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Daz Studio to Poser: I guess I'm a newbie again!

3WC3WC Posts: 1,107
edited December 1969 in The Commons

I've been around the 3d community since about 2006 or so, and thought I had learned a few things. I've done some lurking on the forums, created a few freebies, and thought I was finally at the point where I could tackle a commercial project. It's not even a clothing item, it's a relatively simple collection of props (with bones for a few moving parts, so technically a character, actor, or figure, depending on your program).

Anyway, I've always worked in Daz Studio, but have done my fair share of text-hacking on cr2 files. Recently, though, I picked up Poser 9 cheap with a cyber Monday deal. I thought I would create in DS 4.6, then convert and test for Poser.

With Poser, though, I feel like I'm starting from scratch. I'll explain some of my issues and see if anyone can offer suggestions.

1. First of all, I have a .duf file in DS 4.6. I exported to a .cr2, which didn't work quite right. Some of the geometry was missing. Looking at the cr2 file in a text editor, it seemed that some things were missing. That was easy enough to fix, I just added it in manually in Notepad++, and resaved. But I'm still curious as to why DS export to CR2 is buggy like that.

2. The second problem I had was with materials. I think I did a passable job of tweaking materials in Poser, it just took a while. Again, more manual work.

3. Once I finally figured out how to resave my cr2 file in Poser (add to Library, not "Save As" or "Export"), it seems that something is different. It also saves a pmd and an xmp file. I know the pmd has something to do with morphs. Is it just the deltas? Because it appeared that the DS export had the deltas right within the cr2 file itself. But I have no idea what the xmp file is for. Is one methed preferable to another? Do I need those pmd and xmp files?

I guess those are the main issues for now. Any help is appreciated.

Comments

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,781
    edited December 1969

    1. Poser doesn't like it if there's geometry in a group that doesn't match one of the bones. This may not have been your issue, but it is a good way to have parts of a figure fail to load.

    3. The .pmd file is indeed the morph data. It should be OK for DS and Poser with a figure, but if you want to be safe go to Edit>General Preferences>Miscellaneous tab and turn off Use External Binary Morph Targets. You definitely want to avoid pmds if saving a prop with morphs, and if you want the item to load into DS.

    The .xmp file is Poser's version of metadata - it's purely informational, it isn't like DS' Smart Content, but there's no reason to remove it as far as I am aware.

  • 3WC3WC Posts: 1,107
    edited December 1969

    Richard, thanks for the info.

    On 1, however, even after exporting a duf as a cr2, it would load into DS with missing geometry. So it didn't seem to be a poser problem, it was the DAZ exporter.

    On looking at the raw text, some of the actors would have, for example:

    actor Button_3:1
    {
    storageOffset 0 0 0
    geomHandlerGeom 13 Button_03
    }
    actor Button_4:1
    {

    }

    So Button_3 would show up fine, but Button_4 would be invisible, as the info between the brackets came up missing. As I said, it was easy enough to insert that manually, but why is Daz's cr2 exporter omitting that?

  • frank0314frank0314 Posts: 14,048
    edited December 1969

    You can just delete the xmp files. I usually delete all mine once I have everything saved out. It is not necessary for the functionality of DS or Poser. I really wish they wouldn't get generated. It's just one more thing I have to do to get a pack packaged up

  • 3WC3WC Posts: 1,107
    edited December 1969

    Frank0314 said:
    You can just delete the xmp files. I usually delete all mine once I have everything saved out. It is not necessary for the functionality of DS or Poser. I really wish they wouldn't get generated. It's just one more thing I have to do to get a pack packaged up

    Yeah, they just seem to be taking up space. I don't like extraneous files. DELETED!

  • 3WC3WC Posts: 1,107
    edited December 1969

    Ok, so I had my cr2 exported from DS 4.6, which I repaired in Notepad++. Then I opened the cr2 in Poser 9 and tweaked the materials, and wanted to resave the whole thing as a cr2 again. I turned off the external pmd, but the resulting cr2 file still only referred to a geometry file, with no deltas included. So again I did a text hack, I just copied the material sections from the Poser generated cr2 to the DS generated cr2 so that I had the new materials and the original morph deltas. Does that sound like it will work?

    But then another question. Let's call this:
    4. Poser also adds two actors: Goal:Center of Mass, and Center of Mass. DS doesn't include those in an export. Are they necessary?

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,781
    edited December 1969

    The centre of mass items are used by Poser's auto-balancing feature, DS doesn't have that and ignores them. They aren't necessary, but Poser will I think always add them on saving.

  • 3WC3WC Posts: 1,107
    edited December 1969

    Richard Haseltine said:
    The centre of mass items are used by Poser's auto-balancing feature, DS doesn't have that and ignores them. They aren't necessary, but Poser will I think always add them on saving.

    Good to know, thanks again.

  • TspiritTspirit Posts: 17
    edited December 1969

    Not sure but think this might help I found it while looking for a way to export my figure from 4.6 so I could
    use it in 3.1 daz saw your post so thought I would share this with you too. :>)
    Hugs Tenderspirit Hope it will work for you well. I have not done it yet as I wanted to share it with you
    before it got lost. hehe

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDYEvSb7jQs

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