Some roadblocks exporting a cat/wolf girl into 3ds max (eventually as OBJ).
kuieckc_848b5d66e3
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I decided I would begin working on a project to really work on my skills in 3DS Max as far as lighting and rendering. I also wanted to bring in a character of some kind from DAZ Studio to really get those things into some sort of work flow as I have more experience with 3DS Max. After 15 hours or so of working on this project, I'm not even sure which program my final project will be rendered in as I like certain aspects of the rendering engines in both programs.
The main reason I'm putting this up though, is because this program is made to be compatible with many other programs used in the industry and there are not many threads specifically about bringing a posed DAZ figure into 3DS Max successfully.
I'm not sure whether it is the exported file or how 3DS Max reads the files, but 3DS Max seems to have a lot of trouble reading model and bone information from DAZ Studio exported files. So hopefully this will help someone, or at least be able to give someone a jumping off point now or in the future.
I will preface this by saying that this is a static character not meant for motion, only to be a statue in my final scene.
The cat/wolf girl in this is nude but I have read over the nudity policy and I think these renders will be okay. Please tell me if they are not okay to post, and I will take them down or try to render them in a more tasteful angle or something along those lines
I guess I'll post my PC info in case anyone wants to know:
Windows 7 SP1 - 64x
8GB Ram
AMD Phenom II Quad-Core Processor 1.6 GHz
Programs being used so far:
DAZ Studio 4.6.0.18
Autodesk 3ds Max 2014
This thread will only update as frequently as I get around to it or remember to keep it going... Or until I finish my project... Or if someone asks a question about what's going on, or has something to point out to help me.
The first few things I will post are things I've already worked with in both DAZ and Max.
Anyway, thanks for reading and away I go.
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Comments
3DS is universal, DS is not which is why you are having issues getting DS specific content into another app. DS is great for scene setup and even has some good animation points, but 3DS is an expensive, professional app with many more options. The way I see it, if DAZ had wanted their content to be used in 3DS, they would have included that option for full export. If FBX doesn't work for you, just re-rig it in 3DS. If not, export as .OBJ, the whole scene, and render in 3DS.
Hey, thanks for replying and I completely understand what you are saying.
I have tried exporting scenes, multiple part characters, and base genesis figures as Objects, FBX, and Collada (I'll probably try the others while updating this) but I've always had a lot of problems once they get into 3DS Max.
With bones and polygons being stretched and skewed every direction, textures not appearing transparent when they have the maps for it, and not a lot of specific forum answers for my problems as I encounter them, I just figured I'd get proactive and try to find out some answers to the problems that I, and at least a few others, may have. I decided to document it to help people.
And like I said, I don't know where this project is going to end up being rendered. I like a lot of the ease of character rendering that DAZ has going on so I may end up rendering a video in DAZ. But I also like the material libraries, shading, ease of texture application and baking, and overall rendering control of Max that I'm more familiar with. When I get near the end, I guess it will just depend on which scene will look better.
I guess I could call it an experiment of sorts. : )
Okay, so I figured I would set the scene that I intend to bring this cat/wolf girl into.
Basically It is a small temple where she will be standing in on the main platform as a statue, and hopefully in front of a stained glass window with the sun blasting through shining all over the place and looking fairly cool.
These renders in no way represent the final lighting or texturing environment.
Here's some images:
I hear ya, when Hexagon was released awhile back at DAZ I thought i would give it a shot since it would probably interact with DS better than 3DS, but being so used to the 3DS UI, it threw me off big time. I gave up on trying to get rigging characters into 3DS awhile back, LOL. If I still had access to VRay for 3DS again i would render everything in Max, .obj or not, LOL.
I've downloaded, but never actually tried Hexagon. I have messed around with Bryce for some environments though. I say messed around because I had no clue how that interface worked. lol.
V-Ray though... It's so good it's almost cheating. lol.
Now for the character which was created using DAZ 4.6.
I used the white wolf/fox from Foxy and Wolfie by MAB, found here.
Using a lot of morphs from different characters, then posing, I came up with the character on the left in the final image.
In my next post, I might talk about some rendering techniques I figured out in Daz Studio (If I remember to) just in case anyone sees this and wants pick up some rendering basics along with me.
As always, comments are welcome.
Thank You.
OBJ Export should be perfect for static characters.
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Decided to post this instead of DAZ rendering stuff because there is enough of that online I think (or I may touch on it later, I don't know, kinda doing this on the fly).
When Importing into 3ds Max from Daz Studio, Collada and FBX File Types Probably Won't Work Well For You, Stick With OBJ.
As for Collada...
You can see in Picture 1 that the pose transfers well. In fact really well. But there are a couple problems as you can see in the closer up Picture 2. The problem with this model is that the figure in daz is modified to not have ears showing but this export option leaves the standard Genesis ears on the model, disregarding how it looks in daz.
One extra thing, Collada imports come out at only about half the subdivision quality / polygon density of other export options which leaves things like bent elbows, bent necks, and other areas where surfaces bend closely together looking really rough and polygonal. You can see it a bit in the elbows of Picture 1
As for FBX...SAVE YOURSELF THE HASSLE AND DON'T DO IT.
Unless you feel like spending a bunch of time going between menus and settings in both programs to probably end up with a poor result.
Picture 3 is a perfect example of why you shouldn't export as an FBX.
Picture 3 is a pretty default FBX export from daz studio after it's imported into 3ds Max, if the exporting doesn't just give you an error message that is.
What you can see is parts floating all over the place and all out of position as well as polygons being stretched all over. What you can't see is the bones sticking out all over the place as well as multiple copies of some figure pieces. You can delete some of these with no effect to the model, but if you delete others, you can collapse parts of the model in on themselves.
Do yourself a favor and...
Go OBJ!
Picture 4 shows off the settings I used to export out of daz studio.
OBJ doesn't export bones, so you won't have a rigged character. Remember to save this to it's own folder because it will create a folder for the texture maps it exports (or you could click 'no maps' to just export the objects).
Now you might run into one of the problems I had with OBJ initially where the normally smoothly flowing together parts that distinguish the cat/wolf girl (ears, 4-fingered hands/feet, etc.) appeared separated by a small gap of no polygons between themselves and the rest of the genesis figure (don't have pictures because I couldn't replicate this problem). If this occurs, just mess around with some settings and try importing again.
It should come out as a perfectly flowing model, either all separated into it's individual parts that daz has them assigned to for rigging purposes, or brought in as one single object depending on how your import settings in max are setup.
My next post is going to cover me going over some problems that came about by importing into 3ds max. : )
Progress is a little slow as I had a job washing dishes for 2 days as a favor (I thought it would be longer, but oh well... not to mention the new Humble Indie Bundle. lol.)
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