4 · Your first character#

• Daz scenes — the character's scene, plus any number of extra scenes (outfit/look variants): drop a .duf on the card to add one. Added scenes pass the same checks as at creation — plus the same GP/DK geograft as the primary, so every scene produces the primary's skeleton — and are copied into the character's folder or left in place. The original scene can't be unlinked; extras can. Each scene's open icon is a menu: Open scene, and — for the saved ROM animation — Open last ROM whenever one is on disk; its tooltip notes when it predates the current definition (it opens anyway; stale is not wrong). Generate new ROM builds it in Daz and opens the result, and is offered when there is none or the saved one is stale (Ctrl offers it for a current one too; Alt+click reveals the folder). A running Daz Studio opens the scene right away (handed over via the bundled Runner plugin), otherwise Daz is started with it.
• Houdini projects — drop .hip/.hiplc files to link the character's Houdini project(s), or let Generate project build one. Click a card to open it in Houdini, Alt+click to reveal its folder. Pick a .hip that lives outside the character folder and the studio asks the same question it asks for a Daz scene: Copy in — into the character's Houdini folder, with Delete original after copying if you meant to move it — or Link in place. One that already sits inside the character folder is simply linked; there is nothing to decide. See project checks for what a copied project needs afterwards. Click a card's name to rename it — the file on disk is renamed with it and the link follows, so a generated 3d-workflow_LaraCroft_G81 can just become Lara. The extension is kept (.hip / .hiplc / .hipnc carry the licence tier). Renaming is safe where moving is not: everything the studio bakes in is anchored on $JOB and $HIP, which are folders — the file's own name is the one part of its location nothing points at. Only projects inside the character folder are renamable; one you linked in place from your own tree stays untouched, so its name has no pencil.
• Saved something new? The studio notices by itself: save a .duf or a Houdini project anywhere into the character's folder, tab back, and a banner offers to Review the new files — a wizard with one page per file runs the same checks as adding by hand, then links each file in place (a character without a primary scene gets Set as primary). Skip ignores a file permanently (it can still be added by pick/drop later); the banner's ✕ only hides it for the session. It does not matter which page you tab back to, either: if the studio is showing the project page — or Settings, or Tools — a banner at the top of the window names the character whose folder the file landed in and takes you there.

Morphs dialed once at frame 0 of the ROM. With no item scope — the small labels under the field reading All items — a row lands on every node that carries the morph, the figure and every fitted item, so one row like a clothing Expand All reaches whichever outfit pieces the open scene wears. Auto-follow puts the same dial on every conformed item, though, so a fit value meant for one backpack would deform the boots and gloves too: picking a suggestion scopes the row to the item its dial lives on — shown as those same small labels, mirroring the suggestion you picked, with an ✕ that returns the row to every item. A scene without the morph — or the item — simply skips it. Overridable per Daz scene.

_{The Advanced options section on the character page.}

The Advanced options panel near the bottom of the character page — none of it is needed for a working ROM:

• Preserve morphs after ROM loading — the ROM zeroes morphs as it loads; any morph you list here is restored to the value you set afterwards. Use it for body-shaping controls (breast or muscle morphs, say) that should hold across the whole ROM. Enter the morph's property name and its hold value; small labels under the field show which scene item the morph is looked up on (empty = the figure itself), set by picking a suggestion — a clothing morph needs that, since it never lives on the figure.
• Preserve node transforms — the listed node's transform is memorized before the ROM loads and restored after, so posed nodes (the eyes, say) keep their orientation instead of being reset. Enter the node's label as it appears in Daz.

On a non-primary Daz scene both lists are overridable, so an outfit scene can preserve different morphs or nodes than the primary — see Advanced: per-scene overrides.

_{The GEN section's Golden Palace art-direction frames — a morph set per frame.}

GEN is the genital geograft's range of motion. You don't enable it by hand: it turns itself on exactly when the primary scene contains a Golden Palace / Dicktator geograft (detected when the scene is linked at creation) — the same graft that derives the character's Gender. Our example G9 Female carries Golden Palace, so her GEN section covers it.

In Preset mode the studio drops the DTH release's stock GP/DK ROM block into the fixed GEN slot (after EXP, before PHY). The preset supplies the motion — the look is yours: the section lists the block's Art direction frames, and for each one you set the morph (or morphs) that give it the shape you want — node, morph name and value, like any custom morph.

Frames flagged required — empty in the preset ROM do nothing until you set a morph there; frames you leave alone keep the preset default.

Two things worth knowing:

• The geograft must be fitted to the figure in the Daz scene — the preset poses the geograft itself, so those frames fail without it.
• Preset only appears where the DTH release ships that asset — otherwise the studio flags GEN's Preset as unavailable.

You built your own pose asset for the genital graft? Switch GEN to Custom and use your own asset!

_{The character page's header: avatar, name, path chip, Save/Discard.}

• Avatar — click the portrait to use the primary Daz scene's thumbnail, drop an image file (cropped square in the built-in editor), or paste an image URL; earlier uploads stay one click away. Applied immediately (no Save needed); stored in the project's hidden .dcsmeta/images folder, so it travels with the project.
• Name — click it to rename. The character folder, notes and generated scripts follow (the old ROM_… script is cleaned up).
• Subtitle — the generation, the skinning the ROM targets (DQS or Linear, derived from the chosen preset assets), and the custom-frame count.
• Path chip — where the definition lives on disk; click copies, Alt+click reveals, like every path chip in the app.
• Save / Discard — the page edits a draft: nothing touches disk until Save (which also regenerates, see above). Discard reverts to the last save; leaving with unsaved edits asks first. Ctrl turns a settled Save button into Re-save, force-rewriting the files when nothing changed.

The Notes tab holds freeform markdown notes for this character: background, art direction, references. Hover, hit the pencil to edit, drop images or files straight into the editor — it autosaves. Stored as <Name>.notes.md next to the definition (media in .dcsmeta/media), so notes travel with your project backup. The project page has the same tab for project-wide notes.

A Products tab appears when the project switches it on — the scanning itself runs regardless. See Daz product scanning.

After a ROM run in Daz had problems (a missing morph, a failed preset), a report banner appears the moment you switch back to the studio: every failed frame with its reason, grouped under the scene it came from (a batch keeps all scenes' problems). Clicking an entry switches to that scene and jumps to the pose row; the selected scene's failed rows are also tinted red in the tables. Dismiss clears it; a clean run clears it automatically.

Operations → Fill from character opens the same two-step wizard as at creation: pick a source character (same generation and gender) from any of your projects, then check which of its filled ROM sections to copy (Retargeting always rides with JCM; the Modify JCM frames rules and preserve lists are optional extras). The checked sections replace this character's current config in the editor draft; nothing lands on disk until you save. GEN keeps this character's own scene-derived Golden Palace / Dicktator setup.

Operations → Export packs the character into a single, self-contained <Name>_<date>.dcsc.zip: the definition, notes, all Daz scenes, all Houdini project files, the avatar and the studio's metadata (run log, Execute stamps, PoseAsset CSVs) are always in it. Two toggles add the regenerable — and often gigabyte-sized — export trees: Daz exports (houdini/daz-export, the Daz→Houdini intermediate) and Houdini exports (the final export folder). Confirm, pick a folder, and the zip lands there. Unsaved editor changes are not packed — Save first.

The zip restores in two ways:

• Onto a character — that character's Operations → Import button, or just drop the zip anywhere on its page. An import wizard (in the spirit of the Fill dialog) opens with everything pre-selected for a full restore, and lets you dial it back: edit the character name (pre-filled with the zip's), pick which of the zip's ROM sections and extras to take (unchecked sections keep this character's config — unless the zip is a different generation/gender, where the full ROM must come along), pick the Daz scenes to restore (the primary is always included; the character's existing scenes are always wiped and replaced), and pick the Houdini projects — either replacing the character's own or added beside them. The character itself persists (same entry, same page); notes, avatar and metadata come from the zip when it has them. This can't be undone.
• Onto a project — drop the zip anywhere on the project page: the zip's character is restored, with all of its data, as a new character of that project.

Import fixes every stored path for the new location: the definition's scene / Houdini / avatar references, the studio's metadata records, and the Houdini projects themselves — their $JOB is repointed at the new character folder and their stored references repaired, the same fixes the Utils drawer's Repair project settings + Make paths portable run (this needs a paired Houdini install; without one the import finishes and tells you to run those two later). The .dsa scripts and PoseAsset CSV are regenerated to match. A scene or .hip that was linked in place outside the character folder keeps its original absolute path — on another machine it shows as missing and is relinked in the editor.

Operations → Delete removes the character's folder and generated files, with a confirmation that lets you keep the Daz files folder (your scenes) and keep the Houdini files folder (your .hip projects — offered only when the character has one) — for when the assets should outlive the definition. Either way the daz-export folder goes: it's regenerable output, often gigabytes of it, and keeping your own files must not quietly keep that too. This can't be undone.