MeInOhio posted at 6:56 PM Tue, 26 April 2022 - #4437768

Well, following your tips, I got to finally see the Main Camera. Man was that thing small! I got the camera inside the room. I had to adjust the focal distance, but things started to distorted before I got it to where I wanted. So I gave up on that for now.

Of course, the easiest thing to do is to just hide the back wall, as you mentioned. Many sets are made with separate walls you can hide or show for precisely this reason! The only reason you might not want to do that is if you're relying on the back wall to show up in any reflections and/or if you're rendering with IDL enabled in Firefly, which needs an enclosed space for the light bounces. If the latter, you can solve the "not enclosed" problem by enclosing the scene in a larger structure (like the Poser construct) that won't be visible in the render. (You can even uncheck the "visible in camera" option on the Properties tab to make sure of that; the enclosing item thus won't show up in the render, but it'll still work to contain the IDL bounces).

Some prop sets are definitely easier than others to maneuver a camera around, so you may have found one of those that calls for creative solutions!!

PS: I mean that the ZIP file name starts with FBX, not the file name of the item itself. Presumably when you UNZIP it, the file name ends in .fbx :-)

perpetualrevision posted at 2:16 AM Sat, 16 April 2022 - #4437249

I don't think Ken's converter script works on a Mac, so I'm stuck doing it the "old fashioned" way, regardless. But interesting to note: the FBX import I mentioned above included all the maps attached where they should be, not just the diffuse color maps. It was really surprisingly painless.

Ken's scripts are written in Python 3, which is cross platform.

According to a private exchange with Ken, the "issue is not Python itself, but the WX interface that Poser uses." Apparently that interface works with some version of macOS and not others, for reasons he's not able to ascertain b/c he doesn't have access to a Mac. I've heard from several other Mac users that his DUF converter doesn't work for them, but I didn't track down data like which version of the OS they're using and other possibly relevant details. I haven't tried it myself b/c so far it's been fairly easy to just export out of DAZ Studio in FBX or DAE format, and I don't do it that often.

But I do plan to try Ken's MAT Edit for Poser 12 script, now that I have a new MacBook Pro that can run Poser 12. I rely heavily on Netherworks' MatWriter panel in Poser 11, so I'm looking forward to having similar functionality in Poser 12!

As for the topic of getting DS stuff into Poser, I've noticed that some props purchased at the DAZ store come with versions whose file name starts with FBX, which might mean you could just import that directly into Poser without first going through DS. Haven't yet tried that, however.

Overall, the bottom one looks more natural on my brand new 16" MacBook Pro with a Liquid Retina XDR Display set to the default profile for the display. But it has a fair amount of noise, which makes the skin tones hard to compare, and it has a pinkish cast, as others have noted. The shadows, makeup, and eyebrows are too dark on the top one but perhaps not dark enough on the bottom one. 

When I switched from a 2019 MacBook Pro to my current one, I noticed that all the renders I had "in progress" and not yet shared seemed to be not bright enough, so I've been adding curves adjustments in Photoshop to brighten them before posting them. But of course I have no way of knowing how they look to other people! I use the sRGB color space in Photoshop since all my work is designed to be uploaded to the web, but even then, what looks right in Photoshop doesn't always look right on the web.

The biggest difference I've noticed when viewing other people's renders on my new MBP is that smaller renders look even more low-res, but that's more of a lack of sharpness than a brightness or color thing.

I know the OP doesn't want to have to move files in the library, but for anyone else looking for ideas for how to organize their Poser content, you might find it helpful to know that you can organize files inside the main Libraries folders pretty much any way you want, with a few limitations. Because this topic comes up a lot, as does the topic of "how many runtimes do you use," I finally wrote a piece on my blog to show how I've extensively organized all my content using only one runtime. If you're curious, you can check it out here: Organizing Poser Assets.

Using multiple runtimes drove me nuts, esp. for items that could plausibly be in more than one runtime, so I found it easier to just use sub-folders within the main Libraries folders to organize by figure or genre or whatever. Makes it easy to find things AND easy to install them (which I always do manually.)

As for using the Favorites option in Poser's library, be aware that it's creating shortcuts with full path references, so if you end up moving an item a shortcut points to to a different folder, the shortcut will break. Given my propensity for moving things around, I don't use Favorites.

You can tick the "Visible" checkbox in the Main Camera's Properties panel and change its display mode to something like Smooth Shaded. If you do that while you're actively viewing through the Aux camera, you'll see the main camera appear. That will let you know if you've placed the camera outside a wall or whatever. (We've all done it!)

As for backfacing polys, you probably have "remove backfacing polys" turned on for preview but off for on for your final render settings. That's why you can't tell your camera is just outside a wall. If the wall is made up of single-sided polys, then "removing" them means you can't see them from their back side, only from their front side. That's handy in preview for being able to see inside an enclosed room while posing, but not so useful for a final render if the camera is outside the room.

You can turn on "remove backfacing polys" in the Firefly settings (not sure about Superfly), and then the render will look more like the preview, but the downside is that items made of single-sided polys, like hair and plants, will look kinda thin b/c they depend on backfaces being visible to the camera. So that's probably not the best solution.

Another solution is to get the camera angle you want while the camera remains positioned INSIDE the room, and you can do that by adjusting the Focal parameter and/or the Perspective dial. 

Hope that helps!

I don't think Ken's converter script works on a Mac, so I'm stuck doing it the "old fashioned" way, regardless. But interesting to note: the FBX import I mentioned above included all the maps attached where they should be, not just the diffuse color maps. It was really surprisingly painless.

As for justifying your use of the script, ghostship2, that probably depends on whether you have a membership at the DAZ store. If you do, and if you check your wishlist and the Fast Grab and freebies pages regularly, you can get some DS-only stuff for seriously low prices (or free). I probably wouldn't pay more than $5 for something I'm going to have to go through the trouble of converting to Poser, and every once in a while a $25+ set will briefly drop to a few dollars, so I grab it. That's the only reason I still shop there, as I prefer to do most of my Poser shopping here. 

Oddly enough, I just tried converting another prop set I got on deep discount, and this time the Collada version wouldn't import into Poser. I went through all the dialog boxes, but nothing happened. And when I imported the FBX version, at 100% standard figure scale, everything was the right size AND in the right position. Although, now that I think about it, that may be b/c the objects were zeroed in position rather than at world zero. I also may have done something different when I exported the FBX out of DS, but stupidly I didn't keep notes on the settings I used!

The set (Willow Creek by Stonemason) also came with an OBJ+MTL version, so you could import it w/o going through DS. But when I tried that, each piece came in at a different size relative to the terrain the pieces were supposed to fit, so that just was not going to work (in addition to being rather tedious, with 60+ objs). They also came in with only the diffuse texture maps attached, whereas the FBX version had diffuse, normal, and trans maps attached. All they need now is specular. Plus some duplication of plants, since the set was designed to use instances.

So the short answer is: if you're working with a small number of items, OBJ exports from DS are usually pretty easy. But for larger sets, FBX or DAE might be easier, though you might as well export in both formats and see how it goes!

I've exported tons of stuff from DS to use in Poser, and OBJ works pretty well, although it's a pain if the prop set has a lot of parts. I recently bough a multi-part fantasy room set on sale to see what would be involved in getting it into Poser, and this time I tried FBX and DAE (Collada) formats. As bwldrd noted, FBX format made every item centered, which wouldn't be a big deal for a small number of items, but this set has nearly 100 items already positioned around the room, and I did not relish the idea of manually moving each one. So I tried Collada format, and for whatever reason, I cannot get the import/export scales right with that format. I can open it in my 3D modeler (Cheetah for Mac) and it looks fine with an imported V4 obj -- heck, even the point lights work! -- but in Poser it comes in anywhere from microscopic to extremely tiny. I'll keep trying, though, because all the items were properly positioned. 

As others have mentioned, the manual way gets you just the diffuse texture maps. You still have to manually set up specular, bump, and anything else you want. I love the idea that Ken's script takes care of the materials, but alas, it doesn't work on a Mac, so I can't use it.

As for clothing and hair, you can export that in CR2 format right to your Poser Character library.

That one stumped me too, how to get that "do you want to save it as a smart prop" prompt. And the solution turned out to be to save the item to the library WITHOUT first selecting it from a dropdown menu. I would typically use a dropdown or whatever means to make sure I was saving only the item I wanted to save, but you don't get the prompt that way. So just make sure the intended item is selected in your scene, click to add it to the props library, and you should get that message. (I'm guessing it works the same when saving to the hair library, but hair is just a special kind of prop, so either library should work.)

As for the skull cap that won't move, did you double check that the parameter settings have the min limit as a negative number (and the max limit as a positive number)? That one's tripped me up before.

Also: is the skullcap coming from embedded geometry (geometry coordinates left in the library file) or from a reference to an external OBJ? Sometimes embedded geometry can cause problems, so I use Netherworks' Creator's Toybox to extract external OBJs from embedded geometry in both items I've made and items from others. 

One final thought that's more of a question, I guess: do you need to use a skull cap to use dynamic hair on V4? Is the idea that using a skull cap lets you more easily save just the hair? I used dynamic hair on the HW Horse to make a fuzzy Fjord, and I created the hair groups right on the figure (no "skull cap" needed). I saved the whole horse to the library and it loads into new scenes just fine. 

All those words, and I forgot to say the one thing that originally prompted me to contribute to this thread! 

Yes, I a good part of the reason I use V4 is b/c I have so much content for her. But an even bigger reason that I don't often see mentioned is that I KNOW her so well.  I've used the figure long enough to be very familiar with her material zones, her body shaping options, and her expressions, and even so I still discover new ways to make things happen. I know which FBMs will work with certain types of clothes and which will not, and how to fix various issues. That familiarity saves time, given that my goal is to make art, not to futz about with figuring out how a new figure works.

I LOVE the way Karina has organized all V4's dials to make sense, esp. separating face shapes from expressions. I think Dawn is a pretty nifty figure, and I have a fair amount of content for her,  but her dial organization makes no sense, so I reorganized them myself and saved that CR2 as a "starter."  I actually did that for M4 and for all of Nursoda's figures too, so that I can focus on making expressions and not on hunting down dials!

I'm pretty late to this thread but wanted to chime in on a few things. I mostly post to the gallery, but occasionally I like to see what's up in the forums, so yes, a few folks do both :-)

Like Y-Phil, my favorite version of V4 is the Sasha-16 by Karina, and I use the update released in 2019, which I beta-tested for Karina. Her weight mapping produces bends that aren't quite as nice as those from Nerd3D's weight map (no longer available?), but given all the OTHER nifty features that Karina packed into the S-16 CR2, I'm fine with that, esp. since I don't do nudes. When I want to do a one-time render with a female character, I often use the "regular" V4 (sometimes with the Perfect Arms add-ons). But when I was setting up a bunch of female characters for a graphic novel, the S-16 version was a no-brainer, given how much more functionality she has, like the eye-beams and all the easy-posing dials. (I even borrowed the eye-beams idea and made them for all the other figures I use!) Making clothes work with the modified rig is pretty easy in most cases. And Karina's HTML manual for her has stuff in it that every Poser user could benefit from reading, esp. about posing, all very clearly written.

As for the original question: because I use V4, M4, and K4 when I want "realistic" humans, I do still buy content for them, but only on sale. Mostly I buy clothes or hair (which I, like others, treat as universal, since it's fairly easy to fit hair to any figure, esp. 3Dream's hair!), but I might buy a character if it's by one of the vendors whose work I love AND if it's got some interesting options for creating fantasy characters. (I have no interest in photorealism.) I'm not sure I'd take the chance on a character from a new vendor. I also don't really care about the shaping morphs from a character package as much as I do the textures. I already have a thousand ways to shape V4 however I want!

The figures I would LOVE to have more content for are the ones by Nursoda. I have nearly all of them and they are always a joy to work with. They don't always bend that well, and they don't have a thousand shaping dials, but they're so charming and full of personality that it doesn't seem to matter! I did take a stab at weight-mapping some of Vila's joints, but I'm not sure it was worth the bother, other than as a learning experience :-) I've made new skin textures for many of Nursoda's figures, and that makes them a lot more versatile. But I'm no good at sculpting, so having some more shaping and expression morphs for them would be handy. What I would most like, though, is more clothing. I've made a few very simple things for them in Cheetah3D, but my modeling skills are better suited to props than clothing. I've managed to convert a few items for V4 and other figures for use on Nursoda's figures, but often the style isn't quite right. I guess what I really want is for Nursoda to make more clothing for his own figures, since I love his style, or for someone else to take up that same style. PixPax has done a nice job of that with outfits for Fehn. But I can't imagine that's a big market.

Those weight-mapped versions of A3 are pretty impressive! Definitely makes her better suited for action scenes! As for the high poly count, I did a bunch of experiments a while back to figure out what caused Poser to slow down on my Mac, and I discovered that poly count has nothing to do with it (not in preview or in render). The number one culprit was: the number of conforming items in the scene. The more conformers, the slower everything gets. I've already tweaked all the settings I could to speed up preview performance, but that's one I can't do anything about, alas. I can load prop sets with millions of polygons and have no trouble, but load three V4's wearing outfits that come in lots of conforming parts, and everything crawls! Oh well, some of those outfits are worth it :-)

So that's my 42 cents! Thank you to the three people who read this far :-)

I liked and favorited all of these. Great selection!!

Lovely picks for the week!

Thanks for this thread. I'd been wondering about that myself, esp. when I started seeing dForce outfits as freebies! @primorge: what you did with that nun outfit looks fantastic! Thanks for sharing :-)