KitBash3d

KeithH

I downloaded the freebies that kitbash3d gives you for signing up for their mailing list. I cannot find any tutorial on how to use them in Daz studio. 
Does anyone have a a link to a tutorial for importing and using the kitbash3d items with daz?

thanks

FSMCDesigns

Assuming the products come in .OBJ format, then they can be imported into Daz Studio. Many times you will have to re-apply the textures once inside DS and then tweak them to look good in the render engine you decide to use. It's not hard, I do it all the time

if they are not in a DS format or OBJ they will have to be converted to import into DS.

ZippyGuitar

FSMCDesigns said:

Assuming the products come in .OBJ format, then they can be imported into Daz Studio. Many times you will have to re-apply the textures once inside DS and then tweak them to look good in the render engine you decide to use. It's not hard, I do it all the time

if they are not in a DS format or OBJ they will have to be converted to import into DS.

The few I purchased were in obj format and had to be UVMapped. I couldn't even apply shaders to them. Boy that was a lot of frustration learning how to UVmap. I still hate it. hehehe

FSMCDesigns

GlenWebb said:

FSMCDesigns said:

Assuming the products come in .OBJ format, then they can be imported into Daz Studio. Many times you will have to re-apply the textures once inside DS and then tweak them to look good in the render engine you decide to use. It's not hard, I do it all the time

if they are not in a DS format or OBJ they will have to be converted to import into DS.

The few I purchased were in obj format and had to be UVMapped. I couldn't even apply shaders to them. Boy that was a lot of frustration learning how to UVmap. I still hate it. hehehe

Well that sucks. I have no experience with that site, but the models looks pretty nice, so you wouldn't think they wouldn't be UVMapped.

ZippyGuitar

What I purchased were starter kits. Cheap, small collections. Perhaps the larger sets are not in such a way, but I'm almost certain they are. The models looked great though.

I'm not very knowledgable about importing/exporting objects, there might be a compression thing I know nothing about, but they also slowed down the viewport/camera movement, so I had to hide the objects in scene till I was ready to render. 

Bejaymac

Always looking for good freebies so I've downloaded the Industrial kit, we can't use the .ma or the .max files, the .fbx will load eventually (after kicking out a rigging error) but stuff is spread all over the place as a result, which leaves us with the .OBJ and a lot of headaches.

First off they were made in MAX, as a result they have a vertical Z axis, loading them into DS means they will either be laying on their side, or if you swap axis the mesh will be mirrored, what was on the left will now be on the right and the UV will be mirrored as well so any writing will be backwards.

Second is they are huge, 600K+ polygons, nearly 900K vertex, so people are going to find their viewport slowing to a crawl, they are also huge in size despite the import preset you use, so they will need scaled to size in DS. Biggest kick in the nuts though, is that you are meant to be able to move the individual buildings around, not when they are all in the same .OBJ you can't, so they will have to be carved up into separate items, either in DS or in a modeling program.

The .mtl file isn't much use either, Opacity is set to zero, so everything loads invisible, and the texture pathways are crap so DS can't find them either.

There is a lot of work involved in getting this thing even close to DS ready, probably even have to reduce the poly count on it.

Oso3D

Where are you seeing freebies?

Edit: Duh, mailing list.

nm

 

Oso3D

Pro tip: Carrara makes it a bit easier to use the content.

You can load the fbx (I think it is) in Carrara, then export individual buildings properly oriented.

You DO have to set up the materials yourself from the textures provided, though.

Personally I'd rather buy Daz Store buildings (Daz prices are a steal, seriously).

 

KeithH

Thanks - think I will stick to DAZ stuff till I figure this out. Wish it was easier. :) 

FSMCDesigns

keith_8acb321bf5 said:

Thanks - think I will stick to DAZ stuff till I figure this out. Wish it was easier. :) 

LOL, this is normal for modeling apps and 3D in general. Daz makes Daz Studio to work like it does with DAZ content, which makes us users spoiled

Bejaymac

FSMCDesigns said:

keith_8acb321bf5 said:

Thanks - think I will stick to DAZ stuff till I figure this out. Wish it was easier. :) 

LOL, this is normal for modeling apps and 3D in general. Daz makes Daz Studio to work like it does with DAZ content, which makes us users spoiled

And it's only really been like that since around DS4.6, now there are so many presets available to the user base, that you don't really need to know how any of this works to get a good render.

But then I'm old school and I've been modding games for 20 years, so reworking things and fixing things that don't work right is second nature to me, which is probably just as well going by the amount of Poser & DS content I've had to "fix" over the years.

Doc Acme

GlenWebb said:

FSMCDesigns said:

Assuming the products come in .OBJ format, then they can be imported into Daz Studio. Many times you will have to re-apply the textures once inside DS and then tweak them to look good in the render engine you decide to use. It's not hard, I do it all the time

if they are not in a DS format or OBJ they will have to be converted to import into DS.

The few I purchased were in obj format and had to be UVMapped. I couldn't even apply shaders to them. Boy that was a lot of frustration learning how to UVmap. I still hate it. hehehe

If your adventurous, & I know many of you are, you might want to take a look at this product for UV work:

https://www.rizom-lab.com/rizomuv_rs/

You have so much control & options that it makes UV work somewhat fun.  I generally take Daz assets into Lightwave & then massage as needed, and in a couple cases bring them back into Daz.  One of the 3rd party developers has made Bridges for several apps to Rizom, so it's very quick to work directly in your app, but it works stand alone too.

 

mythos_20

Bejaymac said:

 

Biggest kick in the nuts though, is that you are meant to be able to move the individual buildings around, not when they are all in the same .OBJ you can't, so they will have to be carved up into separate items, either in DS or in a modeling program.

 

Sorry for commenting on an old thread, but I have the same question as OP had. I should point out that I'm more newbie than all newbies combined when it comes to 3D, so please be patient :) @Bejaymac: you mentioned that we have to carve the obj file (the one with all the buildings) into separate objects in DS. How do we do that? Where's the option for that? 

Thank you!

benniewoodell

I just figured out how to make this work in Daz! Someone on their facebook ads complained about how you have to texture everything yourself and that set off the lightbulb of how to make it work. The FBX file for the cyber pack freebie won't open in Daz, I saw another thread on here about some file structure or what have you, I don't quite understand why, but the warzone freebie, if you have that, will open the FBX. But if you import it as an OBJ, then it all comes in one giant piece. So the workaround is go to Blender, import the FBX file and then pick a building, delete everything else and then export that as an OBJ. Undo the delete and repeat the process for each building. Then you can import the OBJ of each seperate building into Daz, and in the surface tab you still have control of all the surfaces to put any texture you want that you own from Daz onto it, like you have your glass, concrete, signs, etceteera. I'm sure you can apply the textures they give you as well in the folder. But it totally works. Here's three examples of what I rendered out with one a couple of their buildings. I've been trying to figure this out for about a year now, so I figured I'd comment here on this thread with this easy workaround for anyone wanting to use these sets. 

 

 

WendyLuvsCatz

I cut it up with the geometry editor myself one building at a time and moved that building to 0,0,0 after deleting the rest and export reimporting them

then reimporting and doing the next building 

it was UV mapped BTW just untexrtured so had to load the maps

I also used the rigging and weight painting tools to lassoo and  fill to add bones to move each building to 0,0,0, you can hide bones, that way you can load a poseable set

yes it loads fine in Carrara but found getting that to DAZ studio more work than doing the above

bytescapes

I've done some quick tests with the free "Apocalypse" set that Kitbash3D have recently been giving away.

As others have observed, the items in the set all load together, the files are huge, and the textures tend to get lost on import.

If you have Blender (and it's free, so there's no reason not to), however, there's a possible workaround, which is:

1. Open Blender
2. Load the Kitbash3D file into Blender
3. Use Blender's Export to resave the file in FBX format.
4. Open DAZ|Studio
5. Import the FBX file that you just saved from Blender

When the FBX file has finished importing, you'll have all the objects from the Kitbash3D file in DAZ Studio, and they should be correctly textured (although you may want to play around with the textures to improve their appearance). They're also correctly grouped into separate object groups, so you can delete the ones you don't need.

It will take a while to load, export and reload the files, because they're big. You'll also find that the DAZ .duf files you save will be slower to save and bigger than usual, because Studio has to save all the geometry and texture maps  in it (instead of just storing references to items in your library, as it does when working with native DAZ objects).

BlazeMystEra

Thank you, bytescapes, for that information!

TheMysteryIsThePoint

I've got Dark Fantasy, Gothic, and Medieval Market. They all came UV mapped. Maybe they don't UV map their freebies?

Everything that @bytescapes said is, of course, valid, but I think texturing is always best done in the application in which you're going to render, and I'd just import the obj, which will bring the UV maps with it.

One thing that I've found, and can easily be solved in Blender, is that you may have to translate, scale, and rotate the UVs so that they look correct, i.e. seams in the texture coincide with seams in the object. This is much easier in Blender than actually UV mapping the object from scratch. So I usually import the KB3D object into Blender, cut out the parts I don't need, and apply the diffuse image from the Daz material I ultimately want to use, just as a reference. The I scale, translate, and rotate it until it looks right. The I import it into Daz, and apply whatever Iray material whose reference I used, and it looks perfect.

Fixing UVs in Blender is really easy; just select your object, hit the "UV Editing" tab at the top, select the faces you want to adjust, and then use the r, s, and g keys to rotate, scale, and translate the texture to your liking. You'll see live updates on the right split screen. To see textures, you'll have to be in Lookdev mode or rendered mode (EEVEE or Cycles). Easy-peasy.

WendyLuvsCatz

the apocalyse set was UV mapped

but

some import/export methods in other programs can destroy UV mapping

DAZ studio certainly loaded the obj UV mapped just untextured and one mesh

just needs much geometry editor fiddling and texture map loading!