Universal Conversion tool
father1776
Posts: 982
I would pay a good chunk of money for a DAZ 3D addon that converts
models from various software, like 3DS MAX to DAZ 3D
Put out a bunch of them, have them convert it all if possible,
textures rigging, if it can not convert shaders, have it load generic
ones and list the missing shaders so the customer can substitute
DAZ ones.
Post edited by father1776 on
Comments
There are a good selection of import and export formats supported be DAZ Studio already; look in the File menu under Import and Export.
not exactly what I was going for, but yes can be done by scratch
3DS MAX is a problem, as .max format is proprietary.
There are two programs and one plugin for Blender that will convert max files...only if you have Max already installed. There's not much else, other than having Max (well, Turbosquid will do it for meshes bought there).
But. short of 'prop' models, there isn't much point...if dae and fbx won't work, then all you will get is an unrigged geometry file. Although millighost has a working Blender exporter that will export a basic rigged figure from Blender, it still needs skeleton work in Studio...at the very least to 'tweak' the joints with some limits, usually a bit more than that, though.
I agree, lots of props in other formats have moving parts, but if you convert to obj, they loose that movement when inported to Daz. It would be nice to have a conversion tool that saves those moving functions and imports direction to Daz Studio. I used to be able to use Hexagon for exactly that, but now the Hexagon Bridge is broken.
The problem isn't that it is proprietary.....it is the very nature of the data stored in a .MAX file. MAX files are actually 'snapshots' of the geometry engine's state when it is saved. This is why nobody can import MAX files without 3DSMax installed.....the importer has to actually run the file THROUGH 3DSMax to get the geometry back out. It's unfortunate, as it makes the files virtually useless to anyone but MAX users. Implementing a third-party importer would require creating an identical state machine to load the file into, which would be akin to re-implementing a large part of the core of 3DSMax itself.