Blender to DAZ textures sometimes black
I have made a few textured object in Blender and most of the time they are OK.
Sometimes, although they look fine in the main view they come out completely black in the render. Recently I had a case where the texture was just about visible (very dark grey against black), even though it was bright and colourful in the main view.
It is all a bit random. Sometimes joining items in Blender fixes the problem. Sometimes joining objects causes the problem. Some items are fine.
I am pretty sure this isn't a lighting problem. I tried messing around with the normals (double or single normals, and reversing the normals, in Blender) but it doesn't help.
I am using DAE format to transfer the object but I think it is similar in OBJ.
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
224 S 200 W, Suite #250
Salt Lake City, UT 84101
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Have you tired loading the textures manually? What are the surface properties like Diffuse Colour, Specular Colour and Strength. Because Blander and Daz treats surfaces differently will have to tweak the surfaces anyway. I have never had the textures load automatically in Daz Studio from Blender when saved as an OBJ. Haven't tried Collada (DAE)
Depending on the lighting, the Ambient color is probably playing a big part in the 'problem'.
Under Surfaces, find the Ambient channel for the affected surface, then set the color to 255, 255, 255 (white) and the strength to 0. Then render.
Also Blender tends to put the Diffuse color at something other than 'white'...usually about 80% grey...or what it defaults to when you create the material. Same with Specular color.
Pete, it's actually pretty easy to get them to load...just make sure the obj, mtl and texture files are all in the same location. The obj/mtl combo doesn't do 'paths'...it is 'local' only. The only problem with that, is you have to move them anyway, or when you save out the item in DS or Poser format, the textures will probably be lost, if you try to package it up in a standard 'format', as the path info in the saved file will be specific (fixed) to the loading location, whereas if they are loaded from the standard folders, the path info will be 'relative' to the main content directory.
Thanks mjc for the info it never even crossed my mind. So MTL's don't do paths, right I will remember that one now, cheers.
If they do, they are fixed paths, too.
More often than not, they just list the texture file like sometexture.jpg, which pretty much means 'local' file.
Also in DS, you have to make sure that the Read Surfaces and Read Material Library options are checked on import, as it won't do it 'automatically' without those two being set 'on'.
Got you....copied and pasted, thanks again mjc.
Thanks to all. Loading it in as an OBJ and manually assigning textures seems to do the trick. Also need to mess around with scale and orientation, but hopefully once I find my feet that won't be too difficult.
Just one more question - once I am happy with my object, what is the best way to save it so that I can import it into different scenes? As an OBJ? DAZ scene or scene subset?
If you just want to use them yourself then Scene or Scene Subset will do fine. I was told the other day if you use Scene Subset then you don't need to use the "Merge" command, just drag and drop if you saved the item into your Content Library,