In this video I’ll show you how to use the Photoshop 3D Bridge in DAZ Studio 4.9.

It’s a little clunky and a little old school, but it can still be a helpful tool to either render a scene from DAZ Studio directly into Photoshop for compositing, or exchange texture maps for easy changes and amendments. I’ll also discuss how to bring a whole 3D scene into Photoshop and add a few troubleshooting tips.

But I know that videos aren’t for everybody, so I thought I’d also add some written instructions here for good measure.

Installing the Bridge

The easiest way to get the bridge onto your system is via the DAZ Install Manager (DIM). Make sure the path to your Photoshop installation is correct (you can check this by clicking that little gear icon at the top right, and then select the Applications tab).

With each Photoshop upgrade, Adobe may change the installation path, and if that’s wrong, Install Manager can’t copy the files into the right location – so it’s something to watch out for.

DAZ update the bridge with every major release of DAZ Studio, which means that you can only install the most current version of the bridge with the most current version of DAZ Studio. If you’re running an older version of DAZ Studio, you must upgrade before the bridge can be used (I don’t think we have access to previous versions of either DAZ Studio or the bridge).

Starting the Bridge

Open both DAZ Studio and Photoshop to begin, and load the item you’d like to work with into your DAZ Studio scene. Now head over to File – Initialise Photoshop 3D Bridge. This will create a new camera in your scene and switch you away from the default Perspective View.

Frame up your object and add a light or two if you’d like to render into Photoshop to make your scene look pretty (this isn’t necessary if you’re only using the bridge to exchange texture maps).

Switch into Photoshop and create a new document, then choose File – Automate – DAZ Studio 3D Bridge. If you can’t see this item, and you’re certain that you have the bridge installed, then it’s likely that the path to your Photoshop installation is incorrect.

Clicking this option will bring up a small floating palette for use in your workflow. Note that not all options are functional at the time of writing (July 2016).

Rendering directly into Photoshop

You can use the bridge to render your current DAZ Studio scene onto a new layer into the current Photoshop document. To do this, select Preview Image first, which will ask for dimensions of your render and create a new locked layer. It will also make the two options Update Image and Enable Auto Update in the floating palette active.

Neither of these options work, and the new layer isn’t necessary – delete as you see fit… let’s not worry about that though.

Select Render to New Layer, and the bridge will call upon DAZ Studio to render the current scene. Depending on its complexity this can take a while, during which time the floating palette will be greyed out. When DAZ Studio has finished rendering, Photoshop will create a new layer and place the rendered image on it, complete with transparency.

You can now add other 2D elements to your scene, from backgrounds to composite elements and anything in between, or tweak the camera position in DAZ Studio and render to another layer. This is great to test various angles of your scene on top of a 2D background without having to save a temporary image and import it into Photoshop.

Exchanging Texture Maps

You can exchange texture maps between an object in DAZ Studio and Photoshop. To do this, select Import Image Maps in the floating palette. This will bring up another palette with a list of all image maps in your current sce...