Geometry Editor tool....tutorial anywhere?
jakiblue
Posts: 7,281
in The Commons
Is there a good tutorial anywhere that explains how and why to use the geometry editor tool?
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Not that I'm aware of, but I'm very helpful! :)
Starters:
Geoemtery editor allows you to select and manipulate the mesh of an object. You can hide parts of something, you can assign parts of a surface to a different material or surface group, or even delete parts of a mesh (carefully!)
The 'stuff' of an object is manipulatable once you've selected the object in scene pane (so you only access facets of the object you've selected rather than anything you happen to select over in the scene)
What's really nice, in Daz, is there are informative info/command boxes that pop up whenever you right-click. So if you right click in the viewer, you will see various options for selection style (Drag: select individual polygons, Marquee: drag a box)
Important: You want to open up 'Tool settings' window (top of UI, Window -> Panes (Tabs) -> Tool Settings )
It has information on Face Groups, Surfaces, Regions.
The vast majority of the time you are only likely to worry about surfaces, though people can correct me on that one. (I think Face Groups come up most with rigging)
So, for example, when I use Ultrascatter. Ultrascatter distributes instances of one object over the surface of another object. You can also limit it to one material/surface/zone of that object.
Well, if I have a HUGE terrain, most of which is out of view, distributing and rendering 5000 trees is kind of a strain for the 4000 trees that don't actually appear on camera.
So, what to do? I go into Geometry Editor, select Marquee selection, drag across my viewport. It's now selected all the polygons that I can see from my camera.
I then right-click on the Tool Settings / Surfaces name and 'Create Surface from Selected...'
This, well, takes whatever you've selected and creates a new surface from it.
So in my terrain case, I then have to go over to the surfaces tab and set the material (since the new surface just has default shader). Just copy from the original material and paste it in.
Now, when I use Ultrascatter, I can select the new material zone (which I usually name something like 'in view') and bam.
This can also be really useful if you are using dynamic clothing and need to distinguish between different parts of the clothing, or if you want to change the look and materials of an object. Maybe you want that robot to have gold trim around various parts without having to go through a lot of trouble with creating image masks for metallicity and other stuff. Nope, now you can have, say, hard plastic for the surfaces and apply a gold shader for the trim.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/42088/tutorial-adding-surfaces-in-ds-with-the-geometry-editor-tool
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewthread/47542/
hope that helps
I'm researching something else and found this thread. I did a tutorial a few days ago over in Art Studio, called The Material Zone, which has a screenshot step by step of creating material zones with the Geometry Editor. It's also for showing shaders.
Thank you....gets me stated!
Hello mates,
Is there a way to open a rectangular hole on a wall using the Studio 4.x geometry editor? I need to fit a window in that hole. Neither the marquee nor the lasso selection modes of the Geometry Editor work. I hoped that I could hide and then delete the polygons within the selected area, but this is not happening. Even worse, not a single polygon is selected at all. If I choose drag mode, then the whole surface is selected which I don't want. Someone told me that I would have to create my surface using Hexagon and then export it to Studio. Would I really have to do that? For some unknown reason the bridge between Hexagon and Studio stopped working when I moved from 4.9 to 4.10. Please advise.
It seems that the whole wall is one polygon/ quad.
You can create your own primitives in DazStudio, check the symbols in the menu bar.
Create a plane primitive and experiment with the divisions, scale it and use the geometry editor then to hide the quads for your window.
Copy the shader of your existing wall and paste it to your new made wall, you can use the vertical/ horizontal tiling/ offset to match it to your "selfmade" wall.
Or you can create a transmap for the wall, load the texture map in an image editing programm, create a new layer, fill it with pure
white and create a black rectangle on the wall where you need the window, save this (careful, do not overwrite the original texture),
and use it in the opacity channel of your shader.
The geometry editor only works with existing polygons, (vertices, etc.) If using the drag mode selects the entire surface, than that wall has a single polygon.
It should be possible to use a black and white image in the Opacity parameter, (Opacity Strength for 3Delight, or Cutout Opacity for Iray,) to create the hole in the wall.
What set are you using?
Thank you buddy,
In the end I had to do it as you suggested. I created a primitive, not a plane but a cube with 8 divisions. I chose a cube because I needed to assign different colors to the surfaces. The only problem is that the new wall/window is no longer part of the whole facade of the building; I temporarily solved it by parenting the wall to the facade till I find any other solution. Think I'm going to review Novica's Tutorial, "The Material Zone."
Thanks L'Adair.
I use 3Delight. Since rendering with Iray takes too much time, I seldom use it.
I already tried working with opacity. It was the first thing I tried, actually. The problem is that opacity affects the whole surface, not a portion of it. I (almost) solved the problem by creating a new primitive for replacing the wall.
"opacity affects the whole surface, not a portion of it"
While that is technically true, it is something that is routinely used to make parts of a surface invisible while leaving others visible. That is accomplished by modifying the opacity settings in 3Delight through creating and using an opacity map (greyscale texture image) and plugging it into the Opacity channel. This modifies the opacity settings so that black areas in the image map used will not be visible and white areas will be completely opaque. Grey areas in between will have their opacity modified accordingly. This works very well for surfaces that have been UV mapped and that use corresponding texture maps, For surfaces that are not UV mapped it is problematic, though.
Great that you've found something that worked for you.
What L'Adair meant (and what I've tried to describe in my second method) is something like this:
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/329096/hi-i-need-help-making-this-is-marvelous-designer
Where did the geometry editor tool go? I finally dl the latest daz version, coming from 4.11, and I can't find the tool.
If it isn't in Tools>Geometry Editor check that you have given DS its serial number, which should activate the rigging tools in Help>About Installed Plug-ins..
I plugged that in during installation ... maybe I'm calling it the wrong thing, lol ... it was at the top on the right, near the render buttons ... maybe the draw tool is where that used to be?
I found it where you mentioned it, but when I clicked on it, though I got the little circle, but no way to select marquis or lasso, etc.
By default the selection mode is paint on, you can chnage that through the right-click menu or the Tool Settings pane.
When I right-clicked, it didn't do anything, but I'll check the other option ... thanks :)
In using the Geometry Editor, to select different areas of the mesh for different textures---I found Flagg 3D Youtube tutorial was very helpful. A simple example, but lots of potential.
Parmy has one, it is very basic and is good for beginners.
Daz Studio Geometry Editor Tool - Material Zones - YouTube
Don't forget to select one of the other tools when you're done. Otherwise we'll end up with another "I can't see my dforce hair in iray preview or renders" thread.
There's this video
https://www.daz3d.com/how-to-use-the-daz-studio-geometry-editor
hello everyone.
please. could not tell. how to separate different parts of clothes and suits geometry editor?
for example. there was a dress became two piece outerwear this a t-shirt. and the underwear became a skirt. and so on. to save all the individual pieces of clothing and suits in the folder clotting.
You could certainly use the Geometry Editor to delete the unwated parts of the model, select them then right-click>Geometry Editing will have the option to delete selected. Once done, and tested to be sure it is working, File>Save As>Support Assets>Figure/Prop Asset so that it has its own identity, otherwise if you load the modified version as well as the original or the other modified version you will be stuck with each apeparing as the one you first loaded (I think - certainly there could be only one version of the base geometry at a time)
If you are removing polys from anything, save your result as its own name. Otherwise if you load the original model into a scene with the modified one it is likely to come in missing the polys that you removed from your version.
Richard Haseltine.
for a start, how to select geometric polygons on any clothing and costumes, and in which section is the geometry editor?
then to separate all the individual pieces of clothing and suits.
later where do you need to put individual parts of clothing and suits, after editing the geometry in what kind the folder to put individual?
Tools>Geometry Editor
You can drag across the surface to paint on a selection; you can also right-click to get Selct By otpions, or use the + symbols next to group/surfaces in the Tool Settings pane.
You can put the presets wherever you like, the asset files will go in /Data/Author/Product/
Richard Haseltine
thank you.
sorry, but it did not work out for me to save two separate parts, here are three reasons, the first one should look like this.
the second reason, after cutting, i can not keep the t-shirt beautifully, at the very bottom you can see the trimming of the t-shirt.
https://imgur.com/iyl8wp4
and the third reason, the outer clothing can not be cut off by a separate part, the whole clothing is preserved and remains.
https://imgur.com/dVqcWNq
and last, here is a window at the time of the appearance, in order to save individual parts of the clothes, what you need to choose there, where, how, and what to do, honest, i do not know.
https://imgur.com/a1SrOyt
from what are separate parts of clothing not preserved?
Richard Haseltine
do you have any other mails, to chat in private?
I'm not sure what the first issues are, for the option dialogue I would keep the Author name (so you remember it isn't your model) but chnage the Product to soemething like TEC2-subsets and then make the Item descriptive, like TEC2-TShirt.
Richard Haseltine
yes, this is not my models.
and what can be was changed, honest, i do not know how, what, where else to do.
please, could you write a full instruction on how to hide cut polygons< and so on?
will be grateful!