Adding Material Zones to OBJ
cstrauss42a
Posts: 83
This may not be possible at my skill set but here is my situation. I downloaded some free spaceship models in formats I know I can import into daz (OBJ, DAE or FBX). When some are these are imported in the only have one Material I can go an add shaders to which makes the whole object the same color which is not ideal especially for a spaceship.
My question is there a way or another program I can use to make different material zones for the spaceship so I can add different shaders to? Does anyone know of a tutorial that can walk through the steps to achieve this also?
Thanks
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Try the free blender. Invest 5-50 hrs with YouTube tutorials about it and you're fine. Same way I've learned about that. In blender you can set new zones for material - import that obj in daz and set any material to it that you want. It's just a learning by doing thing - if you have the time. Go for it
So it can be done yay! I will look into blender thank you.
Any more than 5 hours to learn how to add material zones in Blender is a a bit unnecessary. The way of doing this in blender is almost exactly the same as the way of doing it within Daz itself. It's way easier to select polygons in Blender vs Daz, so better to do it Blender than Daz.
It would probably take 10 minutes to learn this since all you do is select polys and assign a new material. But maybe you will need an hour or more to learn best ways of selecting polys in Blender.
For more experienced users yeah probably 10 min. I have never modeled or anything like that. I am one of the buy stuff load in daz render make art people. so this is a new process for me. I do not really want to learn to model however I do have these models I downloaded so now i need figure out how to make them work in Daz. Again just giving them different material zones so I can apply different shaders to them. Im thinking its going to take me a week just to learn the basics of blender then maybe another week how to seperate the material zones then probably another week to figure out how to get it back in to daz.
They say knowledge is power but some times it just a pain in the ass. :D
If all you want is material zones, no personally made texture maps, uv mapping etc., then you don't need any additional software.
Here's a quick step by step.
1. Switch 'Draw style' to either hidden line or wire frame.
This will show the polygons of the figure.
Hidden line will hide any polygons not directly in sight, wireframe will show all polys. for this i'd recommend hidden line as it's a bit less confusing when starting.
2. Switch on the "Geometry Editor" tool. Pencil over polygons in the toolbar. Alt+Shift+G default shortcut.
3. Select the polygons to assign to a certain surface/material zone. They'll change to an orange color when selected.
The options menu is accessed via a right click in the viewport.
I'd suggest keeping the 'Selection type' to Polygon mode.
The 'Selection Mode', will depend on how many polys you may need to assign to a certain area.
'Marquee selection' is a box where all the polys, that are completely within the box, will be selected. Any partially selected will be ignored.
'Lasso selection' is good for weird shapes to help avoid other polys.
'Drag selection' is hold the left mouse button, and drag the pointer across the polys to be selected. If you relese the mouse button and try to click again it will start over with the current poly. Holding the Ctrl key allows you to add unselected polys. Holding the Alt key, allows you to deselect polys. with either
4. right click in the viewport>Geometry assignment>Create surface from selected.
You'll get a pop out with a box for the new surface name. Type in whatever works for you, and click accept.
The polys selected will automatically be assigned to that surface.
5. to remove the "Default" surface, click on the 'Tool settings' button, arrow over a gear. select the particular surface> right click>Remove surface.
6. save as a scene or scene subset.
easy peasy.
I'd recommend starting with something simple like a plane or box to get familiar with the tool.
All fine for the easy way. But if he/she is new to 3d it's a good way to learn blender in addition. My personal opinion btw
- but just go for it 
I've been using DS since 1.3 and it has always had issues with spaces in names, chances are the models do have multiple surfaces, problem is they are likely named "Material 01, Material 02" etc, as DS only sees "Material" it combines all of the surfaces into one.
If you can open them in a text editor then check to see what the surface names are, you should be able to replace a space with an underscore "_" instead.
@DrunkMonkey Thanks that is very helpful and easy to get started on what I want to do.
@Lothar Weber I agree also I am going to dive into blender and learn how to make blender and daz play together. Who knows I might even try some modeling
Strictly speaking space is not a valid character in group names, it's a separator.
I meant it would take like 10 min to learn this from scratch given that you would be a novice to the program.. You dont need to be good at blender to do something basic like open up the program, and then select polygons and click the assign new material button... Obviously there are some more steps but i assumed you would be watching or reading a tutorial or something at the same time so would not necessarily need to know your way around the program.
Personally i cant use blender to save my life. I mainly just use it to convert obscure file types to OBJ. But on occasion i have used it to make new material zones and im sure it took only like 10 minutes...
There are also tutorials on these forums (and youtube) for how to split up materials within Daz Studio itself using the geometry editor tool. (I found that method annoying because the geometry selection in Daz is annoying and better in Blender).