mcjTeleBlender:Daz Studio scenes/animations w/Blender's Cycles Engine

Cris Palomino

Casual said:

Cris Palomino said:

Casual, I have seen your thread, but had not read through all of it. Do you have or plan a video that shows how to go from DAZ Studio to Blender with your script? Your work on all of this looks very interesting.

Thank you.

just now i found a video that seems to be what you are looking for !

mcjTeleblender 3 is basically the same as version 2, but with better handling of opacity, glossiness, lights

but 90% of the buttons and checkboxes/options are the same, so a version 2 tutorial works for version 3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqaYsE8UNxY

Thanks you, Casual. :)

mCasual

ajd_at said:

Hi

PROBLEM in Blender 2.7 in Imported objs.

Problem Long Load Time in Blender 2.72 and Teleblender(2 & 3) and Underscore in "Names Files" and "materials"

Export Scene in Teleblender with files image with Underscore (body_Aiko_tex.jpg),

Scene with 62 references file body_Aiko_tex.jpg,
Time load in Blender is 20 minutos.

Solution temporary: rename files image bodyAikotex.jpg in "Maps" (mtl), and delete references in "scene.mtl".
Time load: 5 segundos

Affect names files image and names newmtl and obj

Windows 32 bits
Daz 3.1

Thank you these scripts mcasual

thanks

i did experience slow-loading in recent renders

i was thinking ... maybe the bad health of my hard disks was the cause

but i also had suspicions that Blender's OBJ importer script
or Blender's texture loader code... was recently modified

it could also be a change i made in blendbot

but, in fact i think the problem occurs before blendbot even starts "touching" the imported Scene

if this is the case, the changes would need to be done either in the way mcjTeleBlender "cooks" the .mtl files

or i would have to use something else than Blender's built in obj importer

or i would have to use the old version of Blender's built in obj importer

Soon ( maybe in 2014 ! ) i will try to look into this

ajd_at_072df9a27d

I think also affects the files obj, "names material"

Otherwise

Cycles is most Fast in Blender 2.72 vs Blender 2.66.

I'm impressed :)

I did some tests Render Cycles, and is faster and better quality renders.
Four times faster

Worth it Blender 2.72

ajd_at_072df9a27d

Easy Solution Problem Imported Objs in Blender 2.72 (Underscore Filename image)

Find File "import_obj.py" change to "False" image_search (recursive)

-------
-------
Program Files\blender-2.72\2.72\scripts\addons\io_scene_obj\import_obj.py

modify Line ine 829

use_image_search=True,

To

use_image_search=False,

:):):):):)

mCasual

ajd_at said:

Easy Solution Problem Imported Objs in Blender 2.72 (Underscore Filename image)

Find File "import_obj.py" change to "False" image_search (recursive)

-------
-------
Program Files\blender-2.72\2.72\scripts\addons\io_scene_obj\import_obj.py

modify Line ine 829

use_image_search=True,

To

use_image_search=False,

:):):):):)

thanks !
i'll see if blendbot can specify this when it calls the obj loader

well lets check it right now ...

presently at line 477 of mcjBlendBot.py we have

 if bMdd:
  io_scene_obj.import_obj.load(bpy.ops,bpy.context,objFile,global_matrix=gm,
use_split_objects= False,use_split_groups= False)
 else:
  io_scene_obj.import_obj.load(bpy.ops,bpy.context,objFile,global_matrix=gm)

so lets try this

 if bMdd:
  io_scene_obj.import_obj.load(bpy.ops,bpy.context,objFile, global_matrix=gm,
 use_split_objects= False, use_split_groups= False, use_image_search=False)
 else:
  io_scene_obj.import_obj.load(bpy.ops,bpy.context,objFile, global_matrix=gm, use_image_search=False)

and it seems to work so far

though, i dont know if it's just me, but DS4.7's exporter seems slower than all previous versions ( 4.6 and 3.1 etc... )
when exporting a scene with a figure even a non-textured figure

painfully slow ... very sad news

i may end up porting the obj exporter plugin i wrote for DS3 to DS4.7, and include the mdd exporter while i'm at it

well, i tried this: i was using Ds4.7Pro64bit, so i installed DS4.7Pro32bit
and the .obj export went super fast ( as it usually did in the past ! )
so i dont know .... maybe rebooting will solve the issue with Ds4.7Pro64bit

unless it's a Beta/Non-Beta reason

Today i want to post the revised BlendBot with "use_image_search=False"
but i must do it in a way that mcjTeleBlender could force a "use_image_search=True" ... someday

and come to think of it, i must do it in a way that wont break the older versions of Blender

ajd_at_072df9a27d

Test Okok

with mcjteleblender2 and mcjteleblender3 for Blender 2.68 and Blender 2.72 windows 32 bits

Great, now work perfectly

Thanks. :)

ajd_at_072df9a27d

Casual said:

you know what i did just now ?

i wrote a Windows-PC-exe OBJ-sequence-to-MDD converter

as you know, mcjTeleBlender and other programs, can export animations as a sequence of obj files

once converted to MDD format,

in blender, you can import only the first frame's OBJ file

the whole scene is one big mesh

then you load the mdd file ( as a mesh cache modifier )

which is a bit like 1 morph channel per animation frame added to the big mesh

and there you have it an animated scene, which can be rendered

it's not "rigged" so you cant change the Figure poses, but you can add objects and lights and cameras, tweak the materials etc

----

so, very soon i'll publish the free PC-Windows Obj-to-Mdd utility

and i'll share my C source code which is only 160 lines long for now

-----

in the example below the figure is a low poly Aiko3-like figure
so it works quite well
but for figures like Victoria 4, or the real Aiko3 or Genesis etc .... the data load on Blender will be quite severe
( 100K data points per frame )

Hello Casual

where I find the link download "Windows-PC-exe OBJ-sequence-to-MDD converter"?

Could occupy for movement of characters In DAZ (low poly) and clothing simulation in Blender

It would be Great

Thanks.
:lol:

mCasual

ajd_at said:

Casual said:

you know what i did just now ?

i wrote a Windows-PC-exe OBJ-sequence-to-MDD converter

as you know, mcjTeleBlender and other programs, can export animations as a sequence of obj files

once converted to MDD format,

in blender, you can import only the first frame's OBJ file

the whole scene is one big mesh

then you load the mdd file ( as a mesh cache modifier )

which is a bit like 1 morph channel per animation frame added to the big mesh

and there you have it an animated scene, which can be rendered

it's not "rigged" so you cant change the Figure poses, but you can add objects and lights and cameras, tweak the materials etc

----

so, very soon i'll publish the free PC-Windows Obj-to-Mdd utility

and i'll share my C source code which is only 160 lines long for now

-----

in the example below the figure is a low poly Aiko3-like figure
so it works quite well
but for figures like Victoria 4, or the real Aiko3 or Genesis etc .... the data load on Blender will be quite severe
( 100K data points per frame )

Hello Casual

where I find the link download "Windows-PC-exe OBJ-sequence-to-MDD converter"?

Could occupy for movement of characters In DAZ (low poly) and clothing simulation in Blender

It would be Great

Thanks.
:lol:

end of 2014 or beginning of 2015
i want to make it work with mcjTeleBlender
so Blender would open the first .obj file
create the Cycles materials
and load the animation (mdd) data

in the meantime, i did write and post a script
that lets you import animated clothing from Poser / Blender etc...
i didnt know about mdd back then
it creates a prop with 1 morph per animation frame
mcjobjstomorphingprop

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/1065/

ajd_at_072df9a27d

Thanks, Great integration with Teleblender.Se will be able to accomplish great things.

DM3D

Hi Casual,

Just an FYI, I'll be sending a contribution your way! If you have a moment, perhaps you can help me solve this issue with the MATLIB process.

Please refer to the attached image. I have created a custom eyereflection node that best suites my renders. The eye reflection in the igure shown are actual reflections. I have had a hard time getting this accurate effect with the nodes as created by mcjteleblender, so, I am using the MATLIB feature to fine tune my materials.

The problem I am having - the rough value in my glossy node needs to be around .025. Every time mcjteleblender exports a file, it uses my node setup for the eyereflection BUT....the rough value is converted from .025 to .150. This happens no matter what I specify as settings in the export control windows for glossy and rough. If I just save the Blender MATLIB file and reopen, the values do not change so I know this is something mcjteleblender is influencing. Can you help?

Visioneer

This is a great plugin, I just found it recently, but I am having a problem with materials having a higher brightness on geografted geometry than the base figure (like on Genesis or Genesis 2 figures.) Is there a quick and easy solution to this? (I am largely a newbie to rendering AND Blender. I never even used Cycles until I found this plugin.)

mCasual

dcmphoto said:

Hi Casual,

Just an FYI, I'll be sending a contribution your way! If you have a moment, perhaps you can help me solve this issue with the MATLIB process.

Please refer to the attached image. I have created a custom eyereflection node that best suites my renders. The eye reflection in the igure shown are actual reflections. I have had a hard time getting this accurate effect with the nodes as created by mcjteleblender, so, I am using the MATLIB feature to fine tune my materials.

The problem I am having - the rough value in my glossy node needs to be around .025. Every time mcjteleblender exports a file, it uses my node setup for the eyereflection BUT....the rough value is converted from .025 to .150. This happens no matter what I specify as settings in the export control windows for glossy and rough. If I just save the Blender MATLIB file and reopen, the values do not change so I know this is something mcjteleblender is influencing. Can you help?

thanks for the gift !

first the image below is a recap of the way glossiness is transfered from DS to Blender
( this may be wrong with TB3 though but it's how it used to be)

i also found out that in Blender 2.72 the new default glossy method is not Beckman anymore ,
so i may fix that in the next update blendbot for this too
but i think GCX is not extremely different from Beckman, contrary to "Sharp"

i didn't get to the issue yet, but i think i just have to add code in blendbot
so that the MATLIB mats are marked upon being imported from the .blend file
so, later on during the process, the attempts to apply the gloss values
from Daz Studio/mcjTeleblender are not applied to the MATLIB mats

if you look at the scene.py file generated by mcjTeleBlender

the line

setMatGloss('!Aiko_3', 'RCornea', '', 0.5, 0.5019607843137255 )

is the command that tells blendbot to tweak the material's glossy node

and in the next version, if the "RCornea" mat is known to be a MATLIB mat, we'll leave Britney alone

mCasual

hmm i dont use those features often

so, i make a lib_ material and save it as a lib_ .blend

mCasual

well look at that ( possibly since Blender 2.72 )

the lib_ materials trick is broken !

so i'll repair that

and i'll also see about the MatLib issue

ah now i remember i had to ditch the link_append operator to make matlib work
so it wont be hard to repair the lib_

....

... later that day

done, the _lib way of re-using your custom materials in Blender 2.72 will be functional in the next mcjBlendBot update

...

now on to the MATLIB issue

mCasual

the mcjTeleBlender/BlendBot update will possibly maybe be Saturday

ajd_at_072df9a27d

hello Casual

In mcjTeleblender2 %scale for the camera does not work if the value is different from 1, for example 10.
Could also affect the camera ?, as well as for your script "mcjExportCamToBlender". (Teleblender 3 ok)

Apparently the dynamics clothes in Blender has problems with the scale to 1 (Scene 1 unit = 1 m). (Collision Figure and cloth, Fly out cloth)
Now try resizing scene in Blender Units in metric as well as scale (2-10), but it did not work,

The dynamic clothes in Blender work well with clothing scales of 5 o 10 units.

Blender 2.72 32 bits and DS3.1

Regards

mCasual

Visioneer said:

This is a great plugin, I just found it recently, but I am having a problem with materials having a higher brightness on geografted geometry than the base figure (like on Genesis or Genesis 2 figures.) Is there a quick and easy solution to this? (I am largely a newbie to rendering AND Blender. I never even used Cycles until I found this plugin.)

i didn't experiment with geo-grafting yet ( and didnt experiment much with Genesis ... yeah i'm quite behind :) )
just a wild guess - maybe the geo-grafted item doesnt have the same shader as Genesis
i'm pretty sure Genesis used a special skin shader

so you'd need to select the grafted object and select the grafted material and apply the same shader as Genesis
then you can copy-and-paste the material settings from a genesis body part to the grafted object material
then if need be, change the texture images to what they need to be

mCasual

ajd_at said:

hello Casual

In mcjTeleblender2 %scale for the camera does not work if the value is different from 1, for example 10.
Could also affect the camera ?, as well as for your script "mcjExportCamToBlender". (Teleblender 3 ok)

Apparently the dynamics clothes in Blender has problems with the scale to 1 (Scene 1 unit = 1 m). (Collision Figure and cloth, Fly out cloth)
Now try resizing scene in Blender Units in metric as well as scale (2-10), but it did not work,

The dynamic clothes in Blender work well with clothing scales of 5 o 10 units.

Blender 2.72 32 bits and DS3.1

Regards

ok i'll see if i can make the same changes to the treatment of cameras in mcjTeleblender2 and mcjExportCamToBlender
as the changes i made in teleblender 3

mCasual

concerning the matlib issue

i added a variable named bMatLib to each material created by blendBot, default value is False

and if a given material is loaded through use-matlib or through named ( lib_ ) library materials

then that material's bMatLib variable is set to True

later on ( 1 second later ) when blendbot receives the command to modify the materials according to Daz Studio's settings

blendBot will refuse to do so for the materials marked bMatLib=True

***
*** not released yet ***
***

DM3D

Casual,

You are AMAZING. Thanks for jumping on the MATLIB issue so quickly. I don't mind tweaking the node configuration for a single render but I am hoping to work on some fun animations for short films this coming year and it is important that I can rely on the MATLIB configurations, including glossy to be correctly applied to each file in the animation as it is rendered.

You put so much time into this! Cycles and Blender are my preferred render engine. I really appreciate the power of Cycles and the node configurations so being able to set up a MATLIB file to control materials that doesn't changed with export is a MAJOR feature for mcjTeleBlender. I'll look forward to your announcement regarding when the updates are available.

THANK YOU!

mCasual

while i'm at it
i also will fix the special blendbot for carrara ( and poser )
i was quite surprised to see it didn't require much work

but on this test scene, the old version would fail
because there's one "texture" in the carrara .obj file that has no "Image" property ... dont quite understand how that works

oh i think i know .... the default blender cube ... must be the culprit

and apparently i didnt use the proper scale when exporting the scene as an .obj from Carrara

which explains why the camera was too close

mCasual

* * * Update * * * BlendBot 3.10 * * * Update * * * BlendBot 3.10 * * * Update * * * BlendBot 3.10 * * * Update * * *

link to TeleBlender 3's page
https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts4/mcjteleblender3

direct link to the zip file
https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts4/mcjteleblender3/mcjBlendBot.zip?attredirects=0&d=1

--------

new : -

- Blender will not conduct the horribly long "searches for missing images" anymore . This seems to have been introduced in Blender 2.72
- The materials imported through the "matlib" process or the named-materials ( lib_ ) will be protected against modifications at load time
- mcjBlendBot for Carrara was tested and made slightly more robust

i will possibly conduct further tests Sunday, to make sure i didn't break anything

so there could be a BlendBot 3.11 tomorrow

but i know for sure i didn't roll-back to an old version ! ( it happened once i think )

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Warning concerning Daz Studio 4.7
I was not able to figure how to prevent this - The figures with non-visible bones
suffer material mixups when exported through mcjTeleBlender in Daz Studio 4.7
So you should avoid using in-visibility on figures tele-ported by mcjTeleBlender

DM3D

THANK YOU Casual for the mcjBlendbot update!

ajd_at_072df9a27d

Hi Casual

It would be desirable, rename appName in the script, Teleblender to Teleblender3 (or Teleblender2). And so you can have both versions in DAZ, and have two versions of Blender for mcjBlendbot2 and 3.

Thanks.

Visioneer

Casual said:

Visioneer said:

This is a great plugin, I just found it recently, but I am having a problem with materials having a higher brightness on geografted geometry than the base figure (like on Genesis or Genesis 2 figures.) Is there a quick and easy solution to this? (I am largely a newbie to rendering AND Blender. I never even used Cycles until I found this plugin.)

i didn't experiment with geo-grafting yet ( and didnt experiment much with Genesis ... yeah i'm quite behind :) )
just a wild guess - maybe the geo-grafted item doesnt have the same shader as Genesis
i'm pretty sure Genesis used a special skin shader

so you'd need to select the grafted object and select the grafted material and apply the same shader as Genesis
then you can copy-and-paste the material settings from a genesis body part to the grafted object material
then if need be, change the texture images to what they need to be

Hey Casual,

Yeah, the shader settings are the exact same for the geograft and the original Genesis figure, so I fear it must be something else. It's almost like the shader is doubled in spec and ambient when imported into Blender. I'm thinking that the geograft and base Genesis are layer over each other, like when you export an obj file, then import the file into another program. I'm going to try to mess around with some user end options, but that was just a line of thought for the problem. What do you think?

ajd_at_072df9a27d

Hi Visioneer

I had a similar problem. Solution:

Daz Studio
Tab "Surface" for Material geografted -> change Glossiness 50%-5% and Specular Color "Gray".

Differences Teleblender2 And Teleblender 3

Teleblender 2
Only Affected Color Specular .
Example for color Specular White . in Teleblender Gloss (0.05 default) for all textures in Scene. (brightness medium - low)

Teleblender 3
Affected Glossiness(100%) and Color Specular .
Example for color White and only Textute Selected is Brightness High - Very High.

Warning: Glossiness 100 % is default for Daz Studio = Brightness High In Blender using Teleblender3

mCasual

Visioneer said:

Casual said:

Visioneer said:

This is a great plugin, I just found it recently, but I am having a problem with materials having a higher brightness on geografted geometry than the base figure (like on Genesis or Genesis 2 figures.) Is there a quick and easy solution to this? (I am largely a newbie to rendering AND Blender. I never even used Cycles until I found this plugin.)

i didn't experiment with geo-grafting yet ( and didnt experiment much with Genesis ... yeah i'm quite behind :) )
just a wild guess - maybe the geo-grafted item doesnt have the same shader as Genesis
i'm pretty sure Genesis used a special skin shader

so you'd need to select the grafted object and select the grafted material and apply the same shader as Genesis
then you can copy-and-paste the material settings from a genesis body part to the grafted object material
then if need be, change the texture images to what they need to be

Hey Casual,

Yeah, the shader settings are the exact same for the geograft and the original Genesis figure, so I fear it must be something else. It's almost like the shader is doubled in spec and ambient when imported into Blender. I'm thinking that the geograft and base Genesis are layer over each other, like when you export an obj file, then import the file into another program. I'm going to try to mess around with some user end options, but that was just a line of thought for the problem. What do you think?

There's an option in mcjTeleBlender called "Gamma Fix ( Darken )"
when this option in On, immediately following the .obj import by Blender,
blendBot goes through the material color values and squares them
without this fix the colors looked too washed out.

my scenes are usually simple so i did not encounter the following problem often:
when more than one object or figure shares the same name and the same material name
blendBot gets confused and ends up applying the gamma fix twice on some materials
and not at all on others

if i remember correctly it's one of the reasons why i added the "Rename Nodes" option
to mcjTeleBlender. When that option is On, mcjTeleBlender goes through the objects in your scene
and renames nodes that share the same name to something slightly different.

maybe this doesn't always work but it's worth a try

else you could try turning Off mcjTeleBlender 's "Gamma Fix ( Darken )" option
and tweak the color values by yourself, in the Daz Studio surfaces tab

now that i'm better at blender-python programming, in 2015 i'll probably change the way
the "Gamma Fix" is applied, i.e. i'll mark the GammaFixed materials so they don't get GammaFixed twice

mCasual

ajd_at said:

hello Casual

In mcjTeleblender2 %scale for the camera does not work ... ... ...

Regards

** mcjTeleBlender2 Update **** mcjTeleBlender2 Update **
** mcjTeleBlender2 Update **** mcjTeleBlender2 Update **

note that this update concerns the 'old' version of mcjTeleBlender, the new one is mcjTeleBlender 3

the scene exporting scale is now properly applied to the camera position

( the problem was that the script computed the scaling factor after exporting the cameras instead of before)

also,

the mcjTeleBlender 2 script for DS3/DS4 has been renamed to mcjTeleBlender2.dsa
the mcjTeleBlender 2 script for DS1/DS2 has been renamed to mcjTeleBlender2DS2.ds

and the mcjTeleBlender2 thumbnail/icon now sports a big 2

mcjTeleBlender2's home ------> https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts3/mcjteleblender2

also note that mcjexportcamtoblender a script which lets you export

animated cameras from Daz Studio to Blender was also updated

see here http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/17032/

greg017

Hi Casual
I found a solution to the Anatomy attachments issue it may be the same as above not sure.
Anyway here is the solution.
The Specular image is not being imported into the Maps and then the Nodes are not created.
This works
Manually add the Nodes (cut and paste from similar materials works)
Replace the image texture with the Specular one
Reset the diffAndGlossyNode to the same as the other materials

I have tried this on your latest code and it is still the same.
Once done you can use the matlib technique in later renders and that works fine.

Thanks Heaps
Greg
Oh by the way would it be possible to have a toggle for
import bpy
bpy.data.worlds["World"].light_settings.use_ambient_occlusion = True
It makes the background HDRs work heaps better

ajd_at_072df9a27d

Thanks Casual

But the name change would be too great in the script, in order to have so appName two Blender and do not share the same address(path...blender.exe) in regedit. I guess mcj blendbot 2 and 3 are not compatible.