Saving primitives as a prop or group?

NoName99

I could swear I've done this before but can't get it to work right now.

I have 5 primitives I've resized and parented together.

How can I save this as a prop/group/figure so it shows up in my content library under?

I've tried SAVE AS> SUPPORT ASSET > FIGURE/PROP ASSETS, and it seems like it saves it, and an icon show up in content library, but when I load it into the scene, only 1 of the primitives shows up, and it is shaped incorrectly.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

Richard Haseltine

Try saving as Scene Assets, or try saving a Scene Subset, and not worrying about making assets.

NoName99

Richard Haseltine said:

Try saving as Scene Assets, or try saving a Scene Subset, and not worrying about making assets.

Thanks for the reply. That's how I've worked around it for now. I was hoping to be able to save it the right way though, for lack of a better phrase.

selias19

If you select the parent to all primitives and export the whole as obj then they will be "welded" together. With the import of your exported object they will be together and the material zones will have the names of the other primitives that were parented. Then you can save it as prop if you wish.

NoName99

selias19 said:

If you select the parent to all primitives and export the whole as obj then they will be "welded" together. With the import of your exported object they will be together and the material zones will have the names of the other primitives that were parented. Then you can save it as prop if you wish.

Thanks, I'm going to try this first thing tomorrow.

NoName99

That definitely does work exactly as you described.

The only catch is that now I lost the ability to rotate the sphere individually.

I've attached some screen caps of what I'm trying to do.

The first picture is the primitives separated from each other.

The second picture is the primitives assembled together.

I went ahead and welded the 2 plane primitives into an .OBJ using the method you described.

I also parented and grouped all the items together.

Right now, I can spin the "DroneSphere" on it's Y-axis to rotate the Blades like a helicopter.

But when I export it out as an .obj, I'm no longer able to rotate the Sphere individually.

Is there a way to export/import as an .obj while still being able to rotate the sphere?

I'm thinking this is probably something I should be doing in Hexagon, but I don't actually have that yet so was hoping it could be done in Daz.

*EDIT: With the 1 day 50% off sale, Hexagon is like $9. I spend more than that on coffee in 1 day. Point being that if I can't do this in Daz i may as well get Hex, provided there isn't a steep curve for something basic like this.

selias19

Yes, my method only creates a static prop. If you need moving parts then you have some rigging to do. Sorry, I cannot help you with that. I have some vague idea how to rig something (you need to create bones and these bones have to correlate with the moving parts). It's done with the joint editor and the tool options also with the geometry editor. But I canot help you with that. Maybe someone else can explain.

NoName99

No worries at all. Just learning how to import/export an .obj as a static prop was a big help to me, I had no idea how to do that and I can already see how useful it is.

Thank you so much.

NoName99

Just wanted to update this in case it comes up during a search.

I found these in the document center and they have been quite useful. Some of the procedures use older versions of Daz, but the concepts seem to still apply.

http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/userguide/creating_content/rigging/start