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No problem at all - My particular neuro-diversities mean I sometimes offend people when I'm trying to help, and have no idea how I did it, so I generally assume I said it badly rather than someone else being at fault.
Awesome beyond words :) Speaking in terms of potential - what _could_ be done with it, if the developer chooses to go that way - I was saying on FB last week that this has great potential to be the most exciting and important art tool since... Well, a very long time, anyway. From what I've been able to find, unfortunately, the developer seems... Well, to me, he sounds just short of downright disdainful of the idea that anyone would consider this an "artist's tool". What he has said is that if someone is interested in creating art like this, then they should be using Vue or Blender or some other more "serious" tool, not his game. What he has not said, but I've inferred from what he has said is something very like "What you make playing my game isn't you creating art." I don't know if he just considers the toolset to be too basic, or if he considers it to fail to meet the bar because you're "merely" placing someone else's assets, or, a possibility I came to after thinking about it some time, perhaps he feels that when you play his game, you're not creating art, you're playing with art he's (or he and others have) created.
That having been said, it's probably important to reiterate that it's not like I've spoken with him directly and personally - all I can do it make inferences from what I've seen or heard him say in other venues. I could absolutely be as wrong as wrong could be. He does have the "gallery" thing, so it would seem he's at least headed toward considering the output art. I do still think/hope that someday he'll come around to the idea that something where you can paint and sculpt the envirnment and then share the result is an art tool.
And, all _that_ having been said, if he went the other way, pushing harder toward "game" and away from "artist's tool", someone could create something similar, but with far fewer relaxing "game" elements, and far more focused "art tool" elements, in Unreal, building in robust import and export from the outset. If it ever comes to that, it'd be someone with more game than I've got, but I could help. ;)
Using it to make HDRIs was one of my first dreams for it, as well, but so far (and admittedly, I haven't had that much time to play with it, but, so far) I'm getting the same black EXR as everyone else.
I have also been working on blocking out time to learn Unreal, and I have purchased a couple of tutorials specifically involving importing DAZ assets into Unreal Engine, so at some point I'll be in a similar boat to the one Wendy's in as far as that goes, I hope, but unfortunately, I haven't gotten into any of them yet, and won't likely do so, best case scenario, until the day after my current work deadline passes.
I also bought some tutorials on Unity, because it was much more highly in the running before I learned more about Unreal's block-scripting environment and their indie linear content license. Once I pass this deadline, if nobody's found good answers yet, maybe I can scan into those and get some intel.
Just as a humorous aside, I imagine you've all noticed that almost all Google for FlowScape information roads eventually lead to Discord (from the word for disagreement or a lack of harmony ;)
I've discovered that I've yet to find anything that makes me feel as old, as effectively as Discord. Suddenly I'm that 85-year-old pensioner who's tapping my hearing aid and saying "What? A mouse? Where?" :)
LOVE Flowscape. Still trying to get the hang of it tho.
Laurie
With regard to the 'Discord' site for FS, I have registered. However so far, despite my attempts, I have never suceeded in getting a post up on it. It's utterly irrational as far as I can see. It feels as if people are shouting into a void, expecting neither an echo nor a response. Can't be bothered with it anymore.
I have put up a comment on the 'Itch' FS Forum relating to the export, and got a reply from PixelForest where he said he had no plans to provide export. In subsequent posts, though, I rather feel as if he is softening his position a little based on the other comments that came after mine. I suspect the more people who ask for it, the higher up his priority list it'll move, so.. if everyone could ask too, it wouldn't harm our cause.
It has occurred to me that it may be possible to write a program to read the text JSON FS Save file, read the assets and then write an obj file from that. Then I remembered I have something else I need to experiment with - a life.
Doing my little suggestion is possible - obviously, as FS does it - but without the co-operation of the author of FS, it would be less easy than it might. Writing the thing in a moderately low level language like C++ (which is pretty much all I can programme in these days, my Sinclair Spectrum BASIC is long forgotten) would take much longer than scripting the Unity engine which already has the facility to read the assets, read the JSON file and put the two together.
Regards,
Richard
Well its like extracting assets from a game basically, legally he likely cannot allow export as were assets bought to create it, the same as DAZ not allowing distribution of their mesh.
I find it odd DAZ users of all people cannot grasp this.
A lot of games actually don't allow renders/screenshots to be used commercially, I think everyone needs to be grateful he allows that and stop trying to reverse engineer his game.
Buy the assets from the Unity Store, Unreal Markeplace etc yourselves having them if that important, doubt you can use them well in DAZ studio anyway.
Wendy,
That may well be true. But, in all the queries I have read, and I have assiduously read all those I can find, he has not said that is the limitation. Had that been his answer, I would have shut up immediately.
Regards,
Richard
well the assets in question which I ironically cannot link under the forum TOS are subject to similar EULAs as DAZ content.
Guess can link the free ones
https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/slug/17c2d7d545674204a7644c3c0c4c58ba
https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/slug/7f7775996f7442b187f6fa510ec9d289
Yes, I am also collecting a free items from Unreal engine web.
I am still not sure about their license, though.
If I create a video in UE, do I need to pay them 5%, even if I publish it for free?
No you can render to your hearts content
just games have a percentage based on sales and if total income under100K
what would 5% of free even be BTW
just asking
I think you can even render outside Unreal if only images not making a game, I did ask about the Paragon stuff on the forum and they said Renders OK, people use Vray etc for cinematics too.
here is a discussion
interactive videos and visual comics etc have different rules
https://answers.unrealengine.com/questions/753593/view.html
He did say in his webinar that writing export scripts would take all his time and leave little time for actually improving Flowscape. Also, he did buy a lot of the assets that are in it and didn't model those himself, so there is that as well. I would rather that he keep the game updated and write import scripts rather than export.
Laurie
Going back to the discord comments @DigitalSteam,@richardandtracy_e725004c1a, --I hear ya. Where game development is concerned, seems like all roads do lead to discord. heh When I first tried discord it was an insane cacophany that I quickly fled. But persistence is key. I've found that if you give it a little time, visit when there are plenty of people able to respond, but not so many it's impossible to follow conversations, turn off mic and phones, it's not so bad. I even got them to answer my question about commercial usage of FS. One important aspect is to be sure to pay attention to whatever rules the community you're attempting to engage follows... so if they've made a channel for introductions, which I usually ignore, that's where you'd greet people. If there's a channel on the left they've made for newbs or questions or FAQ's, that's where I'd ask any I had. Apart from that, I don't hang around much because it's far too chaotic for my aging brain. One key thing I discovered is that they actually have a pin at the top of the screen where pinned comments go, rather than at the start of the page or thread as with traditional forums.
I echo @AllenArt's sentiment--I'd rather have updates and a working HDR sky import feature than export. I found a comment the dev made on a site back in August where somebody had experienced a red and white sky upon attempting using the HDR import, which I just experienced a couple days ago, and he admitted at that time it wasn't working yet and hoped to be able to implement it soon. Using Daz Iray canvasses to create an actual HDR 360 image for the sky import feature in FS would be pretty cool. For now I'll have to settle using either the standard jpg or png with the sun aligned properly, which is alright I guess.
As W said, but also, to add to this - If you use Unreal (and it's cutscene tools and "filming" tools and editing tools) to render a feature film, sell it to Netflix at Sundance, and make a million dollars, it's still royalty free. This might change after they get the market dominance they might be seeking with this policy, but they've said nothing to indicate that, and, to be fair, letting artists use his toys for free is a very Tim Sweeny kind of move, anyway.
Purely linear content is royalty-free, interactive content (possibly with some exceptions, but I don't know that part, 'cause that's not my intended use) has the graduated royalties fees.
So, honestly, I haven't fully digested what who knows and what we're still looking to learn, so this may be old AF to everyone, but...
I messed around with a fire hydrant model exported from DAZ and ran into the normals issue, so I flipped them all out in Blender, but there are still a few places showing invisible in FS, so maybe I didn't do it entirely properly.
I did, however, find this old paper on the MTL format, and while some of this is possibly outdated, or at very least not exactly how Blender or Unity use the MTL format, it did teach me a lot about what all the tags and values mean, and let me figure out what to search for to figure out some more of it - so I have normals and specularity working now, and I think I'm on my way to figuring out emission, but that needs some experimenting yet.
I also learned while hand-editing MTL files that the Blender OBJ (at least) identifies which MTL file it uses in the OBJ file itself, so if you want to save the MTL file as something else during your experiments, you need to open the OBJ file in Notepad++ or whatever, and change its name in there, too.
Here's my annotated MTL file, so far:
# Material Count: 1
# Flienames must not contain a # sign as that's a ref indicator
newmtl Fire_Hydrant
Ns 200.000 # Specular Exponent - High value results in concentrated highlights
Ka 1.000000 1.000000 1.000000 # Color Ambient
Kd 1.000000 1.000000 1.000000 # Color Diffuse - the main "color" texture of your object
Ks 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 # Color Specular - not sure if this needs a 1 to work with Ns
Ke 0.0 0.0 0.0 # Emissive Color - this should be RGB for the color of light emitted
Ni 1.450000 # Optical Density - Refraction Index
d 1.000000 # Disolve factor - don't fullt get this yet, but 1 = solid material
illum 1 # Illumination Model - Use 1 or see http://paulbourke.net/dataformats/mtl/
bump 1.000000 1.000000 1.000000 # Bump (or Normal) map values
map_Kd Fire_Hydrant_Base_Color.jpg # exact name of diffuse map
map_bump chainnormal.png # exact name of bump or normal map
Ns_map ns.jpg # exact name of specular map
And here is my lame experimental hydrant import, with just the diffuse, and with a bump map, and a normal map (both chainmail, 'cause the normal that comes with it is very subtle) and a grayscale texture from something else as a spec map:
and, in case it's interesting, here is the hydrant in Studio, then in Blender, pre-normals flipping:
DigitalSteam:
Looks like you have a good handle on the importing - your hydrants look great in FS.
The 'd' flag is just as described from Paul's site -- It is a transparency flag. However, FS's author has clamped the flag, so it is either ON or OFF - your meshes will either be opaque at 0.5 - 1.0, or fully transparent at 0.0 - 0.49. He left no margin for transluceny (my shoji lamp import for example needing to be set at 0.25 for the rice paper).
You can use the 'tr' (transparency) flag in it's stead - either one works...
@DigitalSteam Thank you for sharing the link to that resource. Looks like you're making great progress with that. Sometimes I find that when something doesn't fully cooperate I end up asking if it really matters to the camera in the final image.
Here's where I am currently--
I like to share my process because it helps others coming behind us to get where we are.
To get here, I first created a 360 degree spherical render in daz studio iray of the backdrop I created in Daz using various ruined and abandoned buildings.
Then I opened a new scene in Daz, brought in the Abandoned Interiors Warehouse by Stonemason. Exported the entire piece as obj with collected materials at Daz Studio scale.
With the obj, mtl, and texture files folder in a folder together, I moved/copied the texture files out into the same folder with the actual obj and mtl files.
I then used Notepad++ to edit the mtl file to remove the folder structure reference in front of the name of each texture file name. I touched nothing else. Saved and closed mtl file.
I then opened FS, set the flat ground option, as large as possible, scaled tiles all the way down in size, imported the sky I create earlier in Daz as jpg/png (HDR still isn't working as far as I can tell, though you can make them using Iray Beauty Canvas in Daz), I then aligned the sun in FS with the sun in the skydome I created for good effect.
I then imported the warehouse mesh, waited for it to load in with all materials, upscaled it fully in the import dialogue, pointed the mouse at the skydome that came with the warehouse, which I had forgotten to leave off in Daz export, pressed the delete key to remove it. Using the height slider in the terrain feature menu, I adjusted the FS land up or down to set a suitable position with respect to the warehouse and background.
Although Stonemason's model comes with some wonderful plants, I added to the effect by painting new growths in FlowScape, covered over the original puddling water in the model with the FS pool object, and then added some birds, insects, and floaters.
Finally, I positioned my camera, pressed alt-f2 to open Ansel and proceeded to capture some nice pics.
All in all, I'm pretty pleased with the results.
The full size version is in my Art Studio thread way down the page here: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/4963206/#Comment_4963206.
Wanderer, that's very impressive. I have played with importing people, so the shinier effects of glass & paint are ones I have avoided playing with so far.
DigitalStream, thanks for those settings as a starting point for glossiness on paint, will try myself.
In the last week or so I've not getting as much time as I wanted to work on FS at the moment, having to model up our house so I can check plans to build a conservatory won't interfere with any other systems like sewers or gutters. I really want to get back to being creative rather than being accurate.
As a bit of an aside, does anyone know of a written definition of what a 'Normal Map' is, other than the one on Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_mapping )? I could probably work solely from the Wikipedia article, but it's usually nice to have a diversity of sources. I have a hankering to make my house model usable in DS and possibly FS, so I need to create a normal map for the bricks & it'd be useful if I could try to understand them properly. Sort of want to do a program to do automatic conversions between bump or displacement maps to Normal maps. Painting them by hand doesn't exactly feature in my list of things I want to do!
Just remembered about import of HDR skys into FS. Doesn't work yet, needs a jpg. If you have an HDR skydome (as I did with Namtar3D's underwater 'sky'), it's possible to use a little routine called HDR2JPG.exe available as freeware here: http://www.easy2convert.com/hdr2jpg/ if you have no other means of conversion. There is one that also goes from JPG to HDR, but it doesn't convert it into an iRay fully lit environment dome, unfortunately!
http://boundingboxsoftware.com/materialize/
is free
@R&T
Photoshop also generates normal maps in almost one click, but Materialize is freekin' amazing, and fun to use, and as W said, free.
He doesn't seem to be developing it anymore (or he's been so deep for so long that he seems disappeared) and it's kind of buggy from time to time, but for the price, it's flat out amazing. I almost like it better than Substance Alchemist.
@Wanderer: That is just awesome... I'm impressed FS didn't choke on it all, and now afraid I'll get into trouble, when I have some free time. :)
And, generally... I remember a promo video with these really nicely sculpted 'rugged' fairly young mountains, but when I explore the sculpting tools, I see a path toward well worn, rounded, old mountains. Am I missing some tools somewhere, or did that person just spend ages sculpting with smaller and smaller brushes?
Oh, for everyone, just this one mention - I read back far enough to know why it sounded like I was saying "It's your fault!" - I'm sorry. :(
All good to know - thank you. Is there another good site that has a listing of the various tags, or is that paper about the best? (Wait - is it already posted up the thread somewhere, and I missed it? :(
Also @Wanderer et al - Good enough was just what I thought, too - unless someone needs a Hero Fireplug, it should do fine :)
But, then, I also got to looking, to see if it was something I'd missed, and examining the mesh in Blender, even after recalculating all the normals, there are sections of mesh that just aren't there.
So, I thought "Did Studio clip them on export? When you look in Studio, they're there - you can see all the missing edges. When you look in Blender, the faces in question are gone. When I re-imported the exported OBJ mesh back into studio, they're there. When I look at the exported mesh in Hexagon, they're all there.
So now I'm thinking "Wait, did Blender clip them somehow? Maybe I had some import setting wrong?
meh. my brain hurts. I need sleep :)
Materialize looks amazing.
Doesn't help me understand, just gets the job done. Which is the main thing, but I have this annoying need to understand too. Slows things down a bit, usually.
Regards,
Richard.
Thanks for the kind remarks.
@DigitalSteam --no worries on that matter, you just happened to touch a nerve for me, I'm sorry if I was a bit harsh about it...
@richardandtracy_e725004c1a --I know what you mean, but actually, I did nothing to the glass in the warehouse because, since it was clear or opaque, I decided to leave them as is since they might just be that dirty with age, and I'd rather keep the paint on them than not see the paint at all.
Also, a hearty endorsement of Materialize from me as well. That is really, really nice. I had better results getting the end product to look like what I made once imported into Daz Studio with that, than I did with a material/texture I created in Substance Alchemist. Here is an image I made using a primitive cube and applied textures I created using materialize:
The floor and ceiling were just thrown in to help the scene without intending to show any real depth in that material. The lights were added only so that the viewer could get a sense of the depth achievable through Materialize combined with the proper setting under the surface tab in Daz. I know there are a few issues with the image, but this is only meant as a sample to show you what you can make for Daz Studio in Materialize which, as others have said, is free.
I totally get that, I just misunderstood what you wanted. I actually almost replied with this info, but then I stopped myself with a thought of "Don't. You always do this. Nobody cares. Don't bore people with a novel about things only you care about." :)
So, you know what normals are, right? Identifying data for each face and vertice that tells the renderer how light should interact with that particular part of the model and its shaders? Basically?
Well, a normal map kind of gives fake normals to further modify the way light interacts, so it can make small indentations or bumps, but not big crazy stuff.
Where a bump map or a displacement map shows height in grayscale, a normal map shows X Y and Z coordinates in RGB. I always imagine it like if you took a bump map and made it into actual height, then you put a ring light all around it, but the ring light was colored all the way along a color wheel, the light that colored light ring would shine on the bumps is basically the data you get in a normal map.
So, what you end up with is purple is straight up, and then the amount of red, green, or blue would translate to a shift in the X and Y coordinates, so (and these directions aren't right, but for illustration) say a location on the object is represented by a single pixel of the normal map, and that pixel is 60% purple, 20% blue and 20% red - using the color orientation in the illustration above, the fake normal for that location would point about... 25, 30% "down" (as we look at it) toward pink (well, kind of violet pink, depending on what you think of as "pink" - straight down). So, if the next pixel "down" were pure purple, the renderer would know to act like there's a ridge there, where the pink is higher up than the pixels to it's "south"
Ok, thanks a lot for the explanation and the link.
Two quick tips worth reiterating here:
1. Upon OBJ export from DAZ, no need to edit the .MTL file to fix file paths, just move the .MTL & .OBJ files into the MAPS folder so all files are in the same folder.
2. Flipped Normals can easily be fixed inside DS, just open Geometry Editor, right click the scene choose Selection | Selection Mode | Marquee Selection (or other mode) and select the polygons that need their Normals Flipped. Right Click again in the scene and choose Geometry Editing | Flip Normal of Selected Polygons.
@FirePro9 Thanks for that tip... Using Notepad++, editing it is as simple as selecting the /Maps/ portion of text in find menu command and replacing all with nothing, but your solution is one step less so superior. Also, thanks for the insight on how to fix the normals issue.
So far I've found about half the MTL files I've gotten out of Studio to need some editing to be optimal in FS, but my sample size is pretty small yet, so that may actually be quite rare.
On the normals in Studio with the geometry editor - is there some way to visually identify them? I haven't found that yet.
As far as I know DS Geometry Editor does not provide a visual cue as to direction of Normals.
Another Tip, use Geometry Editor to exclude surfaces from being exported, such as Eyelashes or parts of body hidden under clothes. Go to Tool Settings Tab, choose Geometry Editor and under Grouping Tab | Surfaces change Visibility to Off.
So, wouldn't you just be guessing as to which ones needed flipping? Or, you flip them all, and now the ones that were wrong are right, but the ones that were right are wrong? Or does it make them all go the same direction based on what seems to be out in that model's casae?
It is a little trial and error, i.e., import into FS, see which polygons need to be flipped, then go back into DS and flip those polygons. You don't have to flip all polygons, but you can if that works.