Need for a tutorial
jvdesuit1_582de7c548
Posts: 182
Hi,
I've been searching this whole afternoon for a clear and understandable tutorial on the use of the D-former of DAZ studio 4.5 .
For the time being my search was unsuccessful but for what seems a very extensive well done one in video but alas in
German!!!!
Apart from Wagner and Strauss operas my understanding of the language is too limited for the purpose involved here!lol!
To enable the eventual helper understand what am I trying to do here are a few explanations:
The following pictures shows the state of my scene involving the Pompeii Amphitheater.The first shows the original object I found in the Sketchup warehouse which I imported into DAZ. I immediately found many mistakes in the object especially the different tiers are misplaced as I could check on pictures I have of the monument; moreover the site is not situated on a hill as it appears on the original object but the hill was dug to put the amphitheater into it so that the arena itself is below the actual level zero of the town.
As I used Bryce to convert and transfer the collada file into an obj one to Daz I succeeded to eliminate part of the hillsides but not all of them With Photoshop Elements 11 I detoured the whole arena and its tiers as to change its direction and have the tiers on the proper side of the amphitheater. But then I got a flat image and my monument looks like a huge cooking pot with its cover on it!!!!
So my idea unless something better is suggested here, is to deform the image of the interior of the monument as to get the sides with their
proper steepness converging down to the arena.
I hope I made myself sufficiently clear. So my problem is to learn how to use D-FORM with a plane containing the upper part of my actual monument and maybe eliminate the remnants of the hill itself.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions and link to a good written or video tutorial. The only ones I saw dealt with figures which is not the case here.
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Comments
There is this one for DS3, but it should work much the same. You plane would also need to have plenty of divisions (polygons) in order to deform it..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SEBV2GHJHA
I Had completely forgotten this one I had downloaded as a possible use. I hope menus have not changed too much
between DAZ v3 and v4.5
Thanks Jimmy.
I come back to you about the number of divisions. I have a problem here.
I put the plane image of the amphi in a new scene. I had also a plane with 100 divisions and 20m
I created the deform and when I changed the view to the wire shaded as said in the video, I could not see anymore the picture of the Amphi.
Only when I choose the wire texture shaded or the wire texture can I see the object. Also I dont see the difference between the points which can move or not as Carnite explains in her tutorial.
Where is my mistake.
You probably can't see the points because you have a texture displayed on top of it. Not all display modes show textures (try it with a textured scene loaded), that is why she uses Wire Shaded mode. You could try reducing the Opacity of your texture in the Scene pane.
If you select the D-Former (Hill 1 in this case) then look in the Parameters pane, and you will see Colour Min and Colour Max, and also Display Weights and Visible should be set to 'On'
I'm not I understand what you say:
"(try it with a textured scene loaded)" . Do you mean trying with a complete scene. I used just the object I wanted to deform in my case. If I understand you well I should use the scene I'm already building with the complete amphitheater. I Thought it would be more convenient to use a scene without anything in it but the object I want to modify.
I'll see If I can have a better result with your second suggestion and come back to you.
Thanks Jimmy
Jimmy I tried what you said without success, but perhaps those pics could help you diagnose my error as there must be one.
The first shows the system with the object ( "gradins amphi seuls" in the scene tree) selected that is the image of the amphitheater I want to deform which you can see with its elliptic aspect
The second view is that of the deform selected (Hill1 of Carline is called Amphi in my scene)
The third view is the same view as seen from the side.
The fourth view shows the same combination in the scene I'm building
I use for plane a cone as this is what the final object should like, in fact an elliptic cone, it should be upside down as the larger part of the Amphitheater is the top of it and the base of the amphitheater is the arena itself which will be about 1/3d lower; I have to compute the proportions with the actual real measures of the real amphitheater I have The monument as I said earlier was dug in a hill and the arena what lower than the actual ground level of the town. The cone's measures are 10m height, 10m width, 20 segments and 20 sides.
As you can see no points are visible. I made test changing either the image opacity or the cone or deform but all options give the same result.
I take it that this 'gradins amphi seuls' is a plane?
If so, I cannot see why the deformer is not showing the points. It can be difficult to see sometimes, and I used a cone below and I couldn't really see them, so I made the Point Size bigger (8), and they show up quite well. You have to have either the Base, Field or Deformer selected in the Scene pane to see the points. See if making them bigger helps any.
Sorry about the confusion about the textured scene thing, all I meant was to load ANY scene, and change the viewport settings to see what they do. I wasn't sure if the points would be visible if they had a texture on top.
To make it simple I'm trying with a plane and not a cone. The plane is my picture of the "gradins amphi seuls"
as you can see below I have just 2 points visible on the upper corners of the plane (I changed their size to 0 and the background color to
grey to make them more visible. What I don"t understand is that there are only 2 points?
What I should need is points all around the far edge of the picture and points around the ellipse of the center arena.Lifting those at the edge or pulling down those around the arena I would transform the flat image into the Amphitheater interior as it should be.
There is something wrong with the plane, was it from Sketchup, is so you will need to replace it I think.
It looks like it only has two triangular polygons, and it will need a lot more polys to deform at all.
Although the object is from Sketchup, I used one of the texture jpeg files to get the view and I erased with Photoshop Elements 11 all the parts of the picture I did not want just to keep the view of the tiers and seating place in the Amphitheater as well as the Arena. Here is the original texture pic and file. The second picture shows what I kept and that is the view I used
The images don;t matter at all I'm afraid, what matters is the geometry of the plane that you are using. It appears to have only two polygone, and it cannot be dformed. As I said in my very first post, your plane would need to have lots of divisions in order to deform it. Carnite uses a plane with 100 x 100 division = 10,000 polys, it simply cannot be done with two. You don't necessarily need 10,000, but you need a substantial amount of polygons.
You would need to change the plane in your seen to one with lots of polys.
But actually the plane and the picture are unique. I don't see how to solve the problem?
EDIT: I think I've found the way....I made the mistake of using the picture itself as a plane; now that I loaded a proper one and applied to its
surface the picture, it becomes obvious.
I think I chose too many polys, even 2500 is too much, I'll be able to do it I think with less than a 100. The first point gave
immediately the perspective I'm looking for. I must set them around the border of the arena and I'll see next what I'll do with the
stone tiers to give them more perspective too.
Thanks Jimmy again.