mcjTeleBlender:Daz Studio scenes/animations w/Blender's Cycles Engine
mcjTeleBlenderFBX fix for Blender 2.81
February 2nd 2020 - Blender made changes in version 2.81 - i fixed an issue with UV mapping,
https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts9/mcjteleblenderfbx
MCJBLENDBOTFORBLENDER281_2020_02_02 is MY new kit of Blender scripts, it will detect if you use 2.80 or 2.81, so use both.
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TeleBlender 3 is in Beta testing phase and you can get it here !
Update - 3.05 - Update - 3.05 - Update - 3.05 - Update - 3.05 beta
>>>>>>>>> https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts4/mcjteleblender3
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McjTeleblender 2 has arrived and will have its own web page
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https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts3/mcjteleblender2
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What’s new
This new version of mcjTeleblender and mcjBlendBot includes these additional features
- compatible with Blender 2.66.3 and up ( was also tested on 2.66a and 2.66.5
- the Tiling settings of the Daz Studio materials are conveyed to Blender
- the Bump map strengths of Daz Studio’s materials are carried over to Blender ( Blender Bump Strength = ( DS Max - DS Min ) * DS Strength )
- If two identical figures or two identical props are in the Daz Studio Scene, and mcjTeleBlender’s
“Rename Nodes” is enabled, the two figures wont be mistakenly welded together in Blender
- There’s now a button to set all those mcjTeleblender settings to a default state
- There’s an extremely secret backdoor mode, available for the nerdy crew
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The now old version remains here and should remain compatible with Blender 2.66a and below
https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts/mcjteleblender-for-ds1-2-3-4
2 Videos showing mcjTeleBlender results
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTIIwjTV7s4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrgccxFGrS8
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Version History
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History
Jul 21, 2017, 11:48 PM
mcjTeleBlender was updated - version 3.16
no need to re-install mcjBlendBot if you have the august 2016 version
fixes: reflection maps were not being transfered
fixes: the extra parameters passed through the python scen-file were missing, normals, glossy parameters, normals, tiling !
August 9th 2016
mcjBlendBotForCarrara which is part of mcjBlendBot was updated
i disabled the GammaFix effect because the effect was applied more than once for some materials
May 12th 2016 5:30 PM
mcjTeleBlender was updated - version 3.15
line 1261 was attempting to use a function which was removed in version 3.14
normally this meant mcjTeleBlender 3.14 was only usable for animation exports
.................updates in 2015, 2015, 2016 ....
April 14th 3:45 PM --- McjTeleblender 2 released
April 7th 2013 11:42 am
Only if you are using Blender 2.66 & up and are getting non-textured scenes
Blender Version 2.66.3 and up uses different node names, this effectively prevents proper loading of the scene
please download the new package named mcjBlendBotForBlender2663AndUp.zip found in the attachments
at mcjTeleblender’s web site
install it in the scripts/modules folder of your Blender 2.66.3 and up
February 17th 2013
fixes : the materials were not smoothed when rendering animations,
fixes : DS1,DS2 materials didnt get the gloss factor when exporting animations
in the download section, there was a confusion between mcjTeleBlender.zip and mcjTeleblender.zip
February 14th 2013
the "blender scaling factor" which should be 1%, is now applied to the positions of the cameras and lights
February 10th 2013
fixed error introduced in the feb 8th version
. . .
feb. 20 2010
release
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Introduction
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A fantastic GPU-accelerated ray-trace renderer named Cycles has been added to recent versions of Blender.
McjTeleblender is a kit of scripts designed to quickly export Daz Studio scenes, even animations, and render them in Blender using Cycles.
mcjteleblender free Kit of scripts to render Daz Studio Scenes in Blender 2.6x ( Cycles )
* * * * * * * * * New things * * * * * * * * *
In this new version, the material's texture images are ready to be tiled
Also, a new trick lets you re-use your custom materials
this is a scene set-up in Daz Studio 3 , transferred to Blender using the scripts, and rendered by the Cycles Path Tracer
( inspired by the set of 4minute's Volume Up music video )
At Long Last
A First Version of mcjTeleBlenderFBX which lets you import
rigged and animated scenes from Daz Studio
https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts9/mcjteleblenderfbx
Comments
Thank you again for this excellent tool!
Just wondering, are there any plans to add LUXrender to the supported render engines?
Cheers! Oom
Thanks !
well i don't want to be a nuisance to the Reality-plugin people, i see there's even a DS4 version.
so i don't plan to add compatibility with Lux. Blender itself has an extension to render with LuxRender
and i think uh SmallLux.
a Blender-Cycles render, 2000 samples per pixel, 5 area lights
in the skin shader i changed "Multiply" to "Color", to get more color saturation
and i increased 'roughness" to 0.2 on the glossy material
great !
very generous
..and thanks for your other scripts again
Any chance of a tutorial for lighting for this? Anytime I try to add lights, then send it to Blender, the light only seems to touch on the model's legs.
support for lights is limited in mcjTeleBlender, in part because i dont have many hours of experience with Blender
so for now, each light in blender is converted to a point light with an intensity of 100
you could try using spotlights and not directional lights in Daz Studio, the results will be easier to understand
then in Blender you can select each light, move it and adjust the intensity
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in daz studio, if you apply a texture-image to the Ambient channel of a given material, this object will be converted into an area light in Blender. I sometimes create 2 primitive-planes 1 meter by 1 meter and once i'm in blender i move them, and in their material settings i can adjust their intensities, Area lights like those make real nice lightiing for portraits.
once you have a good lighting setup, you could delete everything in the scene, except the lights, then save this as mystudioLights.blend file. Then in mcjTeleblender you can re-use this lighting setup, simply by check-marking the option as shown below
i cant promise i'll make a tutorial for lights, but i may ! :)
in the meantime , it's worth the trouble to watch a few video tutorials for blender-cycles, like this one for instance
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=blender+cycles+tutorial
You could look for lighting tutorials for Cycles, there are plenty around. Cycles use light very differently compared to 3Delight and the default light sources that 3Delight use don't work that well in Cycles. The first thing I do after exporting a scene is to delete all lights an add new mesh lights in blender. I don't think you can export environment texture lights (?) and you will want to use them, they look great and are easy to use.
Cheers! Oom
Thanks for the tips, I'll definitely look into them.
As it stands, without any lights the renders still look really good. Just need to boost the brightness up a bit in Photoshop.
thanks casual and for the tips too
remember that mcjTeleblender has a section named "World Environment"
which is an image that is wrapped around the Blender scene and illuminates it
for instance,
image#1 : i went in Ireland using Google street and i stitched together this panoramic image and saved it as NUX.jpg
image#2 : then in mcjTeleblender i check-marked the "Use this texture" check-box, and browsed up to my NUX.jpg image
image #3 : i did not check the "export lights" check-box, and did a Blender cycles render
also shown below
for good examples of free images that can be use as "world envioronment" maps, see
http://www.hdrlabs.com/sibl/archive.html
http://www.pauldebevec.com/Probes/
http://webstaff.itn.liu.se/~jonun/web/teaching/2011-TNCG13/
i used the Ditch River images from the first link in my videos, they are in a format that works with Blender,
a panoramic photo. other systems use dome-images, maybe blender can too, not sure
image 4 : in blender, no lights added in the scene
image 5 the blender cycles render
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note that while doing those tests i discovered that my brand new trick
to re-use blender materials doesn't work when the "collect maps"
option is used, so there will be an update of mcjBlendBot later today
News * Update * News * Update * News * Update * News * Update * News * Update *
the recent version of mcjBlendBot introduced a new way of re-using blender materials
( i call it the lib_ trick ). so that was the good news.
the less good news is that, when you use mcjTeleblender's "collect maps" option
you have an extra step to perform
see the update manual ( web page ) for details
also - there's a new version of mcjBlendBot that prevents failure of the scene
import process when the "collect maps" option is used in conjunction with the lib_ trick
an early version of my submission to the June Contest of the Freepository
rendered in blender cycles, 1 area light + environment map
I have no words for how amazing this is. Thank you so much!!!
Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to work for me. If I export the file from DAZ, it will boot Blender, but only give me a grey cube (my default scene), no figure. Help?
If it's any help, I installed the scripts in \Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.63\scripts\modules
Hello.
This is fascinating.
Which version of Blender is the first to use this new render engine you spoke of?
Thanks.
Randy
Hi i have found this, mayba it would help you exporting opacity maps correctly. Pls forgive me, if this is something considered before.
http://blendernerd.com/alpha-mapping-in-cycles/
Hi, sory for writing comment before testing, i think you have used the same for tranparency. But i would like to ask, why sometimes transparency works but sımetimes don't.
This script is perfect. As good as reality 10 times faster but free. only down side is it may require al little bit tweaking. But its just a little. I will try to promote this script as much as i can.
I would like to ask if there is a limit for scene file. Today i tried to test a scene whose export obj was about 100mb. İt exported well but blender stopped responding. Also can i send some of my renders here i want people to see how good it is.
A render. in blender ı set cornea and tear to transparent added a sun lamp. And just tweak the exposure in photoshop.
sorry if i didn't reply earlier but apparently i don't get emails from this forum thread
did you solve the problem?
maybe you are using a very old version of Blender - the script was designed for Blender 2.6 and up
also worth checking if the paths specified in mcjTeleblender point to existing folders
for example, in mcjTeleblender's "Export" section you specify where it can write the obj scene/file
if the specified folder doesn't exist, mcjTeleblender wont write the obj file When Blender starts
it follows the orders and tries to load a non-existing file, and therefore fails
if your scene contains objects textured with images that don't exist anymore, that's another reason
blender may fail to load the scene/file
sorry if i didn’t reply earlier but apparently i don’t get emails from this forum thread
i developed it while using Blender 2.60 (i think), it was in beta test phase
i currently use it with Blender 2.63, and used it many times with 2.62
so 2.63 is the best bet
as new versions come out i'll try to maintain compatibility
sorry if i didn’t reply earlier but apparently i don’t get emails from this forum thread
in daz studio, we use a black&white; image for the opacity map
so i make Blender materials that have this image drive the BSDF-transparent material's opacity
other programs, like blender , can also use the transparency map that is built in some images ( often called the alpha channel or alpha layer )
many PNG files have an opacity channel
so if you apply a given PNG image to the diffuse color channel of a surface, and this PNG happens to have a transparency map,
daz studio wont use the transparency map, but Blender probably will, and the result could be a surface with 2 competing transparency maps
a related topic: for now at least, the value of Daz Studio's "opacity strength" channel is not transferred to Blender
so, to get completely transparent surfaces, apply a black image to Daz Studio's opacity map channel
for partial transparency, use a gray image
yes there's limits
it's due to the fact that the entire scene, including the texture images is transferred to the memory of the graphics card by 'Cycles' before rendering
if a render fails the first thing to do is to use mcjTeleBlender's "collect maps" option
then go in the Maps folder which is located in the same folder as the .obj scene/file
you can then use a paint program to reduce the size of the texture images
if meanwhile you did not close blender, you can try rendering the scene
or if you did close blender you can use mcjTeleblender, still with the "collect maps" option enabled, and re-try the transfer/render
i usually apply a completely black image to the opacity channel of the corneas of characters to get them transparent
more recently, (see below), what i do is, i place a very bright sphere in front of the character, but far enough , so the sphere doesn't change the lighting of the scene.
then i replace the cornea's shader with the nodes shown below
a glossy/sharp shader is a pure mirror, her corneas would look like chrome balls
but i mix them with a transparent material
the mix shader with a factor 0f 0.07 makes the mirror effect very weak,
so we cant see the ground and sky and clouds reflection in her eyes
but since the sphere in the sky is so intensely white ( strength 20) , we can see it reflected in her eyes
this usually adds much life to the character
thank you for reply its good to hear from you. I was afraid you dropped the project :)
Hi yesterday i installed python 2.7.3 yesterday, to see if i can do some scripting myself. But your scripts doesnt seem to work right now. It exports and opens blender file. In 3D view if i choose material i can see preview it renders white and when i open the node editor i can not see any nodes.
Hi this is the screenshot explaning the issue. Also i reinstalled blender to see if the problem would be solved. But it continues.
http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/3294/ekranalntseo.jpg
If i open and empty scene and open the pny in text editor and use run script the scene import as it should. It is very interesting.
it's possible that your default scene, or the one you told mcjTeleBlender to re-use
is set to render in black and white as shown below (first picture)
that's the render options, in the panel on the right of blender's screen
you could change it to RGB or RGBA
then using File/Save user settings you can make thi the new default settings/scene
note: if you select RGBA and also check-mark the Film/Transparent checkbox, and save the image in PNG format, the resulting image will have an alpha layer and it will be easy with paintshop / photoshop to overlay it on a different background
Hi, thank you for reply. I checked the default scene and the issue is not about the Bw thing. But I can still use your script with the work around, i mentioned before, so its cool.
What i wonder know is, since 3dsmax is supporting python scripting, is it would be possible to make phyton scripts to use your daz generated scripts to create vray converted max scenes? Or the daz scripts should be altered, too?
I have no experience in daz scripting nor python scripting. But ihave a background of flash scripting. I bougth a python scripting book and it didnt look harder than acion script.
Hi, solved the problem if i use a empty default file BI set. It exports well with out problem.