DAZ Studio/Poser Content Creation Questions
Mage 13X13
Posts: 453
I'm creating this thread to help myself and others learn from those more knowledgable than ourselves about content creation in DAZ Studio and Poser. Anyone with a question related to this discussion is welcome to post it here. Anyone with knowledge concerning those questions is welcome to provide those answers here. If I have the requested knowledge, I will not hesitate to provide it.
To get the ball rolling here is what I wish to know: Can DAZ Studio and/or Poser read texture maps that are in the .tif format?
The above question is due to a friend of mine that uses DAZ Studio, but is as yet a newbie to the software. My own thoughts are that such image texture maps cannot be used in DAZ Studio or Poser. I cannot open such a file on my computer without being connected to the internet, as the file has the Google Icon, which will open a webpage where that image resides. I know this because I have had this happen many times with such files. If I am not connected the file won't open, and I will get an error message saying the webpage cannot be found.
My friend has created a model and has been working at making it compatible for use in Poser Formats for DAZ Studio and Poser.. He tried to apply the textures he made in DAZ Studio to no avail. I do not know if the model has been UV mapped as of yet, because I just recieved the all the related files about an hour ago, and I need time to examine them. If he has not UV mapped the model, I know then that his textures won't take no matter what he has the texture maps formatted in. He will likely need to use an application that can generated a UV mapped template. Hopefully his modeler of choice will have the feature built in as mine does.
So if anyone knows the answer to my question, please provide it in a comment in this thread.
I hope that this thread can be a source of learning for all upcoming content creators, so that they can add their own unique models to the ever growing collection of products for DAZ Studio and Poser, and any other application that uses content and can be used in the content creation process.
Stay Awesome!
Thank you!
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Comments
Yes Daz Studio can load in a .tiff file. I just tried it, although I have never used one before. Can't say about Poser though.
Have a look through this older thread... http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewreply/31140/ ; It has extensive links and numerous tutorials. The author works mostly in Hexagon but the techniques apply to Blender or most other 3D programs. This thread is concerned with Daz Studio formatted content (clothes) which is much easier to rig and add morphs thanks to some transfer utilities that come with Daz Studio. The same tasks in Poser are much more involved and require creating morphs manually for each character..(argh!). For Poser you should be asking in http://www.runtimedna.com ; This is where most of the Poser folks hang out as it's Smith Micro's site (the folks who make Poser).
Here's another thread...http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/12921/
Here's a link to my tutorial detailing how to deal with the size difference between Blender and Daz....http://another-bob.deviantart.com/
This is a frequent request and I keep asking Daz to create a forum specifically for content creation but they keep resisting the suggestion.
Please note that SickleYield, as I, question why you advocate decimation in your deviantart tutorial? This is not recommended. Perhaps you did not see the comment.
That sounds as if the application associated with .tiff is an on-line image tool. The default application shouldn't stop you from opening the file in another application that can handle the format, as DAZ Studio can (as long as you aren't on XP). If you want to use a local editor or viewer by default, on Windows right-click on a Tiff file and select Open With>Choose Default Programme.
I did see it Chris, and thanked her for bringing it up. Please note that my tutorial creates a size reference only, it has nothing to do with a mesh example over which one would make another mesh, or as a basis for an item of clothing. It's for a reference only. For that, one only needs a basic figure. I guess I should emphasis that in the tut. I make a lot of items (don't ask) that are used by Vicky Four (really don't ask) and need to be built to a human scale. I find that having one of these low-poly figures on the stage in Blender while I build is handy.
...and while both you and Richard are here, can I (once again) bring up the subject of a content creation specific forum? I'll be in Vegas most of November for work and will buy you guys dinner and some beer if that's what it takes.
There is no need for a size reference in Blender as Blender's scale is simply 1/100 of Studio's. The person that set the scale option for import and export apparently failed to notice that when you create a cube in Blender it is not 1x1x1 but 2x2x2 so the import is half what it should be and the export is twice what it should be. I sent a bug report a long time ago to explain that and it still hasn't been fixed. Furthermore there is no need to swap the Y and Z axis.
Please send me the link to your tutorial detailing the correct workflow. Thanks.
Hello Wendy. You perhaps know me at PFDLives as Agent0013 and at your own site As Agent 0013. My user name here was chosen because I was not allowed to use my usual one or its derivatives.
Now to the issue at hand:
I thought I had explained that I had tried to use a .tif formatted image map to apply my friends texture to his model, and could not access it in DAZ Studio's Surfaces Editor. I used the Diffuse channels image thumb to open the menu and browsed to the file location on my hard drive. The .tif did not even show up as available for DAZ Studio to read or use. I am currently running DAZ Studio 4.8 Pro, the latest version. My OS is Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit.
Heddheld suggested I right click and open the file in PSP, and make sure I ticked Do this for all files of this type. So I did so, but the file would not open in PSP. So I went and opened PSP and tried to open the file within the PSP application itself. I got an 'unsupported file type' message. Even Windows Paint does not recognize the format on my machine. My only option left to me is to try using MS Office 2007 PowerPoint, which I am almost sure can at least bring the file in and be used to convert it to .jpg or .png. It seems my friends machine has the same trouble as mine with recognizing .tif image files, as he is having the same trouble I am with the exact same files. They are his files, and he wants the textures to apply to his model, which incidentally I now know to be UV mapped.
My only thought on why we cannot get the .tif files to work is that something about our machines is preventing it. I have no Earthly idea what that would be though.
I plan to try the MS Office 2007 PowerPoint option, andseeif I can get it into that program.
Thanks for your responses Wendy and Richard. I have learned from you even though it is mysteriously not working for me. I now know that both Poser and DAZ Studio can read .tif formatting. I also know that my machine has some kind of block in place preventing several applicationd from reading that format.
What was the originating program that saved your friend's TIF file? There are a couple different compression methods and whatnot so perhaps it was not saved in a 'standard' way. I ran across a set of backgrounds years ago in TIF format and they each crashed my viewer. I usually save my renders in TIF format out of Studio--don't remember if I've ever tried loading one up and Studio is busy right now.
To all concerned with the question concerning TIF image files: My friend discovered what his problem was. It had something to do with the way the model itself was made and UV mapped. As he is rather new to 3D art, he had found and followed a tutorial that turned out to be misleading. His main hobby is photography, and as such he has been using the TIFF image format for years. This was why he wanted me to test his product, because he could not understand why his texture image maps were not applying. I myself did not know that DAZ Studio or Poser could read TIFF image files. Anyway, problem solved!
Thanks to all of you that have weighed in on this.
zBrush will save displacement maps as .tif or .psd
zBrush will save Vector maps as .exr or tif
zBrush will save a Alpha map as a .pds ,.bmp ,.tif
zBrush will save a normal,bump,texture map as .jpg ,.psd ,.png ,.bmp ,.tif
I can see using a .tif for displacement or vector maps but is there any other reason one should use a .tif ?
Does IRADIUM suport Vector Maps ?
Most color textures are saved as .jpgs ? cause they have the smallest file size ?
Bumps are saved as .bmp ?
normals are saved as ?
Does IRADIUM have mat caps & if yes where ?
If no ,can we have them :)
im curious about foliage such as trees bushes grass etc .....if i wanted to add such things to my enviromental model that i hope to put up for sale then what is the best approach? am i to assume that all the foilage in the daz3d for sale library has been generated from first principal by the artist....and not for example by using some kind of tree growing software in 3dsmax?
I my own experience using such products, which admittedly is only moderate, I think that most foliage is leaf maps on sinle two sided square polygons. There are several maps, such as diffuse, bump, displacement, transparency, and sometimes normal. Asd for whether the models are grown or manually modeled, many are grown, although there are certain ones that are manually modeled. The reason most would be grown is quite obvious; it takes far less time to model using a software that grows the plant than it does for that same plant to be manually modeled.
I have Ivy Generator and I use it to create Ivy for many of my architecture models. It does fairly well for a program that has such a small footprint on my Hard Drive. There is the problem that pops up in which several leaves will look detached, due to the limbs and stems not being where they need to be. To fix this, I have yet to find a good solution other than doing it in post work. That of course defeats the time constraint you set for getting an image done, so it is wise to do your render earlier than you might wish to, in order to have time to do your post work so that you stay on schedule.
Now from what I have gathered, there are other software programs available that can be used to grow trees, shrubs, grasses, and so on. They all have tools that are common for doing the job, and most have certain models already programmed in that are put together at random, though logically arranged fashion; and those models are already UV mapped and and have the created textures applied.
With my Ivy Generator models, I can substitute texture maps I make myself for the default ones, and I have actually been able to create some unique looking plant models; even otherworldly types.
So inform you about which programs offer such growing methods: here are the ones I know of: Ivy Generator - free to download, Blender - free to download, and 3DS Max - which you mentioned, and which I suspect has a price. I'm sure there are others out there, though at this time I do not know their names or where to find them.
Hope this helps.