Guide to Making Basic Shapes/Morphs for Re-distribution

I have gotten a few emails from people requesting information on how to package up freebies.So here is the basics! 

Guide to Making Basic Shapes/Morphs for Re-distribution

Step 1:

Start with a blank character, in this example I will use a Genesis one.

It is important to start with a character that is not using ANY morphs! If you are not planning on making it available for others and is only for personal use, this is not an issue, but for the purpose of making a freebie it is!

You can check to see what morphs are active by looking under the “currently used” tab, see picture.

Step 2:

Make adjustments to the character, okay now check which packs you are planning on using, most people with have the Genesis Head and Body Morphs package, so you are pretty safe in using those one, if you want to make available to the widest possible audience.

Once you have changed your dials for your character to make your custom morph, check under the “currently used” option to verify which ones were used (see picture)

There are other ways to make morphs, but in this case we are simply focusing on “dialed” characters.

Step 3:

Save your “shape”, using the File> Save As > Shaping Preset

Be sure to name your shape, something unique that you will be able to recognize!

Extra tip: make sure that when you save your preset make sure your character is placed centered in the screen showing off the head or body in a good way, because the current frame will be the “thumb nail” picture in your content library

This will bring up a new dialogue box, in it you want to make sure you “deselect” any “extras”, keeping only the basic’s, otherwise when someone tries to use your shape it will likely throw an error if any of the extra packages you have are missing.

Step: 4:

Scan your hard drive for “new files” in your content library, your new shape should show up in your content library under: unassigned>preset>morph> apply

File is there and named correctly? Congrats! You have successfully created a morph!

Step 5:  

 Now to package it up for sharing!

Check and see where your morph has been saved to, this can easily be done by right clicking on the thumb nail image and bringing up the drop down menu, from there you can select “browse to file location” which will open up the folder on your hard drive where the file is saved.

Now comes the complicated part, you need to make a new folder in a location that is NOT in your “My Library”, select somewhere on your hard drive that you can find but is not directly being used by Daz Studio. You need to create a basic folder, the character I created is named “Findlay”, so I start with a folder named “Findlay”.

Next step setting up the correct structure you need to create a series of blank folders that will lead to the correct path to your shape.

It should be something similar to Findlay>My Library>People>Genesis>Characters>

In the final folder you should copy and paste your characters files, there should be two, a dson file, and .duf file (the dson file is the shape file, the .duf one is the thumb nail image that is displayed in your content library.

note: it is VERY important to only include the two files that you want to redistribute, not every file in your "My Library"

Step 6:

Make a promo image, you should render out a promo image of your shape to be included in the folder.

Make a readme text file, that has the basic info on your files. You can check what others have done for a readme.

Once you have added your readme and promo image to the folder you created to package up your shaping preset, you zip the file up. On a windows machine you should be able to right click on the folder and select “add to archive” which will create a zip file of that folder.

Step 7:

Upload the zipped file to a site such as ShareCG to be shared with others.

If you have any questions please let me know!