User:Aclapton/Draft DAZ Studio

This is a draft!

DAZ Studio is a software application released by DAZ 3D Inc. It is compatible with most files intended for use in the Poser human animation application. It is available free of charge (registration required). Version 1.0 was released in Fall 2005. Version 2.3.3.89 is the current release as of 28 October 2008. Until version 1.7 it was officially known as DAZ|Studio.

DAZ Studio and Poser
The release of DAZ Studio expanded the field of hobby rendering, which was previously monopolised by Poser. DAZ Studio was designed as an alternative to Poser, and serves as a means to increase the number of people participating in the hobby - and in consequence to increase sales of figures, clothing and props by DAZ Productions.

Opinion on DAZ Studio's merits is split among old-school Poser users; some find the new interface faster and enjoy the rendering options; others prefer the fuller Poser features. The debate is not, for the most part, heated. Images created in DAZ Studio are welcome on community sites and forums originally dedicated to Poser art; the newsgroup alt.binaries.3D.poser being a prime example.

DAZ Studio is capable of importing most Poser content, with the notable exceptions of dynamic clothing and dynamic hair. As a result of the different lighting models, lights sometimes need to be tweaked or replaced.

Features
DAZ Studio supports raytracing, which allows creation of reflective surfaces. Faster renders may be achieved through OpenGL support and non-raytraced images.

DAZ Studio also has an intuitive user interface, but does not yet support dynamic hair or clothing, tapering of body parts, or (in the Mac OS X version) texture maps in the PICT format. Several commercial plug-in files have been created for DAZ Studio, which support features natively found in Poser, such as inverse kinematics.

DAZ Studio is bundled with a hard-linked version (not standalone) of the 3Delight renderer. This is a RenderMan-compliant high-end renderer, commonly used in production of blockbuster visual effects. The renderer is perfectly capable of rendering higher order surfaces like true subdivision surfaces and supports true 3D motion blur and depth of field. Unfortunately DAZ Studio currently exports most data as polygon meshes to 3Delight, thus not taking advantage of the superior silhouette and shading quality this renderer is able to deliver. As of version 1.8, DAZ Studio is capable of exporting a scene to RIB, thus enabling the use of an external copy of the 3Delight renderer. Previously, a script available with the DAZ|Script SDK, a separate download, could be used to export a scene to a RIB file.