[Released] OBJ Companion [Commercial]

marble

ManFriday said:

I don't know any timeframe about DS5 either, but I don't expect to get my hands on a copy in the next couple of months.

How much work it will be to get my plugins working on DS5, I cannot say until I have it and try. In many cases it might be a few adjustments here and there and they will work again in a day or two, so upgrading the plugins will be no major effort. But I can't say that for sure at this time.

Having said that, Daz Studio 4 will continue to be available and updated. Daz Studio 5 is not primarily not about new features; it is about bringing the technical base up to date. I expect my plugins to continue to work on Daz Studio 4 for a long time.

Hope this helps!

 

Well, what helps is you saying that you have not been given DS5 (or an alpha) to help you develop which suggests to me that we are still some way out from any DS5 announcement. I think that saying the DS4 will continue to work is beside the point - yes, I do expect it will still work but if DS5 is a dramatic upgrade (such as the afore-mentioned collaboration with Unity or somemething similar) then I think a lot of people will want to migrate.

But I am encouraged by your committment to updating your scripts when DS5 eventually arrives. I have been trying to urge DAZ themselves to make a DAZ-to-Blender bridge in the same sense that GoZ and the Hexagon bridges work but those pleas were ignored. As usual, they rely on PAs to provide those useful tools. I'm assuming that your OBJ tool is a similar concept to the ZBrush GoZ bridge?

ManFriday

marble said:

ManFriday said:

I don't know any timeframe about DS5 either, but I don't expect to get my hands on a copy in the next couple of months.

How much work it will be to get my plugins working on DS5, I cannot say until I have it and try. In many cases it might be a few adjustments here and there and they will work again in a day or two, so upgrading the plugins will be no major effort. But I can't say that for sure at this time.

Having said that, Daz Studio 4 will continue to be available and updated. Daz Studio 5 is not primarily not about new features; it is about bringing the technical base up to date. I expect my plugins to continue to work on Daz Studio 4 for a long time.

Hope this helps!

 

Well, what helps is you saying that you have not been given DS5 (or an alpha) to help you develop which suggests to me that we are still some way out from any DS5 announcement. I think that saying the DS4 will continue to work is beside the point - yes, I do expect it will still work but if DS5 is a dramatic upgrade (such as the afore-mentioned collaboration with Unity or somemething similar) then I think a lot of people will want to migrate.

But I am encouraged by your committment to updating your scripts when DS5 eventually arrives. I have been trying to urge DAZ themselves to make a DAZ-to-Blender bridge in the same sense that GoZ and the Hexagon bridges work but those pleas were ignored. As usual, they rely on PAs to provide those useful tools. I'm assuming that your OBJ tool is a similar concept to the ZBrush GoZ bridge?

I don't have ZBrush so I'm not entirely sure, but it does a part of what I understand GoZ does. It does the export and import bit to create a morph on the Daz Studio side. My tool does nothing on the Blender side: you'll still have to do the import and then again export there, but that's not hard.

The main reason I wrote it is that exporting an OBJ manually and correctly from Daz Studio is not easy (hiding everything in the scene, unparenting things, hiding unrelated geometry that might be deep in the scene hierarchy, detaching geografts, hiding geoshells, ...). The tool automates all these clicks, and you can export many OBJs in sequence with automatic naming. And it remembers what it exported so you can import things again quickly to create the morph.

marble

Having said all that about DS5 being some considerable time in the future, I have just had an email touting some big announcement in 5 days about the "Next Evolution". However, the little blurb in the email mentions a "new addition to the DAZ lineup" which doesn't sound like an update to DAZ Studio, though who knows?

Gordig

If ManFriday knows anything, they certainly can't say so.

EnoughButter

Hi, I'm just starting out learning Blender to help me with some DAZ editing, and this looks pretty cool.

I do have a question about the process:

I watched a couple of YouTube videos of doing the export/edit/import process (there are a lot of little steps that seem tedious if you are doing a lot of them, lol)

But one thing mentioned is that the figure/clothing has to be in the standard Zero-Pose before you export to Blender. This seems pretty limiting if you want to morph in a certain pose (i.e. sitting)

But your example shows an upstretched arm morph, and a pokethru fix and export back. So can you just set up a pose and export/edit in that pose/import back in that easily? Thanks!

 

Richard Haseltine

The Reverse Deformations option in Morph Loader Pro wil let you subtract out any pose or morph activity, leaving only your adjustments.

ManFriday

Thank you Richard! And the OBJ companion has a checkbox that enables that option in Morph Loader Pro when importing.

However, I'm not entirely sure whether this works 100% with joint rotations, so just to minimize the potential for errors, I try to make morphs in the zero pose. Just to be on the safe side. If anybody knows more I'm happy to learn. :-)

Artini

Can one make correction morph for the clothes on the posed characters

or one need to use character always in the default pose?

It is much easier to spot pokethrough on the posed character.

 

ManFriday

Artini said:

Can one make correction morph for the clothes on the posed characters

or one need to use character always in the default pose?

It is much easier to spot pokethrough on the posed character.

Both are possible and useful.

If you just want to fix something quickly in a finished scene, you can make a morph for the clothes on a posed character.

But if you want to make a morph that is generally useful (e.g. a new character morph or some other morph that you want to save as a morph asset so it becomes usable every time you use an asset), I would recommended using the default pose.

Artini

Ok, thanks for the explanation.

I have just wondered about usage of "Reverse deformations" checkmark,

if it is somehow related to morphs made with the other poses, than default.

 

N-RArts

@ManFriday  This is so AWESOME! I can now go back and work on older morphs that I created months ago - but couldn't load - Which really affected my output. So-much-so that it ended up leaving me feel quite down about my work. Hopefully I'll now be able to glean something from them, and get them working.

Thank you so much for creating this. 

724782546

DAZ4.20ver doesn't work.

Can't even found where the installer put the plugin files.

1640375311

724782546 said:

DAZ4.20ver doesn't work.

Can't even found where the installer put the plugin files.

Me too!Please fix!

Inkubo

A year later...

I too had difficulty finding the plugin files because it's not a script like some other products. It's a new Pane. From the main menu choose Window > Panes (Tabs) and click on OBJ Companion from the long list that pops up.. Then drag its tab to dock it. (I put it behind my Viewport.)

This is a general DAZ problem that products such as scripts, add-ons, and tutorials are easy to buy and install--but then the end user doesn't have a good way to find them!

ManFriday, this prodcut is amazing because of how easy it is to use (once you can bloody find it). Some time ago I followed a V3DigiTimes tutorial on morphing clothing, but I never had to do anything practical. And I certainly never dared mess with hair! But I have a particular character I'm trying to make, and I desperately wanted the G3 Crazy Hair to flow around demon horns instead of poking thru them.

I used OBJ Companion to export a plain G3M, Damien Demon Horns, and the Crazy Hair. It's cool that you can do 'em all in one go! Then I loaded the files one at a time into Blender, gave the objects viewport colors so I could tell which object was which, set the horns to display only as wireframes, and went to town moving the hair cards around. I never even expected it to really work, but once I re-exported the hair, using OBJ Companion to import it as a morph worked on the very first try!

I do suggest that you update the manual now that Blender's .obj impor/export window has changed.