The Complete Guide to Daz Studio 4

Thank you

Ridicolo. La chiamano guida. Ci sono scritte solo le funzioni base che scopri semplicemente giocando un po'col software. Una vera presa in giro!

At first glance, I have to say that this book is definitely a step in the right direction, but I wouldn’t call this a complete guide. In the areas of Daz Studio that Mr. Ciccone does cover, he does a good job of going over the material. However, Chapters 10 and 11 are devoted entirely to the Reality Plugin(Not a part of Daz studio, but a plugin that you can purchase –the key point being it’s not Daz Studio.) and Modo(A 3D modeling /animation package in its own right –also not a part of Daz Studio.) That’s sixty six pages out of 316 pages total of text that’s devoted to other programs and not Daz Studio. While in the meantime, there were parts of the program that were not covered at all, like D-Formers and ERC –which are key elements of working within Daz Studio if you’re ever going to go beyond simply posing and hitting the render button. The only other negative thing I observed that he works in the Apple operating environment and was very good at showing the Apple commands and working out what to do on an Apple computer. However, if you don’t own a Mac, that makes all of that effort pretty much useless.With that being said –I don’t look at this as a negative review. There is a lot of useful information contained in this book. If you’re brand new to Daz Studio, reading this book will give you a lot more knowledge than you had when you started. I like the fact that Mr. Ciccone took the time to explain Specular, Diffuse and other material types. A lot of books don’t cover that in a lot of detail –they just expect everyone to know it. I liked the fact that he also takes you to the Major sites for finding Daz Studio content like Runtime DNA, Renderosity and Sharecg. There are some great pointers for workflow that would have helped me out a lot in the beginning if I’d known that to begin with. He discusses setting up cameras and gives a little bit of insight into lighting and using cameras vs. the perspective view to setup your renders, and why it’s important. He discusses the genesis platform in detail, including a bit on using the dials to create a morph of the genesis character, which I think was long overdue. Beyond that, he uses an example that is not based on the much overused –Firey Genesis (I can’t tell you how much I hate that scene. People use it to death when they talk about teaching Daz Studio…).I’m still going over the book in detail, but a couple of final thoughts come to mind. The pictures need to be in color. You can only illustrate so much about the application with grey scale, and it makes it impossible to see the accents he’s trying to point out on certain parts of Daz Studio because the lines are so fine. In order for me to call it a complete guide –there would have needed to be a chapter devoted to 3delight render –which is the native render of Daz Studio. This book is a good start, but there are several omissions of key components that prevent me from personally calling it a "Complete Guide". It would have been far better to name this volume “The Beginner’s Guide to Daz Studio.”

wasn't what the title states, was just a brief overview of what can be done

I have had DAZ Studio 4 for a long time but I use Poser for my 3d modeling. But more and more is going to DAZ Studio 4 so Ibought this book to help me learn DAZ Studio 4. I think it is a very good book.