Converting Blender Environments To Work In DAZ.

n.aspros123

This has been probably asked but I can not find any good tutorials.

Can someone teach me thoroughly on How to Convert a Blender Environment for use in DAZ please?

https://open3dlab.com/project/52398f61-6524-4099-a292-d21d017f77d1/ ;  (free with donations)

I have imported a M202 Rocket Launcher before. Is it the same principle as adding textures but much more complicated?

How do you rig Doors, Chairs and other items?

Gordig

Unless you're talking about a chair that swivels and/or reclines, I don't see why you'd need to rig it. Otherwise, doors would be rigged from the root joint ("hip" by default) without the need for any intermediate joints. Depending on how the texture maps are named, you can use either Map Master, Map Master Pro or Multi Map Loader to speed up the texturing process.

Elor

@Jay Versluis has a couple of videos on rigging, starting with a very basic one, to understand the concept:

And a recent series about rigging a gun:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPcx_LSSGfZfhDCty973OQjnXLugQtoEE

lilweep

n.aspros123 said:

Is it the same principle as adding textures but much more complicated?

Not more complicated, more tedious because you will have to correct every single surface for every single object.*

Definitely do not bother rigging doors and chairs. That is a complete waste of time unless you will be constantly rotating doors and chairs or intend to distribute for others. Just ensure the movable parts are imported as separate objects, so you can rotate them freely. 

*you could try exportng an obj with .mtl or fbx with packed textures from blender, and import that into daz, but i doubt it would give you a good result. Perhaps it could give you a decent starting point, but you still should go through every single surface and check it is correct and add any missing maps, tweak surface settings. MY hunch would be whoever ported that didnt do a good job. People make things too shiny when they should be matte, and make matte things too rough when they should be specular. So really need to completely lookdev an environment from scratch. If there was a USD importer for Daz or a Blender-to-Daz bridge it would be a lot easier, but there isnt.

 

n.aspros123

Gordig said:

Unless you're talking about a chair that swivels and/or reclines, I don't see why you'd need to rig it. Otherwise, doors would be rigged from the root joint ("hip" by default) without the need for any intermediate joints. Depending on how the texture maps are named, you can use either Map Master, Map Master Pro or Multi Map Loader to speed up the texturing process.

 

How are the Blender texture map names checked? 

n.aspros123

lilweep said:

n.aspros123 said:

Is it the same principle as adding textures but much more complicated?

Not more complicated, more tedious because you will have to correct every single surface for every single object.*

Definitely do not bother rigging doors and chairs. That is a complete waste of time unless you will be constantly rotating doors and chairs or intend to distribute for others. Just ensure the movable parts are imported as separate objects, so you can rotate them freely. 

*you could try exportng an obj with .mtl or fbx with packed textures from blender, and import that into daz, but i doubt it would give you a good result. Perhaps it could give you a decent starting point, but you still should go through every single surface and check it is correct and add any missing maps, tweak surface settings. MY hunch would be whoever ported that didnt do a good job. People make things too shiny when they should be matte, and make matte things too rough when they should be specular. So really need to completely lookdev an environment from scratch. If there was a USD importer for Daz or a Blender-to-Daz bridge it would be a lot easier, but there isnt.

 

 

What is the proceedure in Blender to export as .obj with the textures as .mtl or .fbx? Then imported to DAZ Studio and checked?

I've attached a snip of the textures.

I would like to learn how to rig. Just move chairs and other objects.

n.aspros123

Thank you for all your answers. Very much appreciated.

 

lilweep

n.aspros123 said:

Gordig said:

Unless you're talking about a chair that swivels and/or reclines, I don't see why you'd need to rig it. Otherwise, doors would be rigged from the root joint ("hip" by default) without the need for any intermediate joints. Depending on how the texture maps are named, you can use either Map Master, Map Master Pro or Multi Map Loader to speed up the texturing process.

 

How are the Blender texture map names checked? 

with your eyes - reading them. 

lilweep

n.aspros123 said:

lilweep said:

n.aspros123 said:

Is it the same principle as adding textures but much more complicated?

Not more complicated, more tedious because you will have to correct every single surface for every single object.*

Definitely do not bother rigging doors and chairs. That is a complete waste of time unless you will be constantly rotating doors and chairs or intend to distribute for others. Just ensure the movable parts are imported as separate objects, so you can rotate them freely. 

*you could try exportng an obj with .mtl or fbx with packed textures from blender, and import that into daz, but i doubt it would give you a good result. Perhaps it could give you a decent starting point, but you still should go through every single surface and check it is correct and add any missing maps, tweak surface settings. MY hunch would be whoever ported that didnt do a good job. People make things too shiny when they should be matte, and make matte things too rough when they should be specular. So really need to completely lookdev an environment from scratch. If there was a USD importer for Daz or a Blender-to-Daz bridge it would be a lot easier, but there isnt.

 

 

What is the proceedure in Blender to export as .obj with the textures as .mtl or .fbx?

When you export as obj, you have option to write material file.
When you import obj, you have option to read material file.  I dont know if mtl file will write normal map, but certainly iray uber will not put normal map into correct slot when importing an obj, so you have to add all those manually.

I am not familiar with exporting and importing fbx. It has historically been an annoying format to import into daz but is allegedly much better now, perhaps in the beta, not sure if updates have come through to the main release version of daz studio yet.

Then imported to DAZ Studio and checked?

After importing, you can render each object to see it looks good, you can check the surfaces tab to see each map is  accounted for and is in the correct slots with appropriate values (normal map will never be in correct slot). If you want me to tell you where each map should go and what each value should be for every possible material type, sorry  that is beyond my abilities. There are probably references out there one could google.

Map placement doesnt look too arduous as that screenshot shows only 2 maps per object. 1 albedo for Base Color slot and 1 normal map.  So perhaps not too labour intensive to set up maps into correct slots.  Just might need to fine tune roughmess, metallicity, etc.

n.aspros123

What  is needed to be selected when Export a .obj to contain the necessary Map and Textures files for importing into DAZ?

See attached pic

lilweep

oh wow youre already stuck on the export step?

Obj doesnt contain texture files. You can select Materials checkbox (as you have done in the screenshot) and Blender will save two files (1 x obj and 1 x .mtl file).  The .mtl will include stuff such as file paths to texture files and surface settings. (you can open it in a text editor if you want to see what information it contains)

If your .blend file has packed textures in it, im not sure if the .mtl file write texture paths though.  If your blend file is suchlike, you might need to first unpack textures so they are in folders on your system instead of inside the .blend file. I forgot how to unpack textures but there is an unpack button somewhere in the edit menu or file menu maybe? Probably googleable.

 

n.aspros123

Update: I haven't gotten around to trying exporting a environment from Blender to Daz yet. Occupied with other things ATM but will try soon.