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Need help exporting morphs to collada and fbx

f00bar.root_6039d0dd5cf00bar.root_6039d0dd5c Posts: 98
edited December 1969 in Daz Studio Discussion

Hi,

I have problems exporting morphs to collada or fbx (newest daz 4.5)

1) how do I export active morphs only? In daz 3 that was easy, but I do not find an option in 4.5. For fbx you can define rules what to export. Is there some magic keyword for “active only”? Is there some manual explaining what one can do with this rules? How to do it for collada?

2) collada exporter seems broken. Does anybody know if Daz plans to fix that? Because I reported problems back in daz 4 beta times and it is still not ok. Are there any documents/posts what is wrong with the files exactly? Because then I write a script that fixes them, but I’m just too lazy to analyze all the problems in the generated file, because Daz has to do that anyway and maybe has already.


I’m getting kind of frustrated with this. I have a game developers license. So format interoperability is important and I had some hope it will be good in daz 4.5, because when daz started selling these licenses I thought they want to change to the better. But the game dev forum is gone, so they probably do not sell many of those licenses. And it is obvious why.
It is not only that export does not work well, but the communication. If they had a page documenting what does not work in what way, the game dev people would hack some code and the problems are gone. Same with detail info on the different file and morph formats and and new technologies.
I sometimes get the feeling technical details are kept secret as long as possible to prevent too many open source and freeware stuff supporting this new techniques early on.

At the moment I export everything but morphs with Daz Studio 3 as collada and then the morphs as fbx. This is no solution in the long run! But I need the "only active" morphs thing solved, otherwise it is too much work.

Comments

  • f00bar.root_6039d0dd5cf00bar.root_6039d0dd5c Posts: 98
    edited December 1969

    Nobody exporting morphs or all using daz studio 3?

  • wancowwancow Posts: 2,708
    edited December 1969

    I do not know how export is handled, but I'm pretty sure only active morphs are loaded into a figure in the first place in 4.5

  • f00bar.root_6039d0dd5cf00bar.root_6039d0dd5c Posts: 98
    edited March 2013

    For export you can select from all morphs. But they are initialized to "Bake". But to change it you have to switch the setting for each active morph individually. And you cannot save the settings for later use :(
    In blender I can save all settings under a custom name, and this is in software people create for free.

    I now switched to genesis temporarily, there the exports work a little better in daz 4.5. What is killing me at the moment is that the number of faces in fbx and collada is different. I wrote a script to be able to handle different vertex order to be able to transfer the morphs from fbx to collada, but if number of faces is different this does no longer work :(

    [Edit: CHANGED]
    I think my fbx importer triangulates the stuff, so time to fbx importer hacking :(

    Post edited by f00bar.root_6039d0dd5c on
  • f00bar.root_6039d0dd5cf00bar.root_6039d0dd5c Posts: 98
    edited March 2013

    Yeahy. Fbx importer fixed to not triangulate. Can now at least transfer morphs from fbx import to collada import.
    My custom vertex order fix script seems no longer needed in daz studio 4.5 for fbx to collada (same vertex order). Only obj seems to have a different order.

    Post edited by f00bar.root_6039d0dd5c on
  • f00bar.root_6039d0dd5cf00bar.root_6039d0dd5c Posts: 98
    edited March 2013

    Little hint for the people using blender: don't use the blender preset when exporting to obj. Normals are inverted and axis are wrong, morphs cannot be transfered from fbx import because of that. I'm now using "daz" setting on exporting, then they come up in blender correctly.
    So finally vertex order in fbx, collada and obj is identical in daz studio 4.5. And I wrote a script to fix that (in daz 3 time), many hours of work :(

    Post edited by f00bar.root_6039d0dd5c on
  • f00bar.root_6039d0dd5cf00bar.root_6039d0dd5c Posts: 98
    edited March 2013

    Sh*t.

    - I accepted that daz probably will never fix the Gen 4 exports in daz studio 4.5.
    - I accepted that collada export is broken and that I have to combine fbx with collada data to get everything I want.

    But: even the fbx morph export su*ks bad. Export genesis with V4 morph. The morph will move hands away from finger bones! So if you apply that morph during animation the hand is wrong. Daz Studio should adjust the morph to the skeleton in rest pose for each morph before exporting, but it does not!!!

    Yes, I can write a script that fixes that, but I have written about 8 scripts already to fix errors of daz studio with post processing. At some point I have to think about switching to a solution that does not try to fu*k me behind every corner.

    [Edit:]
    If you bake the v4 morph, the bones are moved to the correct position. It would be better to adjust the morph instead of the bones, but better than nothing. That means I could export each morph individually by baking and write a script that fixes the moved bones issue :(

    So back at exporting each morph in a single file again (and writing new scripts to fix stuff) :(

    Post edited by f00bar.root_6039d0dd5c on
  • ReDaveReDave Posts: 815
    edited March 2013

    Export one Figure at a time for best results (remember that hair can be a figure).
    Also check your FBX file with the Autodesk FBX plugins first (http://mexico.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/item?siteID=123112&id=10775855) . I've rarely heard, if ever, that the DS exporter wasn't flawless.
    I'm almost sure there is a command for active morphs, but I don't know what it is. I'd love to know.

    Post edited by ReDave on
  • f00bar.root_6039d0dd5cf00bar.root_6039d0dd5c Posts: 98
    edited December 1969

    Thanks ReDave,

    - yes, I have to export each morph individually, otherwise the skeleton does not match the figure for certain morphs.
    - but this is too much work in my case and even then that means I get different skeletons in the end.
    - try to export Gen4 figure with collada, badly broken

    So only solution for me at the moment is to write 2 scripts (and sad part is all this work and it will only work for genesis because of broken exporter for Gen4 collada):
    - one for daz that takes each active morph and exports it as collada baked morph
    - one for blender that imports all these collada files, takes each morph and apply default pose of genesis to the skeleton (because it has different rest pose than default genesis), then transfer vertex positions to a default genesis as new morph and at the same time save the daz exported rest pose of this skeleton as a pose for the other skeleton.

    This is harder than it sounds, because blender has very bad support for working with differing rest poses.

    I understand that this is not much of an issue for rendering artists, but daz sells game dev licenses, and for those people this is hell.
    Daz Studio should export in the default genesis rest pose always and adapt the morphs to that, additionally it should export the differing rest pose as a normal pose. That way you apply the morph and this pose and you get same result as before, but at the same time you can combine morphs and animations correctly, that is not possible with current style of exporting morphs/figures.

  • legarclegarc Posts: 45
    edited December 1969

    You'll use the 'Edit Morph Export Rules' command in the FBX export dialog window. It's easy, like wildcard entry but it doesn't save it or store it specific to your scene file so you'll have to re-establish your rules for different character, hair, clothing etc. where you're trying to export morphs. Works nicely with Maya, careful wth Max as it only accepts 100 morphs per object. this is how it's done for autodesk products. don't know about collada.

    morphRules.jpg
    574 x 589 - 69K
  • Steve P.Steve P. Posts: 31
    edited December 1969

    User812 said:
    You'll use the 'Edit Morph Export Rules' command in the FBX export dialog window. It's easy, like wildcard entry but it doesn't save it or store it specific to your scene file so you'll have to re-establish your rules for different character, hair, clothing etc. where you're trying to export morphs. Works nicely with Maya, careful wth Max as it only accepts 100 morphs per object. this is how it's done for autodesk products. don't know about collada.

    I am just wondering WHY there is no option to SELECT the morphs which are listed in the FBX exporter???
    They should just add a checkbox next to the morph name and that's it

    Now, you need to look up morph name, write each time manually (As you cannot even select the text..) one by one.
    If you need to export out 30 morphs, that's a lot of look-up, type, check typo etc.

    PLEASE ..
    ...ADD A "SELECT MORPH" CHECKBOX TO FBX EXPORTER DIALOGE BOX..
    ..JUST WHERE YOU HAVE THE LIST OF MORPHS

    It will mean hours and hours saving in people's workflow who need to export out the figures with morphs to other apps.

  • eheberlingeheberling Posts: 11
    edited December 1969

    Ran across this thread on a search. Looking for much of the same feature ... to be able to export the particular pose. (I'm importing into SketchUp).
    I tried a quick test using the posted screenshots as reference. I listed some but not all of the 'Morph Rules'. Still came across as the original default T-pose. I'll go ahead and list them all in a further test ... but has anyone else had failure/success with this method. What did you do to achieve your results?
    Thanks,
    Eric

  • mikael-aronssonmikael-aronsson Posts: 546
    edited December 1969

    As it works with wildcards you can do it pretty fast if you need lots of morphs, just type part of the name they have in common (like "head.CTRL" for example), but yes, sure checkboxes would be very nice.

    I have exported G2 characters to FBX into Lightwave with 500+ morphs and a working rig without any problems, but that is for G and G2, have no idea about older stuff, I never had any big problems with it.

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