how do you import a video game character into daz3d?
thomasbrooks07
Posts: 25
I have seen several really cool models I want to use from rip van winkle on render hub but I have never seen a file system like it and I cant figue out how to load any of them. I can import like a fxb or obj file into daz3d but it either explodes into a unreconizable mess or its only visable under the wired texture mode. there are dozens of texture and bump map files and im not sure how to get any of them to work. Is there a way to do this?
there is one of the models im trying to get to run but I just cant figure out how.
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Does the game license allow the use of its assets in that way?
I looked up Rip Van Winkle on Render Hub and checked out his stuff. I had to go this route because you removed the link. Everything posted there is for games that allow something called 'Mods' to be community developed on platforms like Steam and other places. I'm also a Mod Developer for Steam and I'm more than well versed in this subject. Here is proof, this is my first mod. If you scroll to the second to last picture thumbnail on the image roll, you can see where I improved the model's head features for the guys. And the women you see there are a million miles improved from the original.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1859879154
These mods are not only allowed, but encouraged by the original game developers. It was the original game devs who actually made their code and assets available for the gaming community to modify with their in-house compiler.
If you allow, I can answer the OP's question, as he didn't do anything wrong.
thomasbrooks07, you'll need to use either Blender or Gimp. Daz Studio doesn't play nice with texture maps that try to import that isn't already in its library, hence the scramble and why wire frame mode is the only working way to view it. Once you got the figure you want, save it as a .obj without textures or UV maps, just straight up gray-mode, and import that into DAZ. You can then manipulate it and export it back out. That's if you're well versed in how DAZ manipulated objects that it did not create. Otherwise, just stick with Blender or Gimp, make your edits there and you should do fine.
Good luck with your project!
No disrespect, Daniel, but Richard's question was a valid one, since modding for a game isn't something one would do in DAZ Studio, as you probably know. So the question of what purpose the OP had in wanting to import game models into DAZ Studio remains - certainly not to mod them.
From what I'm seeing inside the files I suspect they were ripped with XNA, imported into Blender 2.79 with their XNA plugin, then exported as DAE, FBX, OBJ and a couple of other formats.
Windows 10 comes with a 3D viewer, it likes FBX files, doesn't like these though, hell even Autodesk's FBX tools don't like them, and they created the ****ing format.
Originally Collada (DAE) and FBX were meant to be universal formats, to make transferring mesh and rigging between different programs easier, that went out the window once all the devs at the different companies got their hands on the code. Now it's a case of program A to program A should work, but program A to program B will result in varying degrees of headaches.
As for the mesh only being visible in wireframe view, some programs have Opacity = 0% meaning no Opacity, while other have it meaning full Opacity, so head into the Surfaces tab and find the Opacity slider and crank it to 100%.
I've been modding games since Half Life, in all that time game developers and publishers (not always the same company) haven't changed any. While it's true many now allow their assets to be modded, most don't, however none of them like it when they find their assets getting ripped and spread across the internet, or worse into other games. It's even worse if someone is dumb enough to try and make money from it, that's when the companies reach for that huge bat with "legal department" printed on it.
Always safer to do the ripping yourself and to use the assets you do rip for personal use only.
Just because game A allowed people to mod it and even provided modding tools doesnt mean that game B and C are ok with it too. Richard is correct and finding out what is and isnt ok to do with a game means you look and see what the game license allows for that game. And also just because models from a game are available to download online doesnt mean its ok...the internet is a pretty big place and its going to be hard for the game devs to police. Nintendo is the only one i can think of that is really fast about putting out takedown notices when models from one of their games show up for download. Blizzard on the other hand is really slow to get takedown notices out but they still do it on occasion.
Having said all that, technicalities aside if you are using it for a private mod that will never be released to the public then imo who cares. But you might want to just use a different program like Blender, Maya or 3DSM instead of Daz to do your mod work. Probably look into a different modding forum too like nexusmods, steam modding forums or whatever is being used these days.
I saw it was Lara Croft and it always puzzles me why when there are nicer DAZ versions of the character, clothes and hair available
here is a whole thread
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/859/lara-renders
I think it's more about authenticity and not what looks better. People trying to put their creative spin on something even if a lot of people find it better still wont make it authentic.
yeah but I will never understand the need to copy someone elses work exactly
that is what screenshots are for
Couldn't agree more. I have probably been modding and developing for games as long if not longer. Used to be that a mod was mostly original work that was made to fit within the parameters of the games SDK, now it usually about what a user can rip out of one game and import into another, talk about lack of creativity.
I rip lots of models from the games I own, for personal use only. I also do my fair share of fan art and find that posing the figures in the app they are designed in and then exporting and importing as an OBj works the best
Because for some people taking a screen shot of a video game character in the video game that they are from isn't enough. They want to create fancy outfits of their own which means you might have to export the character, shapthe outfit to their figure then reimport it all back into the game. People also want to have that characters appearance but in a different video game. If you go to nexusmods you'll see that people have put characters from one game into others. Venom Snake or Quiet from Metal Gear Solid 5 into Fallout 4 or Nier Automata's 2B into Grand Theft Auto 5 or Skyrim. Or people want to make funny machinimas or smut to fulfil their fantasies with their favorite video game characters.
Now as far as why people do it? i assume because its fun for them or because it makes them happy. How it makes them happy isn't really something that i need to know. Because it seems like asking people how their hobby makes them happy makes them uncomfortable (depending on the hobby).
I understand modding
I was discussing rendering a low poly game asset in DAZ iray which quite frankly will look awful
I use Nifskope to extract my Skyrim meshes and I can assure you they look crap
especially on Genesis 8
Skyrim characters will probably look bad no matter where you render them lol. You could probably get the computers that rendered out a movie like Avengers Endgame and try and render a Skyrim character through it and it would still look like crap.
But anyways, a lot of the characters from the van winkle site are from more recent games. Fortnite, Overwatch, Devil May Cry 5, Resident Evil 2 and the ripped models are listed as mid to high poly with a few low poly ones (probably ripped from a mobile game). But even the ones van winkle has listed as low poly look better than a Skyrim character lol. The OP might get lucky and the character he wants is 2B or Claire Redfield both of which have been ported over pretty well into Daz. But with other characters like the Lara Croft you pointed out what you are going to get instead is someones "vision" of what Lara Croft should have looked like. And that goes back to the authenticity thing i talked about where someones vision of what Lara should have looked like might not be ugly it still doesnt look like video game Lara. But if authenticity is what someone is looking for then they may be willing to take a hit in the render quality of the model rather than settling for an imposter.
IMO the OP's best bet is still to try out Blender, Maya or 3DSM instead and do their work in there. But if they insist on trying to make it work in Daz maybe they should talk to the people who made the Claire Redfield and 2B models for Daz. See if it's the original mesh from the game rigged to Daz standards or if its a Genesis character morphed to look like the game character with the game textures or whatever. Hell they can probably request a commission through them since doing a commission through here will probably lead to nowhere.
Closing this because, as noted earlier, allowing modding does not mean allowing any model to be extracted, distributed, and used at will.