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No, it is just a special instance of whatever figure or object it is made from. To add thickness you would need to extrude the mesh along its normals and that requires a modeling program.
Right, so I could export as an OBJ and import into blender.
Yes, Edit mode, select all, extrude immediately followed by Alt-S to scale the extrude along the normals.
The geometry shell is exactly like the original mesh, it doesn't have any thickness unless it's been modelled in — and that's not something you can do in D|S.
thanks poeple
as someone that's just starting to use Geo shells, I'm just curious, why would you need to add thickness? sounds interesting
Perhaps it would be useful in certain scenarios, such as affecting refraction?
if you aren't using the displacement channel for anything else;
I'm thinnking you could make an 1024x1024 square that was solid color greyscale 128. ( not RGB but greyscale saved in tif or tga format)
Put that in the displacement strength channel map slot
set the minimum displacement to 0.00
max displacment to 2.0.
strength to 100% (iray you will want to set surface subd to something around 2 or 3)
and that should make your geoshell 2cm thick at render time. It would all be done in the shader, so you wouldn't see it in the viewport.
Wouldn't that just offset it from the model surface, rather than add "thickness"?
Yes it just displaces the mesh it wont add thickness.
you're right,,that didn't work.
I didn't hide any of the shell parts to see if that was happening.
to create a plaster cast for a broken leg
Is there a particular reason why the inside of such a prop needs to match up with the leg?
eh? Are you really asking why a plaster cast of the leg needs to match the leg?!
The inside doesn't need to match since it wil be hidden, the outside wil rarely follow the exact contours of the leg from what I have seen.
Sure. But how else can I produce even the outer contour to match the leg, if not with a geometry shell? A plaster cast is merely strips of wet, plaster-impregnated bandage applied to the leg and then allowed to set. It is therefore 'leg shaped' (not altogether surprisingly). So what better method is there than to use a geometry shell with some added thickness? It seems the most obvious method to me, but perhaps you know otherwise?
The shell doesn't have thickness, any more than the original mesh does. You could export it and thicken it in a modeller, or you could use displacement - have a very sharp falloff from white to black, and have an opacity map that is black beyond the that, then apply both to the leg zone on the figure and make your displacement limits 0 for the minimum and 1 or whatever, in cm, the cast's thickness should be for the maximum.
Indeed. Thanks. These were the suggestions given above. But they still start from a geo shell. I was just querying the idea that there was some other way to create a leg-shaped cast, besides starting with a geo shell. But we seem to agree that this is the best option.
So.. Here's what I've done.
I created a geo shell on the entire figure (as there doesn't seem to be a way of doing one for just a leg). I then went into the 'geometry editor' mode in Studio and deleted all the shell apart from the leg. I then exported it to OBJ and imported into blender.
I am now a bit stuck though. In blender as I can't seem to select the whole leg all at once, it seems to regard the foot, thigh and shin as separate objects and won't let me select them all together. But I guess that would be a question for the blender forum!
Don't export groups from DS and Blender will, I imagine, treat the mesh as one piece
Err.. ok. I wasn't aware I had exported group. I just clicked on the geo shell in the scene tab and exported.
But I now see this is an option in the export dialog box.
Only problem is, when I un-check the groups box, it sets the export size to "Custom" which means it's not the DAZ 1 unit = 1cm setting any longer. (why are those related?). Problem is I now have an OBJ file that is WAY too big!
Changing the group option won't change the scaling, it says Custom because one of the settings is now different from those of the preset.
But it won't now let me set the scaling to DAZ 1 unit = 1cm. As soon as I do that, it checks the damn groups box again! The two seem to be connected somehow.
It doesn't matter...the scaling is STILL Daz 1 unit = 1 cm. Reimporting will be fine using the Daz preset.
The psets aren't just scale - they are all of the options in te dialogue. If you chaneg a setting it shows Custom, because it is, but none of the other settings shift. There's a save preset button too - you could, if it works, call this one DAZ Studio, no groups.
Excellent. Thanks everyone. That worked just fine.
I guess I assumed because it said "Custom" that it had lost the scaling, but it didn't