Genesis 3 Tutorials

I ran across some Genesis 3 tutorials on the Daz Forums and thought I would share them if anyone is looking for some help with Genesis 3!

Genesis 3 Tutorials 

Tutorial Guide to Using KerWar's Fancies

This is a tutorial guide to using KerWar's Fancies which is downloable at ShareCG

This is one of my must have items! It is a great set, but takes some getting used to, so I decided to make a visual guide so you can get an idea what is going on.

Here is the image we are going to be changing

Specular Colors

The first thing we are going to change is the specular colors.

In your content library locate KerWar Fancies01 > Step 1 - Specular Colors > Blues

Now that you have the right area open, switch to using the surface tool (it looks like 3 angled rectangles and a pointer), click on the surface you want to select. At this time it is also helpful to select the "Surfaces" tab so that you can see what is going on with the colors and patterns.

The "blouse fabric" is currently selected. 

To use the shader double click on it, you can see it worked because in the surfaces tab it shows the new color in the diffuse and specular colors and in the image itself.

Pro-tip:

You can tell what surface you have selected cause it has a yellow outline! 

Quick Render to show you what it looks like now...

Adding a Pattern

Adding a pattern in is easy!

Once again select the "blouse fabric" using the surface tool.

Then go to the patterns in KerWar Fancies list, in this case I chose

Pattern A, Fancy A Spec-03.dsa, and double clicked on it.

See picture...

But hey! What is going on here?! There is no pattern showing up!

Looking in the image you can see the "Specular Bump" now has a pattern on it. Because it is the "Sepcular Bump" it doesn't show up the pre-render.

Pro-tip

To check out what it will look like when rendered use the "spot render" tool, it look like a camera with a pointer. 

Adjustment

So the spot render did not show up anything new! Don't panic!

We need to adjust the tiling on the pattern, in this case we are going to use the 15x one. Double click on the 15 in the adjustment utilities, which will tile the pattern across the shirt.

See image

It shows the spot render of the 15x tiled pattern on the fabric

Example of what you can do with KerWar's Fancies

Other tips

Q: I managed to screw it up and it looks horrible!

A: Don't panic! In the adjustment utilities there is a remove bump, displacement and specular option. Try those! If that doesn't work try the mats from the original item, at worse remove the clothing piece and add it back into the scene.  

Customize V4 Dementia Pauldrons and Halo

This is a quick guide for the Dementia V4 Dress 

Pauldrons on/off

You can turn off the Pauldron (aka the big metal things on her shoulders)

Use the universal tool to select the right or left pauldron, and it should show up selected it the scene tab, alternatively in the "Scene" tab, locate the "arms" of the outfit, then use the arrows to go down to > hip> abdomen > chest> lcollar> lforearm > lpal

Then click on the "eye" icon next to it, which will "hide" the pauldron

See below image for what it looks like when it is turned off

Changing the Color of the Halo

In the surfaces tab select the "halo surface" it is 4 up from the bottom, you know you are in the right spot because it should have a "opacity strength" image where you can see the halo. 

In the surfaces tab you click on the "diffuse color" and use the color picker to change the color then select "ok" which will result in a different colored halo!

Hopefully you found this guide helpful! If you have any questions please let me know! 

Tutorials that include extra awesome freebies!

So Daz has a couple of hidden gems that are available as freebies currently (and one nearly free!)! I am not sure how long they will be available, so I would see about grabbing them ASAP if you don't have them already! 

Sci-Fi Warrior Bundle - FREE
This bundle includes: 

• Basic Hair
• Level 19
• Scifi Melee Weapons
• Sci-Fi Siren Outfit for Genesis 2 Female(s)
• Interactive Lesson
• 6 Lesson Specific Presets (.DUF)

Inside the Asylum - FREE

This bundle includes:

• Basic Hair
• West Park
• Newport Outfit for Genesis 2 Male(s)
• Interactive Lesson
• 1 Scene Subset (.DUF)
• 1 Pose Preset (.DUF)
• 1 Bonus Transmap for Newport Outfit for Genesis 2 Male(s)

Day at the Beach - FREE

This bundle includes:

• Beach Volleyball Set
• String Bikini for Victoria 6
• Charm Hair
• Day at the Beach - Pose Preset
• Day at the Beach - Environment Preset
• Day at the Beach - Shaping Preset
• Day at the Beach - Lighting Subset

Slaying the Dragon Bundle $3.00

This bundle includes:

• Voyager M6
• Fantasy Warrior Poses
• Dragon's Tower
• Dagger Dreams
• Basic Hair
• Slaying the Dragon Lesson Files: (.DUF)
• Slaying the Dragon - Ready to Render Preset
• Slaying the Dragon - Backdrop
• Slaying the Dragon - Clothing and Hair Preset
• Slaying the Dragon - Dagger Pose Preset
• Slaying the Dragon - Dragon Pose Preset
• Slaying the Dragon - Hero Pose Preset
• Slaying the Dragon - Dragon Materials Preset
• Slaying the Dragon - Camera Preset
• Slaying the Dragon - Light Preset
• Slaying the Dragon - Render Settings Preset
• Slaying the Dragon - Tower and Backdrop

So I highly recommend getting all these bundles!!!

They all include multiple items and with the extra's being free you can't beat the price! Even the Slaying the Dragon Bundle is worth the $3.00 with  all the extra's in it. 

The bad news?

I did all the tutorials, I did not find them overly helpful or feel that I learned anything new. You might find them helpful if you are VERY new to Daz Studio. They are worth getting just for the extra items! 

Hair Tutorials

I was recently looking up more information on working with Hair and Daz Studio and Photoshop in general.

I went to the awesome Sticky Thread on Daz's Forum here.  It has a great list of freebies and information!

Anyway I found this nice tutorial on Deviant Art about doing Hair in Photoshop if you are wanting to do post work.

This is a nice PDF on hair painting as post work as well.

Daz Studio Tips!

Tips for Daz Studio

Do it Now! Right Now! 
Once you add something to your Runtime and have it in "unassigned" category... make sure you add it to the correct directory right away!
Trust me, this one seems like a no brainer, but if you are like me add five or six things at once, and then put it off until next time you run Daz, suddenly the amount of work doubles!

Try it out right away!
Try out the new stuff right away! You are more likely to use the items that are familiar to you, and so trying it out makes you more likely to remember it and use it!

Use Wearables Presets! 
Once you have tried out a new outfit, especially ones with a lot of parts to me, save a wearable preset, making it easier to use at a later date! This is also great for when you use items from several different outfits to create a new one and don't want to forget this awesome new combination!

Mostly Universal Hair Shader Tutorial

Welcome to my "Mostly Universal Hair Shader Tutorial!"

Why is it only "Mostly Universal"? Well in theory it should work all on all hair, however, it may or may not look good! That is why I wrote this little tutorial to help explain how it works!

After opening a scene and setting up a character and putting some hair on, browse to the "Hair Shaders" in your content library.

For most hair cases use the 5x Tiled hair, see problems section for information on the 1x Tiled hair.

You can select the hair color three different ways.

Using the Scene Tab
You can directly select the hair from the scene tab, then double click on the shader, which should change the color of the whole hair.

When you double click on the shader the color of the hair should change.

Surface Tool

Then double click on the hair color you want, in this case I used "hotrod" which is a shade of pink. However since I selected the hair with the surface tool it only selected part of the hair, in this case just the under layer of hair. (see picture)

But they I wanted it to be all of the hair you say? 

Hold down the shift key then click on the hair again, which should result in selecting all of the hair, if it doesn't move the mouse a bit to a different spot on the hair until it all selected. Then double click on the shader again, and it should apply to all of the hair. (see picture)

Using the surface tab

After selecting the hair in the scene tab, select the "Surfaces" tab

This way of changing the hair can be extra helpful if you do not want to change all parts of the hair color, you can select only part of the hair to change. Note: currently all of the Amaya hair is selected and therefore highlighted.

In this case I have changed the hair_2 to Hot Rod and the rest to Blond, resulting in a layered look.

Fixing problems with the system:

The hair color looks really funny! What the heck!?

As I said it is a "Mostly" Universal system, there are some types of hair this will simply not work well with. See the suggestions below on how to fix problems with the system!

When I double click on the shader after selecting the hair nothing happens!

Try going to the surfaces tab and then double click on the shader, or use the surface tool to select the hair.

The hair color is showing up as almost white! 

This is most likely because the specular color is "white", change it to black and see if that fixes it. 

note: you can adjust both the specular and diffuse colors to further customize the hair color! 

There are big gaps and missing parts?!

Try using the 1x tiled color on "Base" "Hair" or "Cap" of the hair, which can be selected in the Surfaces tab. 

In this case Aditi hair has both "Cap" and "Head" that need to be changed to 1x horizontal tiles. 

Note: this seems to happen on particularly often on hair that has "ponytails" and other parts that stick out.

The resolution is not good?

This is probably because the tiling is not working well, or you are doing a very close up image (alas not all the colors look awesome in super close ups!) To adjust the tiling go to the surfaces tab, and scroll down the list to "horizontal" tiles, if you are having gaps, decrease the number of tiles to 1. If the hair resolution is just blurry increase the number of tiles to 8 or 10 and see if that fixes the problem. 

Note: increasing past 10 tiles will not likely improve the situation, as there is limited space and it doesn't seem to fix the problem.

Note: messing with the vertical tiles can get very weird results! I do not recommend this! 

I am getting big blocks at the end of the hair! 

Somehow you have overwrote the transmaps for the hair, go back to the original hair colors that came with the hair apply one of those, then try using the shader again.

These are the main problems that I have had with the shaders. Please let me know if you have any questions! 

Sickle Yield tutorials on Deviant Art

Sickle Yield makes some awesome stuff! She also has some great posts and tutorials!

You can see some of it at: ShareCG , Daz3D, and Renderosity 

Check out some of of her tutorials and information at Deviant Art:
So You're a Renderer Now
Transferring Character Morphs from G1 to G2 

Add Sparkles to materials

A nice tutorial on how to add sparkles to materials!

Daz Studio Tutorial Adding a Glow Tutorial

I found a nifty tutorial on Deviant Art on adding a Skin Glow to a character!

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! 

Guide to Genesis Content Creation

I recently found this great sticky post on creating content for Daz Studio's Genesis characters. I used part o fit to help with the transferring of the morphs from V4 Moire to Genesis version of Moire.

Texture Atlas Basics Tutorial

Texture Atlas is an awesome resource and this tutorial is about the basics of using it.
Do not have Texture Atlas enabled? Check out my tutorial on how to Set Up.

For the basis of this tutorial I have loaded up a green alien (which can be found at ShareCG)

Step 1

Texture Atlas

Load your figure, in this case I have used my green alien.
Then open up texture atlas by clicking on the grey globe icon.

Your screen should show a dialogue box similar to this one:

Step 2

Click on the "Auto Arrange" button, which should allow the "Preview" and "Accept" buttons on the lower right hand side to be selected.

Click on "Preview"

This will bring up a new dialogue box.

(tip: if you do not see anything when you clicked preview, don't panic! You probably do not have the figure selected in the scene, close out and select the figure and then go back to step 1.)

UV Set Name: what the UV (texture map) will be saved as.

Target Image Folder: where the map will be saved to! (tip: make sure you pay attention to this and change it if needed so you can find it later!)

Created Images: this are different options, which will allow you to do different things. The most common are bump and diffuse.

Texture(s) Settings: this allows you to set the size of the image, the larger the image the more details you can add, but you should not need to to be too huge for more uses 512 x 512 to 1000 x 1000 should be fine.

For this I have changed the UV Set Name to "Green Alien"

Step 3

Navigate to the folder that you saved your new UV Set to (remember that tip about paying attention to where you saved it?)

It should contain two images (if you used the Toony Alien, some will contain more, but in this case the alien only has a diffuse and bump.

Step 4
That is nice what do I do with these images now?
Excellent question!
With this images you can change colors, and make a variety of changes to a character!
How do I do that?
That is for another tutorial!

Congrats you now know the basics of Texture Atlas!

This tutorial was brought to you by Amy Pettijohn and Bouncing Dog Graphics.

Texture Atlas Set Up Tutorial

Texture Atlas is one of those cool things included in Daz Studio 4.6 Pro but most people don't use because it is not already set up!Looking on the Daz Studio Website is not exactly a help, as last time I checked the information page was pretty much empty! An in depth search of the forums does help some, but it did not fully answer my questions in an easy manner.
So here is my guide to the Texture Atlas!

Texture Atlas for Daz Studio Tutorial!

If you are like me you were excited that Texture Atlas was included in Daz Studio, however, it is not pre-setup for use!

Step 1 
So the first step is to enable it. For the purpose of this tutorial I use the "Hollywood Blvd" layout, which can be selected under "Window" then "Workspace" then "Select Layout".

To enable Texture Atlas you need to go to: Window > Workspace > Customize (or use F3)
Then select "Actors Wardrobe &&" from the right column, toggle the arrow down to see the drop list, then select "Toolbars", at the bottom there should be "Tools" and default setting is to OFF, you want to click it with a right click, which should bring up a little dialogue that says "Enable Tool Bar" which you click and should turn it ON. Then click "Apply" at the bottom of the window, that way the setting change goes into effect. See graphic below.

When you hit apply your screen probably seemed to freeze a moment then refreshed, don't panic! There should be change to your tool bar, see graphic.

Yours will probably not have the grey globe that is texture atlas... yet!

Texture Atlas Icon

Step 2 

How do I get that little globe to show up?
Click on the "Tool Bars" button at the top of the box on the right side, that will bring up a new menu.
At the bottom of the menu should be "Tools" Click the > to expand it.
Then on the left size on the "Actions" box area, there should be "Texture Atlas" listed (tip: its listed alphabetically, so its pretty far down the list) then click the > to expand it, it should have a grey globe and "Texture Atlas" as an option.
Drag and Drop the globe icon over into the "Tools" menu in the right column.

Then hit apply, after the refresh you should see the grey globe on the menu bar...

Now you can click on the texture atlas icon to open it up.

Step 3 
But I don't like all those extra icons at the top of the screen you say?
Go back to Step 1, and remember when you "enabled" the tool bar? Go back there and "disable".

Step 4
But wait! How do I access texture atlas then?
It is still there, you just need to go to the "Tools" menu at the top, and your Texture Atlas icon should be listed.

This tutorial was brought to you by Amy Pettijohn and Bouncing Dog Graphics!