This article explains several Daz3d Duplicate Object techniques. Duplicating objects is a common task that needs to be done quite frequently in basically any 3D software. And Daz Studio is not an exception here. Though, how exactly to do such a thing is not really obvious. And some time ago there was not even a way to Daz3D duplicate objects comfortably.
Besides duplicating objects – there are also copying. What is the difference? How do they work and how to properly use them? Everything will be answered further in the article.
How to Duplicate Objects in Daz Studio
For starters – create an object that you want to duplicate. This can be any object – a figure, background, assets. I will use primitives for the purpose of the tutorial.
After that – a very important thing. Select the object. Either click on it in the viewport or “Scene” tab. You should see a white wireframe box around the object in viewport and yellow highlight in the “Scene” tab if it is selected:
Next, in the top bar go to “Edit > Duplicate”. There would be two options there – “Duplicate Node(s)” and “Duplicate Node Hierarchies”:
First one will only Daz3D duplicate selected objects, while second option will duplicate everything connected(parented) to that object. My primitive does not have any parented objects, so it does not matter what I choose here.
After duplicating, it would seem as if nothing happened. But a new object was created, it is just located at the same place as the initial object, so we can’t see it.
Just change the placement of one of the objects and you will see that there are more than one. And they are absolutely the same.
How about looking more closely into the “Duplicate Node Hierarchies” option? As was established – it duplicated not only the object, but also all of the connected objects. The best example would be a character with clothes and hair.
As before, select the character, go to “Edit > Duplicate” and choose one of the options. On the screenshot you can see initial character in the middle, “Duplicate Node(s)” result on the left and “Duplicate Node Hierarchies” on the right:
Everything as was expected. Daz3D Duplicating without hierarchy just duplicated the character, otherwise all connected assets were duplicated too.
To duplicate multiple objects you can either select a couple of objects while holding the Ctrl button and then press any of the Daz3D duplicate options. Alternatively you can parent all objects to one of them and then just with the parent object selected press “Duplicate Node Hierarchy” which will duplicate all the children too.
Daz3D Difference Between Duplication and Copy-Paste
If you tried to duplicate a character on your own, you might have found the Copy and Paste options in the same “Edit” drop list. This sounds just as duplicating, because usually when you copy and paste an object, you just receive a copy of said object. But not in the Daz Studio.
The thing here is that this option is more “Copy and paste objects information” rather than the object itself. Meaning that it copies selected objects information and then you can apply this information to other objects.
How about an example? I already have two identical spheres from duplicating them. I transformed one of them. Changed its scale in different dimensions and overall deformed.
Now I will select the deformed sphere and go to “Edit > Copy > Copy Selected Item(s)”. We have information about said sphere copied. After that I selected the second sphere and went “Edit > Paste > Paste to Selected Items”.
Second sphere disappeared. In reality it just copied everything about the first one, even its location. Which means that it has not disappeared, I can move it and see that they are now the same:
Copied information can be posted onto any object that can accept the same transforms as the first one. So, for example, you can copy information from the sphere and apply it to cube or even cylinder:
When working with figures, there is an additional “Copy Figure” option available. This option allows you to copy one’s figure information and apply it to the different figure. Difference here is that there are options to paste only a part of the information. Namely, you can paste only the pose of the copied figure or its shape.
Hope this Daz3d duplicate object technique is now more clear, let’s see in the next chapter some tips to speed up your workflow.
Setting a Shortcut Key for Duplication
Copying and Pasting have their shortcuts key. They are “Ctrl+C” and “Ctrl+V” respectively. But Duplicating does not have one and it could be really convenient for the user. Worry not, as you can set practically any key to any action in the Daz Studio.
For this you should go to the top bar and from there “Window> Workspace > Customize” or just press F3 button, as this menu has its own shortcut key.
In the appeared window you can see all of the available actions on the left. It may be overwhelming, but in reality you just need to find “Edit” there, click on it and in the drop down list find the needed setting. In our case it is – “Duplicate Node Hierarchy” as it is more versatile than regular “Duplicate Node”.
Right click on the desired setting, choose “Change shortcut key” and press the key or key combination that you want to set to the action. You may be warned that the key is already used in some other action, so you could choose whether you wanted to change it.
After it is done, just don’t forget to press the “Apply” button and everything will be done, you can use your shortcut key for the action that you want. You can use this method to change or add any shortcut key in the Daz Studio.
Daz3D Instances To Duplicate Objects
There is one more way to do something like duplicating or copying an object. It is called an instance. Creating an instance of the object is really easy. And it is better to make an example to understand what instances are.
Create and select an object for which you want to create instances. Now go to “Create” drop-down list from the top bar and find there “New Node Instance” and “New Node Instances”. First one will create one instant, second will create a bunch of them.
So I have created 10 instances of my object.
This is a Daz3d duplicate object technique that is very helpful e.g. also when creating scenes that require a lot of duplicates, e.g. a forest.
Though it may look like this is a duplicate of the original, that is not the case. In reality all these instances are fully dependent on the original and can’t exist without it. For example – none of them has their own material. If you change material of the original – all of them will change:
Usually instances used for creating some background objects such as bushes, trees or grass. Objects that should repeat and be absolutely identical. Advantage here is that instances need a lot less power to render than the full duplicate.
But working with instances is not really easy. Especially if you want to make a full and good scene with them. That is why we made a list of products that could help you with this task.
Instances Plus+ for Daz Studio by DraagonStorm will take away the tedious placement process. The script will give you an ability to set up any of the instances in the most quick and comfortable way. Be it random, in line or along with the rotation.
Source Instances Plus+ for Daz Studio
Another script – InstaEdit by Callidus Simia will allow you to edit any of the instances easily. Be it an object poking through something. With this tool you can just right click on any of the instances and either convert it into a node or edit its geometry directly using Mesh Grabber.
And the last item for today is UltraScatter Advanced Instancing for Daz Studio by HowieFarkes. The deal with this tool is that it has a big collection of options for automatically setting the distribution, scale and rotation of the instances. Meaning that it will help you to create huge scenes like forests with ease. And they would look really good too.
Conclusion Daz3d Duplicate Object
This article covered different Daz3d Duplicate Object techniques. Copying and Pasting objects turned out to be an absolutely different thing from Duplicating in the Daz Studio. We showed and explained both of these abilities and made an example on how to use them. Also instances were introduced, explained and items to help with them were shown. Besides, you now can set any desired action to any key or key combination that you want. Check out also our other Daz Tutorials.