Digital Art Zone

3doutlaw - 25 September 2012 08:37 PM

Did you have trouble with the figure scaling coming from Poser in the shot above?  My Poser OBJ export is very small…and I dont see a scale option out of Poser, and I don’t see a scale option coming into Blender?

One other question…I tried a V4 portrait from DS, but her eyes are black. 

So after reading some stuff earlier on here, I changed the cornea to a white Transparent BDSF, and the Tear to the same…but it looks like I still have some issues. (see pic)

Are there some “known” settings that go wrong for eyes (and eyelashes actually)

EDIT:  I also posted over at the Blender forum on Rendo to see if folks had some material setting tips as well.  Here is the link to the similar thread as this post:  LINK

didn’t have problems but i did notice the scene was quite small and it made the control of the camera harder

i’m not extra experienced in Blender, but is you type A it selects everything in the scene

if you type . (period ) it zooms to the selected object

if you type Ctrl Alt 0   it moves the camera to the current [point of view

if you type S 100 it scales everything selected by 100

you could re-import the obj in poser using a scaling factor of 10 or 100

then re-export it

——-
i too use the “transparent BSDF” material for corneas

in daz studio i can also use an entirely black image as the opavity map for things i want to be fully tyransparent

poser tends to use the alpha layer of images PNG, and TGA

those images have red green blue layers plus an opacity/alpha layer in the same image file

but daz studio and the materials built by my script in Blender want a standalone grayscale image for the transparency

in cases like that i use a paint program and extract the alpha layer, save it to disk, then apply it to the opacity channel

( more about this in my next post

3doutlaw - 25 September 2012 08:37 PM

One other question…I tried a V4 portrait from DS, but her eyes are black.

Aiko4 dialed back into a V4 with the free textures, exported from poser 7

there’s just the lacrimal that could be made pink or transparent

in your image you possibly used “glass” or “translucent” materials instead of transparent,  those two i think tend to cast a shadow

or you didnt apply transparency to something that covers the iris

well i’m not sure what’s the issue actually, but by trial and error you’ll get it

3doutlaw - 25 September 2012 08:37 PM

...

replacing the “tear” material by transparent BSDF

3doutlaw - 25 September 2012 08:37 PM

Did you have trouble with the figure scaling coming from Poser in the shot above?  My Poser OBJ export is very small…and I dont see a scale option out of Poser, and I don’t see a scale option coming into Blender?

If you want to export an object from Blender in Poser scale you have to scale it down to 0,41 times (rounded) its Blender size.

In reverse that means to if you export an obj from Poser into Blender, you’ll have to scale it up to 2,439 times it’s original size.
For example, this way Vicky4 will be 1,73 Blender units (equivalent of 173 cm) tall, which seems about right.

So after you import your scene as an OBJ, make sure it’s selected and type S (for “scale”) and 2,439 for the ratio.

Just playing with this script of yours - c’est vachement geniale!! Bon boulot!

Got a question: I’m running Blender 2.63a (various builds - my Linux machine updates constantly, my Windows box I have to do manually) and in the Render settings, next to Feature Set, I have a dropdown with “Supported” and “Experimental”. I’m going to be running this script on my laptop, which runs Mint 13/Ubuntu12.04, has a built-in NVidia CUDA card but Blender doesn’t see it as usable for Cycles (too old, not enough features). Question: for this script,  I mean, the one you call poser7test.py…

mcjBlendBot.setCyclesSettings( “EXPERIMENTAL”, “GPU”, “CUDA”, 1000 )

is it okay to do a bit of substitution?

mcjBlendBot.setCyclesSettings( “SUPPORTED”, “GPU”, “CUDA”, 1000 )

Also, is it possible to run that script on its own from within Blender - that you’re meant to run as you bring up Blender with this:

“C:/Program Files/Blender Foundation/Blender/blender.exe” -P “C:/test/poser7test.py”

Thanks for your help! I do as much as I can in Linux whilst doing a render in either PP2012 or Blender (Windows) - best of both worlds.

RobynsVeil - 27 September 2012 12:35 AM

. . .
is it okay to do a bit of substitution?
mcjBlendBot.setCyclesSettings( “SUPPORTED”, “GPU”, “CUDA”, 1000 )
Also, is it possible to run that script on its own from within Blender - that you’re meant to run as you bring up Blender with this:
“C:/Program Files/Blender Foundation/Blender/blender.exe” -P “C:/test/poser7test.py”

yes you can do substitutions, you just have to make sure you use the exact spelling and upper case

the setCyclesSetting function expects 4 parameters in quotes

“Feature set:” can be “EXPERIMENTAL” or “SUPPORTED”
“Device:” can be “CPU” or “GPU” )
“Gpu type:” can be “CUDA” or “OPENCL”
the 4th parameter is the number of render passes

also a yes on launching test/poser7test.py in Blender’s “Text Editor” panel

(i’m testing it now ...... Alt-O to open a new block . . . babaorhum.py . . .  (i forgot what’s in that scene) . . .

it contains this

note the “addCamera function that gives the position (x,y,z) the rotations (x.y.z) and the focal length in mm

the setGloss function is the amount of gloss and the roughness of the material

in the loadfix function, if you replace “CYCLESMATS” with “USEMATLIB” then the blender scene file that follows “C:/matLib.blend” will be used as a material library, this works only if the same materials exist in your scene and that scene. there’s also “BLENDERFIX”  which creates/fixes the materials in your obj file, to ready them for the internal Blender render engine. and there’s “NONE” to just leave the materials as they are in the obj/mtl

in the setRenderEngine function, you can replace “CYCLES” with “BLENDER_RENDER”
if you completely omit the setRenderEngine statement, then your default render engine will be used

note that this i tested and tweaked this with daz studio in mind, so poser compatibility is not as good

turns out babaorhum.blend was Aiko4 sitting in the air ...

oh now i remember it’s my entry for the June contest

the full scene is

Thanks for that, Jacques! This is really quite exciting, you know. Since I don’t use DS at all, the fact that you’ve created a mechanism for Poser users earns you enormous credit. Well, from me, definitely!

In Poser is a collectSceneInventory script that brings all the textures and stuff used in the scene into one folder. Then, I just save the scene as an obj in that folder and it’s all together.
BUT

It seems your poser7Test.py does a few more things in terms of setting up the whole scene in Blender. This warrants a bit of study. For example, when I import an obj from poser into Blender, I use my own defaults (call them Poser01… thinking I’ll probably be developing better import parameters as I learn more LOL) ... I generally untick nGons, Lines and Smooth Groups and go with Keep Vert Order with the PolyGroups box ticked. Scale I’m still unclear about, and I do an Image Search. So, I’m imagining all these parameters are addressed by mcjBlendBot? Might have a look and see what other goodies you’ve got hidden away.

This is the scene I’ve rendered in Poser… all exported and ready to mess with.

RobynsVeil - 27 September 2012 06:47 PM

.....
. So, I’m imagining all these parameters are addressed by mcjBlendBot?
....

the scene you were showing is interesting, she has a unique look
i wonder if it would not be better with a 3-point-light setup
although, since she’s standing outside on a cloudy day, the way you rendered it is closer to what it would look like in reality

———-

mcjBlendBot uses the OBJ importer that is bundled with Blender3d ( if i wrote my own it would have some advantages )

i forgot, but, i think mcjBlendBot can fix issues in the .mtl file before calling the obj importer

then mcjBlendBot notes which materials are in your scene

then it loads the obj

once the obj is loaded, if CYCLESMATS is specified, mcjBlendBot goes through the new materials and converts them into node-based-cycles materials. To get full control of the materials you need to use Blender;s “Node Editor panel”

shown below you can see a complex material, Aiko3’s hair has a color map, a transparency map and a bump map

building this node-based-material by hand would take time, and mcjBlendBot does this for the dozens of materials in the scene.

“the scene you were showing is interesting, she has a unique look. i wonder if it would not be better with a 3-point-light setup
although, since she’s standing outside on a cloudy day, the way you rendered it is closer to what it would look like in reality.”

Interesting you should say that: I realise it’s hard to tell but I’ve got three point lights that are *meant* to look like they’re coming from a cafe on sort-of like an esplanade, if you will. I’ve got the sky acting as light-source (ambient at 2) and the point lights have inverse square fall-off applied. But the effect isn’t strong enough, to my view. It needs to be starker.
But thank you for the critique: all my stuff remains WIPs so any ideas on how to improve the effect is always incredibly welcome.

I think that I find MOST exciting about what you’re doing are your shaders, Jacques! This is where “je suis bouleversée! absolument genial!” I programmed shaders in Python (matmatic by Bagginsbill) - no, they weren’t ‘terrible’, but they did the job. Now, the goal is to stay on top of Cycles development, get their idea of what SSS represents when OSL matures and the node happens, incorporate that into skin, and you have a winner!

You see, in Poser, we do have scatter nodes, which make for some pretty nice renders of skin. With EZSkin2 by Snarlygribby, applying those shaders is fairly trivial. Recreating this sort of thing for Cycles would definitely be just exactly where I’d love to be going. Room for *growth*!

BTW, this forum is a ridiculopathy - logs you out after x-number of *minutes*??? What century are they from?

Sorry, sort-of got sidetracked: this tutorial got my interest.

This is free software. Boggles the mind. I have yet to see anything commercial that come close.

Yes,  I’m still boggled after using Blender since last year! =)

I was hoping the script would allow me to render Carrara scenes in Blender as well, but it appears to be just for
DS(?)  Maybe there’s a collada workaround(?)

Anyway, that’s great of Casual to create the DS>Blender Cycles script.

I built an Octane box last year with 2 NVIDIA CUDA cards…....one for the renders (GTX460 2gb) and a cheaper one for the display.
Works great, but really shines with Cycles…....10X faster than the Phenom II 955 CPU!!!  =O

If interested in Blender,  check this site I created to help others with it.
www.blenderportal.com

Happy rendering. =)

megacal - 07 October 2012 01:40 PM

Yes,  I’m still boggled after using Blender since last year! =)

I was hoping the script would allow me to render Carrara scenes in Blender as well, but it appears to be just for
DS(?)  Maybe there’s a collada workaround(?)

Anyway, that’s great of Casual to create the DS>Blender Cycles script.

I built an Octane box last year with 2 NVIDIA CUDA cards…....one for the renders (GTX460 2gb) and a cheaper one for the display.
Works great, but really shines with Cycles…....10X faster than the Phenom II 955 CPU!!!  =O

If interested in Blender,  check this site I created to help others with it.
www.blenderportal.com  

Happy rendering. =)

hi there

on page 3 of this thread , post 43, named “How to use mcjTeleblender’s kit of blender-python scripts to render a Poser scene” i show how to use part of the teleblender kit to render Poser scenes—- possibly it can be used with Carrara—-

attached, an old cycles render

This looks interesting. Before I get deep into trying it out for myself, would anybody care to offer their opinion about how the Blender Cycles renderer compares with the DAZ 3D onboard software and hardware renderers. I tend to create animations, so rendering time is important, as well as visual quality. Any comments welcome.

Just having some more time to work with this!  Just to get back into it, I dropped a quick scene in DS 4.5.1.6, and exported, but Blender appeared and came up empty.  I may have upgraded Blender since I last worked with this.  I know I updated DS.  Blender I am running 2.63.22 r50890.

Looks like everything got in the directory correctly.  I tried to run the “py” file from Blender as well, but no luck.  Maybe they changed their interface?

3doutlaw - 16 October 2012 02:26 PM

Just having some more time to work with this!  Just to get back into it, I dropped a quick scene in DS 4.5.1.6, and exported, but Blender appeared and came up empty.  I may have upgraded Blender since I last worked with this.  I know I updated DS.  Blender I am running 2.63.22 r50890.

Looks like everything got in the directory correctly.  I tried to run the “py” file from Blender as well, but no luck.  Maybe they changed their interface?

i’m using blender 2.63.0
since 2.63.22 should be a minor revision, i doubt they change much, but , i’ll update mine and see if there’s a problem

———

when you send a non-animated scene using mcjTelenlender
it writes to disk a small batch file
unfortunately its not usable as-is

example i exported a scene as F:\testme.obj

lets say the scene opened blank in blender
i close Blender

i go in F:\

mcjTeleblender produced, testme.obj, testme.mtl, testme.py and testme.bat

testme.bat reads

to make it usable i change it to

i launch testme.bat by double-left-clicking on it

blender opens

the scene is probably still empty

but

if i go in Help / View System Console

i can now see the error messages generated during the unsuccessful Load

and possibly see what the problem was

——-

note that in the example below, the scene was loading without problem, the messages shown are just warning us that Blender disregards the bump-map strength “Km” from the .mtl file