The Photoshop Bridge is a little old school, and was designed in an era when many of us didn’t have a Photoshop version with 3D capabilities. Every current version of Photoshop CC has it, and as such it’s often easier to load an OBJ directly into Photoshop and texture there.
However, the bridge still has its uses. Let me explain how it’s (supposed to) work.
Start by launching DAZ Studio and load an object that you’d like to modify in Photoshop. Head over to
File - Initialize Photoshop Bridge. Notice that the viewport will change and you’ll look through the “Photoshop Bridge” camera. Position the view as you see fit.
Now launch Photoshop and head over to
File - Automate - DAZ Studio Bridge. This will bring up a floating palette with several options. If you don’t see this menu item, the bridge is not installed correctly. Check the path to your Photoshop installation (in Install Manager, under Applications - Photoshop).
Let’s go through the options in that floating Photoshop palette:
- Close DAZ Studio: as the label suggests.
- Preview Image, Update Image and Enable Auto Update no longer work. Ignore those options.
- Render to New Layer: asks DAZ Studio to render the current image and imports it as a new layer into the current document. This is handy if you want to combine your 3D object with a 2D background.
- Export Scene as U3D/DAE: asks DAZ Studio to export the current scene. It’s the same as heading over to DAZ Studio and choosing File - Export. Not sure why we would want to ever do this from Photoshop.
- Import Image Maps: very handy option to import selected texture files from anything in the current DAZ Studio scene. This lets you modify an existing texture without having to find where the actual texture file is saved.
- Export Image Maps: currently crashes Photoshop CC 2015.5 - therefore, ignore this option.
- Close: closes the floating palette and the connection to DAZ Studio.
So really, there are only two useful options here for us: “
Render to New Layer” for compositing, and “
Import Image Maps" for texturing. I’ve used the latter option many times, using the following workflow:
- import image maps for the object you want to texture
- add layers and designs as you see fit
- save the file as PSD (Photoshop will suggest the same folder of the current texture)
- in DAZ Studio, choose Surfaces and select your saved Photoshop file as the new texture (under Diffuse)
- see your changes in action
- make more changes in Photoshop, then hit CTRL+S to save the file
- head back to DAZ Studio and see your changes update live
- if you don’t see your changes reflected, hit CTRL+I to refresh the image manually
Hope this helps ;-)