Digital Art Zone

I am working on a lamp prop with no moving parts. I want to be able to control what parts of the lamp that cast shadow. As it is not possible to to control shadow with the default material and I don’t want to use special shaders, the “Cast Shadows” button in the Display menu of the Parameter tab would be a good option. But then the prop has to be split up in several parts so you can select them in the Scene tab. Making a separate dsf for each part seems a bit sloppy and having to rig a rigid object like a sever overkill. Any options?

Cheers! Oom

Well, if it isn’t meant to be posable just lock all the transforms (set respect limits to on, and set the min and max values to 0) and ignore the weight maps and joint cnetres, other than the origin of the whole item, entirely

It is a long list of extra steps to add functions and then disable them. I even had to make it TriAx weight mapped to be allowed to save it. Why do DAZ hate simple props?

After finally making a figure out of the lamp it turns out it did not do what I want it to. The figures Cast Shadow is only controlled by the root, the button is there for each part but it do nothing, If that is a feature or a bug is a bit hard to tell, the Visible in Render button works for each part so I am leaning towards the bug side.

Well, I’m back at square one.
It looks like it is impossible to do this in DS unless I take that hideous detour of poor fix for bad design and save the lamp as a scene
Any one with better suggestions or do I have to track down a friendly Poser user to create a pp2 for me?

Cheers! Oom

Hi Oom…

Now I haven’t tried this myself, but I assume you want to make the lamp a DS prop, parent all of the sub-objects to a main object and then Save As > Support Asset > DSF Figure or Prop file.

I know you can do this with .pp2’s, just not sure with DSF prop, like I said, haven’t tried yet.  There’s also the OBJtoPP2 script for DS3, but I haven’t tried it in DS4 to see if it still works.

Hmm… don’t know if this was of any help or not…

Try using Legacy/Parametric rigging and see if that enables the shadow option on individual bones - in a TriAx figure the mesh belongs to the root, though I would have expected the code that allows bone-visibility to work to have enabled bone-shadow casting options too.

Ehm, just parent the primitives to one another. No need to make a figure at all.

niccipb - 08 July 2012 02:38 AM

Hi Oom…
Now I haven’t tried this myself, but I assume you want to make the lamp a DS prop, parent all of the sub-objects to a main object and then Save As > Support Asset > DSF Figure or Prop file.
I know you can do this with .pp2’s, just not sure with DSF prop, like I said, haven’t tried yet.

That is exactly what I’m trying to do but you can not have props with several parts then it as to be a figure. No need to try, it will not work, at least not in DS4.0

niccipb - 08 July 2012 02:38 AM

There’s also the OBJtoPP2 script for DS3, but I haven’t tried it in DS4 to see if it still works.
Hmm… don’t know if this was of any help or not…

OBJtoPP2 was one of the first things I tried. Unfortunately it will bake the parts to a single object in the pp2.
Well… Thanks for trying

Richard Haseltine - 08 July 2012 03:13 AM

Try using Legacy/Parametric rigging and see if that enables the shadow option on individual bones - in a TriAx figure the mesh belongs to the root, though I would have expected the code that allows bone-visibility to work to have enabled bone-shadow casting options too.

Thanks for a good try but same old, same old. Visible in Render works for the bones, Cast Shadow dose not.
I agree, as the button is there you would expect it to work.

ReDave - 08 July 2012 05:49 AM

Ehm, just parent the primitives to one another. No need to make a figure at all.

For my personal use that will work fine but I was planing to release the lamp as a freebie. Releasing the lamp as three separate parts would make it look like I was totally clueless, no need to spell it out to people

Thank You all for the answers! More suggestions are welcome!

Cheers! Oom

I’d make a bug report/feature request to have the sahdow setting work for bones- not that it helps you now, of course.

Richard Haseltine - 08 July 2012 12:38 PM

I’d make a bug report/feature request to have the sahdow setting work for bones- not that it helps you now, of course.

How? There used to be a sticker or announcement on reporting bugs, I can’t find it.

Make a bug report (requires a separate account if you haven’t yet set it up) and select Feature under Severity.

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