Ey there!
Editorial
Daz Studio is one of my favorite 3D environments to work in, and best of all: it's freely available as well! Now, sure, that is also part of a sales model because obviously Daz3D is hoping that you'll purchase many assets from their marketplace. Even so, that doesn't change the fact that you can do a lot of fun stuff in here.
Working on several erotic renders myself right now I figured I'd share some tips & tricks here as well. Hope this can help some of you fellow Renderoticans out!
Two viewports can be better than one
One of Daz Studio's key features is that you can customize pretty much everything and make it behave in any way you want. Seriously, this part is pretty impressive if you ask me. The only possible caveat is if you're adding panes that come from external developers, then things may misbehave a bit here and there.
As you can see I have two viewports available: the main one in the middle where I'm working on positioning "some parts" (ahem) of my model and of course the small aux viewports in the corner. That shows me a preview of the part I was planning to work on first: the expression on her face. So now that I got her left b00b in the right place something immediately occurred to me: her eyes should be focussing around that general area as well instead of starting blindly into the distance.
Of course this is a bit of an exaggerated example, but even so... having a preview of what you're working on can sometimes make a huge difference. For example: is that dick you're positioning really going to be fully visible in your render, or can you also suffice with moving it into a general direction? Do you really need to apply anatomy to your female model(s) or is there a prop that might be blocking the view? Or maybe you want a prop to be obscuring all that: what better way but to use a 2nd overview to see what you're doing from 2 directions at once?
Keep in mind that you can only use one "perspective view" setting: setting both viewports to this would make them use the same view. So what I usually do is rely on presets (front, left, right, etc.) or camera presets.
How = > Right click on a border of your screen, then select: "Add pane (tab) => Aux Viewport". The border is basically the area between (or next to) the different panes. You can also use the Window menu: Window => Panes => Aux Viewport. This will add a new (hovering) window with the aux viewport which you can then move into the right place.
Viewport draw styles & rendering
If you look at the screenshot above you may notice that the face in the small viewport has a different (less nuanced) color than the skin in the main viewport. That's because I've set the main viewport to use the so called Filament engine. You can select different draw styles using the respective menus and I urge you to try some because it can provide some really interesting advantages.
Iray rendering for example takes a lot of time. Always fun if you only need a quick preview. Sure, there is "spot render" (= temporarily rendering a small section of your viewport) but even that will take its time. So why not try Filament? Sure, it's not fully the same as Iray, but it's a lot faster and can give you a very good preview of how things are going to look.
Sometimes this can make quite the difference:
Well, seems Violette's mood improved a lot after I gave her this swimsuit to wear ;)
Joking aside though: notice something strange when you compare both viewports? If you look closely then you'll notice that the aux. viewport shows some kind of pattern on the swimsuit while the main viewport ony shows a color and a somewhat vague pattern.
So how come? Easy: the Filament engine used in the main viewport shows us the figure in high resolution, somewhat comparable to Iray. In the upper right corner though I'm using the default texture shader, and since the texture uses a very fine grained pattern we get some distortion because of it (see the content library on the left for an example of this pattern).
How => In the main viewport above you'll notice a small icon on the left of "Perspective view" (upper right corner). Click that small arrow and you'll get a full overview of these draw styles. In the aux viewport (upper right corner) you'll notice a round icon on the right side of "Front view", the small arrow behind it will select these styles there.
Also note that if you switch to Filament you're likely greeted by an oversaturated viewport. That's because of the default settings, you'll need to change those by creating a new Filament draw options node by using the 'Create => New Filament ...' option. Then select the new item in your scene pane and check the environment parameters (in the Parameters pane). You'll need to lower both the Intensity scale as well as the Distance light scale.
Smart contents and the content library panes
Simply put: you'll want to use both. Even if you don't bother yourself with erotics and 'naughty' (?) 3rd party contents for your Daz Studio library. For the simple reason that artists who sell their assets on the Daz3D marketplace also often make mistakes, and using official Daz Studio packages is in no way any guarantee that all your assets will end up in the smart contents pane. Just check your 'Lost + Found' category to see what I mean (search the content library pane for this).
But even if they didn't mess up you'll still get the best and sometimes quickest results by using both. Let me show you:
Here is one of my all-time favorite 'official' figures: Sukai 8; she's so gorgeous and extremely well designed... Seriously... small offtopic example: take this test render of mine. Warning: it's a little bit explicit but nothing too excessive I think. Thing is: I wasn't even trying when it comes to the pose itself, I spend all my time on making the penetration part work. This was a "quickie" to highlight why I came to love Laudanum's advanced pussy so much. But.. notice her face? Her expression? The mouth, eyes and such? That wasn't necessarily me, that was the awesome model design + the render engine (Iray).
But back to the content library pane... In the above screenshot I'm working on a pose for Sukai. You can see that I have her head and eyes a bit tilted but I'm not fully happy with the color of her eyes. So I want to use a different eye material, but only one that was provided by the original artist.
So now I can do two things: make sure Sukai is selected in my scene pane, then go to the Materials => Eyes category in the smart contents pane and then trying to find the right set. You see: I own several figured based on Genesis 8 and thus all those eye presets are going to show up there. From Aiko, to Bridget, to Summer and Kaneda. And once I've reached "Teen Raven" (another awesome figure) I suddenly realize... uh oh: wrong category! I actually needed to go to: Materials => Feminine => Sukai 8 => Eyes => Eye Colors. That's a lot of categories to expand!
Instead I prefer using the method shown above: right click on Sukai 8 and tell Daz Studio to show me the product overview within the content library pane. Now I can simply scroll towards the eyes and select a color that best suits my needs. Easy, quick and best of all: I can continue to use the smart contents pane as intended. Maybe Sukai also needs a pair of cool shades, so off to Accessories => Head => Face I go ;)
How => Same way as you'd add the aux viewport (see chapter above).
This brings me to...
Categorize your figures, assets & saved files!
If you take another look at the first screenshot in this guide you may notice the 'Anatomy => GenesisGens' category. That was my doing. If we then check my previous screenshot again and stop staring at Sukai for a moment you may be able to notice the Figures => Genesis category as well as the Figures => People = Assets category. Also completely unofficial, all my doing.
If you need to keep better or easier track of your assets, then why not use your own custom categories for quicker access? For example... Most of the poses which I use in my renders are made by myself. In order to do so I usually start to work on a Genesis base figure, save the pose and then when I have the actual figure set up in my scene I then load that pose again. Which is why I have a dedicated category for the base Genesis models: this makes it much easier for me to add such a figure and start working on a pose.
And as for those poses themselves: Saved Files => Presets => Poses => ZenAdventure. Guess what kind of poses you may find in there? ;)
How => It's really easy to set this up: right click on something in your smart contents pane, select "Categorize" and then just enable or disable the categories you want to use. If you want to make your own category then right click on the containing category and use: Create => Sub-category. Another option is to go to the content library pane, find the "Categories" folder there and expand it. This will give you full control over everything. So if you want to make root categories.. here's where to do that. Keep in mind that the smart contents pane automatically shows everything within any optional sub-categories!
Break down your projects!
When working on more complex renders it can become very tempting to set up everything at once, in my opinion this can hold especially true when working on erotics because you may get motivated to work towards your goal in "other areas" as well. Or to put this very bluntly: you may be getting a stiffie or a drippie and now you want more quicker results ;)
Nothing wrong with any of that but you may get better results in the longer run if you break down your projects into smaller parts and build things up from there.
See, not only are smaller parts easier to re-use in other scenes, they will also requires less resources from your computer:
This is actually a bit of a sneak preview which I had in mind for a while now and set up just now during me writing this guide. For obvious reasons I'm not going to tell you where this is going to be used (nor why) but lets focus on what we see here...
Sukai has her arms folded, a bit roughly for now but the basis is there. SO... why not save that part as a new pose? Sukai is based on Genesis 8 and since I haven't done any real fine tuning yet this should be perfectly usable as a starting point for other Genesis 8 figures.
These two figures are eventually going to meet up in my ongoing "Zen adventure". Now, a pose preset only contains a figures parameters, nothing more. Obviously I want Ash to keep his glasses on, I want Sukai to keep her hair and basically I want this whole scene to become part of something else. SO... why not save these two as part of a sub-scene?
Now, believe me or not but the fact that both figures are naked has actually nothing to do with any intend of erotics what so ever. Fun fact: this scene isn't going to involve any in the first place, not even some nudity. So why are they still naked? Easy: it's much quicker to position them in the right place this way. I mean, as soon as you start using dForce compatible clothing then trust me: that can take a pounding on the movements, depending on your computer of course.
The more assets you use, the more demanding it will become for your computer to work on that scene.
Back in my 32bit days I've made renders which my computer actually couldn't handle. And it wasn't too hard at all: I build up several sub-scenes, then used those to build up my main scene and then I made a render out of that. But as soon as I tried to load that project at a later time I couldn't even more any figures around anymore.
How => If you have a scene set up like the one above then don't simply save it as a full scene. Instead use the File menu: File => Save As... => Pose preset, and/or: File => Save As... => Scene subset. Heck, you should even consider using options ilke "Character preset", "Properties preset" and "Shape preset".
Loading, dragging & grouping
So for the sake of this guide let's do something with the lovely pair we've just set up above. What does a couple like that need? A dog of course! And I know just the thing:
So first things first... here you see another example of me using specific categories for my assets. I'm still working on this and thus it's part of my WIP category ("Work In Progress"). Second... if you double click on that it'll load and position the pair in the center of the scene. I can't use that here, so I kept alt pressed while dragging them in; this should give you the round icon you see above.
See, by keeping alt pressed I can now determine where I want them added to the scene. In my example to the right side of the dog.
And now I have a problem... I want to rotate both figures so that they're looking in the same direction as their trusty canine. But at the same time... I also need to keep that pose alive. Couldn't be easier: just create a new group!
Make sure to have both figures selected in your scene (keep control pressed to select multiple figures, or use shift to select several next to each other) and then use the Create menu: Create => New group. Now you need to give the group a name, and make sure to parent all selected items for easier access.
Then all that's left to do is select the group in your scene pane, and then either use the parameters pane or the universal viewport tool to move them both in the right place at the same time.
Using groups can also be an excellent way to hide or "freeze" several figures at once. With 'freezing' I'm referring to making them non-selectable in the viewport: this makes it easier to only select the figures you need. For example... that beach backdrop? First thing I did was to switch that to non-selectable (in the scene pane you have 2 small icons in front of your assets: viewable and selectable; just click on them to toggle).
In addition: also notice how the aux viewport in the corner has become a really good help here? While I'm positioning the group in the main viewport the whole thing looks like nothing you'd want to bother with rendering, yet the small preview on the other hand...
Know what? Let's do this... I'll just add a distant light to mimic the sun, give it a bit of color and set its position. Then I'll dress the figures up and we'll let this render out using 3Delight for old times sake. Let's see what we get:
Now, sure, this isn't one of my best renders. But there's still one last point to address here: render engines. Remember that link to my "Sukai 8 test render" earlier? Like I said before: I didn't put much effort into that and to be honest: neither did I do so here. The backdrop is as-is, the dog uses a pre-made pose and the post between Sukai and Ash isn't even finished yet (though I did make his arm point).
But notice the differences in quality? But even so... I still think the above render isn't all too bad either. Dare to experiment!
And there you have it!
A small collection of tips and tricks of which I hope you can put them to some good use.
Thanks for reading!
Edited by user Thursday, April 13, 2023 12:19:01 PM(UTC)
| Reason: Fixing minor typoes