Okay, This is what I wish to do:

First create a model, such as a car or a robot, in another application, like Blender for instance. I would apply materials and textures in that program, including the creation of UV maps and assigning image maps to the surfaces of the model. I would then export the file as a Wavefront .obj file.

Upon opening DAZ Studio, I would delete the default model, and import the .obj file. I understand that there may be problems with getting the .mat files into DS so that they are applied the way they are meant to be. I would need to learn how to fix this problem if it arises.

Now the tricky part: I want to learn how to rig the model in DAZ Studio. This is where I want my models to work, as I wish to create posable models for DAZ Studio. My version Of DAZ Studio is 4.5 Pro. To begin with I will only be creating hard body models that do not require weight mapping. When I say hard body, I mean things like machines, furniture, vehicles, and so forth. Soft body models are things like the human figures, animals, clothing, and other such things in which the mesh gets deformed when the different areas of the model are moved in relation to the areas they are attached to. This type of rigging requires weight mapping to smooth the mesh so that it looks more natural when it is posed.

I have only learned about this in the last few weeks; however, I do not know anything about how to do these types of things. I'm learning how to rig a model in Blender now, but the armature, (bones), will not import into DAZ Studio correctly, possibly because of the orientation differences. 

I welcome any suggestions, advice, and links to easy to follow tutorials anyone here can provide.

Stay awesome!

Agent 0013.

Ideally you want to group your object in the modeller - a group for each moving part, containing the mesh you want to move with the bone. Make sure that imports into DS at the right scale, presumably using the Blender preset. Now, ignore the imported OBJ and open the Figure Setup pane (Window>Panes(Tabs)>Figure Setup). At the top, select Parametric rather than TriAx. Right-click in the Geoemtry list area, on the left, and import your OBJ using the preset that worked fro general import. You should now have the OBJ, and under it all of the groups. Drag the OBJ from the list area into the hierarchy area on the right. Use drag and drop to rearrange the bones as needed - most things will parent to the bodywork for a car, but windows will parent to their door and other things may need different parents too. Now, the slightly tricky bit - you need to work out the rotation order and right click to change it where xyz is wrong; the first axis is the axis that runs along the part, about which it twists (if it can), the last axis is the axis that's most likely to hit ninety degrees - if the car is modelled facing forward, the wheels would twist around their axle (x), would rotate when steering about their vertical (y) and wouldn't move much is at all around the other axis so that's xzy while the doors wouldn't twist, but the long axis would run from the hinge to the edge (z), and again their main rotation would be vertical so that would be zxy. Once you've done that hit Create. Now select all the parts of the model in the scene and in the Parameters pane turn off Bend (that's a button labelled Ben, not one of the sliders). Now use the Joint Editor Tool to move the end points and origins to be wheer you need them - DS will have guessed based on the rotation order and the bounding boxes of the groups. You can use the Align command from the right-click menu if the actual axis needs to be off square. Apply materials. Save as a Scene subset ready for use.

@ RHaseltine: So what you are saying is that** **each section or part of the model needs to be grouped with whatever bones it has in the modeler application before I export it? According to several tutorials I have seen for earlier versions of DAZ Studio, there is a way to create an armature system (skeleton) within the DS application itself. I'm sure that it is in 4.5 Pro as well.

The reason I am questioning you about this is that after I did a test of importing a Blender produced and rigged model into DAZ Studio, which I had exported as a Collada .dae file, the posing ability was broken apart. Each bone and its object were grouped together when I did the rigging in Blender. ( The way it works is the bone gets parented to the object it is meant to operate. I assume when you say "grouped" this is what you are referring to.) The model worked like it was supposed to in Blender, but in DAZ Studio each bone/object group acted independent of each other, spinning around their own centers. Rather useless in my opinion as it is not what I wanted at all.

I am about to try the origin method of rigging in Blender to see if a Collada export will import with the correct movement into DS 4.5. Aside from that, I would rather create the model parts in Blender with no rigging at all. I would import the .obj files individually if needed, or as a group if that would work, then use the DAZ Studio model rigging feature to properly rig it. It seems to me that if it is rigged in DAZ Studio, it will work in  DAZ Studio.

 

Stay awesome!

Agent 0013.

No, groups are like material zones - they are a collection of polygons. At some point you are going to have to select the polygons that make, for example, the door - either to assign them to a group or to flood fill them with a weight value - and it's generally easier to do that in the modeller than in DS (and as I said, if there are groups DS will use them as a guide when placing the bones which makes finishing the rigging less onerous).

Quote - "No, groups are like material zones - they are a collection of polygons."

So according to this statement, A series of polygons that together make up the mesh of a particular part object, (such as a door), are considered to be a group. That is a bit confusing, because in Bryce a group is two or more objects that have been joined or "Grouped" together. The same is true for other applications I use regularly. Of course in Blender two or more objects that have been treated in this manner are said to have been "Joined"; however, the operation is basically the same thing.

The reason I am confused concerning your statement is that both Bryce and DAZ Studio are applications offered at the DAZ 3D Website. It does not make sense to me that groups would refer to different things in each of them.

I think that the terminology needs to be standardized across the industry. Clear meanings of the terms used should be established so that, no matter what applications are being used, understanding what something means would not be confusing to the user.

In no way do I fault anybody or any organization with this problem, but to me it only makes sense to standardize the industry terminology. This a problem that affects many types of industries. I can vouch for this because, as a carpenter and cabinet maker, I have found that the terminology can vary greatly from one jobsite to the next. There will be several different names for the same thing. People have a habit of calling something what they are used to calling it.

Stay awesome!

Agent 0013. 

And to add to the confusion, Blender uses 'Vertex Groups'.

@ **jestmart, **This is true, but there has been significant improvments in what can be done with them.

Oddly enough, in Blender you can export a model made from several objects without joining them, and if you import that model into Bryce, it will already be grouped; yet when you join a series of objects in Blender and export it as a Wavefront .obj file, and then import that file into DAZ Studio, the separate objects that it is made of act independently of each other. I tried this using the latest version of each application and these were the results I got. At least in Bryce I can ungroup the model into its component objects. The only real problem I have with Blender to Bryce is that the orientation is reversed around the Y axis, making it neccessary to turn the model around by 180 degrees. Not really that much of a problem. With DAZ Studio, I have to do much more to get the model the be the way I want it.

I keep seeing a lot of tutorials concerning exporting DAZ Studio models and importing them into Blender, but Blender to DAZ Studio tutorials are woefully scarce. The only ones I have found so far are a little confusing to me, and I suspect that the people who made the tutorials are leaving certain things out because they assume that the person following them automatically knows those things. This is why I think document style tutorials are better than video tutorials in most cases. At least you can peruse a document before you download it if it is in one of the proper formats. Video tutorials can be hard to preview because of the way they sometimes stop in midstream to allow the buffering to catch up.

Anyway, I'm not giving up. I am determined to learn what I wish to learn. Of the applications I have on my computer, the best for posing figures and animating them is DAZ Studio in my opinion. I Know it can be done in Blender, and in Hexagon; however, the process in them is a good bit more complicated. This is why I want my models to be rigged to work in DAZ Studio.

Stay awesome!

Agent 0013.

Just a note here: In Blender you can group objects (CTRL-G)  but I am not sure those groupings will transfer in an obj file - this is completely different to joining objects, of course.  Yes, it would be good to have standardised definitions but you know the old joke: The great thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from ! :)

How right you are! In my work as a carpenter and cabinet maker, I would have to learn the terminology used by the crew I worked with at the time. Even when I was the lead man of the team, the terminology used would be that which was the most popular to the members of my crew, and I did not argue with that. The main point was getting the work done, so demanding that certain terms were used to describe something would have been counterproductive. Even so, it would be nice to know that the terminology describes the same things accross the industry. I guess for now we will just have to use our intuition to determine what a term means in a certain application, and then hope we are right about it. lol