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AJ,
Thank You, You put me in the right direction and I found it, there is a check box for 2 sided in the material settings... Thanks Again
Weird, when I import the lawnmower max starts eating up all my ram.
Nvm, managed to lag through it and started working fine again.
How big is your .obj.? Mine is 8,475 kb when I export it. There is a brief hit in RAM until it's converted to an ARCH mat which better manages textures. Hope that helps to start troubleshooting.
Nar it was more that I set up the smoothing groups which worded perfectly in Max, but it wouldn't import it in Daz. I sorted the issue in daz, with "smoothing angle" However it is not as awesome as in 3ds. But hey, cant expect Daz to be as good as 3ds.
I'm really liking what you got going here! It's really cool to know 3ds will import everything from daz. I'm definitely a fan of 'MentalRay' ! Vray was okay, but I always preferred MentalRay. (MR sooooo much better than 3Delight!!!!)
Everything I make for Daz is made in 3ds. But full sets with great detail is all in 3ds, stuff which I'll never export to Daz.
I'm working on that tutorial for DAZ and 3ds Max mental Ray. In the meantime, here are the two key places I learned what I know about SSS:
http://www.lamrug.org/resources/doc/sss-skin-tutorial.pdf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2FEET5EI5I
These are about the "Concept" of SSS - not specifically about DAZ and MR.... That YouTube video is where I had the 'aha' moment.
Hope that helps someone out there
s
Bump.
It's christmas break now so I have some time to work on this again!
I now have a decent looking subsurface material in max and used multi/sub-map to apply the textures to my daz character.
A few new problems have arisen:
-the multi/sub-map option in mental ray only has 20 material ID slots available (the exported maps require 26)
-the effects of the SS scattering have diminished or become non existent with the textures applied to the 'overall diffuse coloration'
EDIT: I was able to confirm that subsurface works when I have my maps placed properly... had to crank a light up to 10,000 lumens though not sure if that is normal.
You can set the number of sub materials in the upper right of the multi-sub object material.
As you assign the materials you'll want to use a glass-like material for the cornea and tear and an architectural mat for the iris and pupil (you don't want sss on those)
I've had difficulty with the overall diffuse material myself. Here's what I've found, but not an expert as I've said: Assigning a weight map to to the diffuse weight combines with the diffuse color to help the under sss effects to be seen. Hope this simple diagram helps. Here are links for the ones I use or you can create your own. If you look in the M5 directory, his character ships with these maps.
http://www.daz3d.com/shop/interjection-surface-injections-for-daz-studio
Again, I hope this helps... it's not easy but the power and possibilities are amazing once mastered.
Ok, thanks for the info.
I realized mental ray's Sub-Map multi material only allows for 20 slots while the standard multi/sub-object material is up to 1000.
The reason I changed from the multi/sub-object to multi/sub-map was because the sub-object material that imported with the .obj from daz was lagging up my viewports in max for some reason.
I'll probably just try to join some of the textures in photoshop for now.
Also .... You only need six core maps:
Eye
Face
Torso
Limbs
Mouth
Lash
You should be able to use instances of those five for all 26 slots - that's what I do. But I have a beast of a machine.
Did you ever give this script a shot - if the mutli sub from DAZ is in material slot one, it will build out the multi-sub with instances
http://sdrv.ms/PnVDMQ
Wow. I was doing everything manually forgot about the scripts.... LOL Well at least I leaned a few things from that.
http://i.imgur.com/x5LiF.jpg - Are your textures merged in one file for the SSS slots? The only way I could figure it out was to make a mult/sub-map and add everything manually like in daz (way too tedious and only 20 slots)
http://i.imgur.com/Apjl9.jpg - This is my SSS and bump result so far
Your script worked great in converting the materials to arch and design but the SSS script gives me a diffuse error 19
UPDATE: I'm starting to get better results now... render is so much faster than DAZ lol and way more control
http://i.imgur.com/21S5x.png - before
http://imgur.com/EbavM - after (still have to make specular and sss maps)
As an additional resource for those going from 3D Studio Max to DAZ Studio i have two tutorials that may be of some use.
3D Model Conversion Tutorial:
http://www.mediafire.com/view/?adtf0812j6py43i
This was written to aid those who want to convert models that are not native to DS or Poser
If an experianced 3DSM user wants to offer additional advice for what is covered there or show how 3DSM can be used to do more of the work then please do as I could only share what I know.
For those who want to package their own items either for personal use or to distribute for free or for purchase but are not 100% clear on how to set everythign up right
Dealing with Zipped Poser content:
http://www.mediafire.com/?oqcf29kmigzd3gk
If Mediafire shows you the PDF online instead of a download button, there is a green Download button in the upper right of the screen.
Hey bohemian, do you pose your characters in daz before coming into max?
I've been experimenting with the rigging tools in max but am wondering the best practice in getting smooth skin morphs when bending the limbs. Right now I've been playing with skin morph modifier and morph angle gizmo but I'm still a noob at moving vertices.
Would I be able to align the vertices from my rigged model in max to a posed mesh imported from daz?
Since daz has all the morphs already it should be possible to make use of them.
First of all, I want to say what a relief it was to find this thread!
I'm a seasoned Max user and fairly competent with DAZ. My only weakness in Max 2013 has been with rigging. I've worked through the Digital Tutors Max/Motionbuilder tutorials and have learned a great deal but have one odd problem I was hoping someone could help with.
I've imported my supersuit genesis fbx character file without a problem, materials come in fine, the figure looks great in the viewport. When I render however, a second larger character mesh appears in the render (off axis lying on his back) without materials as well as odd objects around the hands. I apologize as I can't upload pictures at the moment, but it appears like the fingertips exploded out. I assumed these to maybe be bones or helper objects but even after hiding and even deleting all bones and helpers they still appear in the render. Only after deleting the "genesis.shape" do they disappear, but obviously so does my character. It does mean though that these oddities are somehow built in to my genesis mesh despite not being able to see them as oddities in the viewport. I'm stumped and can't find anything of the like about it by googling the web.
Has anyone had anything similar to this problem? I've been using vray as my renderer and haven't thought to try MR simply bc it doesn't seem to be a renderer issue. But who knows, I'll give it a whirl after reading how MR seems to be the popular renderer here.
Thanks for any and all help!
Awesome resources this will be most useful indeed
Thank you Mattymanx :)
Hey Cobalin, I'm not really sure what's going on here but I've found that sometimes my character would snap back to that oversized laying on the back pose sometimes too. This was after I've skinned and rigged the bones. It only happened if I applied a reset xform and removed it from the stack later. Probably not what you are facing though.
Alternatively, have you tried importing as .obj instead of fbx? I've had better results this way.
StreetFreak,
I've got it solved, and thanks for your suggestions! The figure you described, gigantic and lying on it's back, is exactly what I was seeing in the vray renders. I have no idea why it's rendering when it's not in the viewport, but the solve was to export from daz as a Collada file (.dae) as for some reason the fbx had many bugs. I tried various export settings to no avail, and then tried the .dae and viola, the Collada imported to Max flawlessly.
As for the exploded out fingertips, I found out there were displacement maps that the fbx export attached to various maps. The Collada file doesn't do that so again it seems to be the import profile of choice, but thought I'd share in case others have weird jaggedy odd geometry in their renders.
One thing I still need help with is the supersuit multi-material as it comes in to Max. The Multi-mat has 278 materials which makes for a hell of a thing to navigate around in the slate editor. I tried running the supersuit script and I see that it consolidates something from the calculation window, I'm just not exactly sure what its consolidating. After running the script there are still 278 standard materials on the Multi-mat. I would like to find something that can identify that there are basically 4 standard materials used in 100 instances in that Multi-mat and condense it down to a Multi-mat with the 4 standard materials. Is there a way to do this? Have I missed something?
For now I've been selecting polygons, hitting "select ID" to have the whole group selected, and then I assign a new material and basically build a new multi- material as I go over the whole suit's logical pieces. Thanks again for any help!
Probably best wait for bohemian to help with that... I've only used his script for converting the daz materials to mental ray materials.
By the way, since you seem to be more experienced than me in max (I've only started in october) would you have any tips in setting up my imported daz character for animation?
So far I went through the DT tutorials for character rigging and am getting the hang of it. I've found it almost impossible to get good deformations using the rig I made with that tutorial though. I tried weight painting a lower poly version on the character but still the envelopes were just far too inaccurate.
Currently I am planning to use the rig that imports with the daz .obj since it deforms great in max.
I'm also getting the hang of cloth and hair modifiers - do you think I will run into any major problems going into something like this?
Any insight would be awesome
I can relate to your headaches with the deformations, to get around this I've been animating my genesis characters in Daz using the animate2 plugin and then sending them over to Motionbuilder to do the cleanup as it has the best control system for animation layers and visualization. When the animation is nailed down then I send it to Max for materials tweaking and rendering. I have also been sending Genesis to Motionbuilder in it's base T-pose, either without animation or sometimes with just facial expressions, and applying mocap data (.bvh files) to them which can then be tweaked and sent to Max for rendering.
I've found Max to be difficult for the animation part, but I've got the knack of Motionbuilder down in just this past week and find it quite enjoyable. If you google "Motionbuilder speed tutorials" you should get the youtube links for a series by TheCGBro that go over this workflow. There's also a new DT series that covers Motionbuilder to Max workflow that's helpful too.
I hope this helps!
Sorry all - for some reason I stopped getting notified when someone posts. I guess the notification expires if you don't post regularly to the thread.
Cobalin...
Yes, the supersuit is an issue in Max - First you have to run this script
http://sdrv.ms/XEmuYO
before consolidating. The first step is to create instances of the materials and this script attempts to do that but it's far from perfect. If you know anything about Maxscript and think you can improve it, that'd be great for the community.
s
Thanks Bohemian...I haven't had a chance yet to try the full method out, but look forward to giving it a go on this next pass of rendering.
I'm glad you got your messaging sorted, I was wondering if you had abandoned the thread! I do have an off topic question that I'm hoping you can answer and that is to help me understand how the platinum membership works. With this latest release and the improved workflows involving Daz characters, I am building my library up and understand that there are nice price breaks with the membership. I've probably spent $200 already in getting a solid base started but am starting to think the membership route may be the way to go. I can find little to no information about it and was hoping you could fill in some blanks.
- Can anyone have access to the membership or is an invited kind of thing? Cant find where to sign up voluntarily.
- Are discounts given on all items or just certain items at random times, and are they worth it in your opinion?
- I thought I read somewhere that its $30/mo, is that correct?
Thanks for all of your help!
David
Hiya...
You can join here:
http://www.daz3d.com/platinum-club
Yes, I highly recommend it. You can get tons of content and they are constantly having sales on things that aren't $1.99. Don't know what your end game is, but mine is game development, and with an Indie $500 license you can use the 3d models themselves in a game which is why I constantly get anything that comes out for 1.99... in 3ds Max I can alway modify the objects, resurface, and for gaming your going to have to reduce the poly count as well.
For instance, I find it amazing an excellent model like this http://www.daz3d.com/gis-orion (and hundreds other like it) is only $2. Watch for any DAZ Jack Tomalin pairings. I have found the whole GIS series very useful.
Hope that helps. And I'm almost finished with some video tutorials I've been working on (finally!)
Steve
You know, it was maybe 4 seconds after hitting "post reply" that I noticed the giant platinum banner above that now outlines all of the info I had been looking for.....ahhh sweet Murphy's law.
I thank you for answering though, and will have to look into the GIS collection you mentioned.
I'm excited to hear about any tutorials, much of what I find as it pertains to DAZ animation is incredibly weak and unhelpful. My current project has come to a grinding halt as my Collada exports are doing some very odd things when they come in to Max now. They were behaving fine but for some reason now the clothing is all irregularly shaped, hair is resized and a mile away from the models head despite being parented, and even my BVH workflow in Motionbuilder no long functions properly.
I read an older post of yours I believe that warned to make sure morphs were dialed in before applying clothing. I made a custom morph in Z-brush which I applied to a Genesis model without a hitch, and as instructed, applied clothing afterwards. I am wondering if it has to do with my custom morph, but I'll be stuck troubleshooting until I can figure it out. If I get things working again, I'll be sure to post the fix!
I'm beginning to think it might just be easier to bring a Daz figure into Max with no rigging whatsoever and rig it up with Max's Biped to gain more control and ensure proper fbx translations. What a headache!
Let us know when your tutorials are ready! Thank you again :)
Hiha C -
Made real good progress on the tutorials this weekend, so should be posting soon. Have to learn the new version of Adobe Captivate on top of everything else.
I am moving to your option of no rigging whatsoever as well - The frustrations of FBX are boundless. Though I am going with CAT - I really really like the animation and walk cycle layers it provides. I've had better luck with BVH as well. Here's a CAT Rig I'm working on. I've name the bones exactly as the Genesis bones so that means I can copy and paste the weight maps which are decent. Just have to recreate the join deformations which I was going to do anyway to incorporate muscle bulges, etc.
As soon as the rig is complete I'll post it, without the Genesis character of course for licensing reason- you'll have attach your own to the rig.
It's good to have other people out there who are going this route. Few of us it seems.
s
I was just going through the DT series "Max to Motionbuilder" where they feature the CAT rig, I just don't know much about it. Could you tell
me why it's useful? The tutor uses it to rig a robot and I was curious if it was better for mechanical creations as opposed to humans.
I've modeled a transforming robot attached below (work in progress...he needs a head) and have been wondering the best way to rig him up. I was looking at Mixamo auto rigs but I'd be willing to CAT rig him, especially if you've got a template. Just let me know, I'm all ears!
Cobalin...
Your model looks awesome!
After my research, I decided to go with CAT mainly because of the workflow options. I really like the ease in which you can easily keyframe and switch between FK and IK. The blending modes and *especially* the masking of rig parts for me is really intuitive and incredibly powerful. This tutorial from DT is what sold me:
http://www.digitaltutors.com/11/training.php?pid=575
My understanding is that CAT really excels in non-standard rigs as well as biped. Checkout all the prebuilt rigs and options.
I'm not quite done with the rig - Tonight when I get home from work I will post it as is and if you want to play with it as is, that's cool. I won't have time to finish until this weekend - I want to add some hand controllers similar to what's available in DAZ.
Glad you're doing this - I look forward to sharing knowledge.
Steve
Wow I'm so glad you guys are experimenting with max rigs now... awesome work too by the way.
@bohemian: I've completed the DT tutorial rigging for production and created a rig for Genesis, weight painting was a mess though.
It must be possible to copy the weights from the daz dummy skeleton to the 3ds max bones right? (as long as you rename the
bones?) And I'm guessing recreating muscle bulges can be done with some kind of skin wrap or creating them manually in a
program like zBrush? I suppose I'll wait patiently for your tutorial as it seems you are covering most of my main questions.
@Cobalin: Holy tits. Does that model transform back to a fully animatable car?! I've looking at some auto rigging tutorials (nothing like
transformers) so that is pretty amazing.
Also the rigging for production tutorial I saw covered IK-FK blending and some hand controllers but nothing like the intuitivity of DAZ.
My robot is finished and I'll be waiting to experiment with whatever you've got!! I'm just excited to finally find some people with the same interests to talk and share this stuff with. I think I bore my wife to death with tech talk.
@streetfreak: The bot started as a model of my car (2011 Ford Explorer) for a separate project where I needed to make it fly (see below). Then I used it's parts and pieces along with some parts from the DAZ cyborg 4.0, as well as bits from an Optimus Prime model from free3dmodels.com and threw this guy together. The magic seems to be in the texturing and lighting ala HDRI with vray. As he's not currently rigged, he doesn't truly "transform" sadly, but with a little after effects trickery, some camera blur, some extreme close-ups of unidentifiable metallic objects moving around, he appears to tansform just fine.
Thanks for the positive feedback!
Try this...weld the vertices...then recalculate the normals at 50%....that should do it!
:-)
Here's the Genesis CAT Rig I've been working on. It's not complete. I still need to wire up the parameters to the Hand Controller.
http://sdrv.ms/RXqLmS
Notes:
1) It's based on the FBX skeletal markers exported from DAZ so hopefully importing animation should be consistent. Hopefully
2) All the bones are named exactly the same using a Hub structure as best to the Genesis figure I could. suggestions always welcome. That means you can save the Weight map from Genesis, then apply it to the CAT Rig skinned Genesis character. I've had no problem with this. Again, I can't include the Genesis figure itself here for licensing reasons. I have started a tutorial on this but can't finish until the weekend. I think this is huge not having to do the weight painting.... the one on Genesis is already really pretty good.
3) As for joint deformations - ah, that's an issue, but here's what I'm going to try this weekend:
- One joint at a time, I'm going to export an obj genesis figure with as much of deformation (fbx's seem to lose the deformation)I can using existing dials and morphs
- In applying a joint deformation, you can pick an existing morph - I'll point at the exported Genesis morph explained above, then tweak it from there.
Theoretically that should reduce the amount of work need in creating deformations. In general, DAZ does a pretty good job exported as an obj, but I want to add a slight bicep flex when the elbow is bended, etc, as much as possible.
Hope all this makes sense. I appreciate all the community help we are mustering up here. I think we're all closer to hammering out a cleaner pipeline giving the current state of tools available.
steve