Import PD Howler into Daz Studio

deepswing

Hi guys,

I am not sure if someone is familiar with this. I try to get PD Howler working so that I can create landscapes in Howler, export them as OBJ and use them in Daz. Working in Howler works fine, exporting (I think) as well, but whenever I import OBJ files into Daz, it messes it up completely.

This is how my landscape looks in Howler:

And this is the imported version in Daz:

They have nothing to do with each other. Does someone know what I am doing wrong? I tried a few settings like switching axes in Daz, but this didn't do anything. 

The OBJ Howler creates is a Wavefront OBJ, in case that's important to know.

Ascania

As most of us don't have Howler, would you mind sharing the OBJ, so we can have a look?

deepswing

Ascania said:

As most of us don't have Howler, would you mind sharing the OBJ, so we can have a look?

Happy to share, give me some time as even the smallest is 400 MB of size. 

deepswing

Here you go: https://imagesbeyondwords.livedrive.com/item/94b386c8377041088280334e5e7531fc - let me know if something is not working. 

Richard Haseltine

I get the same in DS, but oddly it dos import correctly into modo. it's a very large file. I deleted and restored a polygon in modo, saved, and then tried loading that into DS - it worked. So, try loading the OBJ into another application (such as Hexagon), reexport it, and see if it then imports into DS.

deepswing

Richard Haseltine said:

I get the same in DS, but oddly it dos import correctly into modo. it's a very large file. I deleted and restored a polygon in modo, saved, and then tried loading that into DS - it worked. So, try loading the OBJ into another application (such as Hexagon), reexport it, and see if it then imports into DS.

Good advise, however Hexagon crashes when opening the file for me. Might be because of file size. I never used Hexagon before, are there any special import parameters I need to click?

deepswing

Richard, could you maybe share that OBJ file Mojo has created so I can see if there are differences? Maybe a Notepad-edit might help before importing into Daz. :) 

deepswing

I am pretty sure file size can be eliminated as issue in both Daz and Hexagon. I have a very tine OBJ file now of 9 MB, which just causes Hexagon to crash earlier, and Daz still shows the same behaviour when importing it. I wanted to give Modo a try to import/export, but that's way beyond any budget I can dream of. Are there other products I can test it with? Really feeling helpless. 

Richard Haseltine

Here you go https://www.dropbox.com/s/lr9gv951daeegdx/Landscape - V1 through modo.zip?dl=0

deepswing

I did find a way for now to make it work with a software called AccuTrans. If I import the OBJ in there and export it as OBJ again, Daz can work with it. I will try to figure out what the differences of these files are, maybe I can tweak this manually, too. 

Thanks Richard, I will try this now!

Doc Acme

It's definitely NOT a standard obj file. 

Lightwave's Modeler got this:

And PolyTran gets nothing but line parse errors after minutes & would normally open an obj in seconds.

I'd get in touch with the developers & ask directly.  Dan's definitely involved with 3D.  Perhaps there's an export setting or step missed or such. 

 

WendyLuvsCatz

I installed my PD Dogwaffle to test (a lite version but apparently also has terrains) but couldn't find how to even do one 

Ascania

I had a look. Wings3D took absolute ages to import and export it but it managed to do so. Cinema4D had no problems. But looking into the file itself, you see:

v -960 1,337941 -640 0,3098039 0,3411765 0,2470588
v -959 1,67139 -640 0,3098039 0,3411765 0,2470588

That's six values for each vertex. If you take the C4D-exported version for comparison, the same two lines read:

v -960 1.33794105052948 -640
v -959 1.67139005661011 -640

Or the Wings3D one:

v -960.00000000 1.33794100 -640.00000000
v -959.00000000 1.67139000 -640.00000000

Clearly the same vertices with the same coordinates and D|S chokes on neither of those (and neither does Hexagon).

The rest of the OBJ file is unremarkable and should pose no problem to any program. There might be some issue with material definitions but that's a common thing and we know the programs catch that by assigning their own default material. So let's go back to the blatant difference of six vs three coordinate values for each vertex. The OBJ specifications call for three vertex coordinates with an optional fourth (a weight value for curves). Six values is out of spec.

Or not quite. There exists a variant OBJ format extension that adds three vertex colour values to each vertex. And apparently Hexagon is really really unhappy with this addition while D|S seems to try to use them when assigning vertex coordinates and making a complete hash of it. As soon as the vertex colour values are stripped off the OBJ both programs are completely happy with the file again.

The free programs MeshLab and MeshMixer can open the file without issue and should be able to help with stripping the problem data from the mesh.

Tiffanie Gray - IDLM

I have found with my experiments with it, that you have to have a very small bump map to get it to work well. Howler exports trigons, which can make some programs burp.

I worked with the Carrara group a couple of years ago on this. They found that for Carrara importing the bump map itself worked the best. But, that they could do it, with a smaller obj. Let me see if I can find the thread.

Okay, I hope this works: This was the comment/thread about it: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/post/quote/16925/Comment_3241001

Anyway, I guess, what setting did you use to import? 
How Big was the Original Bump map?

I import directly from the obj that was exported from Howler, into Daz 4.15, and used Bryce, and have used Hexagon, and Poser Scaling, with no issues. I started with a 500x500px height map.

This is an iray render using the texture saved from the 3D Designer. This was really quick there are ways to do better/nicer textures, etc.

I'm happy to help if I can.

There is a free webinar tomorrow about using Height maps in PD Howler, but it's mostly for Puppy Ray, not 3D designer but one of the developers will be giving it, so you can ask questions. The information on it is in the PD Howler forum thread.

 

Tiffanie Gray - IDLM

I downloaded your obj, and found the same issue you reported. All I cand thing is that there was a glitch when you exported. I've never had that happen before....odd.

 

Tiffanie Gray - IDLM

I downloaded your obj, and found the same issue you reported. All I can think is that there was a glitch when you exported. I've never had that happen before....odd. So do tag me if you have further questions, I don't check here very often, but I'll check in extra for a while if you do.

I used your texture file to "back engineer" a height map and then exported an obj, I did it with various sample steps, as is mentioned in the thread above, and also at step 1 , but only 5 amplitude. Imported those into Daz and then used the Y scale to increase the amplitude of the mesh. It's a lot slower, the mesh being so dense. But, each time they came into DazStudio fine.