A Basic Visual Guide to DAZ Studio

Author: guy_david

Tools Needed

• DAZ Studio

Welcome to the DAZ Studio basic visual guide. Let me guide you through the basics of adding a model, giving her hair and some cloths, posing her and changing her expression. So - open up your Studio and let us begin :)

First of all, we need to tell our studio were to find everything. We do that by entering the preferences window, clicking the “Add…” button, finding our Runtime folder and pressing the “OK” button.

Once we done that, we can brows our “Content” tab and choose staff from there.

Now - lets choose something from the “Content” tab. I'll choose my copy of the Victoria 3 model by finding her in Libraries - > DAZ People and double clicking on her. Now we have our model on our screen, ready to pose for us.

First of all, lets find her some cloths. Again, you can find them in your “content” tab and insert them by double clicking.

It's important to associate the models cloths with the model, or else, when we try to pose her, the above would happen…

As you would notice 1n the above picture, our model has moved to a new pose, while her cloths stayed in the same place. You associate the model with her cloths in the “Parameters” tab. That window is empty until you choose something in your scene. On your “Scene” tab, choose a piece of clothing:

Now, on the “Parameters” tab, chose your character model from the Fit To drop down menu:

Now we'll find some hair for our model in the “Content” tab:

Don't forget to associate the hair with the model, the way you associated her cloths. Here is what she looks like now:

Now, let's choose a pose for her from the Pose folder on the “Content” tab (see image above). I chose the V3 Backturn for this example:

Here is what she looks like now:

The Pose folder on the “Content” tab also contain some morph files. A morph can change our model in various ways. There are morphs that change our models body, her face, and various other aspects of our model. Lets add some morphs to our model, by selecting her and double clicking a morph add. You can recognize them by the plus sign:

In order to select a morph, we must select the part the morph would associate with. All the models are made out of bones, and we must select the right bone to use. In my example, I selected the head bone:

Morphs appear in the “Parameters” tab. If the drop down menu on the top of the tab says “Ungrouped”, change it to “Morphs”. I'm going to play with the SmileOpen morph (see above). I'm going to turn the dial on that morph all the way up:

Look - our model is smiling:

Now, lets end our lesson by giving her a new lipstick. On the “Surface” tab, make sure that “Show Surface List” is selected. You might have to make that tab wider to see the list.

Note - nothing would show up below the Basic/Advanced tabs until you choose something from the Surface List. Choose the lips of your model in the Surface List, then click on the color on the Color | Diffuse option:

Your default color picker should open up. Choose a bright red color. Here is our model with red lipstick:

This concludes our lesson for today.

Good luck :)