Sophisticated prims for quick props in DAZ like in Second Life?

Member_257874

A while ago Second Life was a hyped multiplayer 3D world where everything was created by it's users. The tool provided by the makers of Second Life to create in-world objects before the introducion of sculpties and meshes, were low-poly prims. Each had seperate surfaces and a build toolbox that allowed "torturing" them into almost any shape possible. Users created a wide range of stuff out of these prims including weapons, clothing, accessories, plants, vehicles, buildings and whole landscapes. These prims could be modified beyond simple scale and position they could have a hollow, could be part-cut, profiled, screwed, tapered, tilted ect.

Here is an overview of how they could be used.

http://www.carlpetersheim.us/3d/pages/prim_modeling.htm

I know there is a Blender plugin that provides almost the same functionality

https://sourceforge.net/projects/primdotblender/

The good thing about this is, that it just needs a few fixed parameter dials to transform them into a wide range of shapes and you don't need to bother an external modeller to create stuff. I thought it would be neat to have such a thing in DazStudio for quick props creation, especially distant buildings, vehilces, planes, boats or simple accessories or even whole low-poly comic scenes. Would this be possible or would there be a product available already that provides these type of prim tools or would it be possible to do it just with morphs on basic shapes or would it require more a sophisticated plugin?

Member_257874

Does no one have an answer to this?

3Diva

You seem to have crammed 4 questions into that last sentence. I'm not sure your inquiry is clear enough for most people to know how to answer. For the most part though, most sculpting programs have primitives you can sculpt, export as an obj, and then bring into Daz. 

It would be cool to sculpt inside Daz Studio though. :) Maybe someday it would be an option - we'd just have to wait and see. :)

cathan01_wwg1wga

Now that Hexagon is free with Daz Studio, you can create props in Hex and use the bridge to send directly into Daz Studio.

Member_257874

No, I didnt want to sculpt I also didn't want to use Hex. I could also use Blender but that's not the point here.

My question was, if there are prims that can be modified with morphs like those in Second Life.

This way we could create simple (or even more complex) props in Daz without the help of another program and exporting/importing and stuff.

Take a box, make it taper at one side, make a box hollow on the inside, have a simple roof.

Take a sphere, a cylinder and a torus, part-cut the sphere at it's top, taper the cylinder, put it on top of that sphere and scale the torus and have a vase.

Take a cylinder, partcut it on the side and you have a simple bar stool.

Create a staircase from a cylinder by screwing it and scale, like this:

I just wanted to know, if morphs could do that.

FSMCDesigns

Not something I would be interested in. I prefer to use a modeling app if the primitives inside DS already won't do the job.

dreamfarmer

There are some products that contain morphable primitives. Look at Maclean's stuff.

Cris Palomino

Keep in mind that these SL primitives are mathematically produced. They are not necessarily low-prim once made into mesh which is why we tell people in SL to consider making meshes from scratch as opposed to using prims. If you are not comfortable with mesh and 3d programs, in SL there are scripts such as Mesh Studio which allow you to make a mesh from prims. You could then take those meshes into Daz Studio.

The main problem is meshes made from prims are going to, by the nature of how objects are composed, be inefficient without cleanup up hidden edges which invariably result in intersecting mesh. For quick props, it's probably fine. Texturing will also be problematic.

Clean, well-made mesh will always be preferable.

Member_257874

Well I could use the Prim plugin for Blender too and import them into Daz however my idea was to have for instance a quick way of producing probs *in* Daz. Like an unicorn horn, take a box, screw it and stretch, marble texture on it and a bump map. Texturing is actually better than with stock prims as the SL prims have a seperate material for each side including loop and part cuts and hollow (insides).

My idea was NOT to replace full featured meshes but have an alternative for simpler objects where you don't want to browse the catalog to buy something simple (or search freebies) or use a third program to model something simple like a horn, an earring-gem, a stool, a window ornament, a dog-house, an arc, a lamp, a toy ect.

I'd buy such a prim package.

@dreamfarmer yeah I think I saw something like that, "magic prims" or so, but they don't have the possibilities of the prim torture of SL prims.

Snuggins

I wonder how far one could get by using Dformer?

Member_257874

I actually don't like dformer very well because it's too fiddly for me and I don't think you could actually make a loopcut or a screw with dformer