation and basic understanding of what's happening under the hood. A "Philosopy of Operation" section attempts to paint a mental model of the purpose and technology of the device and what can be done with the controls singly and in combination. The more variables and degrees of freedom the more difficult it is to describe. Having a mental model of what's going on internally helps. Random poking and twiddling works too, but sometimes it helps to have a flashlight in the dark.
Very this. When I first started playing in the Iray sandbox, many times I had a converted material render unexpectedly smooth and glossy, and after I'd turned down (or even off) all the parameters supposed to control glossiness, the material still rendered smooth and glossy. Some of them I never did figure out; I'll have another go at them one of these days. Even now, too much of the Iray materials documentation — what I can find of it — gives a too-brief technical description with not enough translations into English.
Definitely not alone!
I prefer text with screenshots too.
Not being a native English speaker is another problem with videos ...