If you want freebie RPG, usually can find on sketchfab: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/rpg7-anti-tank-43c5218696bb408685aad2dba447f0fd
 

I have made a collection of military freebies from sketchfab here: https://sketchfab.com/lilweep/collections/desert-militaria-24cc111823304e52834c4c53250ab3c8

Just download. If not obj, convert to obj first.

Then import into Daz and set up textures, scale, etc.

Greetings altogether,

yeaah. After Daz 3D was running into performance issues after a certain time of having it open, I was thinking of a memory leak of some kind, because closing and opening the program again fixed it for the moment, but it started all too early to become unperformant again... so as annoyes as I was to break my workflow again, I came to the glorious idea to delete temporary files.... Just to find out a moment later that all smart content stuff has gone to hell and the entire CMS isn't working anymore.

When hitting Login, it returns a "No Database found" message, saying "a database connection could not be established", mentioning an issue with "PostgreSQL" ect, you probably know what kinda message I mean. If not, I'll gladly upload a screenshot, ofc.

Anyways, I was already trying to "Export User Data" + "Reset Database" under the Content Database Maintenance, and also Re-Import Metadata, but to no avail so far...
The "Start CMS" button casts a short loading moment and then returns without anything being different.

I'm rly a bit desperate meanwhile, as I've only started using Daz 3D this year and invested a lot of time and money to get my stuff together. Also I have content from other 3D sites added to it, which is ofc also gone for the smart content thingy. When looking into the normal Content Library, ofc all is there still.

Please, someone there to tell me I can just return back to normal workflow, without having lost something important here?

Thanks in advance..!

Fae3D said:

Kainjy said:

Fae3D said:

I feel like I'm missing something, but I seriously can't find free Pokemon figures for Daz Studio (not Blender).  I know they would be editorial only, I just want them to make renders for my kid.  Shinteo has a couple, but not many, and they are from older games.  I would think that someone out there would have converted and rigged some?  In fact, I can't even find any paid ones.  As popular as they are, this feels odd to me, like I have to be looking in the wrong places.

If you need one I can convert to DAZ.
I have a pokemon for DAZ done by myself but it's a figure: so you have to manually pose joints because G3/G8/G9 poses don't work

Thank you very much!  I would love that, but I'm kind of trying to get several of them, and I don't want to be a bother.  And I'm fine with a figure I have to manually pose, I'm not looking for it to use preset poses, just be able to be posed manually.  Did you do a Genesis figure (like a "person" version), or did you convert the actual "animal" versions of them from the game?  If you converted them, do you happen to know of a good tutorial for really Blender challenged people that might explain how?

I use the original joints (from switch games models) imported in DAZ.
Online on Deviantart you can find a lot of Pokemon in xps format. You can download them and import in Blender (you must have xnalara/xps Blender import plugin installed).
The xps/xnalara models already have joints.. so you can pose in Blender

You aren't doing anything wrong.

When you look inside the file types DS can import, you will find the files are split into "sections", these "sections" are in the same place across all the files of that type. Open a couple of Poser CR2s and you will find the same "sections" in the same place  in those files.

The problem with FBX and DAE is that DS expects the "sections" to be in order ie ABCDEF, but with a lot of programs the files come something like CBFEAD, and with some an X or Z might be in there.

Studio's importers just can't cope with files like that, but DS isn't alone in that, I have autodesk's FBX toolkit (the people that made the format), and it struggles to load the same files as DS.

I have taken files and manually restructured them and gotten them to load into DS, but that's a lot of work for little reward.

Welp.. I fixed the problem through trail and error.. It apears to be a bug where every new project you have to re-load the root path in Blender then import it works, merging geografts with the mesh correctly.

Anotrher thing, my origanl method to make both grafts and shells work was ineffective and that original project file still refuses to load correctly. So for anyone struiggling with this here's exactly what I did in Daz to get it to work:

- Add the Victoria 9 skin to genesis 9

- Add STX navel and run mat script

- Add STX Nipples and run mat script

- Select Genesis 9 in scene and add a Golden Palace smart preset

- Go to the shells in scene tab for majora and minora and for each go to parameters>shell>visibility>surfaces and turn off stx gen 9 nipples and navel (both)

-Select Golden Palace int he scene tab and run the Golden Palace material copy script.

WendyLuvsCatz said:

try the latest beta as the FBX import has been improved

otherwise Carrara imports FBX  and so does Poser 11+

.dae there is possibly more chance of getting it in rigged correctly but varies a lot

Thank you for helping!  I can't seem to get either .fbx or .dae to work, at least any rigged .dae models.  Is the Beta fairly stable?  I've never had the Beta (I actually don't even know where it is), so this is probably a stupid question, but if I loaded something in Beta and saved it as a scene subset, would I then be able to load it into my regular Daz Studio?  Or do you think it would still crash?

Ninefold said:

DAZ Studio can import .fbx and .dae files, so those should be fine. You can see a list of importable formats by opening the import dialogue (File >> Import), then clicking on the formats dropdown to the left of the file name input box. You might need to move the dialogue box to the left to keep the formats dropdown from running off the edge of the screen. It's mostly a bunch of Poser formats, and industry standard formats like .fbx, .dae, .bvh, .obj and so on.

Thanks for the info!  Unfortunately, for me it seems that Daz Studio could import these in theory, but every time I try to import a .fbx Daz immediately crashes.  And while I can load a static prop .dae, anything rigged either comes out horribly deformed or doesn't load at all.  Attached is what I got when I tried to load a Pokemon model in .dae format, and it's from a large well known website, so I don't think that the model is the problem.  I feel like I'm probably doing something wrong?

Fire Angel said:

• There are five small city blocks that can tile, so by snapping them together at their edges you can make a lot of layouts with it.  This alone makes it very flexible.
• Each block can be rotated through ninety degree increments and will still tile, so you can use the same block in a row of four linked together and it will not be obvious from street level that it is the same block, as each side has been carefully designed to look quite different.
• The memory use is optimised to a silly degree for such a large set.  It gives you a huge amount of city to use in your renders and still does not use anywhere near as much memory as some single street sets I have bought.  I laughed out loud when I realised that.
• The design of the blocks and their contents means that if you rotate and chain them together in the right way you can easily portray a very very long city avenue, stretching off into the distance.  However if arranged differently you can make short, more confined looking backstreets from exactly the same set of blocks!  This will be missed by some people, but I think it is one of the best features and yet another way in which US3 is flexible.
• There is a lot of scope for customisation of various kinds, from changing the street signs to retexturing the shop signs to make even more variation.  Go out and photograph some of your local shops if you want ideas, or maybe import and use the signs from those photos.  I am sure you can think of more ideas if you've been using it, and probably even if you haven't.

Thanks for that. One thing Stonemason always does well is optimising his models and offering more versatility in their use. It's fun just to explore his sets sometimes and find new angles.

Fire Angel said:

I forgot to mention in my first post that I use all my DAZ content and the 3D content I buy elsewhere in Blender, not in DAZ Studio.  The Diffeomorphic script for DAZ Studio is used to prepare and export the figures and then they are imported into Blender using the Diffeomorphic add-on for Blender.  This does make customising stuff extra easy, as Blender has a highly comprehensive set of modelling tools in it.  However a lot of the customisation I am going to show does not require anything other than an image editor to make custom textures with.

OK, here is my first addition to the set; the sixth block in my Urban Sprawl 3 collection; the park!  Off to the right of the cinema you can see it.  I took one of the five existing blocks, loaded it in, deleted all the buildings and retextured the paving in the middle using the grass texture used for some of the grass patches in US3.  I added some of the benches from a courtyard elsewhere in US3, then loaded in some high quality but low polygon count trees and arranged them to make the park.  I will certainly get some use out of this one, and because an open flat space is not exactly polygon-heavy and there are also fewer textures this block uses less memory than the five original blocks.  I cannot recall which product I used for the trees but I will work it out and post a link to the product page here on the DAZ site.

Looking good 

I love Blender but I always seem to go the other way for rendering. I guess I'm just more familiar with DS and Iray now.

I have a problem when using Golden Palace and STX nipples & navel on my genesis 9 character (victoria 9 skin) and trying to import into Blender via Diffeomorphic. I can't figure out why the grafts don't merge correctly. They seem to both leave a seam as well as have slightly off colors on the grafts.

This is how I set them up in Daz:

- Added Golden Palace "Smart Vanilla"

- Clicked Golden Palace "copy material script" now it has skin and looks correct

- Added STX navel and nipples (independently)

- Clicked STX Copy materials script (which doesn't work because Golden Palace messes it up).

- Took me a while but I fixed all materials by selecting the majora and minor SHELLS as well as the navel and nipples OBJECTS in scene then clicked the fix shell Omni script in Golden Palace

- Everything looks correct in Daz now

Things I've tried to get it into Blender via diffeo:

- Selecting "Merge Geografts" through the Easy Importer dialog and additionally selecting "Merge UV Layers."

- Selecting "Merge Geografts" through the Easy Importer dialog and additionally de-selecting "Merge UV Layers."

- De-selecting "Merge Geografts" through the Easy Importer dialog and then going to the finalize tab and trying to merge after import

What's going wrong? and is there a way to just bake the grafts into the mesh in daz before hand?

Update:

I tried creating a new project and only loaded Golden Palace this time. I used material script from golden palace and it is correct in Daz. Diffeomorphic did that exact same thing to the graft.

Diffeomorphic version 1.7.3

Blender Version 4.0.2

Tags are a separate thing, you can add them to items via the Smart Content pane in the (collapsed, usually) section at the bottom of the pane - which also has  tabs for file info and other things.

The Content Library search is much more limited in features than that in Smart Content (after all, not every file in the Content Library will have any metadata), so yes that is the expected behaviour.

Yes, you read that correctly.  Having bought Urban Sprawl 3 I am a happy customer and as usual with Stonemason's products I am highly impressed.  There are a lot of subtleties in Urban Sprawl 3 that aren't obvious in the product images, so it's actually better in some ways than you might think from looking at the description and renders on the product page.  Some of the benefits are obvious, some really aren't so I'll cover both for anyone who hasn't bought it yet.

• There are five small city blocks that can tile, so by snapping them together at their edges you can make a lot of layouts with it.  This alone makes it very flexible.
• Each block can be rotated through ninety degree increments and will still tile, so you can use the same block in a row of four linked together and it will not be obvious from street level that it is the same block, as each side has been carefully designed to look quite different.
• The memory use is optimised to a silly degree for such a large set.  It gives you a huge amount of city to use in your renders and still does not use anywhere near as much memory as some single street sets I have bought.  I laughed out loud when I realised that.
• The design of the blocks and their contents means that if you rotate and chain them together in the right way you can easily portray a very very long city avenue, stretching off into the distance.  However if arranged differently you can make short, more confined looking backstreets from exactly the same set of blocks!  This will be missed by some people, but I think it is one of the best features and yet another way in which US3 is flexible.
• There is a lot of scope for customisation of various kinds, from changing the street signs to retexturing the shop signs to make even more variation.  Go out and photograph some of your local shops if you want ideas, or maybe import and use the signs from those photos.  I am sure you can think of more ideas if you've been using it, and probably even if you haven't.

Yep, another happy customer.  Anyway, on to the main subject, I am posting this to see the level of interest and to suggest similar projects to others.  I hope other people will join in and post their own customisation efforts.  This first post contains no renders but those will appear quite quickly.

Richard Haseltine said:

NorthOf45 said:

I have had the CMS turn off by itself a few times, causing me to question why the metadata is not available when installing new stuff. As it is, the gray and grayer button does not exactly grab your attention when it has changed, unless you are watching it. How about something with a little colour? Green for ON, maybe? Keep the gray for OFF...

"Installing new stuff" suggests you may have closed DS and started DIM in quick succession, or vice versa. That can lead to PostgreSQL still being busy closing down when the start signal is sent by the other application, or even the signal not being sent if the timing if perfectly unhelpful. It isn't necessary to close the one to use the other. (Not that that has any bearing on the requeat for clearer differentiation.)

Timing the start/stop of the two might have been the cause. That is totally up to me, but easy to overlook as I rarely do it, but, as you say, does not detract from a need for better status indication.

NorthOf45 said:

I have had the CMS turn off by itself a few times, causing me to question why the metadata is not available when installing new stuff. As it is, the gray and grayer button does not exactly grab your attention when it has changed, unless you are watching it. How about something with a little colour? Green for ON, maybe? Keep the gray for OFF...

"Installing new stuff" suggests you may have closed DS and started DIM in quick succession, or vice versa. That can lead to PostgreSQL still being busy closing down when the start signal is sent by the other application, or even the signal not being sent if the timing if perfectly unhelpful. It isn't necessary to close the one to use the other. (Not that that has any bearing on the requeat for clearer differentiation.)

I've been building my first character in Daz and tried moving it over to diffeomorphic for the first time to find that the skin looked really strange and plasticy (see first picture). I've been at this now for 6 hours. I originally though it was an issue with Diffeo but I created a new basic gen 9 female with the same skin and upon import to blender it looks correct and the same as Daz (see second picture). I snooped around the sufface editors and the node trees look the same. I can't figure out what I did to my character that could have caused this or how to undo it. the whites of my characters eyes are also not right, they seem to be grey-ish, and her hair is suppost to be brown not black (see third picture for how she is supposed to look).

I've ensured the enviroment settings are the same between my test character and real character (so my eyes arent just playing tricks on me). I've tried re-applying the Victoria 9 skin (which should undo any makeup). I had played around with Skin Effects Adventure acouple days ago and had applied Daz Uber Base to get it to work over my other geoshell/graffs (stx navel/nipples and Golden Palace) as per the recomendation of a tutorial i watched on the matter. I thought maybe THAT could have been what messed it up, but after applying dzDefault shader it didn't fix it. Not sure what else to do. Please help! thank you

I have had the CMS turn off by itself a few times, causing me to question why the metadata is not available when installing new stuff. As it is, the gray and grayer button does not exactly grab your attention when it has changed, unless you are watching it. How about something with a little colour? Green for ON, maybe? Keep the gray for OFF...

Ninefold said:

josiahmora20 said:

Thanks for all this. Yeah I'm just trying to find the fastest and mnost effective work flow, I'm trying to make a comic and so having to re-do materials for every new frame seems like a headache. Do you know of a way I could just replace the pose if i import her as an obj? 

You could apply new exported versions of your character to herself as shapekeys, but that seems like it would be its own hassle, with her hair, clothing, etc. You don't have to set every material up from scratch every time. Just apply the previous frame's materials to the character in the new frame.

oh, duhh, that makes sense. (sorry, really am a newb here). 

josiahmora20 said:

Thanks for all this. Yeah I'm just trying to find the fastest and mnost effective work flow, I'm trying to make a comic and so having to re-do materials for every new frame seems like a headache. Do you know of a way I could just replace the pose if i import her as an obj? 

You could apply new exported versions of your character to herself as shapekeys, but that seems like it would be its own hassle, with her hair, clothing, etc. You don't have to set every material up from scratch every time. Just apply the previous frame's materials to the character in the new frame.

Ninefold said:

josiahmora20 said:

I really appreciate the info. I restarted my computer and now it seems to be working fine to load the rendered view.. very strange. Obj seems like a good option, however, I'm concerned about the textures- for example,when I was trying to edit a 3rd party horse 3 texture or makeup textures in photoshop, they seemed to be a combination of different textures stacke don top of eachother. How do you go about making sure they look the same in daz? seems like a headache to set up no? 

I'm not sure I understand the situation you're describing. Were you trying to edit LIE textures, like from Design Anvil's Horse 3 materials sets? LIE components, which I think are usually just transparent .pngs that DAZ Studio can stack up in the layered image editor, and things like the transparency maps for geoshells, are ultimately just a bunch of alpha maps and color maps that you can plug into mix nodes. How you use this is situational. For something like the DA horse materials, combine your texture maps as desired and plug them into the base color of a principled BSDF node. For makeup, you might find yourself mixing things into a character's roughness or metallicity channels, or using the mix shader node. I find some makeup (like lip gloss) looks best on a slightly offset solidify modifier "geoshell" with its shadows turned off and transmission cranked way up.

Also how does dforce hair look? i can't seem to get it looking right at all (very clumpy) in diffeo)

I haven't really explored this, though I tried using Diffeomorphic to convert a polygonal hair to hair curves once and that seemed to work fine. (I ended up not pursuing that render for reasons unrelated to the hair.) I recommend looking at tutorials for whichever Blender native hair system you're converting the dForce hair to. If it's hair curves, use the scalp opacity map as a density mask. This might go for particle hair as well, but I'm less familiar with it.

josiahmora20 said:

hey thanks for that! that fixed the blockiness, but I have this weird thing, any ideas? 

This is the head mesh clipping through the hair's scalp mesh. You can fix it by grabbing a few vertices and adjusting them in edit mode.

Thanks for all this. Yeah I'm just trying to find the fastest and mnost effective work flow, I'm trying to make a comic and so having to re-do materials for every new frame seems like a headache. Do you know of a way I could just replace the pose if i import her as an obj? 

Ninefold said:

I don't use Diffeomorphic, so I can't speak to most of this, but once you've selected Cycles in the Render tab, make sure you also switch the device dropdown that will appear to "GPU compute". Cycles will run on the CPU by default, which is excruciatingly slow. Once it's on the GPU, you will probably find it no more strenuous for your computer than Iray (and I personally find it a bit "politer", in terms of the liveability of non-GPU-intensive activities on my computer while a render is happening).

I use Blender basically the way that you want to (developing environments around static posed figures, and rendering), and I usually just export .objs and set up their materials manually. I can confirm that geografts look fine when you do this. The naming convention for DAZ character textures breaks Blender's UDIM workflow, so I like to copy all of a character's textures into a new folder and rename them to be Blender UDIM-friendly so that I can set up a single material for a character's skin and nails. I also like to separate characters' cornea/eye moisture surface into its own object so that I can turn shadows off for that object, though you can leave everything as is and accomplish the same thing with a light path node.

I really appreciate the info. I restarted my computer and now it seems to be working fine to load the rendered view.. very strange. Obj seems like a good option, however, I'm concerned about the textures- for example,when I was trying to edit a 3rd party horse 3 texture or makeup textures in photoshop, they seemed to be a combination of different textures stacke don top of eachother. How do you go about making sure they look the same in daz? seems like a headache to set up no? 

Also how does dforce hair look? i can't seem to get it looking right at all (very clumpy) in diffeo)

One more concern, doing it the way you suggest wouldn't I have to re-import my character and re-do the materials every time I want to bring he back from daz with a new pose?

try the latest beta as the FBX import has been improved

otherwise Carrara imports FBX  and so does Poser 11+

.dae there is possibly more chance of getting it in rigged correctly but varies a lot