Daz Studio 4 - Genesis imported to UDK ..... I did it ...

[Justanother1]

I'm a total noob to UDK ... and I don't really know what to do next .... But I got a way cool character creation process ... thanks to Daz and they're little give away last month!! ... I don't have MAX .... but I do have Blender, Sculptris, Wings3d and Daz Studio 4... So I can create and animate characters that will import straight into UDK .... she's a bit High Poly .... 30k triangles exported on the Low end in Daz. But the animation is real smooth. I'm still trying to get the materials right .... UDK really seems to ramp up the normal map ..... but it worked .. animation and all !!

[joshua.fontany]

When importing Normal maps, make sure to choose the correct import settings (there are some specifically for normal maps).

http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/NormalMapFormats.html


I picked up the DAZ stuff when they had their deal too, nice to see some people using in in their UDK workflow.

[Justanother1]

Using? No. I've figured out how to import textures and models and how to build materials. I'm still quite a few videos away from "Using" ..........lol

[geodav]

yep looks like you really need to optomise the amount of materials used on the mesh, afaik the genesis meshes come with 4 or 5 textures, if you do a striaght import you'll end up with 20-30 material slots

[Justanother1]

Yup ... that's the next hump. I haven't figured out how to combine the materials in Daz Studio. I got Genesis UV'd down to one map, and once imported I'm actually repeating the same material for everything except the eyelashes and the cornea, it's about a dozen Mat slots that get opened though. I did notice UDK has some sort of Clothing management as well. I'm wondering if it's possible to add/remove clothing items using DS.

[geodav]

i still don't know enough about blender but you should be able to create an new multi-material set or just re-assign the mesh sections to the correct material, i did a quick check and the inside mouth+teeth are about 5k polys so if you don't need them then get rid.

clothing is an advance problem which i doubt you can do from blender, unless you export the meshes seperate and add them together in udk via script, but that would really push the poly count

[Justanother1]

I'm trying to avoid Blender all together. The Genesis model in Daz Studio 4 can Morph to just about anything, is already Bone Rigged and ready to animate. The lower Sub-d exports at about 30K tris, and Daz Studio 4 Pro exports FBX. It's just a matter of finding the right settings for UDK so it can be repeated. Daz gave away their Daz Studio 4 Pro last month, and this Genesis model is the key. I'm still just learning, but as far as I can tell, I can even build my own Geometry and use Genesis to transfer a bone-rig to my Geometry, animate and export that to UDK. Daz Studio was built to work with 3DSMax and Motion Builder and even has a GoZ plugin, although I don't have any of those ... I painted the textures on the model above in Sculptris, I built the shoes in Wings3d. Honestly, I'll probably never get a Game out of UDK, but I thought it might be fun to try and get some animations out of ... I Luv the UDK renderer .....

[Justanother1]

Update, I've learned !! You can change the material nodes in Daz Studio 4, it's really not to hard, but learning to use the DS group editor is like learning Blender ......
I've also found an answer to another problem. All the Facial animation in DS is done with Morphs, that take forever to import. But you can edit the Morph rules in the FBX exporter. So if you stay away from the Emotion and Visemes, and just use some simple ones, eyes open/closed, smile, mouth open, in your animation, you can edit the morph rules and get away with only importing a few simple morphs. However, this ran me into another problem. This time around my with facial animation, my animation imported with the morph animations first, then the bone animation, in one long strip. Is there a way to put them back together ?

[geodav]

i've no idea, i picked up daz4 pro as well but haven't had time to play with it so any info you learn could be most helpfull to other who just want to have a bit of fun, so if you can keep notes on your work flow i think it will help

[Justanother1]

I posted these in the Sculptris forum when I first got it. I've played with Poser years back, that's what first got me interested, after I learned to make stuff with Wings3d I started playing with game engines, 3DRad mostly, imported several Trackmania cars. There's Plenty of Freebies and help at Renderosity.com and Sharecg.comfor Poser/Daz stuff. You can actually paint a fairly good texture set using Sculptris, though it's maxed out at 2048.

[Justanother1]

OK here's some vids on this .... I really don't know UDK too well, but I did manage to import a rigged model and animations from Daz Studio 4. Here's how......

[Justanother1]

and...

[Justanother1]

and...

[Justanother1]

Hey guys, 100 views no reply? ... bad, good, FU, nothing ???

[Spoof]

I don't need it for myself, but I did watch the videos to get an insight into the process and really appreciate your effort into this - especially sharing the info in such detail, which is what this community is all about.

I tried poser and Daz years ago and it was a bitter experience

[Justanother1]

I don't have MAX, and I hate Blender though I know it pretty well now. I'm just getting started with the UDK, and the first thing I wanted to know is how I'd get my models in, cuz otherwise it's useless to me. I still gotta sit through hours of Tut's on coding and naming animations, and how all the other stuff works, I figured out materials and the BS? surfaces. But yea it seems that Daz Studio 4 and this new Genesis character are set up to run along the same pipelines with LOD's and Subdivision levels and what not. And he's already rigged and ready to animate, just needs a face, and Daz Studio has a really cool animation editing system, with the Puppeteer and stuff .... Riggings not to bad in Blender, but animating is a Pain!! ... I always liked good old CharacterFX and Fragmotion, but those days are long gone .. and there's no way I've found of converting those files forward to FBX and the new systems.

[geodav]

watch them today, need to find out about changing the uv's, maybe one of you other videos, what might help you is if you create a new animset for your mesh then import the fbx anim, haven't tryied it but i have read thats how others are dealing with fbx anims

[Justanother1]

Geodav .. I used the UV-Mapper Classic . The old one from back in the day ..... The Number next to the material indicates the texture. So Edit-Select by material ... then choose all the materials with the same number ..... I wasn't successful with the Genesis UV's, only the V4 UVs .... I suppose I could upload that file .... To import the UV's there's a little flag ..(looks like a notepad) that has all the goodies. You need to be in the Surfaces tab, then click on the Flag.

[geodav]

i'll have another look tomorrow, my main problem was the ammount of material slots that exported with the file,

[Justanother1]

That's in the vids as well ......