Blender to Daz import (with multiple objects)

xenodev

Hi everyone. I'll skip the intro I gave in the "Introduce Yourself" topic, but long story short, I'm a newbie in regards to 3D rendering, modeling, etc. And while I'm learning daily, currently I'm stuck on an issue that's probably trivial to Blender/Daz veterans, but I have no idea where I'm messing up. There are three parts to my question, but all regarding the same issue of Blender to Daz import.

1) So, the idea is to model a house in Blender and use it as a "main" object in Daz, and then place additional furniture, characters and objects in Daz, setup materials for Iray, lighting, etc.

But the problem is, I can't get my objects from Blender to show up as separate entities in Daz studio. Yes, I've searched this problem and found a couple of similar questions, but everything I've tried from those threads didn't work for me. For example, this https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/56563/exporting-obj-file-with-separate-parts is practically what I'm after, but the solution didn't work for me.

I've tried to do it with the simplest of scenes - a cube and a cylinder to show up as two separate entities in daz, but to no avail. I've added each of them in a separate group in blender (in properties/object/groups), I've added them to separate vertex groups (properties/data/vertex groups), assigned separate materials to each of them, tried many export presets (using obj), but nothing worked. The cube and the cylinder always show up as one object. What I need is a way to make complex hierarchies, so that I can adjust each object separately (walls, doors, etc.). I do not need morphing or anything as advanced as that, simple positioning (trans/rot), materials and lighting adjustment will do for now.

2) Disregarding the issue above, how about adding bones to a single object? I've watched this tutorial from SickleYield (her work is much appreciated): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNFHv8K8qKg

If I got it correctly, you basically need to make the bones, hinges and things related to those in Daz, there is no way to do it in blender? I mean, it actually makes sense and it's not a problem to do it in Daz, but that brings me to the last part of the question...

3) What about re-imports? Say I model a nice, big house in Blender. I import it in Daz (let's say I've solved the other issues). And after setting up all the materials, objects, characters etc. in Daz, I need to fix something in Blender - maybe extrude something, adjust walls, anything. How would you re-import that into Daz without needing to redo all the work? Is it even possible? While I'm typing this it kinda seems it isn't possible because there is simply too much that could go wrong for the tools to figure everything out, but then the question is, how to tackle this problem?

Hope that's not too much for my first post :) Thanks

Richard Haseltine

1) You can either export each item as a separate OBJ, or you can create a figure. DS doesn't have a way to break a single OBJ into separate, independent props.

2) You convert the prop to a figure and add bones with the Joint Editor, or you import into the Figure Setup pane and set up the hierarchy there.

3) if you use weight-maping you can use the Transfer Utility to transfer the rigging to the modified OBJ, or alternatively you can import the rigged figure into the Figure Setup pane, import the modified OBJ, and swap them over, then update the figure.

xenodev

Ok, after a day of distancing myself from the problem and after reading through your comments a few times I think I'm starting to make sense of this - again, I'm new to this so the terminology is still confusing and it takes a couple of reads and a bit of research.

The first big mistake I made was that I was so fixated on trying to import the blender obj as separate props (I called them "objects" in the first post), I didn't even realise that the OP of the stackexchange post was talking about creating bones for different parts of the scene, not separate props! So in the end, he/she probably got a hierarchy of bones for the house, something like the genesis figures

The second mistake (this was stupid) was that I somehow completely overlooked the part where you need to add the geometry through the Figure Setup tab for the vertex groups to show... This is even shown in the video that I linked above ( timestamped here: https://youtu.be/vNFHv8K8qKg?t=72 )! It's also mentioned in the stackexchange question... I was always importing the obj with File>Import and was then wondering why the geometry list is empty in the Figure Setup tab. Lesson learned (for the n-th time): when stuck on a problem for a while, take a break :)

Anyway, onto the things you suggested.

1+2) What is the actual difference between a prop and a figure? Is this purely a Daz thing or is it recognized by other tools as well (as a part of some spec)? I couldn't find much info on this with a quick search or two... As far as I can tell (purely by observing the existing props/figures I own), props are simple rigid objects with basic transform tools only and possibly multiple materials, while figures also have bones, custom Parameters/Posing settings etc. I'd appreciate more info on this or a link to an in-depth explanation because it seems really important and I wasn't even aware of the distinction!

3) I'll definitively have to research this a bit more and experiment on a simple scene, but I think I got the gist of it.