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I often see people doing a bunch of uncomfortable things while working in the Daz Studio. Therefore, I want to share with you my experience of setting up some things in the DS UI. Also adding your own tricks is strictly welcome.
DazStudio miniGuide: customizing UI
1. View control.
Get rid of that awkward camera cube and other view control parts. How often do you use the RMB in the DS?
press F3, orbit bind to RgtMB, pan to MidMB (or as you prefer). Don't forget to Apply first then Accept. I guarantee that in a couple of hours you will remember the old control with horror. Don't be afraid to change something, because there is always a Defaults button. Also if you need the old RMB action, just click with the clamped CTRL or ALT or SHIFT. Hide the Camera Cube in viewport menu.
2. Do you really use all the icons in the toolbar? No? So get rid of the extra load. Now you don't have to search for the right icon wasting precious seconds. I removed Scene Navigator, Rotate, Scale and many others including 3 useless icons on the top right screen corner.
F3->Tool bars->+Main
Highlight Unnecessary ->RMB ->Remove Item. Don't forget to Apply first then Accept.
That's better!
Don't worry, you have access to rare tools through the Tools menu, and the necessary tools can be returned in the same Customize menu. By the way, you can add other tools you need. For example, I added Texture Shaded and NVIDIA Iray.
Moreover, you can add any action. For example, a light preset. To do this, click on the desired file in the content library RMB->Create Custom Action, choose Favorites (or any), drag the icon in the Customize menu.
You can also play with the placement of icons, but it is implemented through the ass and constantly flies off (you should Apply+Accept every time when F3).3. It seems to be an obvious thing, but many do not remove it.
Window->Workspace->uncheck Enable Activity Bar4. You can add any image and/or link to any folder in your Content Library. Just create (or copy somewhere) an empty file any_name.dsa, any_name.png (icon 91 pxl high) and any_name.tip.png (full size).
.png only!
You can add a link to the product. To do this, just write using notepad in an empty any_name.dsa:
App.show URL( "https://www.daz3d.com/...your_link " );
This is a rather long and tedious process, but if suddenly you have nothing to do...5. Stop targeting these small triangles. Double-clicking does the same thing.
If you found something useful for yourself, then I did not try in vain.
@yngvarr THANK YOU FOR THESE TIPS! I'm sure many will find them helpful.
AnjaBear
ModeratorThe only thing I can add to your tips about the toolbars is that when you have them the way you like it, save that layout. Windows-workspace-save layout as. Then when you screw up your workspace layout you can just load your saved one back again.
6. Useful shortcuts
CTRL+Z - Undo (Cancels the last action)
CTRL+D - Move to floor (Putting selected object down on the ground)
CTRL+L - Preview light (If the scene is too dark, works only in the viewport)
CTRL+LMB - click on the eye in the scene tab to hide the object and all its childrenJust a click on the eye
CTRL+LMB click on the eye
ALT+LMB - сlick on any parameter to return the default values (no need to click on the gear->Reset)
ALT+LMB - click and hold to move the object from Content Library to any place in the scene
7.Sometimes it seemed to me that the legs of the G8F are not long enough. A quick way to add lengths is to enable hidden properties. Works with any part of the body.
Just select the desired body part and add Y scale %
Here, for comparison, the thighs and shins are increased by 5%
8. These are not all hidden properties tricks. How about changing your favorite hairstyle a little? To do this, select the hair and change the X Scale to -100%. Unfortunately, it does not work with all hairs.
9. I think many people use Point at... in order for the model to look into the camera. But the real control gives you Point at NULL. Now just move NULL to wherever you want. To do this, create a New null via the Create menu. And eyes Point at... Null.
I never use "point at" for the eyes and prefer to move them manually. The above picture is why.
Even though the eyes may be technically pointing in the same direction they often look wonky like this. If look left/right or up/down doesn't get the results you want, you can grab an individual eyeball and rotate it with the dials.As you mentioned you find the legs to short: Heads, hands and feet are definitely MUCH too large. You can decrease the propagating scale of the head by 3-5% for an adult and hands/feet by as much aus 15-18 % for more realistic proportions
Not exactly a tip, but I use this script all the time to convert (single) G3 poses to G8. It fixes the issues with the leg and arm positions. It's not 100% perfect but it saves me a lot of time fixing things manually.
You can also add custom buttons to your toolbar for quick access, but the process is a little bit involved: https://daz3dcookbook.wordpress.com/customising-daz-studio-menus-toolbars/
I use it for things like zero pose, zero selected, the G3-2-G8 script and a few other things things I use a lot.On Windows systems Daz stores it's configuration settings in "%users%\<YOUR USERNAME>\AppData\Roaming\DAZ 3D\Studio4\" (or "%users%\<YOUR USERNAME>\AppData\Roaming\DAZ 3D\Studio4 Public Build\" if you're using the beta). It's a good idea to make a copy of the folder before and after you start messing around with changing menus and layouts. You can just copy everything between the "" in an Explorer window and replace <YOUR USERNAME> with your own user name to access it. (%USERS% should just point to C:\USERS\ by default, but some systems may have the user folder on a different drive).
This one is a bit of a dirty hack to kill Daz when it's taking ages to quit and release memory. It has a small chance of making your system unstable until you reboot, but I've never had any issues with it. That said, use at your own risk:
Open Notepad
Copy and paste: taskkill /IM "DAZStudio.exe" /F
Click File -> Save As
Under the "File Name:" at the bottom of the Save dialogue, change 'Save As Type" to "All Files (*.*)"
Save the file to your desktop with a name like "Kill Daz Studio.bat" The .bat at the end is important as it tells Windows this is a batch file.
Now, when Daz is taking it's sweet time exiting or has crashed, double click on the file you just created and Windows will kill it's process.I keep my 'My Library' folder backed up on my OneDrive account using this guide: https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/92892-sync-any-folder-onedrive-windows-10-a.html
OneDrive also allows you to revert to an older version of a file, which is really f-ing useful when you've just hit 'Yes' to "Do you want to save?" when you actually meant 'No".
(The default path for My Library should be "%users&\<YOUR USERNAME>\Documents\DAZ 3D\Studio\My Library\")If you want to move an item or a character in front of your camera there's a nifty free script available:
https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts7/mcjcoOne click and it appears in the middle of your viewport.
@frank22, I specifically put the NULL in such a close place so that the direction of the gaze could be seen better. In practice, gaze control using NULL is very simple and effective, and most importantly very realistic, since the focus of the gaze is taken into account. And manual adjustment every time you move the camera for a better shot, it's a constant fuss with dials.
@ColdBeer31, I used to use several scripts from this author, it's a pity that most of them are very outdated. And yes, you're right, the proportions of the G8F leave much to be desired.
@SkippyTheMeh, thanks for these tricks!@Ethipia, As far as I can tell, yes it's exactly the same as using Process Explore or giving Windows the three-finger salute and killing the process via Task Manager. It's not the 'recommended' way to kill a non-frozen process as there's a very small chance of stuff being left resident in RAM although Windows has got a lot better about garbage clean-up. I wouldn't use it before doing a multi-hour render for example, but if you're still at the set-up or test render stage, it shouldn't cause any problems.
10. Links to content in the Content library.
Add-ons of texture sets from other vendors are located in the folders of these vendors. And if, like me, you don't sort your content manually, it becomes very inconvenient to look for additional textures in the Content library. You can even forget that they exist at all. Let's solve this problem with the help of links.
I have "Salty for Extended Dress" in the "Sveva" folder and the "Extended Dress" itself in the "LilFlame" folder.
First go to the destination folder, RMB->Browse to Folder Location and...
...copy the path to the folder
Go to the add-on folder, select the necessary files, RMB->Create Links for Assets, paste a previously copied path, press Enter, than Select folder
Go to the destination folder again, Refresh Content library and oops...
I do not know why the path looks like this. But it's easy to fix.
RMB->Browse to Folder Location, select the folder with textures and move it to the Materials folder, then delete the People folder.
Refresh Content library - success! The links themselves weigh almost nothing and work fine.
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