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I purchased the "original" version of DazToBlender8 many months ago. Today I received an email from the developer with information regarding the availability of the free version of the plugin on the Daz3D site.
One if the bullet points in the email is this:
"However, the Prop of Ren****tica cannot be installed on the version published on the Daz3D site. This is a policy of Daz3D."
So if any of you are hoping for support of third party genitals, don't hold your breath. The original version does support the transfer of 3rd party genitals to blender. Unfortunately that version is no longer available.
Well, OK, but still would Thomas be welcome to use that not much code of the DAZToBlender plugin in Diffeomorphic?
That is, unfortunately, not how software works. If a particular functionality were so simple that it could be ported from one app's architecture to another, it would also be so simple that a savant like Thomas would probably figure it out from scratch faster than he could port it.
And honestly, Thomas and Co. are ahead, so the question is really could Mitchy benefit from any of Thomas's code...
OK, the picture is becoming clearer. If the plugin, as Mitchy stated, will not export content from a certain site, then the Daz side cannot ever be Open Source'd, or else there would be no way to impose that restriction in a way that someone, anyone, could not simple remove. And most Open Source licenses reserve the right to use the software for any purpose.
This is a shame because I was hoping that that part of the code would show how autofit works, which Thomas said was the only part he couldn't figure out, and that's why we have the 2-Step process in Diffeo.
I'm just curious, which scripts on the Daz side are you talking about?(you mentioned .dse files earlier) All the ones I've seen are plain text so far. I could be looking in the wrong place.
OK, I may need to get some sleep. I looked in DIM and all the files are dsa. But I know I saw a .dse somewhere because I didn't know what that even was until I googled it. I would love to have to retract everything that I said.
No worries. I was starting to doubt my own sanity.
Thank you. Was wondering where they went.
I don't use products from there, but how would that work? Wouldn't that require that there be a list of things to exclude or include? Neither seems unlikely, since it would be a maintenance nightmare. I can see that Daz might not want those product to transfer (although I'd imagine it's more likely they didn't give it any thought), but I can't see them putting in the effort (and risk) of exluding some but not all 3rd party products. Or even excluding 3rd party products, since people who buy stuff from other stores usually buy more stuff from Daz.
I opened a discussion at diffeomorphic just to spread the voice there. I have no clue if Thomas will have any time for this. As for material conversion I guess the z-cycles project by Jessub Kim aka @JClave would be the best choice. But I'll be glad to help too for the little I can do.
https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/issues/136/new-open-source-blender-exporter-from-daz
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/5806421/#Comment_5806421
I'd use the Diffemorphic plug in; it does more if you want, but the basic process is straightforward; if the product is installed correctly with the requisite libraries detailed, it takes a few minutes - less than five to get a character over to Blender.
I use both the Mitchy plugin and the Diffeomorphic plugin.
I like the rig that the Mitchy plug-in creates. I also prefer the way that the Mitchy plugin applies the corrective shape keys and drivers.
The materials that the Mitchy plugin (and hence the Daz3D plugin) creates are not very good, so I import the same scene with Diffeomorphic and then replace the Mitchy materials with the materials that were created by the Diffeomorphic plugin.
Edit: I stated that I like the way that the DazToBlender apply shapekeys and drivers, but that only applies to characters. There is an issue with the shapekeys that the plugin (both the original and the Daz3D version) creates for hair.
Blender saves shapekeys in a very inefficient way. Every shapekey contains every vertex in the mesh.
The DazToBlender plugin creates a lot of unnecessary shape keys for hair and most hair have lots of vertices. That is why you will see blender consume a huge amount of memory (6+ gig) when you import a G3/G8 character with hair. The blend file will also be huge.
The simplest way to fix the issue is to delete all of the shapekeys for hair, but then the hair will not adjust as you pose the head. You can delete the unneeded shapekeys individually but you better have a lot of memory if you go down that road. Blender 2.83 will consume loads of memory as it creates the undo buffer when you delete individual shapekeys for hair.
In defense of each exporter/bridge:
I am not new to Blender, NOR could I be considered any kind of Blender know-it-all. In fact, what I know about Blender as a whole would probably fill the bottom of a thimble ;). Having said that, I can find my way around half-decently on a purely novice level. In the last 2 days I've tried both the new DaztoBlender bridge AND Diffeomorphic. My takes on the two (not an exhaustive test, but first impressions):
Diffeomorphic was MUCH easier to install - I had to look for the DazToBlender Blender addon before I could complete that install and it was in a folder that I can't even get to from within Blender. Diffeomorphic has clear, concise install instructions published on the site with the script as well as videos on how it's done. Thankfully I was able to get DazToBlender installed anyway.
Diffeomorphic is faster. DazToBlender takes forever to import a figure with clothes, even when exported at SubD 0. However, Diffeomorphic is slightly glitchier in what it will and won't import and I spent most of my time with it trying to chase and fix error issues. DazToBlender eventually would import my figure, even if it imported wrong.
Diffeomorphic has MANY more features. I can import pose folders, expressions, etc. Haven't seen any way to do that with DazToBlender.
I like the material conversion from DazToBlender just a little more than I do Diffeomorphic. However, I'm not really crazy about either one to be honest.
Diffeomorphic, when running, is much less stressful on my computer than DazToBlender is. I have 64 gigs of ram and yet, DazToBlender causes random intermittent hangups on my machine. Not very clear what's causing it either. Diffeomorphic does none of this.
I have much more control with Diffeomorphic than I do DazToBlender. There are just more features. And with Diffeomorphic I can send over anything, not just G3 or G8 figures.
In the end, Diffeomorphic edges out DazToBlender for me, at least at the current time. I have no idea what the future holds, but I know what I'll probably be using in the short term to get Daz assets into Blender ;). And that's the end of my comparrison, by a complete and total Blender novice. LOL Take it for what it's worth.
So it took me about four hours to basically guess my way through to getting this to a working state. I gotta say, this rollout is kind of a train wreck. I have given up on ever getting the "Scripts" menu option to appear on the top bar. Nothing I have done with the Daz to Blender_Install.dsa file will work. I strongly suspect that this is because I do not run DAZ off my "C:" drive (so not the default insalattion location). I just hunted down the DAZ bridge files (they ended up installed to my Photoshop 2019 file LOL) and just dropped th into scripts in My DAZ Library location. It works to export, but there is no menu addition, maybe when its a little less "Beta" it will offer a "find the application ...." option or something. I dragged it (Daz to Blender_Install.dsa) into my DAZ Scripts file for grins and giggles and it does nothing when clicked on. I opened the script language and, even thought I don't really write scripts myself, it seems like there is some kind of "If you can't find the directory" script in there, but I can't tell. It's weird because IM downloads it to my user App file which is on the same drive as DAZ is (D: in this case, my C: is solid state so the real estate there is premium. so I try to keep whetever I can off it).
So because it's so light on instructions, I guess for transfer purposes a Pose is considered to be a Morph and exported seperately with the Morph Exporter....Do we do thm each seperae or all together one right after the other before we hit the import button in Blender? LOL Thanks.
I don't run my DS program OR my content off the C drive either, so that's not it. It's working for me.
The file size is probably my biggest problem right now. With diffeomorphic, I could run scene optimizer and get two characters into Blender and have it be like 1.2 GB, where I imported Kwan last night with a samurai outfit and it was over 9GB! My system was like holy hell, what are you doing to me? Lol. I'm going to have to get more RAM I guess. But I love the rig so much that Daz to Blender comes with over Rigify because of the facial rig that I'm going to try and push through. And I agree with you, I like the skin materials better in Daz to Blender. Diffeomorphics looks amazing on some characters and others it's so off. I imported Hann Mei once and she came in tinted green. I had a list of characters I couldn't import skins from with diffeomorphic because they just didn't transfer, or I had to go in and alter like half the nodes which made them nowhere near as good looking as they could be, but when I bring those characters in with Daz to Blender, they look super close to Daz.
But then there's things I loved about diffeomorphic, like bringing in poses! And it was way quicker and I could import more than one character in to a scene, something that Daz to Blender won't let you do as it deletes the second character. I have to try the save the file and append the other person in route, but with the file sizes so huge, my computer keeps crashing. Until bugs get worked out, I might have to import with diffeomorphic and copy and save the material nodes and just go back to using Rigify, we'll see how this weekend goes.
Can you create a character in Daz with no textures, hair, clothing, etc, export with Daz to Blender, then export a character of the same generation (and in the same pose) as the one you used DTB for and then parent the rig from DTB to the Diffeomorphic character? Or won't that work? I'm nearly a Blender virgin, so I apologize if that was a stupid suggestion. LOL
Theoretically, yes, but that would be much more difficult than simply transfering the materials from one imported figure to the figure without materials (ctrl+L with both figures selected, I always forget which order they need to be selected in off the top of my head)
Any ideas then, because I have put that .dsa file everywhere at this point. If it's an installation file, is there some way to run a DSA outside of Daz. When I click on the file directly it just asks what I want to open it with and I pick DAZ...?
Holy sh*t, really!
I need to check today where the temp files, textures etc are being saved on my machine (W10) so I can check this myself.
First, are you using the public build of Daz Studio or the beta? Or an older version?
Yeah, the animated film that I did during quarantine I was animating two characters and a full environment and 8K HDR at once with no lag, it never went above 4GB with everything in the scene. I even for one shot got five people in it before my computer was like nope, you've hit the ceiling lol. But in the manual that was posted in the very top thread of the blender forum, I tried the step to reduce the morphs even further on page 9 and I got a figure to load with DTB at 1.2GB, so there's hope. What should be an option is to export the mesh without all of the shape keys included in case you want to do all the posing yourself, or be able to import those poses alone (which you can do and it works, it's on page 9 of the manual), I think that would drastically bring down the file size.
I love the fact that the pose controls actually respect the character's limits, what I want to know, is if/how JCMs are used, as I rely heavily on these morphs; I notice that there's a daz-to Blender-morph exporter and I'm wondering how to use it...
Use one of the latest development builds of Diffeomorphic, it is a faithful conversion of materials in 99% of cases because volumetric scattering is used. Its a HUGE jump in difference from the public build and you can't even tell the difference between iray rendered and Cycles rendered characters if you didn't know which engine had been used.
Same one I have been usining for a year or more, 4.12 Pro....
There are several versions of 4.12. The latest general release is 4.12.1.128, which was released at the end of June, the latest beta is 4.12.2.6.
If you've been using the same version for a year it's probably an older version though, so which one?
The blend files are way off size wise. I'm raising a ticket.
Blender's default 2m cube is show for perspective.
Even discounting size; it also opens at a funny angle and at elsewhere than world origin. Materials are not great either. The image shows the table with a default 2m cube near the tray.
If the scales are wrong, light isn't going to reflect real-world lighting effects.
The second image is a straight obj export from studio; the materials were default as imported; they can be improved, but as they are may actually work depending on the scene.
I'd mainly put on a decent cloth material
I thought I'd render it in Iray. Loaded, and hit render. It's supposed to be ready for that from what I could see.
Just the bed after I've fixed the materials in Blender; my own cloth shader and other materials.
Must say, Im not impressed with the product; I'd be returning it if it wasn't out of time; it may have been a freebie (i think), but it was classed as an $18 item. The promos show the issues the Iray image has. They are also there in Blender, but harder to spot due to lighting. It's down to a lot of triangles at the edge of the mesh - and some ngons.
... Not just that but seperated mesh parts; the edges of the quilt are next to but not connected to the quilt.
Sorry for the off-topic.
Hmm, perhaps I shall try a reinstall and upgrade....
-- edit ---
OK I upgraded and am now running the most recent version 4.12.1.118 PropEdition 64 Bit.However, absolutely nothing has changed about the installation of the "Scripts" item on my menu bar. Clicking on the Daz to Blender_Install.dsa file outside of DAZ opens DAZ but nothing happems. Clicking on Daz to Blender_Install.dsa from inside DAZ (I put it in the scripts folder) does absolutely nothing. I even tried making "Add Scripts" as a custom mnu item linked to the DSA file and nothing happened. On Windows10 here.
I think it just doesn't work dude. LOL
I have to reinstall 4 time DazToBlender to get it works ! I run the latest version of DAZ.