- Jun 25, 2017
- 2,469
- 6,937
So, you have a custom character in Daz Studio that you've been fiddling with (or you obtained from someone/someplace else), and you're trying to figure out what assets it uses. Maybe you want to steal, ahem, "borrow" something, recreate something, or maybe you just forgot how you built it. Here are some techniques to try to figure that out.
First, if you got the asset from somewhere else, and you don't have all the required assets, when you open it up, Daz Studio will complain loudly. Usually, the paths to the assets will give you some pretty good hints as to what's missing. So this is more for the case where you do have the assets, but don't know for sure what all went into the character.
First, when you load a character, the log file tends to record most of the assets involved. Thus, if you look at the log and see:
Base Character: Sometimes the Daz character name will still be in the Scene tab. But maybe it's been renamed, or maybe it's one of the characters that just says "Victoria 7," or maybe it was manually constructed.
Open the "Shaping" window. Click on "Currently Used". In the right-hand pane, you'll get a list of all the morphs that have been applied to the base figure. If it's purely a Daz character, of if it's based on one, you'll probably find a head and body morph set at 100% - that's the character that applied. There will probably also be some applied at less than 100% - in my example here, "Keith" is based on Edward and Adam, so he has some of their body and head dialed in, but the 100% dials are both for Keith, so you know that this character's shape at least started with Keith.
This isn't a sure-fire approach, since different characters are "built" different ways, but it works in many cases.
Skins, lips, etc: Open the Surfaces panel. Open the character entry, then "Surfaces". Click on one of the skin surfaces. Hover your mouse over the "Base Color" setting without clicking.
You should get a pop-up with a path to the texture that's used. From that path, you can usually figure out the asset used for the skin.
In this case, you can see from the path that the face skin came from FWArt/Keith, from which you could figure out that it's the skin from
Lips, nails, eyes - you should be able to do a similar way, since they're each a separate surface.
I should point out, however, that sometimes particular skin effects can be obtained, or altered, by changing some of the shader settings associated with the skins. The techniques above will allow you to identify the base textures, but if a shader master has been fiddling, you may not be able to duplicate the results without saving the current shader settings as a preset and then applying them elsewhere.
Makeup's a bit trickier, since there are several ways it could be applied. One way, of course, is that it's an asset that was part of the skin that you applied. (i.e. a "makeup" preset for the particular character you used.) In that case, the face texture itself has the makeup built into it, and you can figure it out the way you did the skin.
If it's a separate make up asset, however, one common way they're built is as a LIE (Layered Image Editor) overlay. This means that the base face texture has had a second (or third, fourth) image overlayed on top of it and merged with it.
If you select the face texture as shown above, and actually click on that Base Texture button (the image part on the left, not the white area on the right) you'll get a big menu. One of the items at the top will be "Layered Image Editor". If you select that (not "Image Editor") you'll get a window like this:
On the right, you'll see the base image. (In this case, the Cathy face.) However, if there is more than one layer listed, then the upper layers are probably the makeup applied over top of the face. Again, from those image names, you may be able to figure out what was used. (If nothing else, you could search your Daz content area for those file names.)
So that's one approach to sleuthing this out. The other, more direct, way would be to open up the DUF file manually and poke around in it looking for the various paths to textures, morphs, etc. Two ways to do that:
If there's anything I missed, please feel free to add your favorite "how did they do that" tricks!
First, if you got the asset from somewhere else, and you don't have all the required assets, when you open it up, Daz Studio will complain loudly. Usually, the paths to the assets will give you some pretty good hints as to what's missing. So this is more for the case where you do have the assets, but don't know for sure what all went into the character.
First, when you load a character, the log file tends to record most of the assets involved. Thus, if you look at the log and see:
you can pretty well guess that the Aiko 7 eyes, the Aurelia face and Outoftouch's Drop Wet Hair were involved. This may be your best method, but sometimes the image names are sufficiently generic that it's hard to figure out what they belong to. In addition, this may help with skins and such, but doesn't usually help with character morphs.
Base Character: Sometimes the Daz character name will still be in the Scene tab. But maybe it's been renamed, or maybe it's one of the characters that just says "Victoria 7," or maybe it was manually constructed.
Open the "Shaping" window. Click on "Currently Used". In the right-hand pane, you'll get a list of all the morphs that have been applied to the base figure. If it's purely a Daz character, of if it's based on one, you'll probably find a head and body morph set at 100% - that's the character that applied. There will probably also be some applied at less than 100% - in my example here, "Keith" is based on Edward and Adam, so he has some of their body and head dialed in, but the 100% dials are both for Keith, so you know that this character's shape at least started with Keith.
This isn't a sure-fire approach, since different characters are "built" different ways, but it works in many cases.
Skins, lips, etc: Open the Surfaces panel. Open the character entry, then "Surfaces". Click on one of the skin surfaces. Hover your mouse over the "Base Color" setting without clicking.
You should get a pop-up with a path to the texture that's used. From that path, you can usually figure out the asset used for the skin.
In this case, you can see from the path that the face skin came from FWArt/Keith, from which you could figure out that it's the skin from
You must be registered to see the links
As mentioned earlier, the log file will give this filename when it's loaded (FWKeithFace_1001.jpg), but if the file name is kind of generic, having the full path will usually allow you to identify the artist and figure.Lips, nails, eyes - you should be able to do a similar way, since they're each a separate surface.
I should point out, however, that sometimes particular skin effects can be obtained, or altered, by changing some of the shader settings associated with the skins. The techniques above will allow you to identify the base textures, but if a shader master has been fiddling, you may not be able to duplicate the results without saving the current shader settings as a preset and then applying them elsewhere.
Makeup's a bit trickier, since there are several ways it could be applied. One way, of course, is that it's an asset that was part of the skin that you applied. (i.e. a "makeup" preset for the particular character you used.) In that case, the face texture itself has the makeup built into it, and you can figure it out the way you did the skin.
If it's a separate make up asset, however, one common way they're built is as a LIE (Layered Image Editor) overlay. This means that the base face texture has had a second (or third, fourth) image overlayed on top of it and merged with it.
If you select the face texture as shown above, and actually click on that Base Texture button (the image part on the left, not the white area on the right) you'll get a big menu. One of the items at the top will be "Layered Image Editor". If you select that (not "Image Editor") you'll get a window like this:
On the right, you'll see the base image. (In this case, the Cathy face.) However, if there is more than one layer listed, then the upper layers are probably the makeup applied over top of the face. Again, from those image names, you may be able to figure out what was used. (If nothing else, you could search your Daz content area for those file names.)
So that's one approach to sleuthing this out. The other, more direct, way would be to open up the DUF file manually and poke around in it looking for the various paths to textures, morphs, etc. Two ways to do that:
- Use the DSON Editor tool. (It's been posted in the Asset Releases forum:
You must be registered to see the links)
- DUF files are simply JSON files that have been zipped. If you copy MyFigure.duf to MyFigure.txt.zip, you can then easily unzip it to MyFigure.txt and open it with Notepad or equivalent and poke around. It's ugly in there, but it's not too hard to find the paths to textures and morphs and such.
If there's anything I missed, please feel free to add your favorite "how did they do that" tricks!
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