I don't see the export and import options in your posts, is there an attachment missing maybe?

What are your settings for the OBJ export from Blender and import into DS?

and here is my DS import option (ignore the caling please)

Can confirm there is UV mapping done in Blender.  

here are my Blender3D export options.  I'll do an import options screen capture in my next post

Yes, you can access your own content on multiple machines - obviously only if it is just you that are accessing it. If you were not allowed to do this then render-rental services would not be able to exist for Daz.

There will be a few issues with this, depending on how the "cloud drive" is accessed. If it is a pure internet based shared location then you'll have speed issues with seeking and loading times greatly increased. If it's one that "syncs" between devices (so that the same files are physically downloaded to both hard drives) then that will avoid the slowdown. You'll likely still have issues relating to the config or inner workings of the cloud drive - for example "One Drive" has been known to trip-up a few forum posters in the past with what it decides to keep or delete on your own machine.

Technically this would mean that if you install it on one machine then it would become avaialble to both machines that share that location as a Content Directory.

The other issue to handle is "Smart Content"/Metadata which is stored on the CMS database and so separate from the physical folder. I know that not everyone likes or uses that but it does add another element to consider. I have seem some people that also put the CMS location on a shared drive to have both machines accessing that. To me, that sounds a little dangerous and could lead to database corruption unless you ensure that only one machine accesses the database at one time. For myself, I am not using a cloud drive but instead a shared network drive on a NAS to access my content on both my Mac and Windows PC - but I have separate CMS instances for each machine. This has it's own set of pros and cons. I can install content once on one machine and then it is immediately available on the other. However, to insert the Smart Content on the second machine I have to use a script to import the DSX file of the new products. I have one to bulk-import these but it is still less than ideal to do this in a quick and convenient manner.

FSMCDesigns said:

myotherworld said:

Thank you both,I will give it a try and see how it goes. At least now I know it won't be a complete waste of time. Thanks for letting me know, have a great week.

Please post your results. I don't have the latest version of DS, but in my years of trying NONE of the FBX figures I have tried to import have worked at all. The mesh is usually distorted and broken and there is usually no rigging, so it will be interesting to see if DAZ have finally fixed FBX import. I know in the past carrara did a great job of importing it.

FBX had some extensive work recently, so previous experience isn't really applicable.

myotherworld said:

Thank you both,I will give it a try and see how it goes. At least now I know it won't be a complete waste of time. Thanks for letting me know, have a great week.

Please post your results. I don't have the latest version of DS, but in my years of trying NONE of the FBX figures I have tried to import have worked at all. The mesh is usually distorted and broken and there is usually no rigging, so it will be interesting to see if DAZ have finally fixed FBX import. I know in the past carrara did a great job of importing it.

Ron Knights said:

Richard. thanks for the reply.

I've got to the point in my life where I get easily lost by some things. I just can't cope with the way DAZ organizes their content.

That's why I've started a total reinstall of all my content.

I have placed every item into its own folder. I've divided everything into categories.

If every product has its own content directory then that wil make loading massively slow - the advice is to have no more than ten content  directories, as when loading a file (e.g. a texture or morph) DS has to check the relative path in each content directory in turn until it finds a hit or runs out of places to look; for content that is well down the list that will be time consuming. 

I will install all the content from scratch. I won't use DIM any more.

And I won't join Premiere because I don't want to be saddled with DAZ's way of organizing things.

If you are using file locations to organise then metadata and categorisation are irrelevant to you; if you are in fact using categories  then you need to update the metadata only to access the exclusive premier content (the sahpes for the Daz name 9 characters) and that will not interfere with your own user data - just keep it in its own top-level folder rather than Default and you can ignore the Daz organisation..

In my exp. yes, most of the FBX figures rigged in Blender can be posed well in DS. You need to import them with the latest DS version.

However, not like Genesis figures, FBX figures don't have any corrective morphs for joint rotations, so if you need them, you have to make them yourself ~~

I'm trying to load in Daz Studio the Lit Brazier model from 'Enchanted'.

I have imported it into Blender where it looks fine and then exported it. When I import it into Daz, there is something that looks like a card that the flames are drawn onto. See attached screenshots so you can see what I'm talking about.

How do I export it so that the 'card' is not there?

Now to wait while it updates metadata.

Ron Knights said:

I was surprised that someone thought I had faulty logic.

Your real world example is a case of that specifically hinges on the idea that in the real world (most) clothing comes in a limited number of set sizes, and how the available choice of sizes was generally unsuitable for women. This is of no relevance to Daz Studio, which has functions specifically to resize clothing to whichever figure it is fitted to.

Even as a man, I can tell you as much as, when I was younger and skinnier, I could have a *right* pain finding trousers that actually fitted, because my combination of waist and leg length was a ratio such that that even the "long" cuts of trousers in my waist size were really too short. I had one much coveted set of jeans which I found in a charity store (for Americans, I think you need to read "thrift store") that actually came with a 35" leg in my waist size, but which I was never able to find another match for.

These are not problems that exist in Dazland.

Do I think it would be funny to put bikini "armour" on a chubby succubus? Bam.

A punk outfit on a busty halfling? Bam.

A bunny girl outfit on a literal rabbit? After I'd made a new auto-fit clone, bam.

None of these clothes originally came in the shape and sizes of the figures they're now fitted to, but Daz Studio has functionality for that. (Not necessarily always flawless functionality, but it at least *tries*).

It's one thing to argue that clothing isn't the style you want, but ultimately all clothing in DS only comes in the one shape and size (that of the base figure shape of a generation) and on any other character shape, it has been resized and reproportioned.

If you read the topic of this thread, it refers to how much needless serching we need to do. That problem is easily fixed by giving men and women their own categories in Genesis 9 clothing.

I would certainly like to see more categorisation in G9 assets, and I think it was a mistake (even if cross-compatibility existed on a functional level) to not still have that categorisation from the start, because the indexing and metadata is independent from what will actually work. (e.g. with a small number of exceptions for expressions or poses that have been set up *very* weirdly, the "male" and "female" poses of previous generations will absolutely load on the other, although as with all poses might need fine tuning).

But "would it be nice to have more categorisation" is a separate issue to whether in the real world a piece of clothing in a man's size would be baggy on a woman.

rnollman said:

I am working with someone who created a scene with a set of objects in Blender. It was a 2D image that she converted to a set of 3D objects in Blender. She sent me the OBJ and MTL files (see attached image of the imported object and files in DAZ and the Bryce render where I was able to access individual objects and texture them). I was able to import the OBJ and MTL files into Bryce with the colors in place as a grouped object. I was able to ungroup it and move individual objects around and apply textures to them. However, I have no idea how to do the same thing when importing to Blender. There must be some simple way to import the Blender files into DAZ so that I can access the individual objects. I reached out to the person who did the conversion in Blender. I am not sure if she knows how to import Blender files into DAZ.

A new option of Read Objects has been added to DS 2025 Alpha which can read objects separately from an OBJ file into DS. You can try your process in there.

Save a Scene after importing the OBJ, then open it with your DS 4.20 ~

barbult said:

I do it completely differently. No need to export or import or copy and paste materials or parent to another object or null.

1. Load the incorrectly centered prop in the scene.
2. Select the prop in the Scene pane or viewport.
3. Select the Geometry Editor tool. Right click in the viewport and select Geometry Selection>Select All.
4. Select the Mesh Grabber tool. Open the Tool Settings pane. Set the Falloff Type to Const.
5. Use the Mesh Grabber gizmo to drag the prop so that the place you want it to be centered is over the 0,0,0 world origin (where the axes cross in the viewport).
6. Select the Joint Editor tool. Open the Tool Settings pane. Set Origin X,Y, and Z to zero. Set End Point X and Z to zero. Leave the End Point Y value alone or adjust it visually in the viewport. (Values may need to vary for props that don't stand upright and rotate around their center Y axis.)
7. Save as Figure/Prop Asset with a new name.

(I hope I documented all my steps correctly. Richard, do you see any flaw to this procedure? It seems to work well for my usage. Of course if you don't have Mesh Grabber, it wouldn't work. I don't know anything about the Premier version, but I would expect it to work.)

It's a fairly neat way barb !  You were making a change in terms of vertex positions by using MG while leaving XYZ values intact. Brilliant !

I misunderstood what OP wanted (the 2nd part of "always zeroed"... though I still don't think there's literal benefit from keeping solid zeroed Transforms for personal use ~~  )... then you enlightened me.

Well, if one has no Mesh Grabber / Premier's Geo-Sculptor, one can :  1) After Centering the Prop by using Align or Center It script, export it to OBJ, Ctrl + E;  2) Update Base Geometry... ! (Vertex postions or Full); 3) Modify rigging values.

I do it completely differently. No need to export or import or copy and paste materials or parent to another object or null.

1. Load the incorrectly centered prop in the scene.
2. Select the prop in the Scene pane or viewport.
3. Select the Geometry Editor tool. Right click in the viewport and select Geometry Selection>Select All.
4. Select the Mesh Grabber tool. Open the Tool Settings pane. Set the Falloff Type to Const.
5. Use the Mesh Grabber gizmo to drag the prop so that the place you want it to be centered is over the 0,0,0 world origin (where the axes cross in the viewport).
6. Select the Joint Editor tool. Open the Tool Settings pane. Set Origin X,Y, and Z to zero. Set End Point X and Z to zero. Leave the End Point Y value alone or adjust it visually in the viewport. (Values may need to vary for props that don't stand upright and rotate around their center Y axis.)
7. Save as Figure/Prop Asset with a new name.

(I hope I documented all my steps correctly. Richard, do you see any flaw to this procedure? It seems to work well for my usage. Of course if you don't have Mesh Grabber, it wouldn't work. I don't know anything about the Premier version, but I would expect it to work.)

If you don't want to export/import you can also just parent them to a null once they are zeroed and use that for positioning.

For this kind of things it is advised to always keep a "daz rig" version of the figure, before converting to rigify or mhx. On the "daz rig" version don't merge geografts either. If you do that then yes you can import extra morphs on the figure or the geograft, using "import custom morphs".

https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/wiki/Setup/Morphs

p.s. Or of course you can always import extra morphs the blender way, that's exporting the shape as obj then merging as new shapekey.

shape keys > menu > join as shapes

The brute ignorance & force way is to put the prop at world 0,0,0, save the obj, re-import, copy materials from the original to the new prop and then save as a scene asset. As I said, Brute Ignorance & Force, and long winded in a one-off occasion, but it will force the prop into the zero position and zero it for you.

Regards,

Richard

felis said:

If you model an object as a car you would have it as one object, giving it different surfaces (for materials) and probably also different vertex groups for rigging (like opening a door).

If you import different objects and want them positioned relatively to each other, I think I would give them all the same origin, then they should be imported with the same relativity in DS.

And I agree, it would be nice if Daz could import an obj as different objects.

Collada (DAE) has worked better for me than OBJ. I’ve exported DAE files from both 3ds Max and Blender without any issues, and all objects import as separate pieces. I usually apply the UV mapping in 3ds Max before export.

To get something at world center, you can create a primitive plane and align that object to the center of the plane on the X and Z axis and to the bottom of that plane on the Y axis if you prefer to keep the aligned prop over the ground.

Then, if you want to save it, you can export the prop as OBJ, import it back, apply the material and save it if it's not rigged (if it's rigged, maybe updating the geometry could work but I don't remember doing it).

I would avoid saving over the original version because doing so will likely break something and you will likely end with the prop loaded improperly when used with the rest of the product.