In import & eksport menu, there is a 'recemt' in lower left.

jjoyner said:

crosswind said:

Nope... it doesn't work as I mentioned in your post last time...and Jay never demonstrated the function but just mentioned it...

You only imported LoD OBJ but didn't really choose it. If you did choose "Alien Half Res" from Resolution Level dropdown list, the figure would vanish... just as RobertDy said. You can find there's zero Face from its geometry statistics.

We tried this function with decimated OBJ for times in various ways... it never works. The only way to use a Decimated figure in DS and make it savable is to purely import OBJ file, rig it with a specific way, supplement corrective morphs on it... then save a Figure asset.. etc. https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/8734511/#Comment_8734511

 You are correct.  I had not applied the the decimated OBJ before and the figure does disappear when the decimated LOD is applied.  I'll ask Jay in his Pateron channel.

And we may ask Daz at the same time... maybe there's a secret setting we all don't know.

crosswind said:

Nope... it doesn't work as I mentioned in your post last time...and Jay never demonstrated the function but just mentioned it...

You only imported LoD OBJ but didn't really choose it. If you did choose "Alien Half Res" from Resolution Level dropdown list, the figure would vanish... just as RobertDy said. You can find there's zero Face from its geometry statistics.

We tried this function with decimated OBJ for times in various ways... it never works. The only way to use a Decimated figure in DS and make it savable is to purely import OBJ file, rig it with a specific way, supplement corrective morphs on it... then save a Figure asset.. etc. https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/8734511/#Comment_8734511

 You are correct.  I had not applied the the decimated OBJ before and the figure does disappear when the decimated LOD is applied.  I'll ask Jay in his Pateron channel.

jjoyner said:

RobertDy said:

jjoyner said:

Jay Versluis made two videos on using Decimator.  In one of them, he discusses the fact that Daz Studio cannot save the level of detail created by Decimator.  The levels of detail can be exported, though, and them imported later as needed.

• Decimating your Characters and combining textures with Daz Studio - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RU5FTHs-MDg

Thanks everyone for your replies. Crosswind is correct, there's no way it can be saved, jjoyner - I tried exporting as obj and then adding LOD using the obj, but whenever I apply the LOD, the figure just vanishes. What would the correct export import way be? Richard - yes, the same figures.

I’m no expert with Decimator having only purchased it in May when it was more than 80% off.  I just tried the process that Jay demonstrates in his video and it worked for me with no problems.

• I loaded Greylien HD for G8M and Decimated it to 50% resolution; see first image with Decimated LOD named Alien - 50%.
   
• I exported the reduced LOD as an OBJ file as Jay demonstrated.
   
• I opened a new scene, again loaded Greylien HD for G8M and imported the reduced LOD by naming it Alien Half Res so that it stood out with a different name; see second image.

Nope... it doesn't work as I mentioned in your post last time...and Jay never demonstrated the function but just mentioned it...

You only imported LoD OBJ but didn't really choose it. If you did choose "Alien Half Res" from Resolution Level dropdown list, the figure would vanish... just as RobertDy said. You can find there's zero Face from its geometry statistics.

We tried this function with decimated OBJ for times in various ways... it never works. The only way to use a Decimated figure in DS and make it savable is to purely import OBJ file, rig it with a specific way, supplement corrective morphs on it... then save a Figure asset.. etc. https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/8734511/#Comment_8734511

Okay, thanks, factors to think about.  I have used some DS products in Carrara, but it seems hit or miss.  I've decided a few vendors seem to sell products that work in Carrara.  And yes, I have exported OBJ with success.  I do have a fast AMD 12 core/24 thread machine, but not CUDA, which is new to me.  So many toys, so little time.  

Yes, with the machines most of us have, Carrara is favored for fast animation render times, in many cases ~5 sec/frame..

I also enjoy using VUE which is now free, and GeekAtPlay has a tutorial series ~an hour long on integrating DS and VUE, I'll get into that shortly.

https://www.daz3d.com/seamlessly-integrate-vue-and-daz-studio-hdri-import-export-and-optimization-tips

RobertDy said:

jjoyner said:

Jay Versluis made two videos on using Decimator.  In one of them, he discusses the fact that Daz Studio cannot save the level of detail created by Decimator.  The levels of detail can be exported, though, and them imported later as needed.

• Decimating your Characters and combining textures with Daz Studio - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RU5FTHs-MDg

Thanks everyone for your replies. Crosswind is correct, there's no way it can be saved, jjoyner - I tried exporting as obj and then adding LOD using the obj, but whenever I apply the LOD, the figure just vanishes. What would the correct export import way be? Richard - yes, the same figures.

I’m no expert with Decimator having only purchased it in May when it was more than 80% off.  I just tried the process that Jay demonstrates in his video and it worked for me with no problems.

• I loaded Greylien HD for G8M and Decimated it to 50% resolution; see first image with Decimated LOD named Alien - 50%.
   
• I exported the reduced LOD as an OBJ file as Jay demonstrated.
   
• I opened a new scene, again loaded Greylien HD for G8M and imported the reduced LOD by naming it Alien Half Res so that it stood out with a different name; see second image.

jjoyner said:

Jay Versluis made two videos on using Decimator.  In one of them, he discusses the fact that Daz Studio cannot save the level of detail created by Decimator.  The levels of detail can be exported, though, and them imported later as needed.

• Decimating your Characters and combining textures with Daz Studio - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RU5FTHs-MDg

crosswind said:

wildbillnash said:

Crosswind, is Content Wizard something you iuse instead of DIM? I want to make sure what it is and if it's relevant. I've bought too many things from Daz that disappeared later, became useless, didn't take off, or was just a waste of money. Others I just couldn't get the hang of it, it wasn't as easy as they claimed. Needed to be a programmer to use it.

Content Wizard was developed for installing products from 3rd-parties. I always use it as well for the store products that have no or messy/wrong metadata. All these tools were developed for end-users other than developers... what you want to do is just learning the key functions...

Are there any videos showing how to use it?.......Found the video and just watched it. Now I have a headache from both the information given (a lot I didn't understand) and trying to read the small print. Ouch.
I'm going to wait to see what support says before I buy and try this program. It should take a week for the response and for me to watch the video again several times. (It's like teaching new tricks to an old dog.)

MelanieL said:

In my (possibly limited **) experience of Rendo imports, all the products I've bought so far turn up under "Lost and Found" in Smart Content - Product view, which you can open and right-click on any item and "Show in mapped folders" - this will take you straight to the right place for loading the item (or maybe its textures, from which you can navigate upwards to find the actual item to load). OK so not as good as proper metadata-ed Smart Content, but quicker than hunting around for ages.

ETA: ** So far I've bought 36 ex-Rendo products from the store since they arrived.

That's great for that... though I suspect that's only because those are in the DAZ store now and packaged in a DAZ "container"... but either way, it doesn't do anything for the thousands of products I've bought at Rendo and other stores over the years. 

In my (possibly limited **) experience of Rendo imports, all the products I've bought so far turn up under "Lost and Found" in Smart Content - Product view, which you can open and right-click on any item and "Show in mapped folders" - this will take you straight to the right place for loading the item (or maybe its textures, from which you can navigate upwards to find the actual item to load). OK so not as good as proper metadata-ed Smart Content, but quicker than hunting around for ages.

ETA: ** So far I've bought 36 ex-Rendo products from the store since they arrived.

If you use blender 4.1 (?!), legacy blender obj import/exporter has been withdrawn, and the new obj exporter/importer always keeps vertex order.

Stezza said:

nice surprise for you @Bunyip02 ... I did start on an image and but it went kaboom when I tried to import an object... so I gave up 

Was nice to get a win !!!

Was it a large memory size object ? Bryce can have issues with those.

wildbillnash said:

Crosswind, is Content Wizard something you iuse instead of DIM? I want to make sure what it is and if it's relevant. I've bought too many things from Daz that disappeared later, became useless, didn't take off, or was just a waste of money. Others I just couldn't get the hang of it, it wasn't as easy as they claimed. Needed to be a programmer to use it.

Content Wizard was developed for installing products from 3rd-parties. I always use it as well for the store products that have no or messy/wrong metadata. All these tools were developed for end-users other than developers... what you want to do is just learning the key functions...

nice surprise for you @Bunyip02 ... I did start on an image and but it went kaboom when I tried to import an object... so I gave up 

Don't forget that the recent (in beta only at the moment) additons to the search features in the Content Library do depend on the metadata in the Content Management System, so you don't want to break that.

Richard Haseltine said:

You are enabling the option to preserve vertex order in Blender, both import and export. Changing the vertex order would certainly scamble the mapping.

Just changed my Blender import/export settings to preserve the vertex order and it appears to be working as intended now. Thank you so much!

You are enabling the option to preserve vertex order in Blender, both import and export. Changing the vertex order would certainly scamble the mapping.

wildbillnash said:

crosswind said:

http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/read_me/index/98103/start no product wiki / metadata so far... for this dForce Ayria...

You can send ticket in here https://bugs.daz3d.com/hc/en-us You may try asking for a fix or refund.

Official tutorial of how to "Create a product metadata" http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/userguide/creating_content/packaging/tutorials/adding_metadata/start

YIKES!!!! I don't think I'll be able to do it. You have to be a programmer to understand some of the stuff mentioned. And I got a headache just scrolling down the page.

I have to say you either go for using the way illustrated in the tutorial or go for having and using Content Wizard (https://www.daz3d.com/content-wizard) to install a product without metadata provided in IM package...

wildbillnash said:

Richard Haseltine said:

You can look for the files in the Content Library under Daz Studio Formats in the meantime.

Nope, don't have it. Here's a pic of what's listed under Content Library.

I already submitted a ticket and it should be next Friday or Monday after before I get an response. Meanwhile, I bought a dress yesterday evening. Apparently I had purchased an add-on with materials for the dress but didn't have the dress itself. So I bought it and it is NO WHERE in sight. I can't search for it because I have no idea what the guy named the file, it's not in Lost and Found. But, I can find all the materials for that dress. What gives?
Crosswind, thanks for the link to the tutorials. I'll check it out, though I probably won't be able to do it with the dress I mentioned above.

Another thing, I found an outfit in Lost and Found that I recatigorized for the proper folder. It's for a G9 model. Buuuut...when I have a G9 model checked and click the Filter By Content, it would show up. I have to uncheck it to be able to see it. What gives here. Ever since they came out with Genesis 9 I have been having a lot of trouble with their outfits.

 

Oh, if you want to "Filter by Context", first of all you have to add metadata to the product so as to be able to see the product thumbnail in Smart Content. Then you will have to add Compatibilities to the user-facing files:

- go to the product folder in Content Library, right-click on the folder to Edit Metadata (ss1)
- select a user-facing file, for instance, a Wearable Preset, then go to Compatibilities tab, right-click to Add Compatibilities to Selected File(s) (ss2)
- locate and choose /Genesis 9/Base (ss3)
- Accept. (ss4)

Now you can have "Filter by Context" checked and see the items.

Many creators have recently moved from Rendo to Daz and brought their products with them, those products do not have the usual metadata.