Exporting to Sweethome 3D.

amature_architect

I am the most amature of amatures here I am sure. I have searched this topic but have not found the answer. I appologize if this has already been covered in other threads.

Just for fun I like to design houses using a program called Sweethome 3D. I got started with Daz3D to create charectors to place inside my house models.

I know it's lame. It keeps my mind engaged when I'm bored. Don't judge me.......

In Daz3D on the Genesis 8 models the eyelashes look great.

After I export the model to OBJ format and import into Sweethome 3D the eyelashes have no detail. They just turn into sort of flat planes of color.

I know this might just be a limitation of how Sweethone 3D imports OBJ files and there may not be anything I can do to make the eyelashes look realistic.

This is the MTL entry for the OBJ file that is created when I export from Daz3D:

newmtl Eyelashes
d 1
Ns 0.75
Ni 1.3
Ka 0 0 0
Kd 0.25882354 0.14509805 0.050980393
Ks 1 1 1
Km 0.02
map_D g8fbaseeyelashes_1006.jpg

I wonder if there is something I can tweek in the Surface settings that might work better for exporting?

Anyone know what settings I should start with?

FSMCDesigns

See where it says OPACITY in that slot you need the eyelash alpha texture. It's the black and white one in the characters textures.. I don't know how the texture slots work in sweethome, but if you select the eyelash and then go to the surface setting in Sweethome and post an image, we can probably figure it out.

amature_architect

FSMCDesigns said:

See where it says OPACITY in that slot you need the eyelash alpha texture. It's the black and white one in the characters textures.. I don't know how the texture slots work in sweethome, but if you select the eyelash and then go to the surface setting in Sweethome and post an image, we can probably figure it out.

 

It appears Sweethome 3D is stripping away the "g8fbaseeyelashes_1006.jpg" during the import. I used the built in utility to apply it back to the eyelashes and this is the result.

When I observed the results I pulled "g8fbaseeyelashes_1006.jpg" into GIMP, added an alpha channel and deleted all the black. The results were basically the same as above but the black around the eyelashes was brown like in my original picture above.

It would seem that Daz3D is using the negative colors of "g8fbaseeyelashes_1006.jpg" to texture the eyelash node. I have the "plane" as I call it highlighted with the geometry brush. It keeps the individual lashes colored and makes the spaces in between transparent. 

FSMCDesigns

based on your images, it seems Sweethome doesn't support any transparencies. Ideally if there is a way to change the transparency of a surface, then you would apply the texture to it and that texture would then control what is transparent.

WendyLuvsCatz

I think most people go the other way, export stuff from SweetHome3D, I have it but admit I never have used it

chris-2599934

amature_architect said:

It would seem that Daz3D is using the negative colors of "g8fbaseeyelashes_1006.jpg" to texture the eyelash node.

Sort of. g8fbaseeyelashes_1006.jpg is an opacity map. Areas that are black are completely transparent, areas that are white are completely opaque, and shades of grey cover everything in between. The colour comes from the diffuse channel - usually just plain black rather than requiring an image file.

It appears that Sweethome doesn't include an opacity channel. What happens if you use a GIF or a PNG with alpha transparency as your "texture" image?

amature_architect

chris-2599934 said:

amature_architect said:

It would seem that Daz3D is using the negative colors of "g8fbaseeyelashes_1006.jpg" to texture the eyelash node.

Sort of. g8fbaseeyelashes_1006.jpg is an opacity map. Areas that are black are completely transparent, areas that are white are completely opaque, and shades of grey cover everything in between. The colour comes from the diffuse channel - usually just plain black rather than requiring an image file.

It appears that Sweethome doesn't include an opacity channel. What happens if you use a GIF or a PNG with alpha transparency as your "texture" image?

I didn't know what an opacity map was or what it did. Now I do. Thank you. I loaded g8fbaseeyelashes_1006.jpg into GIMP and converted it to a PNG. I added an alpha channel and used fuzzy select to grab most of the black and delete it. I then used the fill bucket to convert some of the white eyelash strands to black. When I exported the new PNG file I disabled "save background color" (not sure if I needed to or not). Edit the MTL file to grab the new PNG and this is the result:

I suspect there is a similar fix to make the scalp look more realistic. I am going to dig around in the surface settings of Daz3D to see if I can get this result without having to use so many steps.

I also have an issue with primatives I create in meshmixer (earrings) ending up looking mostly transparent once I import/export into Sweethome 3D via Daz3D. I will bet it also has to do with the opacity map.

Thanks again.