What is the easiest way to move groups from an OBJ file?

davemc0

I have a simple geometric model that I am importing from a .OBJ file. It is a bunch of pieces of glass, each one defined as a separate group in the file. When I import the OBJ I check the box for "Read Groups (g)", and if I use the Geometry Editor I can see that it loaded the groups by name if I select Geometry Selection > Select By > Face Groups I see them listed and can select one.

Now I just want to translate one that I've selected. I want to be able to arrange the pieces of glass within DAZ, but I can't find any way to do this. I'm a total noob and I'm sure this is easy; I just can't find it.

Thanks.

Richard Haseltine

You need to turn the object into a figure, Edit>Object>Rigging>Convert Prop to Figure, set it to General Weight mapping. Select the hip bone then with the Joint Editor tool right-click and select Create>Child Bone, name as desired, then in Tool Settings set the group as the Selection group. Repeat for any other parts you want to make movable. Finally switch to the Node Weight Map Brush tool, right-click and select Weight Editing>Fill By Bone selection groups.

davemc0

Thanks for the quick reply, Richard. It exposed me to lots of parts of the product that I hadn't seen before.

I followed all your instructions and got it working. It's pretty weird for my use case to have the transformations be relative to the rest of the pieces of glass. The piece is rotating about really weird axes, etc. I don't think this will be the right workflow for me, also considering the amount of setup it requires for each piece of glass, of which there may several that I feel like moving.

I think I need a workflow in which each piece of glass is a separate prop in DAZ. That allows very natural selecting and moving. My concerns for that regime would be

a) how can I load them en masse? I can put them all in the same file or in separate files when I create them. I can try a few different file formats, but OBJ is easiest for me.

b) How can I assign and edit materials on all of them at once? This is a common operation for me and I can't figure out how to select two props at once.

 

 

Richard Haseltine

You can use the Joint Editor tool to adjust the centre/end points (drag on the green/red crosses), and to align the bones (via right-click) to the new axes. I was thinking you wanted only translation, for which centres don't matter.

a) I'm not sure you can

b) mutli-select - use shift and ctrl(Win)/cmd(Mac) in the Surface pane's Editor tab to select multiple items (by default you may need to use the same method in the Scene pane, or ctrl/cmd clicking in the viewport, to select the objects first - I have DS to show surfaces for all items rather than only selected but that may be an option I changed).