Currently DAZ Studio is at version 4.23 This program has got a plethora of features. I’ve been using DAZ Studio from DAZ3D.com since it’s mid beta days. A little over 15 years. It’s been a great ride, not to say there haven’t been some annoying and even maddening moments using this program. At that time, for me, Poser was NOT a great experience (please see the Poser page) partially because I never liked the UI nor how it handled allot of the operations BUT Poser is growing on me! I’ve included a screen shots, above and below, showing you my Studio interface and how I like it set up.
The nice thing about DAZ Studio is that all tabs and tool bars are configurable. You can move them around or turn them off altogether if you want. There are themes and color choices to satisfy your every hearts desire!! As you see below I'm a person that loves a natural, nature based green in my personal palette!
To the left I have 3 tabs:
Content Library: It's an easy access area for finding Figures, Character skins, Hair, Accessories, Clothing and Poses as well as Shaders, Props, Environments and so much more. Basically everything you need to render out, change the look of things and all the rest is in this area!
Simulation Properties: This is a fairly new addition to DAZ Studio. Dynamic Clothing and Hair!
Property Hierarchy: This is for creating content, it's one of the very advanced areas of DAZ Studio, not for the faint of heart!
The pane below that is the View pane, this is for positioning the camera rotations and what not on the fly!
To the right there are 4 tabs:
Scene: This is a very important panel as it shows you everything you have in the scene including your figure, cameras and lights and all the rest. You can click on something to make changes or even just delete it.
Posing: This is basically just accessing the Transforms for your figure like Bend, Twist and Rotate and more.
Cameras: Another area for your cameras. Here you can add bloom settings and so much more!
Lights: Another area for your lights. When you need to do minute bits to get them doing what you you need them to do you'll go here!
Shaping: Quick access to morphs for your figure to make them skinny, fat, muscular or what have you!
Another great feature of DAZ Studio is that you can also undock panels and move them to another monitor if you so wish! So I have 3 more tabs on my second monitor. I've included a screen shot of this so you get my drift. The tab descriptions are as follows:
Parameters: This tab is all about controls in one place that you have separated in the above description (Shaping, Posing but goes further to include Smoothing, Visibility and Mesh Resolution properties all in one area. I RARELY use the Shaping and Posing tabs as it's easier to access it all in the Parameters tab!
Surfaces: This is another really important tab, this controls your texture maps and settings to make them look and feel the way you want. There are currently 3 render engine options built into DAZ Studio. iRAY, 3Delight and Filament. So depending on the render engine selected you'll have to make sure your images and settings are compatible with one or more of these engines. iRAY is currently the default rendering engine so MOST products released for the current and recent past Genesis figures and assets including environments and props as well as MOST other products offered for sale use this. 3Delight (3DL) used to be the default until iRAY came along and made things better (and more confusing) LOL Filament has been part of DAZ Studio but wasn't used for much but now it's set up to create toon types of renders. As stated, I don't really use the DAZ Studio to create toon renders but it's a nice addition and other users are really love it!!
Tool Settings: Is a tab, if your a content creator, that makes accessing tools like Geometry Editor, Weight Map Editor and more right at your finger tips to get the job done.
The figure you see in the view port is called Genesis 9. It's considered a Unimesh that can be morphed into male or female! The base figures are included with DA Studio and also includes a few clothing items, some poses, basic skins and hair props. It's all installed using a DAZ Install Manager (DIM) including your DAZ Studio installation!
The figure packs are free, like DAZ Studio, and it's called Genesis 9 Starter Essentials! It's a great way to get started and for many of us addicted to buying goodies for the figures like environments, lights, camera and other accessories! FUN and can be expensive!
The technology that's built into DAZ Studio includes a way to conform clothing and hair automatically to the figure with nary a poke through.
Along with iRAY and 3Delight render engines there is now another engine called Filament (which I really don't use) but comes in handy for making Toon types of renders if your doing comic books, or what have you! DAZ Studio is really wonderful for content creation too. There are bridges you can install for other 3D and even Photoshop to make content creation easier and more fluid.