3d modelling apps & Poser/DAZ

[cloudwkr55]

Thanks Taranis for the awesome list of freebie modelling apps!

I am trying to decide which one to try my hand at first, and I want to get some opinions before diving head first just to find out the there may have been a better choice.

As I mentioned in my intro, I have only recently got my feet wet with DAZ and to a lesser extent Poser. I am looking for a (freebie) modelling app that would be the least problematic to use with DAZ / Poser without having to dealing messy conversions and mesh cleanups... does it even exists as a freebie.

I welcome any advice out there

Mmm, any program that can export either .obj or .3ds should work in poser/DAZ. Try GMax (free version of 3d studio max) or XSI modtool (free version of softimage). The only thing you should have to do is rescale once in daz/poser.

[gmd3d]

I would suggest Truespace 7.... as it exports many formats, and there are members that use it here . EG180 been one of them.. have a look at his Enterprise in the downloads'

• BVH animation and motion capture
• DXF format (full layer support) compatibility
• 3D Formats: SCN, COB, SOB, WRL 1.0, GZ, WRZ, DXF, 3DS, ASC, PRJ, LWO, OBJ, LWB, IOB, GEO, STL
• 2D formats: BMP, TGA, AVI, FLC, JPG, DIB, AI, PS, EPS, PNG, DDS

Or Blender which is growing and getting many followers .. .

Hey!
Where am I?
How'd I get here?
...and what am I doing in this 'hand basket'?

LOL!

Cloudwkr55, did you get a chance to check out the link I posted regarding the character rigging add on for D|S?

[cloudwkr55]

Thanks everyone for all your great suggestions on this thread and on the New Member Welcome thread.

I've been looking at the various apps that everyone has mentioned and they all look very promising and workable.

Please bear with me as I ask another noob question. It seems all the modelling apps tote one type of mesh manipulation technique or another. (e.g. spline modelling, N-gons, Nurbs, subdivision modelling, etc)

I've tried Wiki-ing these to get more information but I honestly got overwhelmed by the technical aspect... can you guess I don't have a physics / computer engineering background??? :laugh:

In your experience, have any of you found one technique having an advantage over another for any specific type of model that you are trying to create? (e.g. starships vs. humanoid / organic objects vs. clothing / equipment?)

[cloudwkr55]

Originally Posted by Fretslayer

Hey!
Where am I?
How'd I get here?
...and what am I doing in this 'hand basket'?

LOL!

Cloudwkr55, did you get a chance to check out the link I posted regarding the character rigging add on for D|S?

:laugh: Now you know how non-federation species feel when they get beamed up for the first time! :laugh:

Thanks for the link for the character rigging link... That may be my best option once I actually model something... oh well, I guess not all the best things in life are free... ** scrounges through wallet, sofa, floor for spare change **

*edited for spelling... man I'm worthless without spellcheck :p

[gmd3d]

Originally Posted by cloudwkr55

Thanks everyone for all your great suggestions on this thread and on the New Member Welcome thread.

I've been looking at the various apps that everyone has mentioned and they all look very promising and workable.

Please bear with me as I ask another noob question. It seems all the modelling apps tote one type of mesh manipulation technique or another. (e.g. spline modelling, N-gons, Nurbs, subdivision modelling, etc)

I've tried Wiki-ing these to get more information but I honestly got overwhelmed by the technical aspect... can you guess I don't have a physics / computer engineering background??? :laugh:

In your experience, have any of you found one technique having an advantage over another for any specific type of model that you are trying to create? (e.g. starships vs. humanoid / organic objects vs. clothing / equipment?)

It depends on what your building .. some people start with primitive shapes box and squares etc.. spline drawing is good for spaceships at times if you what it to have a lot of curves


what approach depends on what you are doing ...

Truespace has download videos with lessions etc ..

it takes time to get your head around what ever program you want

Originally Posted by Taranis

spline drawing is good for spaceships at times if you what it to have a lot of curves

hmmm, spline drawing... i haven't tried that yet....

[evil_genius_180]

Originally Posted by Taranis

I would suggest Truespace 7.... as it exports many formats, and there are members that use it here . EG180 been one of them.. have a look at his Enterprise in the downloads'

You really don't want to use trueSpace 7 to export anything. I've tried with very bad results. There's a plug-in for .obj format (for some reason, there's *still* not a built-in .obj exporter) but it doesn't work very well with anything but simple objects. And that's the best exporter for tS 7. All of the built-in ones suck, except the ones for exporting to previous versions of tS (which really don't help unless you have earlier versions of tS.)

[Kai]

Originally Posted by evil_genius_180

You really don't want to use trueSpace 7 to export anything. I've tried with very bad results. There's a plug-in for .obj format (for some reason, there's *still* not a built-in .obj exporter) but it doesn't work very well with anything but simple objects. And that's the best exporter for tS 7. All of the built-in ones suck, except the ones for exporting to previous versions of tS (which really don't help unless you have earlier versions of tS.)

erm it works very well with complex objects.

I built this
http://www.contentparadise.com/getde.../0/F/18651.jpg

in trueSpace and eported it with LUUV with no problems at all into Poser where you see it rendered. the LUUV tsx in 7 is the same as the one in 4.3/5/6

edit : infact all these (other than the Warboss) were built by me in tS, exported with the LUUV TSX to OBJ with no issues at all. http://www.contentparadise.com/us/us...m0&vendor=Khai

[gmd3d]

I have used LUUV when I had TS5 on my system .. it was a handy plugin .. but I never tried it on TS7 ..

[evil_genius_180]

Originally Posted by Kai

erm it works very well with complex objects.

I built this
http://www.contentparadise.com/getde.../0/F/18651.jpg

in trueSpace and eported it with LUUV with no problems at all into Poser where you see it rendered. the LUUV tsx in 7 is the same as the one in 4.3/5/6

edit : infact all these (other than the Warboss) were built by me in tS, exported with the LUUV TSX to OBJ with no issues at all. http://www.contentparadise.com/us/us...m0&vendor=Khai

Congratulations.

It always crashes the program when I try to export complex objects. (or am I thinking of my old computer?) Not that I really care. I mostly use it to export simple objects from tS 4 so that I can mirror them in Wings.

I think I did get one of my Constitution-class meshes to export to .obj once because I wanted to try Kerkythea.

Having said that, tS 7 still sucks for exporting, IMO. One thing they never seem to update from one version of tS to the next is the import/export scripts. They pretty much have the same crappy ones they've had since (at least) tS 3.

[Kai]

Originally Posted by evil_genius_180

Congratulations.

It always crashes the program when I try to export complex objects. (or am I thinking of my old computer?) Not that I really care. I mostly use it to export simple objects from tS 4 so that I can mirror them in Wings.

I think I did get one of my Constitution-class meshes to export to .obj once because I wanted to try Kerkythea.

Having said that, tS 7 still sucks for exporting, IMO. One thing they never seem to update from one version of tS to the next is the import/export scripts. They pretty much have the same crappy ones they've had since (at least) tS 3.

it does not Suck at all. your doing it wrong.
please don't spread lies around. it exports perfectly. I told you why your enterprise did'nt export properly back when I looked at it for convertion and you blew me off saying I was wrong.

but you know better eh?

[evil_genius_180]

OK, a note for newbies: This is why I feel the trueSpace internal exporters suck. It has nothing to do with how well they do or don't work, it's simply that there are only a few formats to which it will export without plug-ins: .cob, .can, .asc, .3ds, .dxf, .x, .stl. Of all of those formats, the only one that is accepted by the majority of 3D software that I've seen is .3ds. And the .3ds exporter in tS triangulates your object, which at least doubles your polygon count. That is why, in my opinion, tS is no good for exporting. It's simply not versatile enough to be worth downloading just for that purpose. I love modeling in the program, but there are much better conversion programs out there.

Originally Posted by Kai

it does not Suck at all. your doing it wrong.
please don't spread lies around. it exports perfectly. I told you why your enterprise did'nt export properly back when I looked at it for convertion and you blew me off saying I was wrong.

but you know better eh?

Yeah, about that. I'll say what I want about the program because everybody is entitled to their opinion, which is why I'm not openly bashing your opinion. (like you are mine) And let's just leave it at that (not a request.)

[Darrell Lawrence]

Whoa. Let's slow down and take a step back. There's some wording being tossed around that is going a bit beyond an opinion to stating over-all facts.

A fact to one person might not be a fact to another. We're here to learn. If someone has a problem with a certain program, or an aspect of that program, whether it is an internal or an external piece of the program, when someone says they know how to use that and get good results, then that person should be able to share what makes it work good without someone else flat out saying it doesn't work over-all.

Myself I have used LUUV, and have had mixed results, and that has to do with the way a model is created then exported, rather than the exporter itself.

Some models WON'T export very well because of various little things, like capped/non-capped objects and so forth. Others will export very nicely, complex or not.

[cloudwkr55]

Okay, the noob is about to speak again...

What is LUUV? And how does this work with tS or any other app?

[evil_genius_180]

Originally Posted by cloudwkr55

Okay, the noob is about to speak again...

What is LUUV? And how does this work with tS or any other app?

It's a .obj format import/export plug-in for trueSpace. And, while that is the only program it will work for, most 3D software has either a built-in script for loading and saving in .obj format or a plug-in for it because it's pretty much a universally accepted format.

And it is a very nice plug-in, I use it very often in trueSpace to export (though I load .obj with the normal load object script.) Warrior made the point I was attempting to make on its limitations, but overall it works very well. (as long as you have enough RAM )

Here's a clarification on what I meant by complex object. I don't consider a starship to be a complex object, usually it's actually many simple objects glued together. This thingy (see attached) crashed Luuv. I think it was the booleans that did it, but I'm not entirely sure. On the other hand, I've exported whole starships just fine.