Duplicating Objects

mr_maniac_x

I've recently been working with poser and have become eternally frustrated with it's lack of support / resolution for 2 VERY BASIC features :

inability to function key (shift/control or whatever) + Click to select several Objects and then apply grouping/modification or whatever needs doing to them

Inability to Flip imported objects horizontally or vertically

That being said, it was able to duplicate imported objects.. which oddly enough is something that I'm unable to so far achieve using the latest version of DAZ.

Is there a way to do this in the following scenarios :

1. Duplicate multiple objects currently selected

2. Duplicate individual objects.

footnote :

I've tried to copy and paste single or groups of selected items and then paste them using standard functions Control+C and Control+V with no such luck.

I'm using the Windows 64bit version on a Win 7 Pro 64 OS (not like that will likely have any impact on the success or failure of this but just in case...)

Szark

There is not a copy and paste or a Duplicate function is Daz Studio and never has been. That doesn't mean I don't want one. :)

Instead there are ways to do it. Daz Studio now has Save As Scene Subset chooing this option will provide another selection window where you can select which item/s in the scene you want to save. Then load that Scene Subest back in to your main scene and your items have been duplicated.

Or if they are exact copies then Daz Studio now has Instancing via the Create menu. You can make a single Instance (Static Copy) or multiples. You will however need to manually position the copies in the scene yourself.

mr_maniac_x

Hi Pete,
Thank you for this information. It sounds as if the fastest work around for me will be to do the instancing thing. I'll have to look up how you do that but it reads to be the better method.

I gotta say, I'm shocked at the lack of *what I consider* basic functionality in both suits of software. How does a Dev Team miss this kind of thing yet create software that allows the user to do almost every other amazing task they desire in a matter of seconds.. the mind explodes pondering.

Well, hopefully they add things like this into their software as it is likely going to assist with the generation of model creations which are what the developers are banking on making the primary quantity of their profits from.

P.S.

Which area of the forums would be best for me to look for or ask about a work flow going between Sculptris to Daz for creating new characters. I've not come across a tutorial that explains the best way to make a character outside of DAZ and then bring them into DAZ and how you would go about rigging them up. The rigging tutorials I've come across seem to deal with Bipeds but my first test creature is a humanoid ant.

I built him separating each area I wanted to have as a movable zone into separate objects so that I could use higher res. texture maps and paint them directly onto the model in Sculptris. So.. Now knowing that DAZ has no copy / duplicate function.. it makes me wonder if this is the wrong way to do it. Perhaps most people import a solid single mesh figure and then use poly-zoning or grouping and apply grouped poly's to various bones etc..

Anyway, that's what I'm looking for with the goal of solving so if there is a good area of the forum I've missed or someone knows the best way to achieve this, I'm all ears. It may also save other people time if they are looking for the copy or duplicate function... it's likely they are trying what I'm trying to do as well.

Richard Haseltine

Create>New Instance... will give you an instance of the selected item.

Figure Creation, however, does need a single OBJ - with groups for body parts if it's going to use the old Poser Parametric rigging, and ideally with groups for selection and as a guide to bone placement for TriAx figures.

mr_maniac_x

Thank you for this information, very helpful stuff.

So I would need to create the character, assign child and parent objects.. then export as a new OBJ from DAZ, re-import it and then start editing?

Also, I'm now unable to find a way to flip an object horizontally or vertically inside of DAZ without the texture inverting (used an inverse on scale.. set it to -100%

is there an actual flip function for performing this action?

Richard Haseltine

The texture should invert, since you are mirroring the object.

Rather than importing the OBJ into the scene to create a figure you import it into the Figure Setup pane, by right-clicking in the Geometry area on the left. Then you drag that into the relationships area, drag-and-drop the bones to set up the correct hierarchy, and right-click in the order column to set the rotation order (twist axis first, the axis that runs along the length of the bone, axis that is most likely to hit ninety degrees last) and then click Create. Then use the Joint Editor tool to adjust the centre and end points, which will have snapped to the limits of the group bounding boxes, and Polygon Selection and Weight painting tools to adjust the weight maps.

mr_maniac_x

Oh nice, that's great stuff. So what I need to keep in mind for DAZ is that I will need to produce a left and right leg and arm when creating my own characters as there are no built in inversion functions that allow for the characters to have tex coords smart mapped and inverted with the mesh as well so that the mesh, texture map and texture coordinates all invert together and are re-mapped back to the outside of the model.

Maybe in the future something like this will be introduced?

I use a tablet PC and am finding some controls to 'spaz' out on me, is this normal or is there a check box I need to select to enable tablet pen support pressure sensitivity etc?

sriesch

mr_maniac_x said:

I use a tablet PC and am finding some controls to 'spaz' out on me, is this normal or is there a check box I need to select to enable tablet pen support pressure sensitivity etc?

Which controls, and spaz out in what way?
No tablet here, but for example when you use the Universal Tool's rotate control, make sure you are dragging the mouse only left/right (or up/down). (For some reason the first time I tried to use it I thought I was supposed to move the mouse along the highlighted circle line, which made it flip and rotate back and forth at all sorts of random angles for no apparent reason.)

Also there is some functionality in Edit > Copy and Edit > Paste that while it doesn't duplicate an entire object, can copy some aspects of one to apply to a second object.

mr_maniac_x

Hi Sean,
Yes it's with the Rotation tool, it seems to be that for the tablet pen... most of the time going up and down has solved this problem.. but when it comes to angles of rotation that are less X or Y plane oriented.. and go somewhere along an X/Z or Y/Z Tangent angle... that's when it begins to flicker... it has a steady motion of path as you move up and down still but will randomly flicker to an earlier rotation angle then back to another random one then to where you are at again and back so the results are unexpected when you release the mouse button (take the pen tip away from the screen)

not that i've done weight mapping before, but I thought it would be nice to have pressure sensitive weight mapping to allow for a more natural feeling workflow. mostly a gimmic/minor speed increase.. lacks accuracy i suppose unless you could alter sensitivity.

Well, Here is a bit of a testimony to the favour of DAZ and it's community

I placed a similar query on all of the top poser forums including their official forum.. and am yet to get a single reply or response offering advice... I'm glad to see that whilst DAZ seems to lack some basic functionality there are solid work arounds in place to achieve good results none-the-less.

Can't wait to try out the creation of the model in the figure setup as mentioned earlier in this thread.