I exported the .obj file (checking the "Weld body part seams" box) and named it AnimeDoll-weld.obj. I then copied/renamed the AnimeDoll.cr2 to AnimeDoll-weld.cr2 and changed the .obj file references to AnimeDoll-weld.obj.

I loaded up the new AnimeDoll-weld.cr2 file and the results were better. AnimeDoll still has a lot of weirdness for shadows, especially by the hands, but this is a definite improvement.

I know people have been saying that some other characters have seams showing as well, and this should take care of those issues. If this isn't clear enough, please let me know and I'll be glad to post more detailed info.

Cheers!

That's very good to know, thanks for posting. I started a thread at DAZ showing how this sort of thing shows up in quite a few figures, so this should help. :) SnowS

cres, That's a fairly simple fix for those of us who're used to doing these things, but for general users, it would be a nightmare. It seems that DS has pretty dramatic issues with seams. I can't even get posette to look right. I have the horrible feeling that the DAZ crew have done ALL their testing using their own store products. Very bad philosophy, IMO. For example, DAZ insists (rightly) that all brokered products have external geometry. The result? DS CANNOT import any prop that has internal geometry. This ain't good for the general user. I'm certainly not writing DS off. I haven't tested it anywhere near enough to make up my mind. And these are all issues that will be fixed in future builds, I'm sure, so for the moment, I'm just playing with every combination I can think of and I'll see how it goes. Up to now, I'd say I'm impressed by it's potential. mac

The welded seams issue has a fix, its just not active in that version probably becuase it was causing problems elsewhere. But imo unwelded seams on models, and geometry stored in the prop rig file are examples of poor design choices on the part of the content creator. Unwelded seams in particular cause problems in many programs such as zbrush. Whether or not these issues ever get resolved for Poser imports really has no ultimate bearing on the abilities of D|S with its eventual native content. It was never meant to simply be a Poser format importer. Thats just a perk, like loading .obj is into a program like LW. The functionality will eventually begin to show that the two are a very different breed, both in what they do, and how. That said, a ton of effort goes into making sure everything gets translated across that makes sense to, that won't cripple the program's goals.

I would hardly say that opening a posette cr2 can be considered as a 'perk'. Any software based around poser figures should make a determined effort to be backwards-compatible with the major figures users are likely to have. Granted, DAZ is biased towards a new generation of figures, but these seam problems appear to be pretty widespread. Saying it isn't a Poser format importer isn't going to cut much ice with the general public. Anyway, I'm reserving judgement on this. In my experience, DAZ have always gone the extra mile to make things work. I'm sure they'll do everything possible to make this work too. mac

What I am trying to say is that its like importing a Poser figure into 3DSmax. The importer converts all things applicable to 3DSmax native standards of doing things. Some things would never be translated because the underlying 3DSmax engine is not Poser, and the two handle tasks very differently. Its designing a figure animation system that does things found in other animation packages that make life easier, coupled tons of knowledge on what/how things are best sorted in formats to make content delivery easier, and then importing other existing formats, matching features to ours as best as possible. Not build a system tailored completely around importing Poser content. Now that doesn't mean that thing X that doesn't work now, won't work in the future. Just that the goal is the future more than it is the past. (Seam problem aside, the fix is just not active in your version probably becuase an issue cropped up with it)

Crescent, didn't that pretty much break all her morphs?

I probably should keep my nose out as I don't have Studio yet... But Studio isn't based around Poser figures Mac, it's based around "Daz" figures which just happen to work in Poser(or have a poser version). Poser is a program, not a group of or company of models/figures. So they're technically not "poser" figures as such. Whether Daz go the extra mile is up to them. So long as Studio works with the target figures - Vickie, Mike, Steph etc then surely that is what it's supposed to do? It's DAZ|Studio. Not Poser partworks replacement issue Mk. 4.56 That the program doesn't reference internal geometry isn't such a big deal. There are plenty of tutorials to show how to reference external geometry and it's not like it's a big chore to do so. While I might know what I'm doing I was able to convert just over 65 objects this evening (while watching Firefly) to use external rather than internal geometry (props). It's not like it's a big mystery, impossibly hard or anything. The seams issues may well be as MallenLane suggests, something that's not active yet. I wouldn't know, but I fail to see how this is a failing that Studio isn't "Poser XXX" it was never supposed to be, why should it do everything in the Poser way when it's not, not meant to be and has no intention of ever being - Poser? Daz stated many times that Studio is "not" a Poser replacement, but an alternative application designed to offer an alternative and for them to showcase their products. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that Studio will do a whole bunch of things differently to Poser, and some things not at all. ok, back to where I belong. Lurking. :)

I think its a completely fixable issue. They probably didn't include fixing seams in this initial Alpha because it was just one more thing that would cause a problem someplace else. I believe this ALPHA is just getting the engine IDLING, with a few revs (pun maybe- but thinking of mashing the gas pedal a few times) and LISTENING to what the engine sounds like (to initial ALPHA users). There is no doubt in my mind that the DAZ Studio team is WAY SMARTER than people realize (and ain't STOOPID) and this little DS baby is going to be a real Hot ROD as new releases come out. ---Remember- this ain't even BETA yet!

Well, I agree that DAZ are under no obligation to provide a new version of poser. I don't think anyone was expecting that. But I think people were at least hoping there would be more compatibility with most of the poser figures. The analogy with 3d max is completely wrong. I use max and have never expected total support for poser figures. The fact that DAZ makes their living supplying content for the poser market leads me to expect a little bit more of an effort than Discreet software would make. Sure, external geoms are no sweat - for me and 100s of other people. But try telling a newbie who gets DS free in a few months time that he can't use 70% of the free props available for download. (arbitary figure plucked out of my underpants) I'm with veritas (up to a point). I believe DAZ will eventually solve these problems. After all, we're not even at the beta stage yet. But telling everyone that they don't NEED to solve them isn't helpful at all. Compatibility has always been a major plague AND a major selling point for all software manufacturers. DAZ just need to address it, is all. mac

I agree with Maclean, it's very early to be thinking that these sorts of obvious problems will not be fixed in later releases. In addition, I've posted images showing these seam problems also affect Sara and Koshini, two figures sold through DAZ. I'm sure this is a temporary problem, but it's good to see that Crescent has found what could be an early solution as well SnowS

:) "The weld seam fix is just not active in your version probably because an issue cropped up with it." I think you are missing the point with the analogy. Every effort is made to have feature compatibility, as long as its a feature where a comparable Daz|Studio function can be found, or implemented, as long as it won't ultimately handicap the application, or deviate from planned future functionality. Think of it as a new application that happens to have a very featured Poser importer. Work will clearly continue to try and make the importer convertion as successful as possible. I just wanted to spread some awareness that between two different systems sometimes things just don't translate.

I don't disagree with Maclean as such, I just don't see why it should be "expected" for Studio to duplicate Poser. I'd be quite happy (if it ever works well) to never see another poser file for the rest of my 3D existence. If it imports the things and needs a few tweaks I can live with that. If a newbie can't, well, isn't that what the last 8 or so years of forums and mailing lists addressed? Helping newbies? Or did I blink and miss something. Yes there is a good chance that Daz will make things more compatible but I don't see it as a need that they should have to do it just to please people with a different software package. That'd be like expecting vue to support Bryce files just because they're both "landscaping" packages. Importing 3ds files into Poser does not offer the functionality of 3ds files, obviously CL haven't seen a problem with that, they went for the much larger obj files but Poser "imports" them. Apples and Pears I suppose. shrug and I really am going back to lurk this time. :)

Questor, Promises, promises ... ;=]

We shouldn't have to fix any figures, we should be telling Daz to make the changes to their program. D|S shouldn't be another Poser? It should be whatever the community wants & if it isn't the community should hold Daz's feet to the fire. That's how you get a program you want, letting them off and saying "no sweat, I'll make the changes" is how you get a half-assed piece of crap proggy that people can mearly live with rather than really get excited about.

Yeah, it did do weird things with body morphs. The AnimeDoll doesn't have many body morphs, so I didn't notice the problem until I loaded the AnimeDoll boy character which has body morphs in it. (And boy, did it become obvious!) This wasn't meant as a permanent thing, just a temporary workaround and a confirmation on what was causing the problem. This is an Alpha - not everything is going to work properly on the first go. Finding problems and posting workarounds can help DAZ figure out what needs to be done to get permanent solutions in place. They can't fix it if they don't know about it, and the more information we can give them (things that we tried that worked or didn't work), the quicker they can fix it. Cheers!

A better analogy would be with Photoshop. PS has it's own propietary format, PSD, but it imports jpeg, tiff, bmp, etc. If it didn't, people would still use it, but it would be nowhere near as popular as it is. DAZ can support whatever they like, but if they want their app to be as user-friendly as possible, they'll at least try to make it compatible with the vast majority of figures, and not just ones sold through their store. This is just simple business sense. The more people can do with software, the more they'll use it. mac

"It was never meant to simply be a Poser format importer. Thats just a perk, like loading .obj is into a program like LW. The functionality will eventually begin to show that the two are a very different breed, both in what they do, and how."

I hope this isn't the official direction but I have sort of suspected that is how it is going to work out. Daz is betting that they own enough of the Poser community to force a "fork" (in software terms) and D|S is the method they have chosen. It was pretty clear this was the direction they would go in when they didn't fully support all the aspects of P5 that should have been most enticing to a content company.

This might work out, it might not. It might fracture the Poser community enough to fatally wound the market for both Poser and Daz. Hard to say.

I will say that this is a pretty late time in the game to change the "hook" line. D|S has been to some degree billed as a "better Poser than Poser" - and if it looks like that line is going to change into "well, it's LIKE Poser but you know, it doesn't actually share content" then things are gonna get funky.

At some point, Daz is going to release a major product that doesn't function well, or at all, in P5 and then they are going to force the users to choose between D|S and the new Vicki4 or whatever or P5 and whatever the market can come up with to replace Vickie 4.

This will be interesting.

I agree with your hypothesis, soulhuntre.

This forum is populated with Poser users. For anybody to think we are here for any reason other than Studio's relation to Poser content is somewhat surprising to me.

Ah well, I had a huge response all typed, but I'm usually too wordy so I'll skip it, and post this instead. Being 3D-techy geeks, we look around at other programs all the time; i.e messiah, motionbuilder, etc. Sitting around thinking "It sure would be nice if we could rig our models using (insert program feature X here)" or " Wouldn't it be cool if it was this way instead" isn't as productive as trying to do something to make it happen.

Hey guys, this is the line you should be focussing on: "... on the abilities of D|S with its eventual native content." - MallenLane. It's entirely commonsense (business-sense) for Daz to go in this direction. And have you looked at a .daz file? Nothing to see! Think about what will happen when Daz starts shipping products in .daz format... Yeah, they'll keep .cr2 around in parallel, but their brokers will have to follow suit. And then what happens to 3rd party add-on products at other brokers? A fractioning of the community is (unfortunately) a question of when, not if. Someone can - and probably will - write a tool that will take internal props and spit out external objects so they can load in Studio and Poser. But a native .daz format figure is destined to stay Studio only (a HUGE benefit to Daz). And have you seen Rob W's Xmas day statement on Daz Forums that Studio will not support injection as we know it? It'll be dynamic morph loading in a future release. Let's hope that it's entirely backward compatible with Daz series 3 figures (i.e. that V3.cr2 will load in Studio exhibiting extactly the same feature set as a V3.daz will). I'd like to hope it would be, but it's more likely that it won't be long term, even if it is on first release. IMHO Daz see Studio as a Poser replacement as they have said all along, but NOT in the way that Poser users seem to interprete that statement. I believe their goal is to replace Poser in the marketplace, which means a very different approach - perhaps even an othogonal one - to the replacement of the Poser application for the average Poser afficianardo.

if Daz can support .cr2 files, how long do you think it will take before e frontier decides the upcoming Poser 6 should support .daz files? You'll most likely see it going back and forth, what one does the other will match.

Ahhh - speculation and misinformation abound. Gotta love it.

"And have you seen Rob W's Xmas day statement on Daz Forums that Studio will not support injection as we know it?"

I suggest you read more carefully, you misquote me... what I said was "We are still working on dynamic morph loading... (which will render 'injection' obsolete). The UI is only partially there right now" and further explained, when Ratteler misunderstood my meaning, "please don't read that to mean that we will not support it. In fact, we already do... its just that the UI for the parameter pane isn't fully implemented yet, so you don't see them in all thier glory. Basically, what I'm saying is that there will be no NEED for it, as [native] D|S morph loading will be dynamic... as in, the morphs will be loaded on the fly (with no need for user intervention) as needed, vice consuming valuable memory better used elsewhere. Think of it sorta like 'injection', but under the hood." Quite a difference from what you would have people believe by misquoting me.

"Daz see Studio as a Poser replacement as they have said all along"... quite the contrary. DAZ has specifically stated the opposite.

-Rob

For example, DAZ insists (rightly) that all brokered products have external geometry. The result? DS CANNOT import any prop that has internal geometry. This ain't good for the general user. Er... I've just tried importing some of my old props, which have internal geometry becourse at the time they were made I had no idea that it could be made otherwise :o) They load into Studio JUST FINE. (I tried my Wind Bottle and the Wooden Bowl becourse I knew those were among the first ones I made :o) ) They did give me the usual "missing {" error but nothing strange was to be seen, they just loaded as they should.

Bleh WinE bottle of course. And just for the record: Yes, props SHOULD have external geometries, and my newer ones has too, but even with internal they seem to be working in Daz Studio

'And have you looked at a .daz file? Nothing to see!' Yep! Sure have. It's binary. But, so what? I don't read any sinister motives into that. Suppose DAZ had wanted to use cr2/pz3 formats? Have you any idea what that might cost them? I see the fact that they have a native format as a workround, not a plot to take over the galaxy. If they develop it in future.... well, that's only a logical progression that comes from having one in the first place. Maybe they just decided that it was easier and cheaper to develop their own, and that while doing so, they could make it something that was based in the 21st century, not the last one. ernyoka, Lucky you! I can't get any customGeom prop to load without a huge string of errors. I must try again, although I did try about 20 different props. mac

"And have you looked at a .daz file? Nothing to see!"

I don't suppose you've stopped theorizing long enough to consider that binary is not only significantly smaller than ascii, but also loads MUCH quicker? Nevermind. That wouldn't fit well into a conspiracy theory, now would it? I forgot, I should be ashamed of myself, we are trying to build an evil empire... damn building a tool we would want to use in our own production.;)

-Rob

LOL@rob. You evil dictator, you! mac

Ha-ha, ernyoka. I was wondering what a 'wind bottle' was. I thought maybe it made in poser 5.... OK. I am now finally able to load props with customGeom. Now what happens is, they load and I get an error message, but I see the prop. Before I was seeing nothing at all. So that's an improvement. I'm sure the error message will be killed in subsequent builds. mac

Dynamic Morph Loading may render injection obsolete, but only if people stop using Poser.

The unstated issue with a binary format is that we (the users) can't hack. We can't trick. We can't discover. We cant write our own programs to automate file alteration and creation tasks. That would be left completely to the proprietors of the format. For some of us, the discoveries are an enjoyable aspect of the art/hobby/profession. Considering the number of discoveries made by Rob and Mac, surely our hesitation is understood?

Well, migal, I said I don't think using binary is an evil plot. I DIDN'T say I was thrilled about it from a personal POV. You and I both know that half the fun in poser (if not more than half) is getting in there with a spanner and unbolting things to see what's hidden away inside. I'd hate to think that we could never do that in DS. But I can see that there are valid reasons for breaking away completely from cr2/pz3. Not the least of these being the fact that another company owns (?) these formats. Anyway, the way I look at it is, I've still got poser and nobody's gonna stop me getting my hands dirty in there! mac

"The unstated issue with a binary format is that we (the users) can't hack. We can't trick. We can't discover." It's also a little backwards. Lots of utilities these days in many high end and Poser level apps make use of the open formats available to these programs to play all sorts of tricks and automate all sorts of tasks. Actually, Poser has this just right. An ASCII file format that can be OPTIONALLY compressed by easily implemented code. Allows for space/time savings of binary with the open hackability of ASCII. Personally? I would have oped for a compressable XML variant... but no one asked me :)

gamers hack binary formats all the time, and write translators and programs around them (think milkshape)... its only a matter of time before someone here does too. :D

An old Japanese (I believe) proverb ... "Man who say it can not be done should not interrupt man doing it!" cheers, dr geep ;=]

Good one, geep. :) I for one am happy to see the differences between D|S and Poser. I like to have varied tools. I'm one of those that owns both Vue & Bryce. ;)

Me two. ;=]

I'll be an eager student when somebody posts a tutorial on doing advanced ERC and multi-filtered JCM with a hex editor.

That's my main concern... eventually I see the need for a developers kit for the program. Available to everyone, from professional animators, to brokers, to the freestuff makers, to the 3d hobbyist that may never sell a single thing. If the general public can't make content for it easily, I can see significant problems on the horizont regarding the application's overall acceptance by the community. It will never be accepted as a professional tool if its hobbled to being just a 'hobbyist's app', dependent on bought content only. But... with the right vision towards an open developers platform, I see an extremely bright future for the application too. I like the improvements I see so far though. (except that it crashes with my video card to the point of being unusable... but I think that issue will be addressed)

Your point is a good one, Bijou. A scripting language with hooks into the core functions and ability to read/write in the D|S format would definitely alleviate my concerns. But, considering the size of the development team and other potential features, that could easily be five to ten years away. Hopefully, initial success will enhance the code monkey budget.