Blender and DAZ figures
Mosk the Scribe
Posts: 888
I haven't looked into this for a couple of years, so thought I'd ask if there's a workable pipeline between DAZ figures/props/pz2 files and the latest version of Blender. (I know you can export objects, but I'm looking for a consistent way to get figures in with their morphs and textures intact, and would also need a convenient way of applying single frame and animated poses. Didn't know if FBX exporter or some other format captured all this in a reproducible manner. Thanks for any information.
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I'm curious about this too.
A few days ago I tried exporting Genesis to Blender via Collada, and the result was a posable figure. Trouble is, some important bits are lost in the translation and as a result the joint bends tend to look pretty awful. I don't have any experience in Blender rigging and can't say how much effort it would take to achieve the result you get in DAZ Studio.
I haven't tried this with Poser figures, and of course other possibilities may exist. Last I checked Blender didn't import FBX.
I have seen a DS scene exporter for Blender:- https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts/mcjteleblender-for-ds1-2-3-4
I have not used it, as I do not currently use DAZ characters.
You'd have to weight paint it in Blender to get even similar results posing. That is genesis big thing, the weight mapping.
Now who says that software developers aren't also excellent marketers? The name of this exporter is "mcjTeleBlender"
Huh? Geez, guy, at least give it a name that makes some sense to someone other than another code jockey.
Anyway, I've never used it, know nothing about it, but something like this is desperately needed for Blender. Content sales for DAZ would soar, although it would probably sound the death knell for Carrara.
Though I'm not holding my breath. Typically import/export stuff like this is hugely difficult to get right, if not impossible. I may give it a try....
I haven't used this, but here it is, for what it's worth.
http://www.blender3dclub.com/posertools/
If you google "blender daz poser" you get some good info.
Here's a blog discussing one guy's attempts:
http://maddieman.wordpress.com/2012/04/23/exporting-daz-studio-4-figures-to-blender/
As expected the results seem pretty limited, though I just scanned it a bit. There are a few blog entries from this week, so it seems pretty current.
And here's a tutorial step-by-step for DAZ to Blender...
http://www.art-tech.it/html/tutorial_export_daz3d_to_blender_2_5.pdf
I never got those to work right on full biped figures. :p
I'd certainly like to know if anyone gets this to work without manual rerigging, since I already use Blender for my modeling, simming and some texturing (disp mapping of wrinkles and so on). A manual rerig shouldn't really be needed, though - Blender's native rigging is much more similar to weight mapping than to the old cr2 joint falloffs. If anything, DAZ is catching up to Blender in that regard.
Blender's main attraction historically is sticking it to the man, which precludes paying for things like content, so I doubt that Blender users would ever be a big market for Daz products. It's also got one of the most notoriously counter-intuitive interfaces in cg, even after it's recent overhaul.
Not good for content users that prize ease of use.
Not sure what you mean by "sticking it to the man", but DAZ Studio has been free for a very long time, and, presumably, in spite of that (ie, attracting the the 'freebie grabbers') a lot of guys are still willing to pay $19.95 for some content. But maybe you're right...maybe the typical Blender user, in spite of being the typical market of young males who typically are into this kind of thing, refuses to pay a dime for anything, even that cool fantasy world stuff that young guys think is cool.
Au contraire. Some of us are already using Blender as part of a Poser/DAZ content pipeline (including PAs like yrs. truly). And of course there will always be a certain number of people who will choose free over ease of use even in this market - we've got a lot of layers of customer budget and time investment here.
Add the fact that Blender can produce better renders than 3delight for free, and it could provide an alternative for those unable to pay for Reality but wanting better renders and with things like cloth, fluid and fur sim in addition to their preexisting content.
Yep they are anti-establishment in many regards. I have usually regarded Blender users as part of the CGSociety crowd, looking down their noses at pre-made content. But there have been surprises lately of more of them wanting to get Poser and DAZ characters into Blender (EDIT: I see Sickle Yield just posted)... but often it seems to be people who already had Poser or DAZ and had moved to Blender to do the special effects stuff.
BTW, OctaneRender is officially released - the DAZ plugins are still being worked on... one free and one paid for. face-off has the Poser plugin beta available for purchase there. Tugpsx who is working on the freebie for Studio has said before he plans on working on a Carrara plugin once the Studio plugin is released.
Ahhh, okay...now I get it.
I guess I had misjudged Blender's market. But yeah, now I know what you guys are referring to. The "nose-looker-downers". :)
I was always wondering why there didn't seem to be a huge amount of activity with import/export between DAZ/Poser/Blender, but now it makes some sense. As we used to say, "cooties".
I never got those to work right on full biped figures. :p
I'd certainly like to know if anyone gets this to work without manual rerigging, since I already use Blender for my modeling, simming and some texturing (disp mapping of wrinkles and so on). A manual rerig shouldn't really be needed, though - Blender's native rigging is much more similar to weight mapping than to the old cr2 joint falloffs. If anything, DAZ is catching up to Blender in that regard.
I did...once...with 2.49.
But I'm not entirely sure HOW I got it to work...it just did. After that one time, no matter what, I couldn't get it do work correctly.
Going back and forth isn't that difficult. I've found it works best to create a folder for each item/scene and make sure everything is in it...geometry files, mtl file, textures...everything. The less hunting around Blender has to do to find things, the more likely it is to find them (less chance of path/directory errors...which are the most common causes of 'lost' textures).
One of the guys working on getting Poser stuff into Blender has mentioned before all the delays caused by Blender code always changing and breaking things. And he's getting paid by someone with some money to burn to get it done... almost 2 years later...
Ahhh, okay...now I get it.
I guess I had misjudged Blender's market. But yeah, now I know what you guys are referring to. The "nose-looker-downers". :)
I was always wondering why there didn't seem to be a huge amount of activity with import/export between DAZ/Poser/Blender, but now it makes some sense. As we used to say, "cooties".
A lot of that comes from the Max/Maya crowd...and gets transferred to Blender, because for quite some time, that was the 'direct competition'.
These are the guys, who, think nothing of creating something, from scratch, to use once and then dumping it to some storage archive, never to see the light of day again...even if another project needs the same item. That comes from the days of huge studio budgets that let a small part of that crowd get away with it...
Now, the tide is changing...more and more studios/other places are starting to value a good, working and usable archive of existing assets (yo, stuffed-shirts, there's already a name for that...PRE-MADE CONTENT!), so the attitudes are starting to soften.
As to Blender, specifically...how can you 'quantify' the typical Blender user, when the user base is so diverse? I guess the one item is individuality...
I got started with Blender, because I wanted to make a couple of Morrowind mods...and with it and the nif tools package I could do that without a second mortgage, selling a couple of kids and my left arm.
I looked at this and I don't think it will work anymore (at least not from DAZ Studio). Part of the process is exporting as .dae, which as far as I know doesn't work anymore in Studio. Maybe out of Carrara, however.
A lot of that comes from the Max/Maya crowd...and gets transferred to Blender, because for quite some time, that was the 'direct competition'.
These are the guys, who, think nothing of creating something, from scratch, to use once and then dumping it to some storage archive, never to see the light of day again...even if another project needs the same item. That comes from the days of huge studio budgets that let a small part of that crowd get away with it...
Now, the tide is changing...more and more studios/other places are starting to value a good, working and usable archive of existing assets (yo, stuffed-shirts, there's already a name for that...PRE-MADE CONTENT!), so the attitudes are starting to soften.
As to Blender, specifically...how can you 'quantify' the typical Blender user, when the user base is so diverse? I guess the one item is individuality...
I got started with Blender, because I wanted to make a couple of Morrowind mods...and with it and the nif tools package I could do that without a second mortgage, selling a couple of kids and my left arm.
OMIGOSH
I started with Blender trying to mod Oblivion! There's still an archive of my gothy armors and spiderfolk races around somewhere on TESNexus. Someone on an Oblivion forum I liked had started a DAZ/Poser render thread, and that's how I found out about it and its commercial opportunities. Actually I think it may have been Pendraia. Here's to you, Pen. :-)
I came in just as V4 came out. You know, it's weird, I don't remember the level of complaining from people with archives of V3 clothing that there is from V4 users who don't want to change to P9 or DS4.5. Maybe V3 just didn't last as long.
Having tried the current process once, I'm still waiting for more functional niftools before I finish my Skyrim stuff. All of my mental energy for difficult workflows is reserved for actual work now. :-D
The number of Poser users dwarfs Blender, so it isn't a big surprise that a some also use Blender. Blender does have cool features, I have it installed as well, but Blender is a go-hard-or-go-home proposition, and I don't think most Poser users would tolerate this.
I don't now the Poser scene that well so I concede that I may be wrong about this.
Cycles is nice but is still quite slow, and is also heavily tied into Blender's nodal materials and compositing system, both of which are difficult to master (imo). I'm still not convinced most Daz users would want this, but again I don't know too much about the Daz scene.
Really, the reality render plugin looks quite good, and if I understand it properly it works in Daz without too much hassle. Nothing in Blender is without hassle in my experience.
I think Carrara would give itself a huge boost with a good Octane exporter. At least then Daz wouldn't have to commit resources to improving the native render, a big ask given the competition imo. And Carrara beats most apps hands down with ease of use and learning curve, especially given it's features.
The number of Poser users dwarfs Blender, so it isn't a big surprise that a some also use Blender. Blender does have cool features, I have it installed as well, but Blender is a go-hard-or-go-home proposition, and I don't think most Poser users would tolerate this.
The ones serious enough to be exporting to an external renderer probably will. That's not a one-step process with anything right now. And lots of content creators use Zbrush - it's not exactly renowned for its easy interface, either, and it costs $700.
A lot of that comes from the Max/Maya crowd...and gets transferred to Blender, because for quite some time, that was the 'direct competition'.
These are the guys, who, think nothing of creating something, from scratch, to use once and then dumping it to some storage archive, never to see the light of day again...even if another project needs the same item. That comes from the days of huge studio budgets that let a small part of that crowd get away with it...
Now, the tide is changing...more and more studios/other places are starting to value a good, working and usable archive of existing assets (yo, stuffed-shirts, there's already a name for that...PRE-MADE CONTENT!), so the attitudes are starting to soften.
As to Blender, specifically...how can you 'quantify' the typical Blender user, when the user base is so diverse? I guess the one item is individuality...
I got started with Blender, because I wanted to make a couple of Morrowind mods...and with it and the nif tools package I could do that without a second mortgage, selling a couple of kids and my left arm.
OMIGOSH
I started with Blender trying to mod Oblivion! There's still an archive of my gothy armors and spiderfolk races around somewhere on TESNexus. Someone on an Oblivion forum I liked had started a DAZ/Poser render thread, and that's how I found out about it and its commercial opportunities. Actually I think it may have been Pendraia. Here's to you, Pen. :-)
I came in just as V4 came out. You know, it's weird, I don't remember the level of complaining from people with archives of V3 clothing that there is from V4 users who don't want to change to P9 or DS4.5. Maybe V3 just didn't last as long.
Having tried the current process once, I'm still waiting for more functional niftools before I finish my Skyrim stuff. All of my mental energy for difficult workflows is reserved for actual work now. :-D
I've still got those armors, somewhere...and Pen's stuff, too...
Unless I'm mistaken, the Octane plugin for Poser is one step, although it's not free. And I don't see how content creators really prove your point since they are probably 0.1% of the user base for Daz or Poser.
I don't think that Blender is a big problem for Carrara, or any other app for that matter. It's usually a lack of support that cruels most apps I use, not the presence of open source software.
To me, Carrara's main competition seems to be Daz Pro and Poser. I think this is a problem for Carrara, especially with an Octane plugin for both Daz Pro and Poser in the works. I think Carrara is a lot better than both these apps, so I hope it survives, but it's lack of rendering options is a bit of an issue going forward imo.
So now would you classify that statement as:
1. I have actual data to show that's true, or,
2. I think it's probably true based on some stuff I read, or
3. I have no real idea if it's true, I just said it :)
I'm kinda joking, but I've found that real, meaningful user base statistics are infamously hard to come by, for a lot of reasons. Companies who sell commercial software generally don't let that info out, and free, open source stuff like Blender doesn't really have a mechanism that I know of that tracks real users, as opposed to the "download, use it once, and move on" type of guy.
And for example, I own Poser but haven't used it for years. So any company stats on registered users is likely to be skewed.
I've heard download numbers for Blender on the order of 1 million or more for various versions, but your guess is as good as mine to actual users who regularly, or at least semi-kinda-regularly use it.
I just assume that when something is free you're likely to get a whole bunch of guys downloading it, compared to an app where they have to pay hundreds of $$ for it. Just seems pretty logical, I suppose. Not necessarily true, but pretty reasonable. On the other hand, they're probably, in general, less serious about the software and have less reason to stick around.
Unless I'm mistaken, the Octane plugin for Poser is one step, although it's not free. And I don't see how content creators really prove your point since they are probably 0.1% of the user base for Daz or Poser.
I don't think that Blender is a big problem for Carrara, or any other app for that matter. It's usually a lack of support that cruels most apps I use, not the presence of open source software.
To me, Carrara's main competition seems to be Daz Pro and Poser. I think this is a problem for Carrara, especially with an Octane plugin for both Daz Pro and Poser in the works. I think Carrara is a lot better than both these apps, so I hope it survives, but it's lack of rendering options is a bit of an issue going forward imo.
One of the nice things about Octane is you can import an .obj and materials (you'll have to tweak stuff anyway) without having to have a plugin. A plugin just makes it easier, especially for animation, So you can use Carrara right now with Octane. And when Tugpsx gets his plugin made we'll be doing better. But I can see the fussing already about cost for an integrated plugin as evidenced by the people over at Rendo resisting face-off's Poser plugin which in beta is 99 euro and will be more when it's final.
Actually Andrew Price did a very interesting survey of Blender users a while ago, and posted a video of the results and his analysis on his website, blenderguru.
http://www.blenderguru.com/the-big-issues/
The average Blender user is a young male, 18-25 years old, a hobbyist, relatively new to Blender, who also uses 3DS Max, and tried Blender mainly because it's free. And less than 25% have made money with Blender.
I kind of assumed that described pretty much the average DAZ Studio user, as well as the average Poser user. And probably the average Carrara user, too.
I'd guess that the Poser & DAZ Studio user base has more women and less geeks.
Oh, and by the way, what the hell is a "mod"? It's a video game thing, right?
It meant something very different back in the 1960's.
Anyway, I see it mentioned a lot in the 3D world. I guess a lot of guys who play video games use CG software to make their own stuff for the games or something?
I've actually never played a video game, so I'm clueless. Unless you consider a flight simulator a video game. But I got bored with that real quick.
I dunno. As far as the female thing, I think it's far less likely that women will get interested in computer games and CG software and such in general. Yeah, there are definitely women who use it, but as a hobby, for fun, it's just not the kind of thing that most women get real excited about.
I'm sure there are statistics around somewhere....
And as far as geeks, well, I guess it depends on your definition.
The non-geeks don't care so much about computers in general or the technical side of computer graphics in particular, they just want to make some art or pretty pictures. These people don't fare so well in Blenderland where you don't find much "load & render" stuff.
As for women, it's simply a guess based on what I see in forums like this (not so much the Carrara section but the Commons), as well as the number of female Published Artists here and elsewhere. But I haven't actually done any counting so it may as well be a false impression.
I just did a search and found a statistic that blew me away. Turns out that as of 2010, 42% of video gamers are women. Holy cow. That amazed me. I figured it was down near maybe half of that. Maybe 20% or even less.
So Araneldon may be closer to the truth about women and D|S or Poser. Haven't found a stat on that, though....