Digital Art Zone

Hello, here’s me starting my adventure with DAZ.

My question is related to importing Unreal format characters.
The thing about DAZ that it is really easy to pose characters which I use for future reference for drawing/mixed art (home use).

I want to import a character from a game based on the Unreal Engine (e.g. Mass Effect):
I followed the guide here http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/104/index/3255953/1 and with 3DSMax it was a cinch, everything worked perfect.
Now I want to get it into DAZ for some easy posing, but when importing it (in OBJ format), I get a single, unmodifiable object.
In 3DS the skeleton mesh structure seems all fine, but after importing into DAZ it looks completely lost.

So my question in short is: is it possible to import a Unreal character (*.pcc format) into DAZ to make it pose-able like say Genesis? I don’t need any morphs, just the possibility of moving the limbs around for posing. Not necessarily using 3DSMax, any way will do.

Thanks in advance for the reply.

The OBJ format does not carry bone or rigging information, just mesh information and UV Mapping, so it will never move untill you rig it in DS.  The PCC? format is not importable to DS either, but FBX and DAE (Collada) should be.

Delved a bit into it, they are PSK files; pcc is the container. FBX and DAE are exportable from 3DS but I get some errors, and all in all in DAZ I find only 3 parts after import - body as whole, head and helmet. So one part per PSK file. Still trying to figure out how to export it properly for each skeleton part to be seperate.

Question about rigging - I read the term up often when searching for information.. but what’s that?

Rigging is a gaming term really, and it means adding bones to the mesh so that it can be posed.  The bones control how the mesh moves, and gives them limits of rotation and movement on the different axis.

DAZ Studio has it’s own rigging tools, both the new ones for weight mapped rigging, and the legacy ones too.  If you wanted to rerig the character from scratch, there may be a bit of a learning curve.  There is a tutorial for sale in the store here on rigging new characters.

Hi,

I know only from these plugins, but for Carrara:

http://www.clintons3d.com/plugins/carrara/index.html

rk66.

I bookmarked that link thx rk66

Still searching for a way. I tried out UDK, Carrara trial.

So far the closest achievement I had in Carrara - after exporting the *.psk into *.fbx it imports really nicely into Carrara with a skeleton, and I can select and move specific parts of the body, and they stay connected. It’s far away from posing however.
Nevertheless no matter which way I want to export it to DAZ Studio, it’s always as a single object (“God” is seperate from the object itself), or when trying to import Collada format, DAZ always crashes.

Any other ideas?

Current status - I managed to get the skeleton imported as well as the “object” (mesh?), but they don’t work together. As in, I change the knee angle, and the model doesn’t change a bit. Any way to make these two working together?

That’s how it looks: when selecting specific skeleton parts it all looks properly place, they (the armor and the skeleton) are just not correlated. Any way to make them work together? Or something I have to do in Carrara?

I have a ready FBX file.
I import it to Carrara and there I can move the skeleton and the model reacts.
I import the same file to DAZ Studio, and nada, nothing, it’s untouchable.
I import it to Carrara, make position modifications, export to FBX again, import to DAZ - model stand in same position, without the modifications I made, as if untouched.

I had managed to get my unreal model in via collada, When it first appears it is a mess, but the rigging is there, and after re-positioning the bones the model works, fiddly but it worked, here is the post Importing Rigged Characters from Games into Daz I do not have Carrara or 3DSMax.