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There are menus there, either side of the screen stuff can be found.
I just set the world scale to 0.01 and then import/export everything from DS at 100%
I'm wondering now if there's any difference between going bigger or smaller. I remember seeing in a video somewhere that Blender doesn't like doing small collisions. Maybe I should do it the other way around.
It has all those things, people just don't use them because pointers and menus are slow and inefficient. I do think it's a mistake that most people's tutorials only show the hotkeys but you're in no way obliged to use them.
It does not take scripting knowledge to rebind a few options to use the keys / mouse clicks you want.
You don't need the hotkeys. I don't use them since I use so many different programs that I try to use the wrong keys in the wrong (or right) program. Using keys is much faster but only works if you use Blender a lot. I use the menus which is slower but straight forward and simple to remember. The controls are also endlessly customizable which I've taken advantage of. The first control to change is the ridiculous right click to select. This is completely at odds with all other programs and downright confusing. I spend most of my life in Adobe stuff and have many of it's hotkeys burned into my brain.
I have noticed, that Landscape add-on is not enabled by default. Just in case, if you have not done it before, below is a small how to do that.
Just open "User Preferences" from "File" menu, choose "Add-ons" tab, click on "Disabled", tick on the check-box "AddMesh: ANT Landscape"
and then click on "Save User Settings". Done. I attach the screenshots, as well.
You can access the UI with menu items it's just that the entries in the menu don't have pretty icons like AitoDesk products do.
After spending 3 days composing and rendering an image in DAZ Studio only to think it doesn't work and tossing it, I think modeling in Blender is easy, of course I've spend 5 days box modeling a model in Blender only to throw it out so there ain't no pleasing some folk I guess.
Of course the frustrating part of the DAZ products image is the individual models look good in the image and since they are all Genesis 3 Girl 7/Guy7 style they even match but the image I composed still doesn't work. You'd think it would be easier, after all I'm just clicking DAZ Preloads.
Thanks for that tips, lx. I did not know about that solution and never noticed a problem with my approach.
I am still a beginner in Blender, because I have only started it using more frequently a couple of months ago,
even though I have opened it sporadically from time to time for many years from now.
My point is, that one does not need to create very large, elaborate projects in Blender, from the beginning.
Just using Blender for the small tasks, can improve overall experience in Daz Studio, by adding the tools not available there.
Notice that the unit of measurement was set to Metric in this example. The default unit of measurement is not defined but equates to Metric, 1 meter. DAZ's default is 1cm. So, what this setting is doing is clarifying that the measurement standard is metric and is adjusted from 1 meter to 1cm. I recommend this for any human size scale as it is pretty standard now in many programs (some do use imperial but it's actually less common in my experience.) For working on large scales such as city blocks, one might want to leave the scale at meters. For landscapes, kilometers even. Note, the scale can be changed while working in a scene and it will not resize any objects already created so we can dynamically change the scale as we work, then change the scale at export to whatever we need to match the program we are importing into.
The important takeaway here is to work to scale. There is a bad habit that formed in the 3D community to ignore scale since back in the dark ages (of 10 years ago) programs had no reference to real world scale or to each other. It was up to the artist to sort it all out when importing/exporting and it could get pretty arcane pretty fast. Now there are standards in almost all programs but they don't necessarily match. Some use metric, some imperial, feet vs inches, meters vs centimeters... So there is some matching up to do still but for the most part it's pretty straight forward now if one does a little research.
Oh, and by the way, when we import an object like a chair and it's 10 stories high, that's laziness on the part of the modeler, not some collision issue. Yes there are occasional issues in various programs where things like collision calculations or some similar type of calculation can justify a change in scale but that is actually pretty rare at the moment. 99% of the time, it's laziness that can often lead to problems, or at least more work, later on.
Now if we could get software to sort out their whole input value issues, as in 0-1 in some cases, 1-100 or some random range in others, normalized inputs that sort out dynamic curves in the back end for us vs non normalized inputs where there's no change for 1-99 and suddenly a huge change for 99.1 to 99.3... etc.. ;)
Blender is still terrible about this, DAZ is pretty good about it. Most other software is somewhere inbetween ime (in my experience.)
*Note: I'm not totally against non normalized inputs. When a non normalized input matches directly with real world settings it makes sense, such as fresnel or ior. It's when the inputs have been abstracted from a direct connection to a real world issue. Too often programmers will leave it non normalized because it relates to some parameter inside a formula that to the setting is black boxed (i.e. there is no direct connection to the end user.) This is what I am against, as to the user it makes no sense. One has to understand the underlying formula for it to make sense and that should not be the case when the formula is a black box scenario to the end user.
My other favorite add-on for Blender is a Bolt Factory. Below, are the screenshots of where one can find it in user preferences,
how to unwrap the bolt - just use "Smart UV Project"
and an example iray render made in Daz Studio, using a couple of instances of the bolt imported from Blender.
...I still am not able to move the main viewport camera without using key commands. It's been that way ever since I first tired Blender seven years ago.
...I rarely use them save for the most basic universal ones like in Word and other software as I have short term memory issues. For some people, yes hotkeys are faster, for myself when I have to stop and either try to remember them or look them up all the time, it isn't. In spite of my arthritis I get around pretty well with my trackball as it has very precise control and takes a lot of strain off my wrist and arm.
My wireless mouse(middle scroll button) doesnt work for that, but a different usb mouse works fine
Navigation with no keys. Mousewheel does zoom too, but my mousewheel is kinda broken so I set a second zoom command for it as well.
There are a few keys I use all the time: (W)menu, (E)xtrude, (R)otate, (S)cale, (G)rab being the main ones, but the first two are easily covered by menus, there are usually relevant context commands to click on the left toolbar, and rotate move (grab) and scale have an on screen manipulator that you can click and drag.
Can't leave this one out...
Thanks for all of the tips related to the camera - now I do not need to search for them myself.
So I've finally started to take the plunge... Rigging in blender. I got tempted by all those neato bendy bones videos that have come out recently.
Its not nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be (why did I think it was joint to be so hard? I mean, I rig stuff in DS, and I have no problems with that)
So I started out with just a cylinder and a bendy bone, and, honestly, it was pretty fun. Then I thought "lets make the object a bit more fun" so I made something screw-like. Then I thought "Hey, that looks a bit like a slinky," any guesses what happened next?
So heres my self propelled slinky gif
Nice...
Very cool!
You may want to get a programmable keyboard which has support for macros in addition to programable keys. They are very popular in MMO/RPG gaming circles. Though those keyboards may come with built in profiles for popular games but they can also be customized for specific applications and the profiles can be switched on the fly depending upon which applications you are working on.
..I like to keep things simple.
LIKE!
Wow, this quick fur in Blender is amazing. Just create some object in Blender or import something else, then click on Quick Fur and done.
Below is a Blender Cycles render of that Quick Fur placed on the ico sphere.
Then I have converted it to the mesh and even remeshed it, exported as .obj and then imported to Daz Studio, but it does not show up there.
Does anyone know what to do, to have it exported properly to show it up in Daz Studio?
When you converted it to a mesh objec...how did you do that?
I'm guessing you just created a set of 'edges' and no polys...
I have just clicked on the Object menu, then on Quick Effects and choosen Quick Fur.
Next, I have clicked on ParticleSystem tab and marked Use Modifier Stack.
Finally, I opened Add Modifier tab and clicked on Convert under ParticleSys.
I have tried even to add a Skin Modifier, but it has no effect on .obj export.
The Solidify modifier complains something about faces.
Below are the screenshots.
Yeah, that just creates edges...you'll need to give them 'thickness' in order for them to show in Studio.
You can convert the mesh to curve, then under the Curves options bevel it (or make it a closed cylinder) and then convert it back to mesh.
After all is said and done...
(I may be able to post some screenshots later)
Ok, got it - just extruded edges and that made the trick. Just need to play more with the settings.
Below is an iray render from Daz Studio.
Wow, mjc1016, that is a very nice mustache, you have made. Will try your tips next...
It's slated to become a freebie at some point in time...
This bevel on curves works even better. Below is another Daz Studio iray render of the fur created in Blender - 3000 fibers.