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Hello, I found a lot of products have unusually large .obj files. For example, some hair characters have .obj files that on average are somewhere in the region of 3mb, so when one is 12mb I started wondering 'why!'. I tried to use online decimators to reduce the size to something that could open more easily. The results were not consistant. I tried Wings3D, this took forever. Then I found an easy way. Open the .obj file in UV mapper pro by Steve Cox. You see a series of oblong shapes which is the main hair. Select half of one of the oblongs VERTICALLY. Delete the selected half. Select the remaining half, stretch it back into the oblong's original shape. Do this to all the oblongs, not the scalp shape. Save as a copy. I then opened it in Poser and checked that the Trans maps still fitted, Otherwise it's easy to adjust them in Photoshop. This took me 5 minutes. It reduced a file from 7mb to 2mb. What I did then was open it in Poser 6. Made the entire obj file 'neck''. Used 'Wet Hair' by Michelle as a donor in Setup to create a figure/character. Then edited the material groups in CR2 editor. Bingo. Perfect neck joint. Then used Poser magnets to make simple morphs. I converted 6 hairs from here in less than an hour that were all multiple boned, multiple texture groups, higher versions into characters I can use in lower versions of Poser. I chose ps_ac2323_WetHair as the donor because it has a perfect bone system.
My apologies if this isn't very clear. The technique of 'slicing' in UV mapper is very easy, I used a Hair character just as an example.That's interesting. I read numerous complaints about hair files getting increasingly humongous over the years. I wonder if this would also work for Studio files?
Hello Ethiopia @supreme-leech, I don't work with Daz files at all, sorry. This system is only going to work if you wanted a very simple version of the original version. It has a lot of flaws because the bones are all grouped as 'neck' so the original morphs can't be transferred back from multi-boned originals. I managed around 4 good morphs just using Magnets in Poser. Because of the shapes, I couldn't simply edit the .obj file in a program like Wings3D because of how long it would take. In terms of time and results I think editing in a UV editor is way faster. It will work where the .obj file has 'oblong' shapes, for cloth it will not. I used Poser 6, Steve cox UV editor and Paintshop pro to check the alignment of the Trans maps. Making morphs with Magnets isn't easy, I used Wings3d to make mat zones to apply the magnets to. The main ingredient is using a 'donor' hair to make the bones and sphere zones spot on. I found hair characters by Michelle were very good. I'm no expert, but I'm sure somebody could use this idea and refine it.
I've found most problems with hair models when it happens is the topology, but not usually in Poser/Daz. There can be issues in any hair model depending on how the modeler created them. If all the faces are separated and double layered, this can be even more frustrating. I prefer hair planes over strand though, since it's usually lighter weight. Same with eyebrows, lashes, and anything that is hair like. Transparency and layering can do a lot to make hair planes just as attractive as strands. But I don't understand the hair models where everything is duplicated and the second identical mesh has the normals flipped. That's not even necessary. I'm not sure what technique this is because I use Blender a lot, but it sounds like doing it exactly the same way would not create good results in Blender unless the "Correct Face Attributes" tick box is checked, and then you extrude the edges back to their original position. I still want to learn how to turn strand hair into hair planes. I have a werewolf like model that needs attention with that. I also need to learn how to comb 3d hair properly so the hair planes are more realistic.
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