Losing Material Nodes on Export

fakedoctor

I've taken a character from Daz Studio to Blender by exporting everything as an .obj. I'm using the default Daz export settings but changing scale to 1% and checking "No Maps" so I don't duplicate large image files unnecessarily (I'm primarily doing this to work with materials in Eevee and Cycles, so finding and applying textures in the node editor is part of the process anyway). For the most part this works exactly as expected - Genesis 8 has all the necessary material slots in Blender, and G8 maps for arms, legs, teeth, etc all apply like they're supposed to in their corresponding slots. The same goes for a few other items I've exported (clothing, shoes, props).

The problem I'm running into is with one specific object, OutOfTouch's "Classic Bob Hair." In Daz Studio, this has materials separated into areas like "bangs" and "side" and "cap," like a lot of hairs. When I export it, however, it only has a single "Default OBJ" material slot available. Almost every one of those missing material slots uses the same textures, so applying them all to the one material slot works fine, but the "cap" material needs a totally different set of textures and I have no way to apply them in Blender.

I've tried exporting the hair with other settings selected under "Write Groups" and "Write Surfaces," but none of it seems to fix the problem of this .obj losing all of the material slots in the export. Does this problem sound familiar to anyone who understands this kind of process a little better than I do?

 

Edit: I was able to solve the problem in Blender. The UV map was still intact, so I selected the cap geometry by highlighting its island in the UV editor and assigning it to a new material. I'm still curious about how the export "forgets" material slots in some cases and not others, however, if anyone is able to explain.

andya_b341b7c5f5

You can preserve the material slots if you export from DS with the settings shown in the image below, particularly note the ones on the right-hand side.

You should then get basic materials defined when you import into Blender (at least version 2.80).  You may need to check the Image Search checkbox in the import options.  If you want to use Eevee, to get transparency to work on the cap etc. you have to set the blend mode for each material to 'Alpha Hashed' in the Settings section of the Material tab.  In the attached image, which uses another OOT product 'Lary Hair', I have done this on the cap but nothing else, to show the difference.  You will have to add the other maps e.g. glossy, bump, normal, manually.

fakedoctor

That was one of the configurations that I tried, and unfortunately it didn't work. Just with the one specific hair, though - it has worked on everything else I've exported, including a couple other hairs. There's something special about this one ("Classic Bob Hair") and I can't imagine what makes it this way.