Wondering if this is a general Carrara FBX issue or if it is specific to my project.

I have a custom Cookie Monster fanart model.  I uploaded as obj to Mixamo and applied the Twist Dance.  I exported from Mixamo as FBX.  The FBX skin (Cookie Monster mesh) and animation load fine in Blender and the animation plays.  When I try to import the same FBX file to Carrara I get an error saying the FBX file is corrupted. But the file can still be loaded and used successfully in Blender.  Is there a general Carrara problem with Mixamo FBX?

On an other site, Sshodan released à long while ago beautiful dynamic chitons for V4 and M4, and I haven't found the equivalent since for G3 or G8.

Since the originals where for poser, is there a way to import them in Daz, and then convert them du dforce ?

Thanks in advance !

BTW, Sshodan, if you read this, more greek-looking stuff would be indeed most appreciated !

Hi,

Is there a way from with in DAZ Studio to uninstall/delete unneeded parts of a product? I am using IRay rendering exclusively and want to get rid of all the 3Delight maps to free up space. I know that I can delete files manually, but I don't want to break the product database.
I am tempted to delete these files manually and the open the metadata for that product and remove the deleted files from the list of assests. Would that work?

Thanks,

Stefan

If that is Windows you can take a proper screen shot with the Snipping Tool/Snip and Sketch, depending on your version.

The first screen shot shows the item not installed - it has metadata, presumable from Daz Studio being allowed to go online, but no files. What is the other version, just above it in the container list? By backward arrows do you mean the U-turn icon? That means there is an update - that would be from a Daz Studio instalaltion, and might well mean that some files failed to install correctly (if you right-click and browse to the folder location you may find 0-byte .part files).

Well, it isn't a daz product that is causing the issue (or at least, not oen that has been installed in a way that gives it metadata). That means the culprit is either a third-party pack (store or freebie) or a morph asset you created yourself.

WillowRaven said:

What I mean is, the G3 material folders for Neve Hair don't have all of the files as the G8 material folders for Neve Hair do. I went ahead and tried just copy/pasting all the mat files and the original ones still showed an exclamation mark in Daz. I deleted those and it seems to be working, but I didn't know if it was going to mess something up later.

I'm also wondering if Daz would want to know so it can be fixed for future buyers.

Hi there :)

Since late 2019 I switched to using asset links instead of duplicating the preset (mats, poses, etc) files.  I.e. when my product has presets that are the same for multiple figures there is one original set of presets and the others link to them. So for Neve you'll notice in the G3F presets folders they are .djl files.  If you open one of them in a text editor it will simply point to the G8F .duf preset which have the actual data.  I also do similar if I made the hair for G8M and then created a G8F version.

If the G3F mat thumbnail is not showing in DS, ie you are seeing exclamation marks, that is a good indicator that the link is not finding the G8F originals.  So would you be able to investigate where the G8F presets were installed and why the G3F links can't find them? 

If you have moved the files around after install, that would be the problem.  In that case, simply apply the G8F mats to the G3F hair, they're the same mats. Edited to add: Or copy them over to the G3F folder as you did and If you still see the exclamation mark thumbs delete the djl files, they are still saying the linked files are missing. :)

See pic below for reference.

The advantage of the djl links instead of duplicates are the same as creating system shortcuts to files instead of having multiple copies of the same file in different locations.  In DS this means lighter total package size; reduce editing time; reduce testing time which are required for duplicates; the presets shouldn't show up twice or more each file in Smart Content tab; faster for Daz QA to create metadata.  

Hope that helps :)

Leonides02 said:

outrider42 said:

This is one of those cases where using the Hexagon bridge helps a ton. You can use the UV Paint tool in Hexagon, specifically the smoothing brush. Use it gently and you can knock out the abs pretty easy, then send that back to Daz and save this as a new morph that corrects the abs. So like if you are editing the Voluptuous morph, you could call this "Voluptuous No Ab" or something like that.

You could also use Blender, but in this case Hexagon is actually more usable. The Daz to Hexagon Bridge is just so easy to use. If you don't have the G8 Dev Kit, you should get it from the G8 Starter download section. Just load the dev kit, dial in the morph you want to fix, and send to Hexagon. It is that simple, no need to worry over having the settings correct because the bridge handles all that. In Hexagon the UV Paint brushes have a Smoothing Brush. This brush will be your best friend. Just gently apply this on the abs, and poof they are gone. Send this back to Daz, give it a unique name (and make sure it is unique to avoid dreaded duplicate ID errors), toggle reverse deformations to on, select the location, and go. You can also select to mirror one side of the morph you are importing if you were not able to mirror it in Hexagon (the mirror function doesn't always work in Hexagon).

If it works, then save it as a new morph. Since this is only the abs, there is no need to do any fancy ERC stuff, you can just save it.

It might sound like a lot, but this is something that can take just a few minutes, even if you are not used to doing it. The longest part might be waiting for Hexagon to load.

Wow, what a helpful post! Thank you. I will try this ASAP. 

NP, I hope it works for you.

If you have not used Hexagon before, you will probably want to go into its settings and disable "Local Redraw" in the Edit > Preferences Editor. There is a viewport glitch that happens with it on that can make Hexagon unusable otherwise. Also, as long as you stick to the Dev Kit you shouldn't have memory problems since the dev kit has no textures. If you import characters with textures on you will almost certainly run out of memory since Hexagon is ancient software. The Hexagon "supposedly 64 bit" Beta improves it a little, but only a little. So it is best to just avoid textures unless you use like one or two very small and compressed textures. You could use say a smaller than 100kb texture on the torso to help make sure you not distorting things too much with the smoothing tool. That is the only problem you might get if you get a little too aggressive with this tool. It is easy to spread the vertices apart, which leads to the the skin looking stretched when you render in Daz. So you want to avoid this. It should be much issue if you are sticking to the abs, but on other areas you run into this.

Once you get a little practice with it, you might find this a very handy way to make those small adjustments on morphs that drive you crazy. It is too bad we can't use it on HD morphs (they just drop to base res when transeferd to Hexagon), but it is still handy and dare I say fun to do. And this is coming from someone who hates using Blender.

Update:

New solution:

Import mmd's vmd motion onto Daz Character in blender, without a mmd model:

https://blenderartists.org/t/addon-retarget-mmds-vmd-motion-to-daz-or-cc3/1361902

Update:

New solution:

Import mmd's vmd motion onto Daz Character in blender, without a mmd model:

https://blenderartists.org/t/addon-retarget-mmds-vmd-motion-to-daz-or-cc3/1361902

Hi guys,

I made a character in DAZ 3D and I have exported it to a FBX, however when I import it in Cinema 4D, the facial features and morphs are not there anymore, it looks almost like a plain face. 

Pease see the screenshot attached,  I madea samurai type of character in DAZ 3D and when imported in Cinema 4D it almost looks like a regular genesis character, all the asian face features have dissapeared 

I am doing something wrong during exporting? I also attached my export settings

I would appreciate any help, thanks!

N-RArts said:

I'm so tired. 

I was working in Daz Studio when the computer randomly restarted. The computer came back on, and I couldn't find the Daz Studio Iray shaders (PBR Skin, and all of that). So I've had to uninstall then re-install Studio. 

I hope the SSD isn't on the way out (one year old). If it is, I'm giving up, and I'm not replacing it.

I can't deal with anymore of this cr@p!

Might have been a corrupt database if DS was closed mid-write. If you install using DIM/Daz Central/Manually and the files were missing only from the Smart Content pane, Presets tabs, and Categories or Products in the Content Library you might be able to get them back by reimporting metadata or - if everything was gone - by doing a database reset and then reimporting. I do recommend backing up the database, and doing an export of user data, as protection.

There is also a feature for using inhomogeneous volumetrics without having to use a VDB.  In the Render Settings, under Environment, there is a new Atmospheric Ground which uses the volumetric MDL on a dynamically created cube aligned with ground.  You can use this without needing to create and import any VDB files.  Here are some examples.

It doesn't generate any wisps but I think it is better than the SSS cube trick we had before.

You can use the easy import that does things for you. Also be sure to get the latest update.

https://diffeomorphic.blogspot.com/p/import-into-blender-version-16.html

https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/downloads/

von Hobo said:

Carola O said:

CZ said:

Carola O said:

I followed the instructions in this post (from another thread, also about the missing thumbnails :) ), it was surprisingly easy and painless :)

 

Maybe I understood it wrong, but isn't it that you have to copy, rename and paste some jpg in different folders for EACH product? With more than 100 products with missing thumbnails I wouldn't call that easy and painless.

Yes, that's basically what you need to do. However, the renamed jpg's are going into the same folder (the one called Meta in the cloud folder). But essentially, yes you have to copy one jpg from the folder of each product that are missing a thumbnail, and than rename that one before moving it to the Meta folder. I started with copying the jpg's from each product folder, than got some coffee and sat down to rename them. Before moving them over to the Meta folder at the same time.

I considered it rather easy and painless compared to some other work arounds that has been around over the years for different problems :) Besides, the first batch of copy-renaming-moving might be a big one, but the following ones (when you buy something and if the problem still is around) shouldn't be as many :)

 

It was easy for me to fix too, but I only had 5 missing thumbnails.

But this fix is only a bandaid. The next time you login to DAZ Studio and Connect updates metadata, it will screw up the thumbnails again. At least that is what happened to me.

And with more people experiencing this issue, sure would be nice if DAZ could just fix this so that people are not going through this mess.

 

After applying the fix would it be possible to backup/copy the said directory to another storage location and applying it to the new installation? Or would it still revert to the same issue?

Paintbox said:

Yeah, I see what you mean. It's the curse of working with 3D, you always run into a technical hurdle you have to overcome. It can be incredibly complex, with a steep to impossible learning curve at times. 

Which supposedly these Bridges are meant to alleviate somewhat,  and they would - if they actually worked as DAZ advertizes them 

I want to use human figures more often, but making my own is out of the question and getting them elsewhere would likely be very expensive. Not that I don't mind doing Creatures For Days or anything, they're totally my thing - it's just sometimes I get that desire to put something else in and then I can't.

Still, learning more about how things like Constraints work will speed things up a bit. To be honest, I hadn't used the offset feature in the PSR Constrait before until I started working with conforming figures and realized what a big help they were. The next problem though is weighting, like oh my goodness gracious the default settings for these exporters is atricious when it comes to things with additional parts.  Like,  Dinoraul's dinosaurs as one recent example. In my recent upload to the Gallery, I was going to include his Einiosaurus in the scene but other than the usual "Poor Weighting on Import" issue, the spikes along its back and tail would not remain on its back and tail and instead float off into the distance or remain floating there. Getting them to stay was a huge trial-and-error thing, coming down to which joint should influence it and how much and when and where.  Importing DAZ's clothing content is like that but ten times worse. Doesn't help that when I import that content from the Bridge it comes in without a Weight Tag for whatever reason.

Since these Bridges are apparently Open Source it'd be awesome if someone who knows something about this coding stuff could at the very least patch up the R23 ~ R25 version of it, but that's just wishful thinking...  Honestly, I'd settle for just having proper rigging export so figures actually reliably load in as they should.

Is there any hope for a Poser 11+ version of this?
I just want a Poser version of the Alien Queen, not to import this Alien Queen into Poser, seeing it's strictly made for Studio.

Yes, it can be downloaded by anyone. It's probably not easy to use, and I fear there are probably bugs. I haven't identified any with any certainty, otherwise I would have fixed them, but they are probably there. Once in a while the 'Automesh' dies on me, and I have never been in a position to work out why, and texture mapping seems to go screwy if 'De-Triangulate' is used on texture mapped facets, it's best to de-triangulate before texture mapping to be on the safe side.

I need to update the download file, it is quite a few years/iterations out of date. I can probably update that this week. The three manuals on the web page will give a flavour of how to use the program. There is a 44 page 'Quick Start Guide'. The 247 page 'Command Reference' is updated every time I add a command, otherwise I will forget how to use the commands!  There are a number of 'How To...'s in the 110 page User Guide including  a 'How To' on using the modeller to model for rendering packages and another on texture mapping using the original 'Current View' mapping (the current version adds box mapping to that method).

Unlike any current modeller, it's old fashioned enough to feel that vertex positions are important, and being and engineering program, vertices are called Nodes, and facets are called Elements, otherwise they are the same. The program can use all engineering finite element types, but 'Shell Elements' is the type needed for OBJ files. The program doesn't have a fixed scale. 1 unit could be one meter, one centimetre or 1 inch, you decide. Just stick to it! If you try to use the program, and run into problems, give me a yell, and I will try to help.

I avoid the stl import for the program, I now use the rather faster (and batch capable) STL-OBJ translator I wrote here: http://www.chestnutpens.co.uk/misc/stltoobj.html

I did start the programming for it in 2004, so it's been developed slowly over a long period of time. I have used it a lot, but it is rather out of date.

One mild irritation is that the Z direction is up, as was the case with all engineering programs I came across up to 2004. I've not been brave enough to introduce an option to have Y up. I shall have to look at it.

Regards,

Richard.

Thanks Guys.. It's funny with GTA modes.. some convcert really nicely, import into Blender (or 3ds Max) and export as .obj.. Someitmes though you need to break some of the geometry and delete the "damage" bits. Final setp is to import into Bryce, set all materials to flat gray and export as .obj,them import into DAZ (I fnd the final Bryce import/export really makes a difference when pulling it into DAZ

Kainjy said:

You didn't bought a DAZ product. It's a general 3D object (obj is the model file, mtl the materials settings and zprj is the Marvelous Designer original file).
You must import the file in DAZ Studio (FILE-->IMPORT) and convert it into a clothing (using Transfer Utility).

Look online for tutorial on how create clothing on DAZ. Or maybe ask here for details

Thanks, Kainjy, that looks interesting.  Will give it a try.  Very helpful.  

alainmerigot said:

These assets where made for marvelous designer (I think from the zprj extension), not for daz studio.

You can still use the objs by "importing" them from File>Import. You must find the proper scale (I do not remember if a scale for MD is predefined in the import form). The material is not guaranteed to be properly imported and definitely you will not be able to conform them on a genesis figure (at least not simply).

Ah, that's great - thank you.  It's not the end of the world, as I only bought a couple of things - and the Marvellous Designer label is clearly on the product description.  Rookie error.  Will give your suggestion a go.  No textures on product to worry about.  I'll just hit it with a shader once I've worked out the import.