RobynsVeil opened this issue on Jun 04, 2008 · 26 posts
RobynsVeil posted Sat, 07 June 2008 at 8:06 AM
Quote - Your work looks quite good already IMHO. Maybe small folds and X and Y formed wrinkles could be done with an additional displacement map ?
Thank you for that... and the displacement map is an excellent idea - hadn't thought in that direction.
Quote -
I would be most grateful to have a good solid (read idiot proof :) ) tutorial on the whole - export character mesh from Poser, build clothing in Blender, import back and use - process. This could also be cross linked to the DAZ and Poser forums.
Actually, the process is really quite simple if you have the right tools. In the past, I would export my model from Blender as an .obj file, then import the obj file into Poser, bring it into the setup room, and try to deal with bones, groups and all that. What a bloody pain. Now I do the following - and I do this on the average of about 8 - 10 times a day, so it's something I kinda know by heart.
First of all, here are the tools I use. This set of step on how I do it involves the use of these tools, without which the whole exercise is pretty much meaningless, but without which tools the entire process is laborious and unnecessarily painful, so for the small investment, GET THESE TOOLS.
www.philc.net/OBJ2CR2_page1.htm
Believe me, been over this road a number of times, and this utility is worth its weight in gold - if you've ever been in the setup room and spend ages assigning polygons to groups, only to have the whole bloody thing cave in when the curtain is meant to rise, you'll agree that your sanity is well worth at least the price of this utility!
I'm not going to pretend I have the complete end-all, be-all solution for you here. I'm just going to tell you what I do... and if anyone sees a glaring flaw or omission, feel free to jump right in: I have a very thick skin (when it comes to criticism) and am quite keen to learn.
In Poser, load, zero and export the model you are going to base your clothing item on as a Wavefront OBJ file - in this case, I used Victoria 4 Base. I would export only the parts of her that my clothing will actually touch. This export process has been covered in so many tutorials I won't go into any great detail here - just save it somewhere you'll find it easily in Blender.
In Blender, import the model obj file - I generally put her in layer two, and my model in layer one. That way, if I need to scrutinize my mesh and don't want to see polygonal flesh-tones, I just select the first layer. Key point - once you've got your Victoria (or whoever) model in Blender, DON'T move it. Just don't. It will give you heaps of grief when trying to import into Poser if you do.
After I've finished modeling the mesh, the next thing to do is create material areas, as Poser will see those areas with the name you've given them and you can base your UV map on them too. To do this, you use the Links and Materials Panel of [F9]. Under "Vertex Groups", click "New", then highlight the name "Group" and replace it with something more meaningful. Highlight the vertices that will be associated with this vertex group - this is the tedious bit - and when you are certain every vertex is highlighted that you want part of this group, click "Assign". If you find you've missed a vertex or two, you can always highlight it and click the "Assign" at that point. Once you've got all your vertices assigned, you can [A] and click the "Select" button to check that your vertex group includes all vertices that are meant to be part of that group.
Next to the "Vertex Group" stuff is the Material stuff. Here's where you assign the material, which name will actually show up in Poser, believe it or not. This is why I make the material name descriptive of the part you are assigning material to, rather than what sort of material that part is made of. For instance, for the item I was creating, I wanted to be able to have the ability to assign a different colour to the front of the bodice vs the back, so I named the material "FrontBodice"... you do this by clicking "New" in that group, then going to the Material section [F5] and under the Links and Pipeline panel, in the Link to Object dialog, replace the name given - usually "Material.001" or "WhatEverMaterialYouHadBefore.001" - with the name of the area of your mesh... in this case, I named it FrontBodice:
Do this for your entire mesh until all vertices are assigned to a vertex group and, more importantly, a material - which for Poser will be an area.
Do your seams - there are some great seams tutorials out there, not the least of which by EnglishBob on his Morphography.co.uk site:
www.morphography.uk.vu/uvmapping.html
Once the seams are done you can generally create a UV map - Obj2Cr2 requires a UV map of some description, and Blender does an okay job at making them, particularly if you follow this tutorial:
blenderartists.org/forum/showthread
You might want to make your UV map a bit more spiffy using UVMapper by Steven Cox, available here:
www.uvmapper.com/
Now that you've got all vertices assigned to materials (named after the regions they cover) and a UV map created, you leave your model in "Set Solid" mode -- as opposed to "Set Smooth" -- and making sure the item you've just modeled is selected do:
File -> Export -> Wavefront (.obj)...
The name of the obj file will default to the name of your .blend file - usually works for me. Click [Export Wavefront OBJ] in the upper right-hand corner, which will give you a dialog with these options:
These are the default settings, and I have yet to find a reason to change any of them. If anyone has another view or perspective on this, feel free to contribute.
Your Blender model is now ready to import into Poser.
On a blank Poser page, load the same model you used as a basis for your mesh - in my case, V4 Base. Zero and turn IK off - probably not entirely necessary, but that's what I do, just to be on the safe side. Then:
File -> Import -> Wavefront OBJ...
In the ensuing Import Options dialog box, untick everything and click OK. Locate your mesh OBJ file, highlight it and select "Open".
Take a few minutes to ensure that your mesh has nil breakthrough points you might have missed prior to export. It should fit your model exactly - if it doesn't go back to Blender and fix it.
Now, at this point you can try to tackle the Setup Room... or you can use Obj2Cr2. I'm not even going down the frustrating, fraught-with-disappointment path of the Setup Room... have a look at this:
www.philc.net/OBJ2CR2_page1.htm
and you can see just how easy and satisfying the process can be. Believe me, as many times as I've had to re-work my cheerleader dress:
Did I leave anything out?
Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2
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