Modifying Daz 3 models in blender

[dopperman]

What does it say when you use dim? Does it even show up there?

Ah, turns out the product key was hidden in DIM.

I am back to square one with hexagon though - using the bridge from Daz 3d the separate parts of the model are merged into one object, so I can no longer manipulate different parts differently

 

[OhWee]

Ah, turns out the product key was hidden in DIM.

I am back to square one with hexagon though - using the bridge from Daz 3d the separate parts of the model are merged into one object, so I can no longer manipulate different parts differently

That's where my suggestion of just building a new wall section, and then hiding polygons on the existing one comes into play.

Anyways, I thought of an even easier way to to do this... although the sphere suggestion above might be easier than mine, so if that'll do the trick, yeah...

Use the geometry editor tool to select the polygons in the part of the wall that you want to modify, then assign those polygons to a new surface.

Then, create a texture map for that surface if needed (if the product in question combines different regions into a single texture map, crop out the part of the texture map you need for that wall, and make a new texture map) and then assign the relevant texture map(s) to the new surface you just created, using the horizontal/vertical tiling and offsets to shift and resize the texture map as needed. Then, create a black and white map with a hole in it where you need the hole, and assign that map to cutout opacity for your new texture section. The black part of your map will visually create a hole via 100% transparency for the black parts.

Note that if you need to set tiling to greater than 1, you'll end up with multiple holes, in which case this won't work... I'm thinking you'll need to do less than 1 though, since it's just a tiny part of the wall.

As I mentioned before, save your scene to a different file name before doing this, in case you end up reassigning unintended polygons to the new texture, so you have a fallback point.

Then, if needed, create a cylinder primitive in Daz to put behind your hole, with the ends hidden/deleted (again, use the geometry editor tool to hide and delete the ends of the cylinder). This will allow you to assign a different texture to the cylinder/hole, say if you wanted to simulate unpainted sheet rock or something.

This way, you can place a figure on the other side of the wall, for camera angle purposes. You could also place another room model (or just a simple room created using cube/plane primitives) on the other side of the hole, if you wanted to show some guy crouching in front of the hole. Of course, you'd need to 'mate' your hole with the other room as well, but that's where using hexagon to merge a cube primitive with a cylinder primitive comes in, or you could do the transparency/cutout opacity thing again on the new wall. Might be a bit of a pain to offset the texture though, to get the holes on both walls to align properly...

As I said before, this avoids all the issues you may run into by exporting and re-importing the entire model.

The transparent sphere thing suggested above sounds pretty simple though, might be worth looking into.

 

[OhWee]

Just for fun, I made you a cube with a hole in it. It has four material zones.

Default material is the hole, plus there are separate zones for the front face, back face, and edges.

Hexagon file for the obj, the obj, and a Daz file where I've added the other three material zones are in the 7zip file I've attached.

If you need to offset the hole from the center, it might be easiest to do that in Hexagon. Just select the edge points you need to move to the left/right/up/down and move them as a group. Similarly, if you need a smaller hole in your wall, again, select the edge points (but not the hole points) and scale up accordingly.

I hope this is of some use to you!

 

[dopperman]

Just for fun, I made you a cube with a hole in it. It has four material zones.

Default material is the hole, plus there are separate zones for the front face, back face, and edges.
View attachment 251356
Hexagon file for the obj, the obj, and a Daz file where I've added the other three material zones are in the 7zip file I've attached.

If you need to offset the hole from the center, it might be easiest to do that in Hexagon. Just select the edge points you need to move to the left/right/up/down and move them as a group. Similarly, if you need a smaller hole in your wall, again, select the edge points (but not the hole points) and scale up accordingly.

I hope this is of some use to you!

Wow, thank you for trying but Im not sure how to use it, Hexagon is not very user friendly.

I did use your suggestion to cut out the part I need to modify - but switched to blender (hexagon takes about 4 seconds to select a single vertice..). I have no idea why daz messes up my surfaces though.

Cutting everything out works fine, and exporting it to daz as .fbx.


So I punch a hole in it, the UV looks fine to me, but then it looks messed up in Daz 3d.


Unwrapping (and leaving it) also gives the same.

I tried sending it to Hexagon

As well as I can tell, somewhere between Blender and Daz a bunch of new surfaces are added?
Im at a loss here - I cant seem to delete them in hexagon without entire parts of the wall going missing.

 

[OhWee]

@dopperman

One thing I may have forgotten to do in Hexagon is to set the surfaces to 'cube'. I only use Hexagon occasionally, so I'm probably not using it to it's full potential.

As for the files I shared, my idea here was for you to load/import the .obj I created into Daz, then position it where you made your hole using the geometry editor in Daz, in case I wasn't entirely clear on that before.

I did provide the hexagon file at least. I'm sure Blender is a bit easier to use though. Hopefully you can adjust the'edge' vertices of the .obj in Blender as needed (i.e. stretch the top, left, bottom, and right edges of the object horizontally and vertically to the size you need, while not changing the shape of the hole itself), and then save it as an .obj again and position it to 'fill' your hole in Daz.

 

[dopperman]

@dopperman

One thing I may have forgotten to do in Hexagon is to set the surfaces to 'cube'. I only use Hexagon occasionally, so I'm probably not using it to it's full potential.

As for the files I shared, my idea here was for you to load/import the .obj I created into Daz, then position it where you made your hole using the geometry editor in Daz, in case I wasn't entirely clear on that before.

I did provide the hexagon file at least. I'm sure Blender is a bit easier to use though. Hopefully you can adjust the'edge' vertices of the .obj in Blender as needed (i.e. stretch the top, left, bottom, and right edges of the object horizontally and vertically to the size you need, while not changing the shape of the hole itself), and then save it as an .obj again and position it to 'fill' your hole in Daz.

Thank you. I tried using the file in hexagon but I cant get it to work right with the UV maps.

I figured out how to make a hole in hexagon with the boolean tool - but that ended up giving the exact same problem as blender in daz (new faces pop up out of nowhere so you can only see through part of the holes). It also lost the UV map (and trying to reload it in Daz just makes everything black).


I've no idea why the new faces pop up. Everything looks great in blender and (and now in hexagon, except the missing textures).

 

[-Theo-]

My guess is you need to break down the large polys on either side of your hole into Tri or at least quad polys. When you are exporting it, looks like it is trying to auto convert them and that is how you are getting new unwanted surfaces. again just my guess.

 

[dopperman]

My guess is you need to break down the large polys on either side of your hole into Tri or at least quad polys. When you are exporting it, looks like it is trying to auto convert them and that is how you are getting new unwanted surfaces. again just my guess.

This is probably true! I tried "breaking" the face with the hole and got a working hole!


Thank you! Daz 3d still messes up the UV though (and it seems to add a bunch of edges to the other faces as seen in hexagon). In this case I subdivided each edge 3 times (so 8 vertices per edge) and just drew from the circle. Any idea why daz3d feels there needs to be lines from each vertice on the other faces? Anyway to stop that from happening?

 

[recreation]

This is probably true! I tried "breaking" the face with the hole and got a working hole!
View attachment 261816

Thank you! Daz 3d still messes up the UV though (and it seems to add a bunch of edges to the other faces as seen in hexagon). In this case I subdivided each edge 3 times (so 8 vertices per edge) and just drew from the circle. Any idea why daz3d feels there needs to be lines from each vertice on the other faces? Anyway to stop that from happening?

In daz select your prop, then click on the arrow with the gear on the upper right side to open the tool settings, choose the geometry editor as active tool. Then you'll see all the surface groups. You can combine all surfaces to one and delete the rest. The same goes for the face groups.

 

[dopperman]

I managed to fix it, just needed to split the face with the holes from the other faces of the wall

Thanks alot to everyone who helped me! Here, have some not entirely nsfw renders as thanks!



Now just to figure out lightning in Daz..