Any lists of "gotchas" or best-practices for Hexagon?

WsCG

Hello,

I'm learning/checking out Hexagon (again :p). I've had an on-again, off-again relationship with DAZ, switching between Carrara, dabbling with Hexagon, staring mystified at DS, but mostly sticking to Blender. With Blender's 2.8 update, I'm finding it uncomfortably unfamiliar to work with and really don't understand many of the "improvements" they made to the UI. I'd already felt like Blender was becoming too much of an "everything and the kitchen sink" program - just too much crammed into it. But, I'd used it enough to develop muscle memory and could generally navigate and get things done pretty quickly. That changed with 2.8, and now my muscle memory feels "broken". Since I have to learn a new layout and workflow *anyway*, I figured it would be a good opportunity to check out some other options.

So I floated around to check out a few other choices, and have landed back at DAZ. Had a short stint with Carrara, which is a cool program. Thing is, I have problems getting DAZ figures to load/function correctly in Carrara, and it also kinda has the same thing that annoyed me about Blender... too much crammed into one package. Don't get me wrong.. Blender and Carrara are both great programs. I'm not saying they're *bad*. Just not ideal for what I'm looking for (something more streamlined/focused).

So! I'm re-learning Hexagon which thankfully has a ton of learning resources available; always a good sign. And I'm aware that DAZ has re-ignited their interest in continuing to support and develop it (or at least it seems that way). The plan is to  work with it and DS for my projects.

Getting to the thread subject, I am noticing a number of thread titles with the words "Hexagon crashes", or "crashing" in them. This is a bit concerning, as I can't imagine the frustration of being well into a long project, and having Hexagon just go "poof" on you. I magine Ctrl-S gets lots of love by its users :p.

Since I'm just learning it, and am pretty much a "blank slate", I'd like to learn some good habits and procedures to use while working in it, in order to avoid crashes as much as possible, and generally keep things as tidy and organized as I can.

Is there any such source for that kind of thing? Maybe a bullet-list of "do this, don't do that" type guidelines?

Any suggestions/advice is appreciated.

Thanks!

JonnyRay

After the latest release, stability has vastly improved. You can still crash it, but usually you'll figure out why and how to avoid it in the future. :)

As for re-learning the UI, I'd start with Max's tutorials he has on YouTube.

Check out the Max Hancock & Co. channel. The first video in particular goes over all the basics of Hexagon. He also has some custom keyboard shortcuts which may help you feel more comfortable or maybe give you ideas for how to map some things that are similar to Blender.

Roman_K2

JonnyRay said:

After the latest release, stability has vastly improved.

I had it not install properly on one computer: it seemed to run but it was unusable as there was nothing in the work space. Then I tried one of the "update" links for the new Beta or whatever and bingo, I now have two shortcuts to Hexagon on my desktop in Win7, and one of them actually works! Cool.