Trying to save a character as a prop

Boorsman

I know I did this before where I saved a character I had along with hair, clothes, pose and props as a single prop.  I can't remember how I did it though.  I know I Googled "How to save a character as a prop in DAZ3D" and found a thread that said exactly how to do that, but now I can't find it anywhere.  I also thought I saved said thread in my bookmarks, buy apparently I didn't.  I have read in other threads about saving characters as a Scene Subset or Character preset, but that's not what I want.  What I did before left me with a static prop where everything including the clothes, hair, and props were one prop.  Does anyone know how I can do this?

Wonderland

This is just a guess but can you try selecting everything you want to save in the scene tab then export it all as an obj? And I mean export, which is different from save. I'd be curious to know if this works for multiple items.

3Diva

I know you mentioned Scene Subset, but it sounds exactly like what you're describing. You can save a figure with the hair, clothing, etc as a Scene Subset. 

Pack58

Wonderland said:

This is just a guess but can you try selecting everything you want to save in the scene tab then export it all as an obj? And I mean export, which is different from save. I'd be curious to know if this works for multiple items.

Yes it works. I used to do just that regularly with 3rd generation figures making sure to select Write Surfaces. Then import and save as a subset.

If you only want one copy or multiple copys with the same textures this is the easiest method I've found.

 

Edit: I seem to recall that I got some difference in material settings or somesuch but can't for the life of me remember exactly what.

Chohole

http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/scripting/api_reference/samples/nodes/convert_figure_to_props/start

jdavison67

Does this reduce the impact of the character on rendering resourses or not?

I'm trying to understand why you would do this?

 

JD

Havos

jdavison67 said:

Does this reduce the impact of the character on rendering resourses or not?

I'm trying to understand why you would do this?

 

JD

My understanding is that reducing a figure to a prop will significantly reduce the memory DAZ Studio needs to record that item, and if your machine is memory constrained that will help.

However if you are rendering with IRay and using a GPU, then this will likely have little or no effect on the amount of VRAM required to render that item. This is because the only thing sent to VRAM is the obj details and the textures, whilst reducing a figure to a prop removes all the info about bones, the rigging and weight mapping etc, none of which is send to VRAM during rendering.

 

Boorsman

First, I thank you all for your feedback and suggestions.  I found my answer.  When I was searching I should have been searching for converting a figure to a prop instead of saving a figure as a prop.  While looking at the link that Chohole posted I had an Aha moment and realized I my mistake.  The answer I found was Edit>Figure>Rigging>Convert Figure To Prop which Richard Haseltine posted in another thread.   The reason for all of this is I have three characters in a scene.  Since the scene has a lot of props in it, when I had the three figures in the scene, my computer was running very slow.  I thought that if I posed, put on hair, clothed my characters,and convert them to props, it would reduce resources and my computer would be faster.  Now I wonder if I take the room with all the different props and convert that as a single prop instead if that helps.

Havos

Note that Edit>Figure>Rigging>Convert Figure To Prop only converts the selected figure into a prop, not all its clothing and hair. Naturally you can select each of these manually, and then convert them to props in the same way, but to convert a fully dressed figure into multiple props in one go, you need to use the script highlighted by Chohole.