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Selling elsewhere besides DAZ Shop?

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  • PhilWPhilW Posts: 5,145

    It's odd about the rendering to grey - have you checked that there is nothing directly in front of the camera that is blocking the view?

  • MarkIsSleepyMarkIsSleepy Posts: 1,496

    Yes - thought of that. laugh

    I tried a fresh new scene with just a 10cm cube in it and got the same thing. Also, if I flip to 3Delight it renders normally. The weirdest thing is that it also renders fine if I use the dropdown in the viewport and change it from textured to Iray! It's just when I actually click on the render button with Iray that I get nothing but grey.

    I'm going to try and submit a help ticket when I get home from work today and see what DAZ has to say. I do have the installer for DS 4.8 somewhere in one of my backups I think, but that's a pain to go back that far.

  • WsCGWsCG Posts: 391
    edited June 2017
    MDO2010 said:
    3DAGE said:

    I just watched a couple tutorials from DAZ PAs who said that lately that is what DAZ is asking them to do.  I have to admit it makes a lot more sense to me to keep the textures with the product and not off in a runtime folder that supposedly isn't used for anything else, so that's what I've been doing on my freebies

     

    See, that's how I would expect it to work - keep things close to the things they're associated with, even if it's under an overall "umbrella" folder.

    If there's a product called "OldWesternWagon", intuitively, I would expect a folder structure something like, for example:
    ~\Studio\My Library
                        |___ OldWesternWagon
                                    |____Data
                                    |            |_objectname
                                    |            |          |_ file
                                    |            |          |_ file
                                    |            |_objectname
                                    |            |         |_ file
    ​                                |            |         |_ file
                                    |            |_...
                                    |____Textures
                                    |____Materials
                                    |____Environments
                                    |              |_______ iray
                                    |              |_______ 3delight
                                    |____Props
                                    |____Support
                                    |____CameraPresets
                                    |____Lights                               
    ... and so on.

    Or even some derivative of that, but just keeping things as much directly under the main product folder as possible. If it were a setup more like that, I'd have had it down immediately, only needing to know what content type goes in what folder.

    Conversely, here's the structure for an environment set I bought recently:

    ~\Studio\Product #
                           |____Data
                           |             |____User/ComanyName
                           |                                 |____ProductName
                           |                                                   |____object
                           |                                                                 |____ file
                           |                                                                 |____ file    
                           |                                                   |____object
                           |                                                                 |____ file
                           |                                                                 |____ file
                           |                                                   |____...
                           |____ Environments
                           |              |____User/ComanyName
                           |                                  |____ProductName
                           |                                                   |____3delight
                           |                                                   |                |__________materials
                           |                                                   |                |__________files
                           |                                                   |____camerapresets
                           |                                                   |____iray
                           |                                                             |__________figures
                           |                                                             |__________light
                           |                                                             |__________materials
                           |                                                             |__________props
                           |                                                             |__________render settings
                           |____runtime
                                        |____textures
                                        |                 |____user/companyname
                                        |                                      |____productname
                                        |                                                      |____subfolder
                                        |                                                      |____subfolder
                                        |____support
                    

    Now, to me... that is a huge, labyrinthine and messy file/folder structure to have to navigate/understand. -shrug-

    Post edited by WsCG on
  • UnifiedBrainUnifiedBrain Posts: 3,588
    MDO2010 said:
     

    Maybe I'll just take the rest of your advice to Mitovo and make something for Carrara - I've got a couple ideas for that too. laugh

    That would be terrific!  Maybe I'm naive, but it seems to me that becoming a PA through creating products in Carrara is easier than trying to crack the larger DS market right away. 

     

  • WsCGWsCG Posts: 391
    edited June 2017
    MDO2010 said:
    PhilW said:

     

    I don't think this is necessarily true anymore.  I don't think you actually need the Runtime folder anymore unless you are creating products for Poser. I mean, don't delete it or anything for old products, but for your own new products you shouldn't need it.

    I've watched a couple paid tutorials by DAZ PAs lately that have said DAZ3D wants the texture files in the same folder as the preset to load them.  So if, for example, you have a prop called MySword that is part of the product MySwordCollection, it would go in the My Library/Props/MyVendorName/MySwordCollection/MyProps folder. In the MySwordCollection folder you'd have a /Materials folder that contains not just the material presets but also the actual texture files that go with them.

    @Mitovo - it's up to you if you don't want to pursue it further (everyone has their own threshold for how long they want to bang their head on the wall wink ), but I think we can help you get there if you want to give it another go. I've created a couple freebies for DAZ Studio and have a couple more in the "waiting until I have time to do renders of them" stage and I think I can walk you through the process of creating and packaging a product for DS at least in a few relatively painless steps if you want.

    Was thinking it over earlier, and I think I just need to know the absolute fundamentals... just what I need to know to get *something* into DS and working. From there, I can pan out and learn the rest. Just need to know where square 1 is.

    To put it in context, let's say I'm creating a park bench, modeled and UV mapped, with a single texture and bump/normal map. That's it. 
    What do I have to do to get it properly setup and loaded into DAZ, and then to export/save it out to something I could zip up and send to others?

    Beyond that, what folders does DS expect me to have 'pre-configured' for it?  What do I leave for DS to do itself, so I don't have to worry about it?

    Someone earlier, I think it might have been Phil W... possibly someone else... anyway, it was suggested to set up a separate content folder path as a "work path". I'm guessing this is where I would save the content I'm creating to, and where I'd be initially importing it from. And then, presumably (if I'm understanding correctly), I could then save out the assets as a "completed package" to DS's actual 'My Library' folder, correct? DS will create any additional required files and folders itself?

    I think a big part of my confusion when looking at others' content, is I'm seeing the end-result, without any context of how it all came together.

    Wish I could find some good walkthrough's on how this is done. I've tried. If they exist, they're doing a darn good job of hiding lol.

    Thanks again!

    Post edited by WsCG on
  • WsCGWsCG Posts: 391
    3DAGE said:

    Mitovo,. perhaps leaving DS for now,. and focusing on developing a product for Carrara,. would be simpler.

    learn one thing at a time,. it's easier :)

    Is there a Carrara asset marketplace? I've only been aware of DS.

     

  • UnifiedBrainUnifiedBrain Posts: 3,588
    edited October 2017
    Mitovo said:

    Is there a Carrara asset marketplace? I've only been aware of DS.

    https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/160876/a-list-of-carrara-oriented-pro-artists-in-the-daz-store-any-to-add#latest

    Much smaller than DS - but still growing!  For a few PA's, Carrara remains integral to their work flow.

     

    a-soldier-saluting-emoticon.png
    104 x 107 - 6K
    Post edited by UnifiedBrain on
  • WsCGWsCG Posts: 391
    UnifiedBrain said:
    Mitovo said:

    Is there a Carrara asset marketplace? I've only been aware of DS.

    https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/160876/a-list-of-carrara-oriented-pro-artists-in-the-daz-store-any-to-add#latest

    Much smaller than DS - but still growing!  For a few PA's, Carrara remains integral to their work flow.

     

    Oh nice! Was not aware Carrara had its own dedicated content on there. Will be perusing :D

  • MarkIsSleepyMarkIsSleepy Posts: 1,496
    edited June 2017

    @Mitovo - I started compiling all my notes from various places into one document. It's not complete yet and hasn't been edited, so it's probably riddled with typos and spelling mistakes, but maybe it will help get you started. I've also got an empty project folder structure that I copy for each new project as a starting point and then just delete the folders with nothing in them when I am done. 

    The instructions doc is only complete for a simple prop, the sections on clothing and rigged props are just headers at the moment. The pre-made folder structure has MDO2010 vendor folders under a lot of the folders - you can delete those or change them to whatever vendorname you plan to distribute under. laugh

    Two notes:

    1. My instructions don't use a Runtime to store the textures, but if you want to do that, there is an empty Runtime folder in the content folder; just add a textures//vendorname/productname folder in the empty Runtime and put your image textures in there instead of where I say to put them in my notes - if you follow my process though then you can delete that empty Runtime
    2. My notes on naming conventions and where texture files go are based on second-hand information; I have successfully distributed DS products for free but have not yet submitted anything to DAZ so if you do they may ask you to rename things from how I do it in this doc
    Post edited by MarkIsSleepy on
  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,182

    Thanks for the notes and the sample project folder, MDO2010.  Currently, I have a couple projects that I would be willing to offer as freebies, but I want to shift from Poser format to Studio format.  One is a tomato plant made with Carrara's plant editor and the other is a book with pages and covers that can be rotated as posed limbs and animated.  My current obstacle for the tomato plant is the uvmap for the branches that did not translate well from the plant editor to Studio (I don't think, hard to edit).  The obstacle for the animated book is the weightmapping and subD to get smoother folds and bending.   

  • MarkIsSleepyMarkIsSleepy Posts: 1,496
    edited June 2017

    I do have a lot of notes that might help with the weightmapping for the book, but they are currently spread across about a dozen text files, a couple pieces of paper and the back of two envelopes. laugh

    My plan is to organize them better though, but I thought I'd start with the simplest case.

    Post edited by MarkIsSleepy on
  • WsCGWsCG Posts: 391
    MDO2010 said:

    @Mitovo - I started compiling all my notes from various places into one document. It's not complete yet and hasn't been edited, so it's probably riddled with typos and spelling mistakes, but maybe it will help get you started. I've also got an empty project folder structure that I copy for each new project as a starting point and then just delete the folders with nothing in them when I am done. 

    The instructions doc is only complete for a simple prop, the sections on clothing and rigged props are just headers at the moment. The pre-made folder structure has MDO2010 vendor folders under a lot of the folders - you can delete those or change them to whatever vendorname you plan to distribute under. laugh

    Two notes:

    1. My instructions don't use a Runtime to store the textures, but if you want to do that, there is an empty Runtime folder in the content folder; just add a textures//vendorname/productname folder in the empty Runtime and put your image textures in there instead of where I say to put them in my notes - if you follow my process though then you can delete that empty Runtime
    2. My notes on naming conventions and where texture files go are based on second-hand information; I have successfully distributed DS products for free but have not yet submitted anything to DAZ so if you do they may ask you to rename things from how I do it in this doc

    Oh very nice! Thank you! Even with just a quick perusal through it, I can see that such documentation will be very helpful.

    It looks like that's a fairly "flat" folder structure - closer to what I've simulated in my previous post, which is nice!  I'm beginning to get the idea that the crazy, complex folder structures I'm seeing in some packages are more to do with how the creator set them up, and less with how DAZ needs them to be. That's heartening actually heh.

    Thanks for sharing that!

  • TangoAlphaTangoAlpha Posts: 4,584

    Bear in mind that the contents of the Data folder are autogenerated, you just need to provide the top level data/ArtistName, and Studio will do the rest when you Save As->Support Asset->Figure/Prop Assets. Other folders are really as required.

    When you save a prop / scene / material preset / etc in Studio, it will create an icon file. This is a tiny render from the active camera, in .png format (91x91 pixels). PAs will universally replace that with a better render using a proper lighting setup, and maybe a photoshopped background. There is an optional "tip" file you can create, which is 256x256 pixels. This appears when you hover your mouse over the icon in the Studio browser. It can include extra information such as vendor & set names, instructions etc that wouldn't be visible or appropriate in the small icon.

    If you create Iray versions of your set in addition to 3Delight, it's considerate to append "Iray" to the name, and put Iray props (say) into a props/Iray folder. BTW, it's also considerate to add some sort of Iray indicator to the icon (as shown on the tip image below).

    Here's the props folder of the set I'm currently prepping...

    Screen Shot 2017-06-24 at 20.51.35.png
    998 x 754 - 255K
    cl_Bed.duf.png
    91 x 91 - 12K
    cl_Bed Iray.tip.png
    256 x 256 - 83K
  • TangoAlphaTangoAlpha Posts: 4,584

    Oh and if you save out 64 x 64 versions of your icons, you can use P3DO to embed them into Carrara versions of the props.

  • MarkIsSleepyMarkIsSleepy Posts: 1,496

    That piece about the tip icon is really interesting - I didn't know that!

  • PhilWPhilW Posts: 5,145

    We should start a series - Tim's Tips!

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634
    edited June 2017
    TangoAlpha said:

    Oh and if you save out 64 x 64 versions of your icons, you can use P3DO to embed them into Carrara versions of the props.

    Kewl,   Just grabbed the P3D0 Pro ver as suggestested somewhere by Phil.  I had always thought that I'd be able to change the icons in a paint program... little did I know they are imbedded in the saved Carrara file... car and cbr.

    MDO,  Thanks for the notes and empty file structure... both will save me some time.

    I've been considering offering an item or so as freebies elsewhere, they still need some final work... don't feel like I'm up to the knowledge and quality level of DAZ and PA products just yet.

    Post edited by wgdjohn on
  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,182

    The very generous Wargis posted a pdf tutorial for JCM and similar morphs.  yes.  See here.

    https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/173151/tutorial-easy-making-of-jcms-and-mcms-in-daz-studio-4-9#latest

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