DAZ 3D Victoria

[ashea]

I am new to LW10 and I would like to know the best way to import a DAZ 3D character like Victoria into Lightwave.

I've tried to export as a .obj, which seemed to work, but only gave me the base model with no surfaces. So I am asking what is the best method to get the character imported so that I can render it and have it look as good as if it was rendered in DAZ?

Also, to animate it would I have to build a rig for it or can that be imported to?

Has anyone done this before and have a model they can share?

Does anyone know of any tutorials on how to do this?

Thanks

[Afalk]

(3) ways I've seen it done : 1 -- Greenbriar studios used to offer a pretty powerful little kit to do it w/rigging intact though I am unsure how compatible their products are vs the current LW. If you're using Daz's character -- Poser Pro also offers some manner of Lightwave bridging utility. Lastly - if you have the game dev kit - you can remap teh materials down to a single UV on each item (or even 1 for all of them) and export an FBX which with a little nudging is also usable/animatable in LW.

AF

[LW_Will]

the easiest way to get all your maps, morphs, and cameras, lights and prop into LW is to use the AMAZING FBX Exporter from Daz3D for Daz Studio.

(Amazingly, if you download the current version of the software they give you the FBX Export for free! It is $99, cheapest of the other Daz Studio plugins)

So, the one thing you have to do in the exporter is to set the morphs from BAKE to EXPORT. You can set the function of the morphs to the ones that are used, everything (tho, that makes the file large... VERY large) or select the individual morphs. REALLY cool.

The new import functions of LW10.1 help this to work, and currently it works flawlessly.

[Mr Rid]

I...
I've tried to export as a .obj, which seemed to work, but only gave me the base model with no surfaces.

Thanks

When you export OBJ from Daz, be sure to enable 'write materials' and 'collect maps', or else you wont get surfaces.

One problem is that LW reads the resulting material file oddly and it winds up loading each image repeatedly for each instance that a different surface uses that same image. It wastes ram, but is also confusing when you go to edit the textures. If you use the mesh and textures as is, then it isnt much of a problem. Otherwise you have to manually set each redundant surface to using the same image and resave the model. Or convert thru Deep Exploration.

...
(Amazingly, if you download the current version of the software they give you the FBX Export for free! It is $99, cheapest of the other Daz Studio plugins)

How?! I downloaded Daz4 a few days ago and there was no info about the FBX exporter. I dont see anything about it.

FBX export from Daz3 lacks any UVs on the mesh. Am hoping this gets fixed.

[LW_Will]

Its from Daz Studio 3.xx. Not the latest, I know, sorry.

(Was before DS4 came out.)

There ARE UVs from the model, a UV available from the model, one map. Works okay, and can be broken out into individual UV maps in Modeler if you feel the need.

[Mr Rid]

...
There ARE UVs from the model, a UV available from the model, one map. Works okay, and can be broken out into individual UV maps in Modeler if you feel the need.

When I export an FBX from Daz3, and load it into LW 9.6 Layout or Modeler, there are no UVs.

When I import the FBX into LW10 Layout, I only get "unknown scene file format." (?)

When I load the FBX into LW 10 Modeler, a UV shows up, but the weight maps are missing (and of course, no rig).

So are you somehow getting FBX from Daz into LW, with everything intact?

[seq1ajs]

Thanks for the suggestions. I also started playing with Vue9. I am trying to see if it can import the Daz character, then output it as .lwo

[prometheus]

Thanks for the suggestions. I also started playing with Vue9. I am trying to see if it can import the Daz character, then output it as .lwo

As to what Ivé seen there´s no way you can export out from vue to lightwave and have the bones retained, export are only in obj,lwo,3s, truespace cob. and dxf.

doesn´t work exporting it out as a scene either.

daz to vue works fine with the collada format and you can repose the daz figure in vue... with daz advanced or the full animate you can also export out animations done with animate inside of daz to vue, but not in the free version.

e-on has done their homework on this collada interchange format and while it seems that newtek has not, at least not for daz compability.

Michael

[prometheus]

I think that the latest beta build of lightwave 10.1 has a fix of the issues
when loading the obj format wich results in loading the same image maps several times...that´s at least mentioned in the bug fixes.

I can´t verify for sure thou, since I haven´t installed it yet, but It might be that you now should be able to load daz figures directly in to lightwave without getting memory consuming multiloading of the same texture, wich means that you could skip deep exploration as a conversion tool.

Michael

[LAD3D]

Hi, how about DAZ3D make their humanoids available as Lightwave scene files so we can can use Micheal, Victoria and the rest of their massive inventory directly in Lightwave 3D without any funky plugins and or exports/imports from Poser and or DAZ Studio?

I would LOVE to have as much functionality with these figures directly in Lightwave as I do in Poser Pro 2010. Why not just use Poser Pro 2010 then? Because I can't render in Poser Pro 2010 like I can in Lightwave! Lightwave is at the very core of my lively career ... But I need humanoid figures.

I say get your DAZ3D into my Lightwave and let's move it move it. Thanks.
-qb