How to create roofs/dormers for setting in Daz
echristopherclark
Posts: 273
I'd been looking at what appears to be a rather old set/add-on called Room Creator 2, then found that Collective3D's more recent stuff (including Iray materials) could handle much of what I was looking to do. So I invested in Collective3D's "Create a Room" and other packages. And I've been really pleased overall.
But I've finally been playing around with them a bit and discovered that I don't see any options for creating roofs. And while I know that's not the intended use—the focus seems to be on interiors—I was kind of hoping I could fudge it with what was in all of these kits.
Am I missing something? If not: is there anything out there to use to create full-on houses within Daz, or do I need to go learn another program? I'd considered Sketchup, but that is feeling way over my head every time I open it.
(Or, I guess, should I go back to looking at Room Creator and then adding on newer Iray materials?)
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Comments
Have you tried creating a primitive plane, and applying a shader of your choice to it? Then you can also add a chandelier prop or what you like in general :)
@TGFan4 That's really good point and I'll have to try that. With a dormer, the only part that I can't wrap my head around creating is the front part with the triangle at the top (which is created by the meeting of the two primitive planes). Are primitive planes limited to squares/rectangles, or have I just not found the tutorial on how to change the shape?
Sadly I'm not a modeler!
There's a "cone" primitive, but I've not found a piramid one!
@TGFan4 I played around a little and found that if you take the Cone primitive and reduce the number of sides when you create it, you can get a pyramid. Then you can flatten it on the X axis to 1% (if you do 0% it won't render) and you've got a triangular plane. Not perfect, but it works.
After that, I started playing with Hexagon a little bit and found it a bit easier there. The tutorials on Hexagon helped. I wouldn't want to go much further than simple geometric shapes at this point, but it seems like this'll be the better method: make it in Hexagon then export it as an OBJ for importing in Daz.
Thanks for your suggesting and chatting with me on this!!!
If you are creating something in Hexagon for DS don't forget to UV map it, otherwise it won't take shader pressets or materials properly.
You can set how many sides a circle, cylinder or cone has.
@Scorpio Thanks for that tip! One of the reasons I was hoping for a store-bought solution was precisely because I'm the type to forget that sort of important step.
@jetsmart Yes! Just saw that this morning I need to play with it more.
P.S. Could I use the following product and just add iray shaders, or am I still missing something?
https://www.daz3d.com/room-creator-exteriors
Sure you can:)
Excellent! BTW, is there some basic guide to 3D terminology that you'd recommend to explain shaders vs. materials vs. whatever else? I think I've got it figured out after a couple of months of puttering around with the software, but I keep coming up against things where I'm like, "Oh, that's what that does!"
You're welcome! :D
Good to know there's a way to make a pyramid!
A material can contain more than one texture, while a shader just contains one.
For example, you have a shirt, and you want to change it, but you have not bought any other material.
Either the shirt has, in the surface pane, more surfaces, and you can change them individually.
Or, if you just select the one and only surface, you'll lose every seam applying a shader, because it will treat everything equally.
Another example occured to me the other day. I wanted to use the fishnet shader on a top, but the result was not good, because the top, then, didn't have any border.
I don't know about any organic guide in general! Either creators are occupied, or they don't want to share their "trade secrets" xD
I'm trying to do that on my YouTube channel, but currently I've got so much more stuff to do that it's paused!
Well for that at least the solution is to export your top as an obj to something that exports a UV map template and use that’s as a guide for your texture,
the UV map will be either like a dress pattern layout on fabric or several surfaces on top of each other in which case you need to create separate surface textures.
if you edge all the edges in black you should have your seams for you fishnets,
using layers in your favourite image editor you can scale, rotate transform your textures to best fit each pattern piece like you would on a swath cutting out for sewing but more in reverse in that you move the fabric not the paper pattern
knowing the UV layout is your key to figuring out how textures fit themselves to your item
Because everything has its own unique UV there cannot be a one size fits all shader you can apply to anything, it’s not so much a trade secret as much as every present can be wrapped multiple ways, you could just spherically loop your wrapping around and scrunch in the top and bottom and fasten it with tape,(cylindrical or spherical mapping) you could cut your paper into shapes to fit each side, (UV islands) you could put your present in a box and wrap it (box mapping)or stick it in a big envelope (flatmapping)
https://mobile.twitter.com/xxivips/status/938366852039888896/photo/1
thats a spherical UV
That's a genius solution, thanks for sharing :D
This is all super useful! Another random question: any way to remove all the shaders/materials from an object so that I can start from scratch?
You can apply a shader like this one
https://www.deviantart.com/spyrorue/art/Genesis-Grey-Materials-G8-Bundle-700269005
Neat! I was thinking of materials/shaders for architecture/props, but this is also super cool to discover is possible.
Its not really possible to completly remove the shader if you replace the Iray Uber Shader with the 3DL default one you will still have a shader on the item. The Shader is how the renderer reads the surface settings, a shader preset is the settings for that Shader, these are what you mainly see in the store for sale; many people get them confused.
The link Wendy supplied is a preset.
A lot of shader preset sets have a reset preset this will clear out any texture files and should reset the settings to the default ones. I know Mec4D Iray sets have this can't remember which others off the top of my head.