Saving a character preset
I followed a tutorial elsewhere in these forums to make a centaur with Horse 2 and Victoria 6. Got a REALLY nice look, I think. Luckily, I saved the scene I was working on, because I also tried saving the figure as a character preset (since this isn't the only work I intend to do with that character), and ended up with an issue. Since Victoria is parented to the chest of the horse, I selected DAZ Horse 2 in the Select pane and chose to Save As a character preset. (First time, I had the amusing error of having selected the hair, so when I reloaded the "character preset", I had hair floating in mid-air. :D) When I went to reload the character preset, I had a horse body, but no Vicki. She is nowehere on the character preset figure. (I expanded the entire listing, just to make sure she wasn't playing Hide-and-Seek with me. :))
I'm hoping that it's possible to save the entire figure (which I can get if I load the scene) as a character preset, and if so, what am I doing wrong currently?
Steps right now are:
1) get centaur looking the way I want
1a) ensure Victoria 6 is parented to DAZ Horse 2 chest
2) select DAZ Horse 2 in Select pane
3) Save As Character Preset
4) Open new file and load just-saved preset
5) Marvel at headless, Vicki-less horse.
Comments
A character preset saves shape and materials for the currently selected figure only. A wearables preset will save items parented to the currently selected figure, but not the figure itself. Only a Scene or Scene Subset will save both the base item and items pareted to it.
Okay, that's what I needed to know. Thank you. Does that mean if I have a character with a particular hairstyle that I want to keep for them, I should save him/her/it as a scene subset, so that I don't need to keep adding the hair back in to the figure?
So if I understand this correctly, the two types of save overlap a bit, or...?
Maybe I don't understand "parenting" because I often save scenes with several items in them and as long as I also save the current camera view as a preset, I am able to make everything come back after turning the computer on and off... one save saves "all" if I may put it that way. (At least I think it does.)
Are there special types of parent? Reason I ask is because the toy train product in the DAZ store seems to be optionally mated to the track. It's not "glued" or fixed to the track, and if you rotate on the Z axis say it will appear to tumble off, like in a derailment. However if you load the train to the track and slide the Y Translate control, I believe it is, the train will "glide along the rails". It is like it is magnetized or something.
I don't think I've seen any other products with this sort of feature? It might be handy to have a "null" sort of track in a battle scene say, that projectiles could travel along. Or how about mounting a camera on an invisible tracked dolly say - like they do on a Hollywood or professional photography set.
Yes, this is what I do.
A Scene Subset saves everything in the scene which you leave checked when saving it. It never saves render settings, though.
Saving as a Scene saves everything in the scene along with render settings. For your purposes, I'd say use Scene Subset.
I guess the track is circular and the train's centre of rotation is at the centre of the circle.