Importing Blender files?

scotchfairy

I don't actually user Blender, though I have it here. Never gotten around to using it until now. I have a bunch of meshes with textures that I want to import into either DS or Hexagon. What I see when I uncompressed my file was:
<br /> dragons.blend<br /> [folder]scripts><br /> [folder]textures></p> <p>

Scripts contains a bunch of python scripts. Textures contains a separate folder for each item's textures, and in each folder are the textures in .png and .jpg format.

No big deal, right? The question is, what file format should I export this to if I want everything to work in DS? Looking at the manual, it says that OBJ and FBX are available options for export. And FBX appears to preserve more of the original, at least in Blender's exporter. But can I import an FBX file into DS? I know there's an exporter built in, but references to *importing* files are few and far in between.

Can someone point me the right direction? (if there's a way to import these files without firing up Blender, I'd be even happier, but getting them into an editor I know how to use is the first step)

Hiro Protagonist

scotchfairy said:

I don't actually user Blender, though I have it here. Never gotten around to using it until now. I have a bunch of meshes with textures that I want to import into either DS or Hexagon. What I see when I uncompressed my file was:
<br /> dragons.blend<br /> [folder]scripts><br /> [folder]textures></p> <p>

Scripts contains a bunch of python scripts. Textures contains a separate folder for each item's textures, and in each folder are the textures in .png and .jpg format.

No big deal, right? The question is, what file format should I export this to if I want everything to work in DS? Looking at the manual, it says that OBJ and FBX are available options for export. And FBX appears to preserve more of the original, at least in Blender's exporter. But can I import an FBX file into DS? I know there's an exporter built in, but references to *importing* files are few and far in between.

Can someone point me the right direction? (if there's a way to import these files without firing up Blender, I'd be even happier, but getting them into an editor I know how to use is the first step)

You will need to open these in Blender. From Blender you should use export to OBJ (Wavefront .obj). The whole process is not necessarily simple as many free models for Blender (such as those on the excellent BlendSwap.com) have modifiers such as "array" which you must "apply" before you can export as OBJ. You can choose apply modifiers in the export dialogue, but then you are doing it blind and you may be applying modifiers you don't want.

A single model will often be split into separate objects in Blender, too, and these will need to be either merged or all exported together (there's an option to only export the active object). If you export all, you may end up exporting objects you don't want, such as scene objects that are sometimes included. As you can see from that, a certain amount (and sometimes quite a lot) of knowledge of Blender is likely to be required.

There's also scale to consider as Blender models tend to be at large scale which even at the smallest import scale in Studio will be too big.

You also need to get the Blender export settings right. I've attached a screenshot of what I use (note it only exports the selected object and does not apply modifiers). This is intended to go with the "Lightwave" import preset in Studio NOT the Blender preset as this is incorrect/out of date.

The textures will probably not be linked on import, but it's easy enough to attach them in Studio in the Surfaces tab. In any case you will probably want to move textures to your DS library.

Oh, and another thing. Blend files usually contain the creator's Blender UI layout. There is an option not to include this when you open it and I would recommend that as you may get a layout that will confuse you.

MickyMac23

Could just create clothing or props in Blender and just leave the posing for Daz.