Using Poser (DAZ) Content in DAZ Studio

Author: Vicky Tolonen

Tools Needed

• DAZ Studio
• V3 Base+add-on packs

This tutorial will take you through the step-by-step process of finding and installing Poser content for use in DAZ Studio and the basic steps of using that content in DAZ Studio.

When you download Poser content from the DAZ site you should save it on your computer in an easy to find location. (You'll want to save this somewhere permanent in case you ever need to reinstall the content.)

After the download is complete you will need to double click on the installer icon to begin the installation process. As the installer is running, you should come to a screen similar to this one. (Older products may have slightly different installation screens.) Please select DAZ Studio from the drop down menu as that will be the application you will be using the content in.

You will also need to make sure your Destination Directory is set to DAZ:Studio:Content folder.

You should then see the installation starting.

Note: Some older installers will get into a “loop” when searching large hard drives. Click Cancel on the “Searching for Installed Components” stage to stop the Search, and Browse to your Content folder instead.

Once DAZ Studio is installed, the first thing you should do is set your Poser content Directories. To do this, click on your Edit- > Preferences (PC) or DAZ Studio- > Preferences (Mac), and choose Poser Content Directories from the drop-down menu.

Click Search to have DAZ Studio search your entire computer for Poser Content. You can also manually add your DAZ:Studio:content folder to your Content Directories from here. If you have Poser 4, 5, or 6, you can also add content from them here. You can also create different Runtime folders to organize your content.

For example, you can have all of your Victoria 3 items in one Runtime, and all of your Michael 3 items in another Runtime. Make sure to add the folder that contains the Runtime, otherwise DAZ Studio will not read the content correctly.

For instance, if you have a DAZ:Victoria:Runtime folder, you should add the 'Victoria' folder to your content directories.

Once you have added your Content directories, close and reopen DAZ Studio.

After you'reopen DAZ Studio, you should have a Content tab (Windows- > Content), usually on the left side of your DAZ Studio interface.

In your Content tab, your content will be organized in a similar way to how it would be in Poser. Clothing, sometimes hair, and scenes, will often be in your Figures folder. Note: When you are looking at a Poser-content folder, Figures, Hair and Props contain actual things that can be loaded into your scene, while Pose, Face and Hands contain things to modify the item you currently have selected in your scene(i.e. MATerial Pose Files apply MATerials to your Figure). Lights and Cameras create new lights and cameras for use in the scene.

If you have multiple Runtimes, you will see them all in your Content tab. (The items are, by default, organized by how the program handles them.)

You can now start creating your scene.

For this scene, I will use V3 and some of her accessories. To load V3, go to your Figures- > DAZ People folder, and double click on the icon that says Victoria 3 SAE.

After you do this a progress window will pop up which shows you the progress of loading the Victoria 3.0 figure into your document window. Once Victoria is completely loaded the progress window should disappear and you will see Victoria 3 in the document window in the default pose.

Now you need to add clothing to V3. In this scene we will use her Bikini, so go to where the bikini figure is located in the content tab, which is Figures- > V3 Morphing Clothes. Then just double click on the V3 Bikini Full SR1 to load it into your scene.

Note: Clothing can be in a wide variety of folders, so you should check your ReadMe to find out where it was installed.

To Fit the Bikini to V3 so that it will move with her when you pose her, just select the Bikini in your Scene tab (Windows- > Scene), and then go to your Parameters tab. Near the bottom of the General section in the parameters tab, you should have a Fit-To button. Click on that and choose V3 SAE from the drop down menu. The Clothing is now Fitted to V3 and will stay with her as you pose her.

You can also change textures of the Bikini, and of V3, to make them more interesting and life-like. We already have the Bikini selected, so we will start with that.

In the Content Tab, go to the section called Poses and find the MAT V3 Clothing folder. In there, you will see a series of different designs for the Bikini. These are called MAT Poses, short for MATerial Poses, and are meant to change the Materials settings of that particular figure (the bikini).

Material settings affect the look of an item, such things as the color of the bikini and how shiny it is. Choose the MAT Pose you want to use, make sure the Bikini is still selected, and double click on the MAT Pose icon to apply it to the bikini.

You should now see the design you chose applied to the Bikini.

Now we want to change Victoria 3's skin texture so that she doesn't have that plastic look. We will use the V3 Universal Texture Maps for this example. To do this, select V3 SAE in your Scene tab then go to your Poses- > MAT V3 Maps HI folder in the Content Tab.

In this folder, you will see several items, including the actual skin texture MAPs, and some skin and eye colors. You need to apply the actual MAPs first, either !V3Natural Hi PP ( to give V3 that natural look) , or !V3Make Up Hi PP (to make her look like she is wearing a bit of make-up). ('Hi' means the textures are high resolution–they take a little more computer resources to use, but the final render is nicer, especially for close-ups.) In this scene we will make V3 look natural, so double click on the !V3Natural Hi PP file.

You may notice that there are a lot of files that are named the same except some have a P4, a PP, or a P5 at the end, which stand for Poser 4, Poser ProPack, and Poser 5 respectively. The P4 version of the material does not work in DAZ Studio and the P5 version can sometimes be difficult, so you will always want to use the PP version of the file.

To change the shapes of one of the DAZ Generation 3 figures, such as V3, you will usually need to inject specific morph target(s) into the figure using the Morph INJection/REMoval technology.

In brief, select the Head of the character (if it is a Head Morph), or the Body of the character (if it is a Body Morph). Then, double click on the morph target(s) INJection file that you want to use, which can be found in the Poses section of the Content tab. Once you have done this that specific morph target(s) will be listed under the Parameters tab, when you have the body part that the morph target corresponds to selected in the Scene tab. Then all you need to do is change the values of the morph dial to see a change in your character.

Later, if you decide that you do not need a specific morph injected into your character, you can remove the morph by clicking on the Morph Target's REMoval file, which is also located in the Poses section of the Content tab.

Here you can see V3 with the HdAsian Morph set to 100%

and the V3 Smile1 morph set to 100%

Note: Some characters have their Expressions and Morphs already loaded into the character. In these cases, the Expressions or Morphs do not need to be INJected.

Now we want to add some hair to the character.

Hair comes in two types. One type of hair is a Hair Prop, and is loaded from the Hair folder in the Content tab. The Sassy Hair 2 style is an example of this. To use this hair on V3, double click the Sassy Hair 2 S3P icon in the Hair folder to load it into the work area.

After that, select the Sassy Hair in your Scene Tab, and drag it onto the Victoria 3 SAE- > Head listing(also in the Scene Tab). This Parents the hairstyle to V3, so that it appears as below.

Now, with the Sassy Hair selected in the Scene tab, go to your Parameters tab and set the Victoria3Fit dial to 100%. The Sassy Hair will now be Parented to Victoria 3's Head, and be Fitted into place.

The other type of hair is a Hair Figure, which is loaded from your Figures folder. In this example, I'm using the Maria Hair for V3. If you want to use this hair instead, select the Sassy Hair and delete it using the delete key on your keyboard. Then go to your Figures- > DAZ Hair folder, and double click on the Maria Hair icon.

Hair from the Figures folder works in the exact same way as Clothing, so you would select the Hair in your Scene Tab, go to your Parameters tab, and select Fit To- > V3 SAE.

Now the Maria Hair is a very nice hairstyle, but right now it looks rather dull, even after you render it. This is because DAZ Studio handles materials quite a bit differently than Poser. Poser content must sometimes be tweaked to look the way you want.

To tweak the materials of an object you will need to open your Surfaces tab (View- > Tabs- > Surfaces), and go to the Advanced tab.

Select the Maria Hair material (it only has a BangsL group) from the Surfaces drop down menu.

Now change the Diffuse Color to White, and the Ambient Color to Black by clicking on the little colored button under the name.

Now when you render your image the hair will be a lovely strawberry blond!

You can also add other figures and props to a scene.

For this scene, we want to add a background of the beach. To do this I chose the MPCycBeach figure which would be located in the Environments folder in the Figures section of the Content tab.

Double-click on the MPCycBeach icon, which then loads the Multiplane Cyclorama, with the beach texture, into the document window.

The next step would be to pose your figure. For this example we will use one of the basic poses that come with V3. Go to the Poses folder in the Content tab. The poses that come with V3 are located in a folder called !DAZ's Victoria 3.

For this example we will use the V3 Reclining pose. Make sure that V3 is selected in the Scene tab and then double click on the pose icon to apply the pose to the V3 figure.

You will probably want to customize your Camera angle to focus on V3, especially for those close-up renders. To do this, select your Camera from the Scene Tab and use the X, Y, Z rotation, and translation dials. You can also use the View controls to customize the camera angle (pg 3, DAZ Studio Quickstart Guide).

Usually, for close-up scenes, you will want to adjust the camera Focal Length for a more realistic appearance. The default Focal Length in DAZ Studio is 50. For the purposes of this tutorial, we will change it to 85, which will help keep the image from distorting when doing a close-up shot of Victoria. You can change the focal length by selecting your Camera in the Scene tab, then changing the Focal Length in the Parameters tab.

Sometimes, when you pose your character, your Hair will deform because of the bending of the character's head and neck. Different Hairstyles will require different adjustments. In this case, the Maria Hair deforms around the Right Shoulder area. To fix this, you will want to select the Right Collar of the Maria Hair from your Scene tab. Then, in your Parameter tab, double click on the words 'Front-Back.' This will open the Properties of this parameter. Click on Respect Limits to turn them Off. Now set the Front-Back parameter to around -265, and the right collar will straighten out.

DAZ Studio comes with its own default global lighting. For a more realistic scene, you will want to add and adjust your own lights.

DAZ Studio allows you to create Point, Spot, and Distant lights. In this case, I ended up using one distant light to light up the entire scene, and two spotlights to brighten up V3, and some dark spots on the beach.

You can adjust the lights by selecting them in the Scene Tab, and spinning the Parameter dials. You can also select your Lights from the Camera drop-down, to view your scene from the perspective of the Light's origin. This helps you to position the lights where you want them.

Now you will notice that the skin has some odd highlights on it. This is because the default Lighting Model for most Poser-imported items is 'Plastic.' To change this, go to your Surfaces tab, and select the various V3 Skin parts (You can multi-select by Shift-Clicking on each item).

Then go to the Surfaces tab, and change the Lighting Model to Matte (I prefer this over Skin). I also changed the Hair and the Cyclorama to Metallic, just for fun.

And that's it! We've now gone through loading, texturing, adding hair, adding backgrounds, lights, and tweaking poses and surfaces.

It's impossible to show you all of the different things you can do with DAZ Studio, because there are quite literally hundreds of possibilities! So feel free to use the information I have provided in this tutorial to have fun with DAZ Studio, and experiment with your creativity!