Thank you DAZ Studio, you've done it again!

[N-drju]

I just found out that DAZ Studio released its first Genesis 3 character - Victoria 7.

They just don't know when to stop...

At first there was first generation of DAZ characters. Later on, second, modern generation came which is good. However, people were forced to buy generation 1 to generation 2 conversion kits so that all skins and outfits that you bought earlier worked with new models. I'm pretty sure Genesis 2 items will as well not work at all with any Genesis 3 characters and we'll be forced to buy yet another effing conversion kits to get shitloads of our generation 1 and 2 files to work with new models...

Thank you DAZ, you've done it again.

[jgwinner]

I know, right?

And it gets worse, you can't easily use the Gen3 stuff in Poser any more!

I've been wondering where some of my content is, and even with the DSON importer, it doesn't show up in Poser11. I can export/import it, but that's a mess and I don't think preserves the "poser ish" rigging.

I REALLY wish these two companies worked together better. I wouldn't be using DAZ products if it wasn't for Poser.

I stumbled on this thread because I'm trying to figure out if I should use Terragen or Vue for some landscape rendering of some DAZ3D content. It turns out, it's not that easy to actually get the stuff across.

I'm hoping Terragen will work better than Vue, but I can't try the import module unless I pony up to the Pro version  

== John ==

[Dune]

It turns out, it's not that easy to actually get the stuff across.

What do you mean exactly? If you turn the DAZ stuff into objects, you can import them alright. Even assign more procedural texturing to them in TG. Saved as tgo's them it's very easy to reload and use in renders.

[jgwinner]

I'm finding a lot of the translations are completely messed up; materials come over very strangely also. A lot of the materials have 100% reflectivity. I realize you need to go through and tweak some of them, but a simple texture map shouldn't suddenly turn out like the T-1000 o.O

The translations are the big problem; I've got to repose about half of the objects. I'm using the Stonemason Mars Habitat and the REMUS rover, and they are half the scene away from where they should be. If I export as OBJ the problem isn't there, but the materials aren't as well represented (and I'm getting some weird artifacts).

This is from Daz3D. I've tried exporting a CR2, then going into Poser, but making the entire scene a cr2 doesn't seem to work well

Poser 11 has a few more export options that Vue will ingest as opposed to DAZ3D, so was going to try that, but it's Collada import looks even worse than Vue's.

== John ==

[Dune]

I take DAZ stuff through Poseray, and combine materials so each part takes a specific material; you end up with far less nodes. I also throw out parts that are insible anyway, such as teeth (with closed mouth). TG imports textures as well as transparency maps from these exported obj's well. It doesn't import bumpmaps, though. You can center geometry and then set Y to zero, then in TG it imports at 0/0/0 and you can shove it around into the scene as you want. That is, if you set up your scene from scratch in TG.
I guess centralizing is better than keeping the objects at strange locations when working in TG.

[jgwinner]

Thanks, I'll check out Poseray - used it a long time ago with POVRay.

Regarding the translations, that would the right way if I was loading individual objects; I'm trying to load an entire scene. I needed to pose some of the characters in relation to other objects. When I do the import, some of them get scattered all over. It's quite weird. I haven't narrowed down the bug yet, but it's a lot of work to fix it up.

== John ==

[masonspappy]

If you have familiarity with Blender you can import into that, then use the 'Set Origin' feature to ensure that T4 imports precisely wherever you click.

[jgwinner]

I do, and the objects are offset there too. It seems like DAZ isn't setting the parent transforms properly or something. But, they aren't all offset the same way, and in some cases the scaling is off. I guess I need to break this down and give examples, report it as a bug (to Blender, Vue, Poser, and DAZ). I don't know if TG will have an issue, I don't have the Pro version. Wasn't sure if I should upgrade or not; I don't know where the problem is with the exporting.

I'm not sure Blender would do proper joints either ... that's why I wanted to pose in DAZ Studio first, then export the whole scene. I knew I'd have to fix some materials, I didn't expect to have to readjust everything. Then if I notice a finger is off, I have to do another few hours of work all over again.

Probably I need to break down scenes a bit, or maybe use Terragen to do an HDRI lightprobe, and just use that for lighting in DAZ studio. I'd miss the great terrain rendering that way though (for the foreground).

== John ==

[Oshyan]

You don't need the Pro version to test any object-related stuff. There is nothing in the Pro version that will make objects work better, as far as I can recall. The FBX import/export is only for syncing camera, light, and animation data. You can't currently load FBX-format objects. So if you can't already get a good OBJ into TG the way you want it to be, then the Pro version probably won't make that any better

What you can do with the Pro version, however, is use render elements to output data that you could more easily combine with a Daz figure render. If Daz can output alpha, then you could just render the Daz figure out with an alpha and composite that over the TG render. To get shadows properly cast on terrain you could just export the terrain geometry from TG, load it into Daz, and use it to get proper shadows. As long as Daz can output a shadow element itself you could composite onto the full terrain render into TG. Conversely you could use Front Projection of a Terragen render onto the terrain geometry imported into Daz and do the final render there with a TG environment for IBL.

- Oshyan

[N-drju]

DAZ Studio indeed does render shadow along with the figures, even when the scene as a whole is empty. It would indeed be great to have an opportunity to export geometry from TG into DS... However I'm afraid this will not work if Terragen scene contains grass or if the shadow is cast on a tree for instance... These are not geometries, right?

[Oshyan]

You could import the same trees into DAZ, and the same grass if it's not the built-in Terragen grass. If you want to export instanced object geometry along with the terrain you can do so by disabling raytracing of objects and doing a micro export, but keep in mind the results might be a bit messy (the geometry). Adequate for shadow catching perhaps though.

- Oshyan