Finding DAZ Frustrating
EyeOfCharon
Posts: 6
Hello, all!
First time poster, long time fan.
So ... I bought this awesome Titan Armor suit today. It's for a character in this thing I'm thinking about doing. Applied mats to the suit, and her Toularouse (sp?) hair, did a render, and there's nothing; the armor rendered white, and the hair color change was not apparent. I was going to do another test, but I cant find the render presets, and I'm not hip to every little detail point in the render window. I'm a Poser veteran, and Daz and Renderosity, et al, have been on my radar for years, but just recently, I took the dive into 3D modelling -- I have some perfunctory experience with MAYA from a few years back, but I recently downloaded Blender, and I've been continually impressed with how serious that software is. I get a lot of this stuff in concept more than practice; especially getting into the technical aspect. I have built unique bump, and transparency maps in my day. I plan to make my own scenes, textures, some monster-character work, but humans are not going to be a thing I'm able to do for years. One has to have a real artist's touch to get that level of realism out of a mesh. For me, I like 3D scene-building to be more of a plug-n-play concept. One of the things I love about Poser; the ethnicity dials -- super-friendly way to create new characters. This is an area where I feel like DAZ is restrictive with the base models (I need more character morphs), and the posing tools seem cumbersome.
There are other issues I'm having, too, like figuring out what file type is the best to export w/textures mapped so when the character's loaded, so are their mats, and that they retain a relative size going between worlds (I understand each program has its own way of measuring, which is just silly; there should be a global standard), and why does it seem all my rigging fails when I go from one program to another? (Not that I've done a lot of animation, but it's another aspect I want to explore, and it would suck to be locked to one venue). This is probably just my own ignorance fighting against me. I think what I need is some sort of 3D Guru, but that's why I decided to bring my ignorance to the forums -- so I can learn.
My toolset is -- Poser 11, Bryce 7, Blender, the Adobe Suite. All the elements are in place, methinks, but I'm having trouble wrapping my head around essential work-flow concepts -- creatively, I'm a writer, so I tend to think in broad strokes.
Also, the DSON (?) exporter doesn't seem to do it's job. I had to do a manual install of the DAZ Poser content, and it made such a damn mess of things (as I did it right after I'd just loaded the software, so I wasn't sure what was in the base menus to begin with). I uninstalled both DAZ and Poser, and did clean installs, so now all my "This for Poser" content is hibernating in the Smith Micro Install Manager queue -- along with the DSON Importer, and the Photoshop 3D bridge -- both of which can't seem to understand where they're supposed to live even when I do the directory adjustment.
So, I know this is a $#*&%! first post, but I'm really hyped to get into creation mode, and these obstructional technical issues are becoming frustrating.
Not really sure if I'm asking anything, I guess I just wanted to throw my issues out, and see who has some thoughts on any of these obstacles. Thanks!
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Comments
What renderer are you using? 3Delight or iRay? If you get a white surface, it's usually one of two things. 1. You're out of RAM (or video RAM if rendering with iRay), or 2. Something went wrong with DAZ Studio and you'll have to save (into a new file) and reload. It can also be that your light is too bright. To me, it sounds like the materials weren't applied at all. Can you see the materials being applied when viewing it in OpenGL? If not, it might be best if you select the figure in question, go into the Surfaces panel, select all the surfaces for the object you selected and then apply the material. Tedious, yes. But sometimes DAZ won't change the surface selection even when you change the object selection. Not sure why that is.
About export formats, I've never had any problems with any of the exports except when trying to do more advanced stuff like exporting rigging. Exporting with .obj and fbx will preserve most materials. FBX is probably the way to go though if you're exporting rigging. And as far as scale goes, when you export, there are presets available for whatever export format you're using. You can manually set it yourself if you want.
Export from what to what?
The DSON Importer needs both the DSON Core (DAZ Studio) and PoserCF (Poser library files to trigger the loading of the DSON files) installed to a Poser content library. Do you mean Smith Micro Install Manager queue? That won't install the DSON Importer - you need to use the manual isntaller or the Daz Install Manager. If using DIM, for both the DSON Importer and the DS/Photoshop bridge you have tot ell it where the host application is - click the gear icon at top-right of Install Manager to open preferences, go to the Applications tab, click the + button to ad a new application, set its name and version then click the ... to set the path - do that for Poser and for Photoshop.
I'd prepare yourself to get used to that one ;) , you really have to work for your pudding with Smith Micro, and when I say "work" I mean getting your head around the obtuse structure and behaviour of the software, not actual modelling / rigging and texturing.
Yeah, I hear tha t about my pudding! I'm up to the challenge, though! Good heads up, Rmissin. Thanks!
Alien: my rig is an HP Envy Core i5, and I just got the GTX 750 TI for a graphics card. I'm a bit unsure about how to switch around rendering engines. I don't really know the difference between Open GL and other standards. I didn't add any lights. I just did another test with the Dark Storm outfit, and it seems to work fine. (About to try a specific application of mats to the new assets -- yep, same thing. I used "Ft to Titan Suit" this time. I'll keep playing with it).
Richard: I did the manual install with the DSON thing originally, but I must not have set its destination right. I thought I understood the destinations to be where the .exe for each program was? And the manual install of the DAZ Poser stuff dumped most of the content into the Figure Library, and put the rest of it all in weird places. I don't mind doing a manual install, but I was concerned about pulling library folders onto library folders because I want to make sure I explore where all of the Poser content is before I start messing around filling them with my stuff. And as far as exports, I just mean getting a figure from one venue to another. Like, if I send a figure from Poser to Blender, can I scale up the figure in Blender, then send it back to Poser withouit things getting too weird? 3dS seems to be a format which seems to be consistent among apps, and protects the mats in most cases.
Thanks for the replies, gang! You've given me a couple of things to think about!
Well, lookit that! The iRay settings seem to be producing results. I assume "Interactive" is the Lo-Res mode?
Yes, the installer for the actual DSON Importer plug-in should be pointed to the folder with the Poser application.
What do you mean by the content being isntalled to the Figure library - that is where the CR2s, with accompanying Python and .duf files, should go with other items in other libraries. The DSON files will create a Data folder that shold sit alongside the Runtime folder, as well as folders like people at the same level which are not needed for use in Poser (unless you resort to Dimension3D's loader script for files that lack PoserCFs). The content should not be in the application folder.
Richard: the instruction I had for the manual install (as I recall) was to pull the DAZ folder onto the Runtime folder, and the files would self-distribute, but most of the various content (not just figures) seemed to land in the Figures folder. Like I said, I did re-installs of both programs, so I don't recall exactly what it looked like. I just remember going, "Oh, well that doesn't look right." There may have been some cursing. I'm certain there was some cursing.
It probably would be fine if I just pulled each folder to its appropriate library, but that's why I wanted to sort out exactly what the file path should be before I tried it again.
Well, as I said the Runtime from the zip should merge with the Runtime in your library folder (the folder you pointed Poser to as an external library), the Data folder should sit beside the Runtime. Everything inside those folders should then be in the correct palce.
Okay, I will try to nerve-up and have another run at it sometime this week. Thanks for the tips! I'll let you know how it goes. =)