latego said:

mjc1016 said:

Sketchup is not conducive to 'clean' modeling.

By the time you have ended fixing geometry, ngons and edge flows you realize that it would have been faster to model it from start in Blender.

:lol:

mjc1016 said:

Sketchup is not conducive to 'clean' modeling.

By the time you have ended fixing geometry, ngons and edge flows you realize that it would have been faster to model it from start in Blender.

exported from sketchup as an obj imported into Carrara and rendered

Total time - maybe 5 minutes

Nope...never exported anything from SU that didn't need work...usually lots of hole patching. Sketchup is not conducive to 'clean' modeling.

Anybody know of a way to import from google sketch up that ain't... well "sketchy"
I've exported all ways and imports are never good.

Thanks

Hello! I do this quite often, depending on the SketchUp version you are running on, but basically what you need is a plugin called export to DXF or STL, in my case Do the following:

You need to make components on every models you do, Carrara recognises all the components made in SketchUp and this is cool as you will assign materials on every component.

When you export your models, choose the triangulate option, and the .dxf file extension, this will be helpful if you need to convert any component to Vertex Modeller.

Will bring some step by step samples to illustrate what I have said.

Cheers!

Otto

mjc1016 said:

You'll need to sign up at Sketchucation...

This is the importer I use.
http://sketchucation.com/pluginstore?pln=obj_importer

They've got a ton of plugins there....many of them very nice.

And the obj exporter....
http://sketchup-onigiri.jimdo.com/sketchup-plugins/su2objmtl/

excellent, thanks!

You'll need to sign up at Sketchucation...

This is the importer I use.
http://sketchucation.com/pluginstore?pln=obj_importer

They've got a ton of plugins there....many of them very nice.

And the obj exporter....
http://sketchup-onigiri.jimdo.com/sketchup-plugins/su2objmtl/

Kulay Wolf said:

I did not get dazyneland as it was free with purchase not free. Will it ever be free again?

My pc coupon will not cover it now.

mjc1016 said:

StratDragon said:

First off has anyone done this?
Are the tools between Studio and Sketchup good enough to get some figures into an architectural mockup or did anyone have to resort to 3rd party plugins?
I need to make about a dozen unique figures and have a designer import them in. They've been using it for about 2 days which is 2 days longer than I ever have.

thanks in advance.

I have a free obj importer/exporter for Sketchup...so I never tried anything else.

But I go the other way around, most of the time...

the only one I found was like $159.00
do you have a link?
thanks in advance!

Yes, morphs and poses of Genesis characters do transfer to Carrara.

I'm also a former Daz Studio user that recently "migrated" to Carrara. I feel at home here.

natclarke said:

I am considering purchasing Carrarra to use in the apps I develop. Can it do the following:

1. I have a indie developer licence for Daz, Are the models in Carrara included that create the 2d images

2. Can I create my own hair for my models and load back to Daz?

3. Can I make my own outfits in Carrara? I also use photoshop?

4. Can I alter the materials?

5. Will it work on Mac Osx 10.10.2

6. If it is suitable for my needs as app developer. I am not sure what to purchase:

7. If it can't do what I am looking for, what does, simply and Cheaply?
8. Can Carrara import a 2d image For example I have an image of orangutan that I would like to put on a model drawn in Photoshop. I would the. Draw back and sides of model to complete
Thanks Natalie

Sounds to me what you're seeking is game specific models with flat 2D style toon shader effect.

Yes Carrara is more than capable for game developer modeling needs. Lots of Unity users use Carrara to build game characters and props.

Modeling in Carrara is very easy and has plenty of options. You can do simple box style modeling (buildings and furniture) and sculpt organic stuff too (simple trees rocks animals and terrains).

If the goal is using 3D characters in game, you also need much lower resolution than typical Daz Studio characters. Carrara has basic decimating tools to lower mesh density, important for game app devs.

If you need to make your own characters from scratch, Carrara rigging is also very easy to learn and exports well to most game engines.

Hair - don't think you're looking for fibermesh hair. If you're talking about Daz hair, yes, you will still get to use your Daz hair in Carrara and fit them to your Daz characters. If you want to make your own polygon mesh hair, totally possible and fun to do in Carrara.

Texture workflow, Carrara works fine with Photoshop, good support for many popular texture formats. You also get to 3D or 2D paint bump and specular maps that will be useful for basic game app dev use.

Carrara's UV unwrapping capability is also very important for game app devs. Better than SketchUp free version.

The only "all in one" tool out there that can do more than Carrara for the same price is Blender. But Blender is many times harder to learn for 3D beginners.

Carrara also has one of the most helpful community in the 3D world :)

StratDragon said:

First off has anyone done this?
Are the tools between Studio and Sketchup good enough to get some figures into an architectural mockup or did anyone have to resort to 3rd party plugins?
I need to make about a dozen unique figures and have a designer import them in. They've been using it for about 2 days which is 2 days longer than I ever have.

thanks in advance.

I have a free obj importer/exporter for Sketchup...so I never tried anything else.

But I go the other way around, most of the time...

First off has anyone done this?
Are the tools between Studio and Sketchup good enough to get some figures into an architectural mockup or did anyone have to resort to 3rd party plugins?
I need to make about a dozen unique figures and have a designer import them in. They've been using it for about 2 days which is 2 days longer than I ever have.

thanks in advance.

Kyoto Kid said:

...I'd enter this one, however really not good at modelling or altering content. to meet that requirement.

Here's another quick example I made up using a couple of items from sketchup..

all I did was drag and drop some shaders that come with Carrara and put them onto the opera house and bridge

I did a bit of postwork on the image to blur the background.. and it was fun in making it ;-)

I found some really cool props and models on one of the free 3d model sites. The only problem is that some of them are created for other programs and they either will not open in DAZ or look like crap in it.

So I am looking for some software that can export the files to a format that DAZ can use and can maybe add some textures or what not.

So far I have downloaded Blender and Sketchup make, both are free. I have not installed them yet because I am in the process of doing some PC organizing (to many files spread out in different locations). I am not sure if either of those will work. But I am open to suggestions.

Bruce

Patience55 said:

mdbruffy said:

Patience55 said:

wancow said:

mdbruffy said:

scatha said:

Booleans to my knowledge require a lot of cleanup...

Wouldn't it be easier to use texture naps? Then you can put windows wherever you want- as many as you want- and you can use the texture maps to make your light maps- at least in Poser.

I like the control it offers me. the way I do it, you can zoom in very close and even insert an interior...

So far as cleanup, there's no reason for my models to be subdivided in DS, so I'm not at all concerned with that. They're hard surfaces so fillet or chamfer on sharp edges suffices IMHO.

I'm using Rhino, which is excellent for hard surface modelling, not so much for organics

It's that D/S doesn't handle booleans very well ... esp. those created in Hexagon. There are some steps that can be used to fix how booleans are created in Hexagon but generally speaking, for booleans => NO.

Using texture maps for windows can work EXCEPT now in D/S4.8+, apparently with the new Iray renderer one will have some problems as light doesn't go through them.

It's a bit of work but my preferred method for making windows is to model them into the mesh. As long as the lines are there, one can select the face normals and "copy/paste/delete" to create removable windows. The glass itself normally needs a few extra tessellations to help keep the shape exact. Both Poser and D/S will add some smoothing to objects. While I definitely appreciate it that .obj files are included for items created in Sketchup, Blender, etc. they invariable need a fair bit of work to hold their shapes in D/S. It is not the people creating stuff, it is how the programs read each others codings or something like that. Some work in "layers" and Hexagon does not.
And then the staging programs [Poser or D/S or Carrara] each read all those files again differently. For eg. Poser loaded the .pz3 file with no issues. D/S, keeping this short, has some issues. Which is why I re-make things.

This is why I don't release the objs that Sketch-up creates. When I import a sketch-up obj into poser, I usually have to change it's orientation anyway and re-export it. It's that new obj that I release with my models.

It's appreciated. :-)

................

Links for STO 10c added, and also for the TNG Turbolift, thanks all :-)

You're welcome.

mdbruffy said:

Patience55 said:

wancow said:

mdbruffy said:

scatha said:

Booleans to my knowledge require a lot of cleanup...

Wouldn't it be easier to use texture naps? Then you can put windows wherever you want- as many as you want- and you can use the texture maps to make your light maps- at least in Poser.

I like the control it offers me. the way I do it, you can zoom in very close and even insert an interior...

So far as cleanup, there's no reason for my models to be subdivided in DS, so I'm not at all concerned with that. They're hard surfaces so fillet or chamfer on sharp edges suffices IMHO.

I'm using Rhino, which is excellent for hard surface modelling, not so much for organics

It's that D/S doesn't handle booleans very well ... esp. those created in Hexagon. There are some steps that can be used to fix how booleans are created in Hexagon but generally speaking, for booleans => NO.

Using texture maps for windows can work EXCEPT now in D/S4.8+, apparently with the new Iray renderer one will have some problems as light doesn't go through them.

It's a bit of work but my preferred method for making windows is to model them into the mesh. As long as the lines are there, one can select the face normals and "copy/paste/delete" to create removable windows. The glass itself normally needs a few extra tessellations to help keep the shape exact. Both Poser and D/S will add some smoothing to objects. While I definitely appreciate it that .obj files are included for items created in Sketchup, Blender, etc. they invariable need a fair bit of work to hold their shapes in D/S. It is not the people creating stuff, it is how the programs read each others codings or something like that. Some work in "layers" and Hexagon does not.
And then the staging programs [Poser or D/S or Carrara] each read all those files again differently. For eg. Poser loaded the .pz3 file with no issues. D/S, keeping this short, has some issues. Which is why I re-make things.

This is why I don't release the objs that Sketch-up creates. When I import a sketch-up obj into poser, I usually have to change it's orientation anyway and re-export it. It's that new obj that I release with my models.

It's appreciated. :-)

................

Links for STO 10c added, and also for the TNG Turbolift, thanks all :-)

Patience55 said:

wancow said:

mdbruffy said:

scatha said:

Booleans to my knowledge require a lot of cleanup...

Wouldn't it be easier to use texture naps? Then you can put windows wherever you want- as many as you want- and you can use the texture maps to make your light maps- at least in Poser.

I like the control it offers me. the way I do it, you can zoom in very close and even insert an interior...

So far as cleanup, there's no reason for my models to be subdivided in DS, so I'm not at all concerned with that. They're hard surfaces so fillet or chamfer on sharp edges suffices IMHO.

I'm using Rhino, which is excellent for hard surface modelling, not so much for organics

It's that D/S doesn't handle booleans very well ... esp. those created in Hexagon. There are some steps that can be used to fix how booleans are created in Hexagon but generally speaking, for booleans => NO.

Using texture maps for windows can work EXCEPT now in D/S4.8+, apparently with the new Iray renderer one will have some problems as light doesn't go through them.

It's a bit of work but my preferred method for making windows is to model them into the mesh. As long as the lines are there, one can select the face normals and "copy/paste/delete" to create removable windows. The glass itself normally needs a few extra tessellations to help keep the shape exact. Both Poser and D/S will add some smoothing to objects. While I definitely appreciate it that .obj files are included for items created in Sketchup, Blender, etc. they invariable need a fair bit of work to hold their shapes in D/S. It is not the people creating stuff, it is how the programs read each others codings or something like that. Some work in "layers" and Hexagon does not.
And then the staging programs [Poser or D/S or Carrara] each read all those files again differently. For eg. Poser loaded the .pz3 file with no issues. D/S, keeping this short, has some issues. Which is why I re-make things.

This is why I don't release the objs that Sketch-up creates. When I import a sketch-up obj into poser, I usually have to change it's orientation anyway and re-export it. It's that new obj that I release with my models.

wancow said:

mdbruffy said:

scatha said:

Booleans to my knowledge require a lot of cleanup...

Wouldn't it be easier to use texture naps? Then you can put windows wherever you want- as many as you want- and you can use the texture maps to make your light maps- at least in Poser.

I like the control it offers me. the way I do it, you can zoom in very close and even insert an interior...

So far as cleanup, there's no reason for my models to be subdivided in DS, so I'm not at all concerned with that. They're hard surfaces so fillet or chamfer on sharp edges suffices IMHO.

I'm using Rhino, which is excellent for hard surface modelling, not so much for organics

It's that D/S doesn't handle booleans very well ... esp. those created in Hexagon. There are some steps that can be used to fix how booleans are created in Hexagon but generally speaking, for booleans => NO.

Using texture maps for windows can work EXCEPT now in D/S4.8+, apparently with the new Iray renderer one will have some problems as light doesn't go through them.

It's a bit of work but my preferred method for making windows is to model them into the mesh. As long as the lines are there, one can select the face normals and "copy/paste/delete" to create removable windows. The glass itself normally needs a few extra tessellations to help keep the shape exact. Both Poser and D/S will add some smoothing to objects. While I definitely appreciate it that .obj files are included for items created in Sketchup, Blender, etc. they invariable need a fair bit of work to hold their shapes in D/S. It is not the people creating stuff, it is how the programs read each others codings or something like that. Some work in "layers" and Hexagon does not.
And then the staging programs [Poser or D/S or Carrara] each read all those files again differently. For eg. Poser loaded the .pz3 file with no issues. D/S, keeping this short, has some issues. Which is why I re-make things.

...okay (gasp) finally got caught up with what's been happening on the current and the last model of this thread. Lots of good work and love some of the "true classics" I've seen. Alas, my modelling skills are....well... nothing to write home about, and never could get the hang of converting .3ds, GTA, and Sketchup models so they play nicely with Daz. So pretty much been sticking with commercial models and textured .objs, though do manage a bit of texture and simple kitbashing now and then..

A few samples to follow.