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Snow's Tips #6 - Advanced Saving Methods

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Studio can be very finicky about where data files are located, and occasionally installing new versions or moving your content can result in Studio being unable to load saved scenes. I've probably remade my characters at least eight times because of these sorts of issues, and although fairly rare now, it's something long-time Studio users have dreaded.


To prepare for potential problems, it's a good idea to save the poses, materials, cameras, and other elements of your scene as well so that if your scene ever becomes unusable, you can recreate it quickly using these saved presets.

- For a character, select it and click the + button at the bottom of your Content Library panel. Choose "Properties Preset...". This type allows you to save pose, materials, morphs, and more in a single file. By default, Shaping, Pose, and Material(s) are selected with checkboxes. If you don't want to save the morphs, but do want to save the pose and materials for example, just uncheck the box in the Shaping tab and leave the others checked.

- A Wearable Preset will save all clothing, hair, and props that are conformed or parented to a figure in a single file and load the entire outfit at once. This is very handy if your figure is wearing a lot of mismatched clothing from various sources that would be difficult to recreate quickly. Select the figure, click on the + button at the bottom of your Content Library panel, and choose "Wearable(s) Preset...". Check all of the boxes for the items that you want to be loaded when you apply this preset and choose Accept.

- Scene Subsets are useful for saving light setups with multiple cameras. As before, click on the + button at the bottom of your Content Library panel, and choose "Scene Subset...".  When the dialogue box appears, uncheck everything EXCEPT the lights, cameras, light domes, and anything else that you might like to keep together and choose Accept. This also works for any items in your scene of course, like if you wanted to save one figure or a set of props separately from the rest of a larger scene. I mention it for lighting because some special lights (like environmental ones) cannot always be saved as a Light preset. Saving them as a scene subset ensures they'll always be saved just as you wanted.

Hopefully between the basic saved Poses and Material presets and these new more advanced ways of saving, you'll always be able to easily recreate your characters and scenes if things go wrong!
Just some handy additional ways to save content in DAZ Studio, and particularly helpful for backing up scenes in case Studio decides to throw a fit and suddenly not be able to open them. Believe me, I've had that happen one or two or forty times.
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