myvirtuallady said:

atnreg11 said:

DAZ_Spooky said:

Novica said:

So spell this out for novices. How would I use this going from DAZ to Lightwave? What would I be exporting over?You create your scene in DS, with or without animation.
You export it using Alembic
You import the scene into Lightwave.
You set up your surfaces for best results in Lightwave (Same as you would do with OBJ, MDD, FBX, etc.)
You add anything in Lighwave you want/need to add to the scene. (Sasquatch Hair, Lightwave dynamics, Lights, etc.)
Render.

I just tried it, does not work at all at least with Lightwave :(

I setup a scene in DAZ, then export to Alembic (without subdivs preserved, that's the only way to get anything to LW).
But when I import it to LW, the geometry is correct but NO surfaces are preserved! The whole object is plain Default.
Ok it copies the texture maps to a folder but that is totally useless if the surface names and assignments are lost!

Please someone tell me this actually works and I just did something wrong (I doubt that as there is nothing to do wrong).

Is the problem in DAZ exporter or LW importer?
A bit strange was that the Alembic Importer was not in LW menus, I had to add it manually. The plugin existed though. I have LW 11.6.1.

Please help / comment!

Hi there,
I get the same problem usign Alembic exporter for DAZ Studio in Guerilla Renderer. While importing, I get the list of materials in the node list but the surfaces are not preserved into the geometry. Impossible to plug any material for body part like torso, face, cornea... I try to know more about this in the Guerilla Rendere forum...

Here is a copy of some info from another thread for you ;)

roeland wrote:

Does it crash Octane or does it fail to load the file? If it crashes, are you able to upload a file causing a crash?

Both, fails to load .abc when using subdivision preservation, but i now know why thanks to you ;)
And crashes Ds when trying to import a Daz studio character called Michael 4, but the newer Genesis character loads fine BUT, ALL Daz Studio characters exported from Daz Studio as .abc files have either surface or texture errors as shown in my pics! Am starting to guess that the issues are both related to unsupported mesh types and that Daz3D did not included camera export when writting their Alembic exporter (maybe based on older code, i just dont know) I can only guess at all this suff i am afraid :lol: :roll:

Also if the Alembic file contains a camera objects then the imported scene node will have a camera output (blue-green) for every of these camera objects. Cameras are part of the Alembic standard, this is mentioned on the Alembic website:

Thank you for that information/link.. just reading it all now.

Am stuck on my Ipad until the morning but if you still need them i can provide those scenes for you after intake the kids to school in the morning ?

Thanks for your reply Roeland :)

UPDATE EDIT:

linvanchene (Daz forum), Thank you so much for making things clearer for me & your time to post here :D

Orion, thank you a lot for posting this here. I tried to follow all the different threads in all the different forums as good as I could.

Thank you for taking the time to explain things to me in a way that I understand, sorry for the confusing posts.
I posted in Otoy & Daz forums as (not being the sharpest tool in the box sometimes) I did not know much about the issue(s)
I was having, what the actual causes were and how much of it was user error or software related.

I though that getting the perspective from Daz & Otoy would help me clear that up not foreseeing this issue of multiple threads.

Also, I guess I am guilty of not reading things fully and therefore when the features I was expecting did not work I got lost in the frantic world of google searches rather than FULLY reading & understanding the information provided, sorry once again.

It seems there are two different issues going on at the moment:

1) The otoy OctaneRender Standalone version is not fully ready yet to support Alembic import of meshes with subdivision.
What is needed is some more patience until the “official” version 1.5 of OctaneRender is released as I allready tried to explain in the posts.

Currently Octane Standalone 1.27 is out as a Release Candiate.
We also need to understand that all Release Candidates are unofficial Beta versions that we can use at our own risk.

The last official standalone version available in the downloads is 1.2
Until we see an offical version 1.5 in the downloads area there is still A LOT of work to be done.
For those who do not read through the whole thread

GUILTY :(

This only affects the Octane standalone version.
The OctaneRender plugin for DS reads the data directly from DS .duf files. No Alembic export / import needed there.
- - -
2) For some reason some people are under the impression that Camera values are not part of the Alembic standard.
I really do not quite understand all the limits and possibilities of the Alembic format yet myself.
I can understand if some things are mixed up because I myself still end up mixing up a lot of things that may or may not be related.
But from a google search for camera+data+alembic+format it seems that other software support camera export & import with the alembic format.

The camera values and the definitions also seem to be included in the alembic documentation:
http://docs.alembic.io/python/search.ht ... ea=default

From my point of view having camera values defined as part of the Alembic standard makes a lot of sense.
As I already pointed out above matching different footage no matter if the source is video or animation depends on using the exact same camera data with the same values.

After all the Alembic standard seems to be introduced by imageworks and lucasfilm both companies dealing probably a lot with composting footage of different sources and all the issues that arise in the process.

The impression I got so far is:
There is one Alembic format. But it seems not every software is yet supporting all features of it.
Otoy seems to be working to make Alembic support happen for subdivided meshes.

Roeland @ Otoy had this to say in his last post to me:

Octane at the moment only supports triangle meshes, the other forms of geometry (subDiv, strands etc.) are not imported.

I understand the mesh & texturing side of things better now thanks to everyone, I would just like to see how the camera confusion will be cleared up from this point on then ;)

Maybe DAZ could have another look at how camera values are calculated in DS and how to include properly calculated realistic camera values in the Alembic Export / Import.

I certainly hope so as both DazSpookey & Richard Haseltine both seem to be under the impression that Cameras are not supported!

With respect to them (as is only right & due), Here is what they say..

Richard Haseltine: Alembic does not carry camera or texture information - just the mesh and animation.

DazSpookey:Cameras are not part of the Alembic Spec, neither are lights. It is an Vertex exact object and object animation format. It doesn’t do cameras.

Here is hoping that Daz & Otoy continue to improve these products (& add camera export to the Daz exporter) with as much dedication & ingenuity as possible. Together Daz & Otoy software complements each other on a great level that serves us users well, I am grateful for the hard work that goes in to both the programs involved in this thread & their developers :D

Hello to all! I'm a newbie in DS 4.6 Pro and soon I found some problems with rendering textures of usual (non Genesis) models (V4, M4 and characters). For example when I render default installed Barefoot Dancer girl with her texture settings (if I understand them right, with UberSurface shader?) I get the fine proper result like this -
Barefoot dancer
But when I attempt to render other content, mostly from Poser and try to use their textures and different shaders (default and Uber Surface) I get many problems, most often overlit images like this M4 (default sample texture, default light) -
Michael 4 in DAZ render

I tried to use textures made for DAZ like in Sabby Sisters- Kyrsi, but with any shader I get the same result -
Sabby Sisters - Kyrsi DAZ mat
In Poser 7 all textures work correctly even without specifuc settings - the same sample skin of M4
Michael 4 - Poser 7
How to adjust textures for DAZ properly and which of installed shaders I must use (and what settings) to achieve the same realistic result (and even better, if it's possible?).
(sorry for html links, I didn't find how to upload pictures here)

Here's my first entry....

As you can see, I went full-bore stereotype with Aiko. As for the rest, well.... I would blame the Martinis, but the truth is..., I'm just weird!

Items used:
Aiko 3 (Well, DUH!)
Mech Girl outfit
Mitsu Hair
Skyrider
David 3
Simply Cool for D3
Michael 4
Bad Boy for M4
Relic Hunter Essentials
Dark Places 2k9: Back Alley

Image composed and rendered in Poser Pro 2012, no postwork (because I totally suck at postwork!)

Title: Uppity Women From the Future #1: The Carjacking
"Carjack me, will you!? I don't think so!"

HI :)

I cant seem to get the Camera to export from the Daz Alembic exporter in to Octanerender standalone, any tips please?

Also, I am having texture 'issues' still and would like help with that please? Here are a couple of links that discribe my problems I am having thank you :)

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewreply/527344/
http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=37859&start=10

Should I file a bug report or is this user error?

Dont want to waste Daz teams time with a fake bug report lol :P

A copy of my post in Otoy forum (as you may not be able to view that area of the forum, I dont know!)..

How strange, my exported scene file (from Daz Studio Alembic Exporter) does not seem to show a connector for a camera (as seen in inthe post by Elvissuperstar007)... ?

There is no Alembic camera slot on the exported 'scene' object file?

Also,

Still have a skin issue with Alembic but not obj?

Any advice please?

Thank you :D

UPDATE: Trying to import Michael 4 exported by Daz Alembic exporter crashes ORSA EVERY TIME, Genesis exports fine apart from the messed up texture issue! Also, choosing the option 'preserve subdevision surfaces' results in the Alembic export failing to load every time!

@ DazSpooky (or anyone else)..

I cant seem to get the Camera to export from the Daz Alembic exporter in to Octanerender standalone, any tips please?

Also, I am having texture 'issues' still and would like help with that please? Here are a couple of links that discribe my problems I am having thank you :)

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewreply/527344/
http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=37859&start=10

Should I file a bug report or is this user error?

Dont want to waste Daz teams time with a fake bug report lol :P

A copy of my post in Otoy forum (as you may not be able to view that area of the forum, I dont know!)..

How strange, my exported scene file (from Daz Studio Alembic Exporter) does not seem to show a connector for a camera (as seen in inthe post by Elvissuperstar007)... ?

There is no Alembic camera slot on the exported 'scene' object file?

Also,

Still have a skin issue with Alembic but not obj?

Any advice please?

Thank you :D

UPDATE: Trying to import Michael 4 exported by Daz Alembic exporter crashes ORSA EVERY TIME, Genesis exports fine apart from the messed up texture issue! Also, choosing the option 'preserve subdevision surfaces' results in the Alembic export failing to load every time!

I meant the injected morphs should appear with the head selected. Do you get a dialogue box when you load Michael 4? If not you may need to go to \Runtime\Libraries\!DAZ and run DzCreateExPFiles-m4.bat to properly initialise Michael 4.

Do you have multiple content directories, and if so have you checked to see if there is a \Runtime\Libraries\!DAZ\Michael 4 folder in each (there shouldn't be)? You are remembering that for Michael 4 the head morphs are on the head?

I am using Poser 9 on Windows based machine.

I had Michael 4 and his morphs++ all working a while ago but now nothing.
I have uninstalled and reinstalled both Michael and the morphs and still they don't work.

So, it has been a while since I used them but I am pretty sure I am doing it correctly but maybe not.

So any idea or guess you have would be appreciated in helping me to determine how I get these to working again.
I just got Character of Men for M4 and would love to get that working but it needs those morphs++

Changing the subject.
Can you have too much stuff installed in Poser ? Just wondering if this is why items like these aren't working.

Cheers,
Tabbycat

digitell said:

Is there a way to get V4 or M4 textures to work on the Genesis2 or M6 figures?

http://www.daz3d.com/victoria-4-for-genesis-2-female
http://www.daz3d.com/michael-4-for-genesis-2-male

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/33957/ <- to use UVs between the G2m and G2F</p>

These would be to easily apply pre-dson material files to the G2 figures:

http://www.daz3d.com/michael-4-skins-auto-converter-for-genesis-2-male-s
http://www.daz3d.com/v4-skins-auto-converter-for-genesis-2-female-s

Gabriel for Michael 4 and Michael 5 (Raiya) On Sale 50% off for $7.48
http://www.daz3d.com/gabriel-for-michael-4-and-michael-5

Alexios Hair (3Dream, Mairy) On sale 60% off for $6.78
http://www.daz3d.com/alexios-hair

Casual Surf Wear For Genesis (DAZ3d) On sale 72% for $2.79
http://www.daz3d.com/casual-surf-wear-for-genesis

The Treehouse (DAZ3D, Stonemason)
http://www.daz3d.com/the-treehouse

Tera Poses For Hiro 5 (DAZ3D)
http://www.daz3d.com/tera-poses-for-hiro-5

The hair went on easily, this is it without any tweaking. Gabriel is easy to light and also shown without any morphing. There is an eye reflection option and you have several choices for the reflection.

The Surf Wear gives you nice vibrant colors but also some of the nice neutral ones too. The flip flops come in a variety of colors. The clothes went on without any adjustments. Do note when you use the white ones, every muscle shows and so does the belly button unless you adjust it. Found it to be a bit too tight for my personal preferences.

The Treehouse looks good from a variety of different angles. I will be adding some more renders here, so check back. I won't use depth of field so you can see the details of the set.

The Tera poses are great for the stand your ground and don't mess with me stances. I love the clenched fist!

The sky is Skull Cove but the lights are mine.

Gotta go put the blanket back ON the horse. Be glad when spring arrives! At least we're all not in the minus zero to +5 real feel range anymore though. :) Back in a hour or so.

EDIT: Added another Treehouse image. Note the branch is really notched out by the steeple, and one other branch looks really shoved into the trunk. Not very impressed. Also, there are floating leaves without branches.

I don't have Poser, don't have it selected in DIM, and I am assuming the pz2 is poser?
Using Gabriel for Michael 4 and Michael 5, on M5.
Those are both shapes. Do I just use the INJ.dsa I assume?

Then for Gabriel OPTIONS- when I mouse over the .dsa one, there's no clues.
the 02.dsa says HSS

the pz2 one says AO & DS HSS. Can I use the pz2 one, and is it Ambient Occlusion and DAZ Studio Human Surface Shaders? What would choosing this one do?

That sounds like you have the basic versions of the figures.

http://www.daz3d.com/genesis-2-female-morphs-bundle
http://www.daz3d.com/victoria-4-2-morphs
http://www.daz3d.com/michael-4-morphs

Free
http://www.sharecg.com/v/72792/browse/21/DAZ-Studio/DieTryings-182-Morphs-for-Genesis-2-Female
http://www.sharecg.com/v/73186/browse/21/DAZ-Studio/DieTryings-182-Morphs-for-Genesis-2-Male
http://www.sharecg.com/v/72909/browse/11/Poser/DieTryings-182-Morphs-For-Victoria4-ExP-version

SereneNight said:

Todays Review:
Michael 4 Earring Collection
http://www.daz3d.com/michael-4-earrings-collection
by: bucketload3d

Some Other content Used

Pepper Hair (Valea)
Portrait Artist’s Background (Diane))

Oooh -- I never noticed these either! Very nice. Which character is that? He's yummy, lol.

Todays Review:
Michael 4 Earring Collection
http://www.daz3d.com/michael-4-earrings-collection
by: bucketload3d

Some Other content Used

Pepper Hair (Valea)
Portrait Artist’s Background (Diane))

http://www.daz3d.com/pepper-hair
http://www.daz3d.com/portrait-artists-backgrounds

Custom chunky sci-fi jewelry for m4? Why have I never noticed this until now? Jewelry and bling can add so much to your characer and Michael 4 Earring Collection is designed for gen4 but can work on any generation character with some careful tweaking. Autofits for M4, Hiro4 and Freak4 are included.

For gen 6, you can start with using the gen 4 autofit, and then moving them up and down using the x, y controls until they are in the lobe in a good position. You may have to adjust the scaling to get them to both fit in at the same time or to match your taste preference. By default, they are pretty close. Depending on the jewelry, and pose further tweaking may be necessary (these are large earrings and adjusting percentages can help create a better fit.

In any case, these earrings may require postwork on the lobe. To postwork the ear, a little careful shadow and a dot of darker skin color smoothed and blurred can help create the illusion of piercing. I did this in most of the renders. I also adjusted the size slightly to improve the fit.

There is one texture with the earring set- silver, however they color easily with metal shaders

I’m sure you’ll agree these earrings look stunning! =-)

Thoughts:

One thing I would like would be to have the ability to apply earrings L or Right singly. The earrings apply as a set. Since these are big chunky earrings you may not necessarily want two at a time. I would also love it if the texture applied automatically.

I’d also love it if the earrings had some wires or narrower centers. Without a good distortion morph for the lobe, narrowing the part that penetrates the ear might make more design sense. Especially when it comes to taking them off.. =-)

Dimension3D said:

Thanks for your kind statement. The upcoming upgrade has several new major features, not only full support of Genesis 2 with morph transfer in every possible direction, but also automated conversion of clone morphs, and improvements in morph transfer. So, I think most people will understand that the upgrade price will be very reasonable.

The new version of GenX does not require any additional products. Only the generation 3 add-ons will still require the legacy morphs, because they also contain the clone morphs. All clone morphs are converted to fully working morphs automatically.

About the new legacy morphs from Slosh, he was so kind to contact me and discuss the relationship between his morphs and the upcoming GenX for Genesis 2 with me. He also was so kind to provide the V4 and M4 morphs to me, so I could try how they work with GenX.

While you do not need these legacy morphs to use GenX with Genesis 2, it's obvious that hand-crafted morphs and joint adjustments look and work better than an automated transfer. In particular when transferring morphs from Victoria 4 or Michael 4 to Genesis 2, the legacy morphs from Slosh will be a good alternative as the base shape instead of transferring the V4/M4 legacy morphs from Genesis 1 to Genesis 2. To sum it up, they are not required, but they are an interisting addition and the V4/M4 morphs for Genesis 2 from Slosh are fully compatibel with V4/M4 morphs transferred to Genesis 2 by GenX.

Thanks for the quick response. I will support both of you guys cause your products are just godsends. Thanks again.

Thanks for your kind statement. The upcoming upgrade has several new major features, not only full support of Genesis 2 with morph transfer in every possible direction, but also automated conversion of clone morphs, and improvements in morph transfer. So, I think most people will understand that the upgrade price will be very reasonable.

The new version of GenX does not require any additional products. Only the generation 3 add-ons will still require the legacy morphs, because they also contain the clone morphs. All clone morphs are converted to fully working morphs automatically.

About the new legacy morphs from Slosh, he was so kind to contact me and discuss the relationship between his morphs and the upcoming GenX for Genesis 2 with me. He also was so kind to provide the V4 and M4 morphs to me, so I could try how they work with GenX.

While you do not need these legacy morphs to use GenX with Genesis 2, it's obvious that hand-crafted morphs and joint adjustments look and work better than an automated transfer. In particular when transferring morphs from Victoria 4 or Michael 4 to Genesis 2, the legacy morphs from Slosh will be a good alternative as the base shape instead of transferring the V4/M4 legacy morphs from Genesis 1 to Genesis 2. To sum it up, they are not required, but they are an interisting addition and the V4/M4 morphs for Genesis 2 from Slosh are fully compatibel with V4/M4 morphs transferred to Genesis 2 by GenX.

I believe the character from that image is this one: http://www.daz3d.com/vladimir

If you wish, you can use Vladimir's skin texture on Genesis, but not the morphs (at least not without additional purchases), as they were made for the Michael 4 figure.

For morphs, I agree that the Creature Creator set that others recommended would be a good choice.

I have never had any dealings with genesis before & have not found the information on this. Are Michael 6 & Victoria 6 Anatomically correct?

Is Michael 6 like Michael 4, where that male body part is added as a additional character item or is it already part of Michael 6 genesis mesh?

Thank you

Does anyone knows some outfit for ww2 german SS?

For Michael 4, daz or poser.

Something like that:

http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2010/346/1/3/m35_german_ss_colonel_by_tiriol-d34pyhl.jpg

Slosh said:

dsexton72 said:

Okay, let me make sure about this. Your product can basically be used to use morphs and characters that we're made for these shapes? The only problem would be the textures created for the characters?

The Legacy Shapes only provide the base shapes of each character (plus extra head and body shapes that came with some of the Generation 5 figures). For example, Stephanie 5 comes with 3 body shapes and 3 head shapes. But you will not be able to, for example, apply the Riley or Candace morphs that were created for her by their respective vendors. Dimension3D is working on a Genesis 2 version of his GenX product which will allow transfer of any extra morphs you have in Genesis or Generation 4. The purpose of Legacy Shapes, at this point, is to provide basic shapes from past generations that can use Genesis 2 clothing and textures and hair, plus they mix very well with Genesis 2 shapes. So you can add a bit of Freak 5 to Michael 6, or Aiko 5 to Teen Josie, etc.

Textures will come later. At this point, seeing the interest in the texture uvs, I can see a definite demand for them and will therefore begin working on creating the uvs starting next week sometime. I will most likely work on them in pairs, male and female, of characters that "go together" like Aiko 5 and Hiro 5, Stephanie 5 and David 5, The Young Teens Justin and Julie, then Freak 5 will be all by himself. I will also try to address the genitalia from Michael 4 and Michael 5, but so far I've had a lot of trouble getting those to match up to the hip area on Genesis 2. That one is a big maybe, but I promise to try. I will also be improving the M4 uvs for my Genesis 2 product. This I will be doing first, since that product is already out.

So this will work like the Gen 4 Iconic Shapes and Gen 3 Iconic Shapes for Genesis did in concert with GenX. Once Dimension3d updates their GenX plugin, you will be able to transfer morphs from Gen 5 and Gen 4 characters to Gen 6 the same way you can do Gen 3 and Gen 4 to Gen 5, by loading the legacy shape into Genesis 2 first, then transfering the morphs of your favorite Gen 4, Gen 5 characters over to Genesis 2?