Digital Art Zone

Thanks for the info, I’ll give it a read.

Interesting info here. Thanks.
R

I’ve been looking for a daz to max help thread for a while now!

I’m still new to 3d in general but I have a few problems…

1. Importing an fbx from daz causes max to use up all my memory. (It is only one character with clothing)

2. I’ve gotten collada files to import fine and the materials are applied but the hair and eylashes lose their opacity and appear blocky.

3. I have no idea how to make the rigging work properly haha.

I’m going to check out the resources you posted, there’s so much I have to learn to get up to speed. Makes me appreciate how simple daz makes it.

Hi there SF4….

Hmmm…  I’ve not had had any trouble importing FBX - double check to make sure you’re *not* embedding the textures - The fbx export will maintain a pointer to the location of the original files for the materials that are created in 3ds max.
 
Hope that helps. 

 
I don’t pretend to be an expert ... I’ve only been at it for less than a year.
 
Yes, I do appreciated what DAZ does beyond words.  But I want the power 3ds max offers so it’s always a trade off.  Here’s one of my latest renders done with 3ds Max - I used the Sky System which is amazing, then touched it up in post with Photoshop brushes—Ron’s Fog for clouds and Ron’s birds.
 
Also, when export animation via FBX the rigging comes over!  http://www.digitaltutors.com has lots of tutorials on CAT and rigging for Max.  I’ve learned so much there.

Hey Streetfreak_4

I’m not a max user but I’ve been importing fbx from daz to maya and I have encountered some of the same problems you seem to be describing.

1. Check your export for what morphs are going with it.  Each morph comes into maya as not only a blend shape but also a complete mesh which can really begin to get large when there are say 50 morphs or more.

2. The materials come into maya pretty wonky across the board. The hair, eyelashes and cornea materials are using a transparency map, in maya it’s an easy fix by checking a box called “alpha is luminance” in the file attributes.

3. The rigging is pretty bad, even in daz. Importing it into maya it works the same as in daz however if there are a lot of morphs used sometimes it comes in way out of position or proportion. If this happens you can set up your character in daz as a new morph, adjust the rigging in auto rig and export it and it should come in properly. The weighting is another issue however as daz uses triax weighting and, at least in maya, this is not supported so you end up with just one of daz’s weight maps controlling the mesh in maya, which is still pretty good for the most part and can be easily tweaked to work properly.

As you learn max you will likely appreciate daz even more for how simple it makes things. But, like bohemian3 I agree that the power of max/maya is hard to deny even if it is more effort.

Thanks for the reply, I’m going to go read more about max haha.

@AJaxxxe: When I exported from daz I had everybox ticked in the settings, that’s probably why… I kept the figure as basic as possible though. And I agree about the potential in daz>max workflow otherwise I wouldn’t be so interested in learning about it!

Got my figure into max properly now and applied fast skin sss. I’m kinda stumped as to converting the map images that daz exported. Is this where multi-materials come in to play?

@bohemian3: I’d like to know how you prepped the texture maps in step 3 of your cheat sheet. Daz gives me several maps from the export but applying them straight to the sss material isn’t cutting it for me.

SF4 -
Tomorrow I’ll put together a quick tutorial on this - it’s kinda tricky, but powerful once you get used to it.
Don’t have time tonight, ... sorry .  Have to prep for class tomorrow. 
Glad you’re giving this a shot!  There’s so much potential in the Mental Ray SSS shader.  Yes you have to use the multi material setup.  Again, more tomorrow.

Now this is a cool thread I’m glad to see our kind are not so few as I originally thought. Max is my most favorite 3d application! And after four years working on it and studying it as part of a diploma, I still have heaps to learn.

I coincidently have a question, perhaps you may know the answer to it… Smoothing groups are what defines a realistic prop from your average ones. I am having trouble exporting a well smoothed prop from 3ds Max to Import in Daz 4.5. My issue here is that Daz will NOT read the smoothing, despite the OBJ file has been exported with smoothing groups checked. (BTW I was not taught in my diploma how you send things back and forth between other software lol, So I’ve been learning it just like a newbie again haha)

As you can see in the attached image, Daz smoothing is really making a mess of the prop. Max has absolutely no problem with it at all.

I wonder if it has something to do with the normals…..? I think I would check that first….In Daz I believe the smoothing is referred to as sharp or soft edges, I’d have a look at that too…just some guesses, though. GL

Thank you AJaxxxe! I will look into it

Hey Spyro -
I don’t really import things into DAZ - I mainly go the other way.  I take it you are applying smoothing in DAZ as well under Edit-Geometry ... Just taking a stab in the dark. 
s

Hiya all and streetfreak_4….
Here’s that tutorial for bringing simple objects into DAZ - I used the new Lawn Mower since it’s free this month.  It’s simple and has sub-materials defined on it.

Here’s the tutorial (Tutorial 01):  http://sdrv.ms/QSw2u3
Here’s the script: http://sdrv.ms/SM41Fl

Note - when creating photometric lights in the tutorial, be sure to accept the prompt to change the exposure level.

It’s still somewhat high level, but the steps at least broken down a little more.  I will work on another for transferring characters.  Here’s the script that turns an imported standard muli mat to an SSS multi mat using the same concept.
http://sdrv.ms/PnVDMQ

When importing multiple objects you need to make sure the standard material to transfer is always in the first slot.

It takes a while but I think worth the effort - Again, I’m still relatively new to this so any suggestions or better ways are always welcome.

I have an issue that hopefully someone can help me with, I am very new to 3DS (using 2012) but have been working with Daz for sometime now, I exported and then imported a posed V4 character with hair, using the obj export/import. Everything came over just fine and was able to play around with the textures and what not (still need to play with the advanced settings though) but my issue is every time I go and render the hair does not come out right. It appears that the back side of the hair is not rendering, so any vertices not front facing don’t appear in the render.. I know i am forgetting something easy but for the life of me can not figure it out, any help would be greatly appreciated ....

bohemian3 - 10 October 2012 11:04 AM

Hiya all and streetfreak_4….
Here’s that tutorial for bringing simple objects into DAZ - I used the new Lawn Mower since it’s free this month.  It’s simple and has sub-materials defined on it.

Thank you so much for this, looking forward to what you have to say about characters as well!