Daz 3D Beginners – Tutorial

Index
1. Getting started // improving the interface speed...............................................................................2
2. Adding a default camera...................................................................................................................5
3. Adding content to your library.........................................................................................................7
4. Re-importing Metadata...................................................................................................................10
5. Customizing the Interface...............................................................................................................12
6. Render Settings (Iray).....................................................................................................................16
 1. Getting started // improving the interface speed

After you installed Daz Studio, the interface of the software will look like this.

While some people use it with the settings that are set as standard, there are quite a
few things you can do, to improve the interface and it‘s speed.
The most important thing to do is to go to Edit > Preferences > Interface.
Once there you will see a window like this:
The standard settings set here are okay for powerful systems, but even then they
aren‘t ideal.
The settings you see below are the standard ones and here are a few things you can
do to speed up the interface and the viewport.
First of all click on the dropdown menu of Display Optimization and select Best.
Then set the slider for Texture Resource to Performance. This helps to keep the
interface from lagging in most cases. Of course this isn‘t a fix for everybody, but even
if you have a system that‘s not that powerful, it definitely helps.
 2. Adding a default camera

While you are navigating through the preferences, I‘d recommend going to the
Scene tab. There you have the option to automatically set a camera for every new
scene.

Click on the little box and enable this feature.

After you‘ve done that you can hit Accept.

Once you‘ve set up the interface and the default camera, it‘s now time to add the
content.
Usually two entries are already set, one leads to C:\Users\your
username\Documents\DAZ 3D\Studio\My Library and the other to
C:\Users\Public\Documents\My DAZ 3D Library.

If you install your content with the Daz Install Manager your assets will be installed
in one of these locations. But if your harddrive/SSD for Windows isn‘t big enough,
you might want to move your library to another drive. Once you‘ve done that, Daz
won‘t find the content automatically. Therefore you won‘t have the assets in Daz.

There are two ways to fix this issue.

First you need to navigate to the Content Library tab, after that click on the small
button with the three bars and the dot (highlighted in the image below).
This will open a drop down menu, where you can select a few things, but for
simplicity, click on Content Directory Manager.

Now Daz will open a small window, which looks like this:

Click on Daz Studio Formats and then on Add. Now select the folder or drive where
you saved your content/assets. This will add the folder to your library and Daz will
include all the assets that are saved there. (Important not all assets are listed in the
Smart Content tab!)

Once you‘ve done that click accept.

The second way is to click on Search Drive(s) for Files, which will open a small
window, where you can select the drives, where Daz is supposed to search for
assets. While this is a comfortable way to include all the assets you might have, it‘s
also pretty slow, because if you have more than one drive and/or drive with 2 TB
space or more, Daz will iclude every single file you have on your drives in the search.
 4. Re-importing Metadata

Once you‘ve added your assets, I‘d recommend Re-Import Metadata. This can be
done by clicking on the small buton (that‘s shown above) again and then selecting
Content DB Maintenance.

This will open a new windows:

Click on the small box next to Re-Import Metadata and then hit accept, which will
open another window.
Here you just need to click Accept and wait for Daz to finish.

Note: This can take a while!

Now that you made some changes that will influence the performance and added
your assets, it‘s time to customize the interface/workspace.
Note: There are a lot of things you can do here, and this tutorial will not show every single way
possible.

AS you see in the picture, the tabs (panes) on the left of the screen are Install, Smart
Content, Content Library, Draw Settings, Render Settings and Simulation Settings.
By right-clicking on a free space under those panes, you open another menu, where
you can add panes. In this case we‘re going to add the Scene pane and move it from
the small space in the top right corner, where the Aux Viewport is, to the left side.

Now add the Scene pane by clicking on Scene, but you can add other panes too if
you want to.
The next thing that‘s really helpful is to activate the Advanced Toolbar. To do that go
to Window > Workspace > Customize.

Once you‘ve done that a new window will open. Here click on the little plus next to
Advanced and then Toolbar. Right click on Advanced Toolbar and enable it, like in
the image below and hit Accept.
After that your Daz workspace should look like this:

You now have most of the features, Daz provides, like the ActivePose Tool in your
toolbar.
 6. Render Settings (Iray)

Now go to the Render Settings pane and click on Advanced.

Once you‘ve done that your screen should look like this:
Unmark the CPU, if you have a nVidia graphics card in your system, in both
Photoreal and Interactive.
And enable OptiX Prime Acceleration. This speeds up your renders and reduces the
RAM usage in some cases.
Although quite useful most of the time, OptiX has some flaws. If you run a SLI (two
graphics cards of the same type at the same time) and one of the cards or both get
close to their VRAM limit, one card stops working and the render will be done by a
single card, instead of two.

With all the preparation done, it‘s time to take a look at the Render Settings itself.
There are a couple of options to choose from and it can be quite cofusing, but the
sad thing is, there isn‘t the perfect way to set them up for any scene. You most likely
have to change some values for each scene. The reason for that is, that Iray is a
physics based renderer and therefore every lightsource changes the physics in the
scene.
The Dimension Preset (Gobal) lets you choose different resolution presets, like for
example 1920x1080 (1080p) or even 3840x2160 (UHD). This will be the easiest way
to choose the resolution you want for your render. You can also add your own
presets.

Pixel Size (Global) is essentially the same as the Dimension Preset, the only
difference is that you can type in your desired resolution.

The Aspect Ratio (Global) allows you to change the aspect ratio of your render (or
rather potential render). A normal TV or PC monitor usually uses an aspect ratio of
16:9, a phone on the other hand (usually) uses 9:16. So you might want to change
the settings to get the best result.
All of these settings will also influence the Viewport. Once you chose a preset you
will notice that there is a box in your viewport now, this box has the exact aspect
ratio of the preset you chose. This helps to determine what your render will look
like.

The Min Samples are the minimal amount of Iterations that are rendered.
With the Max Samples you can set the maximal amount of iterations that Daz will
render. So if you leave it at 5000 Daz will render a maximal amount of 5000
iterations. The maximal amount is 15000 samples.
The Max Time (secs) is to set the maximal render time. With the standard setting at
7200 seconds, the render will stop after 2 hours. The maximum is at 259200
seconds, which translates to 72 hours.
If Rendering Quality Enable is set to „On“ the render will reach a Rendering
Convergience of the set amount. The stadard setting is 95%, but you can increase
and decrease the ratio to whatever amount you like. Although the maximum is 100%
it‘s not advisable to use that. The maximal usable ratio is 99,9%.
Rendering Quality linearly increases render time each time you raise the number: 2
is double the value of 1, 3 is triple the value of 1, etc. It overrides the time and
samples counts.