This is great for me because I do not have much drawing or painting skills. I love art, but I certainly would not be able to create my DA images without Daz Studio. Best of all, you can get it for free HERE.

Arabian Dreams Fantasy Woman Art created using Daz Studio, Iray, and Photoshop.

What Is Daz Studio?

Ok, so now we know that Daz Studio is cool, but what exactly is Daz Studio?

Daz Studio is a 3D rendering program. You create a 3D scene, light it, adjust camera settings, and then just click render. In this way, it is like photography, except you are taking a picture of a virtual scene. Because it is a virtual scene, we get a lot more control over the scene itself, as well as how it is lighted.

You may think that creating a 3D scene is very complicated and time consuming, but actually it is not. This is because we can get many 3D-objects, poses, and lights to populate our scene from the Daz3d marketplace. In fact, that is how they make money, which is why they give away the Daz Studio software for free.

The software itself also comes with some free initial content, and you can get more free daily items from their freebie page. In this way, you can try things out first, without having to buy content right off. Daz also organizes many sales throughout the year, so I buy most items in my library at a 50% or more discount.

WARNING – Daz Studio can be very very addictive.

WARNING – Daz Studio can be very very addictive.

How to Create a Scene?

One of the first things that I did when I first started using Daz Studio is to set up the layout. This allows me to pick an interface that I am comfortable with. I go to Window -> Workspace -> Select Layout (see below).

One of the first things that I did when I first started using Daz Studio is to set up the layout.

When the pop-up window comes up, we can pick the layout we like most from a drop-down menu (see below). I use the Hollywood Blvd layout, so that is the one you will see in all of my tutorials. I like this layout because it is most similar to the Poser interface that I used before moving to Daz Studio. More on why I moved to Daz Studio.

When the pop-up window comes up, we can pick the layout we like most from a drop-down menu.

Now we are ready to create our scene. The first thing that I do is go to the Smart Content tab (interface left). If the tab is not there, we can easily right-click on empty space in the tabs area and pick Add Pane (Tab). This allows us to add additional tabs to the interface.

In the Smart Content panel, I drill down to Default > Figures > People > Female > Real World. This presents me with a thumbnail grid of realistic female figures. From this list, I double click on Charlotte 8 HD. This adds a human figure into my scene.

In the Smart Content panel, I drill down to Default > Figures > People > Female > Real World. From this list I pick Charlotte 8 HD.

Next, I enrich my figure by adding hair and clothing. An easy way to do this is to click on the Scene tab (interface right), and select my Charlotte 8 object. Then, I go back to the Smart Content panel, go to Hair > Long, and double click on the wonderful Alice Hair by OOT. Similarly, I go to Wardrobe > Outfits, and double click on Lilikh !Outfit.

I go back to the Smart Content panel, go to Hair > Long, and double click on the wonderful Alice Hair.

After crafting my character, I want to give her an artistic pose. To do this, I go to the Pose & Animate tab (interface top). Then, I go to the Smart Content panel and pick a pose that shows off the character and outfit.

I go to the Pose & Animate tab (interface top). Then, I go to the Smart Content panel and pick a pose that shows off the character and outfit.

Camera controls icons in top-right of viewport.

Once that is done, I may adjust the camera a bit (top right of viewport). Finally, I go to the Render tab (top), and click on the camera icon (top left of viewport). And just like that, I start rendering my scene.

What Is Iray, 3Delight, and Reality?

In addition to Daz Studio, you may also hear people talk about Iray, 3Delight, and Reality/Lux. These are all different renderers that we may use to render our 3D-scene. I highly recommend Iray because it is a physically based renderer that is built into Daz Studio. As such, it is easier to access, and there are a lot of shaders and materials for it in the Daz3d marketplace. The only downside to using Iray is that we will need a good nVidia graphics card for it to render in a timely manner.

Reality/Lux is also a physically based renderer, but we get to it through a plugin. As such it is not as integrated, and there are very few supporting shaders and materials that we can purchase. It is therefore, more of a do-it-yourself option.

3Delight is the original Daz Studio renderer and it is not physically based. Scenes generally render faster and are less noisy, but they are also less realistic.

Set renderer to Iray by going to Render Settings > Editor > Engine

We can pick to use the Iray renderer by going to the Render Settings tab (interface right). Select Editor up top, and then pick the renderer you want from the drop-down menu next to Engine.

What Is Iray, 3Delight, and Reality?

How to Improve Your Daz Studio Images

Once we get comfortable with the Daz Studio interface, we can start to drill down into certain key areas to improve our images. I got the most bang for the buck by improving my scene lighting, so that is the area that I would recommend tackling first.

This tutorial describes in greater detail how I light my Iray scenes. You can also see how improvements in lighting leads to changes in my images here.

How to Improve Your Daz Studio Images

Following, I will list a set of common issues I encountered, and then discuss useful tips and tricks that I found within Daz Studio, to solve them.

Tips and Tricks for Daz Studio Beginners. Image rendered in Daz Studio 4.6 Pro with postwork in Photoshop.

1. Dealing with Poke Through in Clothing

One common problem in 3D-posing software is that depending on pose, the body of our figure may sometimes poke through her clothing. In addition, when a figure is wearing multiple layers of clothing, an inner shirt may poke through an outer vest or belt. Similar poke through issues can also occur with hair and head-wear.

In the past, we deal with this issue by manually adjusting or enlarging various parts of our wardrobe. Another technique is to make a body part that is fully covered, invisible. For example, if our figure’s toe is poking through her boots, we may turn off the visibility of her entire foot.

In Daz Studio, we can address this thorny issue by using their collision detection function.

To get to this function, we access our clothing parameters.

For example, in the screen-shot below, we have added some hair and clothing to our Olympia 6 figure. Next, we select our clothing top (JG_Top), and then click on the Parameters tab, which is right below the Scene tab.

Added hair and clothing to my Olympia 6 figure.

Accessing the collision detection feature for a piece of clothing.

On the Parameters screen, we want to select Mesh Smoothing, which is where the collision detection feature resides.

Note that Enable Smoothing must be on for collision detection to work. We can then set the collision item and the number of collision iterations.

In the case of clothing, our collision item is usually our figure. However, if we are wearing multiple layers of clothing, we can also set the collision item to be another piece of clothing. For example, we may set the collision item of a belt to the pants, instead of to our base figure.

The default collision iterations of 3 usually works for most things, but if there is still poke through, we can try raising this figure to resolve it.

How to add the Mesh Smoothing functionality.

Most new clothing items already come with the Mesh Smoothing feature included. However, for older pieces of clothing, it may not be present. In this case, we can add the Mesh Smoothing function from within Daz Studio.

To do this,

1. Go back to the Scene tab.
2. Select the object that we want to add mesh smoothing to.
3. Click the the button with a triangle and some lines on the top left of the Scene panel (highlighted to the right).

This will open up a drop-down menu. We want to mouse over the Edit option, which will open up even more object feature options. To apply mesh smoothing and collision detection to an object, we simply select Apply Smoothing Modifier from the top of the drop down menu.

Note however, that adding this mesh function will require additional calculations, which may slow down navigation and increase render time. Therefore, we only want to only include it as necessary.

In the case of mesh smoothing, additional calculations need to be made when our figure pose is changed, which can significantly slow down direct manipulation posing controls. If I have clothing items with high smoothing or collision iterations, I usually turn mesh smoothing off while testing and tweaking poses. There are also vendor products that can help with poke-through such as Zev0’s Fit Control

Make sure there is no poke through between the figure and her clothing by using the collision detection feature.

2. Getting Rid of Blocky or Jagged Figures and Objects

Sometimes, an object in our scene may appear blocky or jagged when viewed up close. This is because there are not enough polygons on the surface of the object (i.e. not enough resolution). Therefore, when we zoom in, we start to see the jagged corners of the now larger polygons that make up the surface.

This is similar to when we zoom into an image, and start seeing jagged edges, because each pixel is now much larger and we start seeing the jagged corners of the pixels.

How to add sub-division surfaces to a figure or object.

Another very useful Daz Studio mesh function is the Convert to SubD option. SubD stands for subdivision surfaces. Using this option, we can automatically add more polygons onto our object surfaces. By increasing the resolution of our objects, we get rid of jagged edges and increase the quality of our renders.

We can increase the object resolution by using the same process as outlined above for mesh smoothing.

1. Go back to the Scene tab.
2. Select the object that we want to add mesh smoothing to.
3. Click the the button with a triangle and some lines on the top left of the Scene panel (highlighted to the right).
4. Then, we select Edit > Geometry > Convert to SubD.

For example, in the dark angel picture below, I used the sub-division surface feature to increase the resolution of the wonderful End of Summer Hair on my figure. In addition, I also used the Mesh Smoothing operation we discussed in the previous section, to further smoothen out my hair edges.

I applied mesh smoothing as well as sub-division surfaces to the hair object on this dark angel. It helped to significantly smoothen out the jaggies in his long hair.

We can access our sub division surface parameters by selecting the object, clicking on the Parameters tab, and then choosing Mesh Resolution.

Mesh Resolution or sub-division surface parameters.

Wheel icon to the right of the sub-division level panel.

Note – if we want to increase our sub-division level by more than 2, we only need to click on the wheel icon at the right of the sub-division level panel (shown to the right).

This opens up a drop-down menu, and we want to select the Parameter Settings option. Doing so will open up a pop-up window that allows us to increase the maximum sub-division level in our interface (shown below).

How to increase the maximum sub-division level in our interface.

a) Remove Grid Lines on Sky-Domes

Sub-division surfaces are also really useful for removing lines in sky-domes. When certain environments are rendered, grid lines may sometimes appear on the sky-dome. When this happens, I simply select the sky-dome in my scene and convert it to a sub-division surface. Increasing its polygon resolution seems to get rid of all the grid lines.

b) Background Figures

Just as we can increase the resolution of foreground objects and figures in our scene, we can also use the sub-d controls to lower the resolution of background objects to increase rendering speed.

This is especially useful when we have multiple human figures far off in our background. These human figures have a lot of detail and are usually set to high resolution by default, which will unnecessarily slow down our rendering speed. I also make sure to reduce the mesh resolution of far away clothing and hair.

I lowered the mesh resolution of the human figures, hair, and clothing that appear on the background of the scene.

To get the blurring effect in the background,
1. Select your camera and go to the Parameters tab.
2. Select Camera from our list of parameters.
3. Turn on Depth of Field.

How to get blurring effect in the background.

Here are some simple instructions from Flipmode on how to easily set our focal distance.

Here is a more detailed tutorial from Daz on Depth of Field.

3. Change Background Color

Finally, it took me the longest time to find the controls for changing the background color of my Daz Studio scene. Changing background color is very useful for a variety of purposes including –

• We may want our scene background color to match our floor color or texture. For example, in pin-up scenes, we may set a white floor so that shadows will create a nice effect. In such a situation, setting our scene background to white also, will cause the floor to naturally merge into it.
• We may need greater contrast between the figures or other elements in our scene with respect to the scene background.
• For placing lights, it is absolutely invaluable to change our scene view to Wireframe so that there is no occlusion of our light objects. To better view a wireframe scene, we will need to change our scene background color to black or some other darker color.

Top view of wireframe scene, with a black background, which is very convenient for light placement.

How the change the background color of our Daz Studio scene.

To change our scene background color, we want to-
1. Click on the triangle with lines menu button to the right of the camera drop-down menu on the top-right of our scene. We circled this button in red in the image above.

2. This opens up a drop-down menu, and one of the options is Change Background Color.

3. Clicking on this option will open up a pop-up window with a color selector for us to pick our new background color. Once we are done, select Ok and voila, our scene background color is changed.

That’s All Folks

If you have useful Daz Studio tips and tricks, please share them with us in the comments section below. Have fun rendering with Daz Studio!

Scene created and rendered in Daz Studio 4.6 Pro. Post-work in Photoshop.