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Comments
Looks very cool.
Why Téléblender?
tt’s testimony, Part 2.
To assist the wannabe illustrator in producing believable images of humanoid figures,
DAZ’s offerings and expertise are something I cherish.
Some aspects are IMO technically solved: for example,
a young woman’s eyes, and her hairless and wrinkle-free skin.
Hair and fur are still perfectible, but!
Blender offers an elaborate particle system for this, that has the option of rendering,
not the particles themselves, but their trajectories as tapering tubes.
Below I show you the same G2f leg as before, with Elite Maya texture,
but now with a basic fuzz, to be used with two more hairy layers [bear with me].
Sticklers for optical correctness, I now encourage to skip this post.
Still with me? Oh; thank you.
Well, the first thing you might notice in terms of optical incorrectness
is the lack of shadow. Why no shadow? Because it looks better!
Other fur layers will have shadows. Soft shadows, even.
The diameter of human hair does not normally exceed 0.18mm;
hair from a horse’s tail is expected to range up to 0.28mm.
The fuzz you see is 0.24mm at the base, tapering to one-third of that at the tip,
so, if it looks coarse to you, it is!
Why so coarse? Because then I can use fewer strands.
Exactly as coarse, but now a more supple fuzz:
The geometry is the same; only the material settings have changed.
Edit: this more supple [subtle?] fuzz deserves a bit more tapering, says I,
so instead of 1/3 I have now tapered it to 1/4; otherwise, the geometry is the same.
Long live Cycles nodes: in the “macro” closeup, you can see that
(with geometry informaton, vector math, a color ramp, and other nodes)
our phantasy photons (fantasy fotons?) have been taught new protocols.
but there is currently no nodes interface from DAZ Studio that allows you to plug and play like this:
Edit: Is there?? I just stumbled onto DS “Shading Mixer” and “Builder” and noodle nodes show up,
but what DS calls “Geometry” is not what Blender Cycles calls Geometry.
Cycles, I dare say, is considerably better documented, isn’t it?
UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE mcjTeleBlender v3.14 UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE
very important export speed improvement if you render animations using mcjTeleBlender
https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts4/mcjteleblender3
mcjTeleBlender was updated - version 3.14
The Animation tab now contains a section titled "Speedup export";
in that section is a new checkbox named "Material properties are not animated"
By default this new option is ON.
The short story:
When your animation does indeed contain only non-animated material settings
this will tremendously speed up the transfer export process
The Long Story:
mcjTeleblender transfers most of the material settings in your file through the .obj/.mtl files
Some material settings are not transferable through the .obj/.mtl files.
Instead they are transferred through the Blender Python script
When the "Material properties are not animated" option is ON,
mcjTeleBlender will create a shared "Material Extras" function in the Blender Python script
This function will be used and reused for each frame of the animation
When the "Material properties are not animated" option is OFF,
A "Material Extras" section will be added to the Blender script for each frame
This also means that teleblender will have to read all material settings for each material for each frame
this can will take substantially more time ( and that's how it was done in v3.13 )
note that the upper body is all plastic only because i didnt take the 1 minute
needed to turn down the specular color before exporting to Blender
I'm kind of lost - trying to learn about this. I was able to finally find in DS 4.9 where to store mcj TeleBlender - then was able to run it in DS, but when I click the 'export/open current frame' button, nothing at all happens. Looking through these forums - I made sure the directory paths exist, etc. Blender version 2.77, but it never gets that far. If I click the animation button, it starts processing...
Is there some setup I need to do in DS to get the scene ready? I'm a brand new user to DS and I need to go back and watch tutorials, but basically, I got a character and put some clothes on it. Is that enough or do I need to activate a camera or something for mcj TeleBlender to export it?
btw mcasual, do you have a donate button on your site somewhere? If i can get this working, this will solve some big problems for me I think.
Thanks,
//Dan
Also...
it gives me an error after I exit and tells me to look at the log file. This part I think is only part that pertains to the problem...not sure if it helps...
WARNING: Stack Trace:
<anonymous>()@C:/Users/Public/Documents/My DAZ 3D Library/Scripts/mcasual/mcjTeleBlender3.dsa:1261
Error in script execution: C:/Users/Public/Documents/My DAZ 3D Library/Scripts/mcasual/mcjTeleBlender3.dsa
confirm, "when I click the 'export/open current frame' button, nothing at all happens"
WARNING: Script Error: Line 1261
WARNING: ReferenceError: Can't find variable: g_thingsIAlreadySaid
WARNING: Stack Trace:
<anonymous>()@/Volumes/Data/+DAZ+/Scripts/mcasual/mcjTeleBlender3.dsa:1261
mcjTeleBlender3 v3.12 (update April 30th 2016), Daz Studio 4.9.2.44 Pro, OSX
IMPORTANT UPDATE Version 3.15
I'm sorry if Ii didn't respond earlier but the forum system doesn't seem to email me about my thread any longer
I had to be told by someone on my youtube
in version 3.14 I greatly improved the export speed for Animations
but unfortunately I didn't test to see if the single-scene export still worked and it didn't
as some could see there was a problem at line 1261
mcjTeleBlender was trying to access a function that was removed in version 3.14
so I give you version 3.15, which is 3.14 with line 1261 removed
mcjTeleBlender 3 page
https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts4/mcjteleblender3 ;
direct link to mcjTeleBlender 3.15 zip file
https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts4/mcjteleblender3/mcjTeleBlender3.zip?attredirects=0&d=1
----
come to think of it I didn't really, really test it, so I'll do that right now !
YaY it works fine, 100 samples
i dont know if that's a fact but Cycles seems faster than iRay, maybe just a matter of not having comparable quality settings tho
looking up at the panels under the mcjStairs which go in the mcjNewCastle
( which has been "nearing completion" since January, shame shame shame )
https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts7/mcjcastlexiii
There's a new version 3.15
in version 3.14 i improved speed for animation exports and broke the single-frame export
it was just a matter of deleting 1 line of code
https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts4/mcjteleblender3
there's a donate button at the bottom of my site's pages
There's a new version 3.15
in version 3.14 i improved speed for animation exports and broke the single-frame export
it was just a matter of deleting 1 line of code
https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts4/mcjteleblender3
concerning Scene preparations
there's no special preparation
at a minimum the script will export the current camera your are using
there's an option to export the lights or not
from the point of you of mcjTeleBlender, the Daz Default shaders are prefered over shaders like iRay and uber and skin shaders etc etc
sometimes, if you can change the skin shaders on your figures to the simple DS Default shaders, you may get better results once in Blender
on my PC, i dont know if i had to install this separately, but the DsDefault shader is in My Library\Shader Presets\DS Defaults
the other crucial steps that need only be done once is to set teleBlender's output directory ( Export scene as .obj ) to a folder that really does exist on your computer
and to set teleBlender's path to Blender to blender, which on my PC happens to be c:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\blender.exe
also the mcjBlendBot.zip package needs to be unzipped in the proper blender folder which on my PC is C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.77\scripts\modules
note that most of the manual for teleblender3 is on the page for teleblender 1 and 2
a recent blender cycles render of a DS scene
Cycles is indeed a lot faster, even if you involve a lot of noodles!
One reason is that Cycles converges much faster: I’m regularly rendering in the 3D modeling window,
with only 6 samples per pixel, and getting perfectly decent preview renders;
for images such as my ice age sweetie, above, I found that 24 samples per pixel were enough,
without even using your de-speckling filter! [Where is it, by the way?]
Comparable clarity, with iRay, requires hundreds of samples per pixel.
THANK you for your ongoing projects!
Question: When you say animation, are you transferring armatures and vertex weights?
For animations, the script exports one .obj file per timeline frame, a bit like what render farms do, then a batch file renders them using Blender-Cycles in invisible mode.
One would normally export the first frame, tweak the cycles materials to their liking, save this as mymaterials.blend, then re-use that to render the whole animation.
In some cases, if your daz scene is textured with care, you can skip the mymaterials.blend step
In April i tried exporting from Daz using the Collada format, with an animation and importing in Blender
the figure in Blender was rigged properly, also the clothes
the props were scaled up like crazy, i deleted them but could have fixed them
the bent joints didnt look too good
The animation had problems
---
BUT sometimes this spring/summer i'll publish blender scripts to convert the collada import's
BlenderEngine materials and convert them to Cycles ( just a few lines long, it relies on mcjBlendBot )
and a Blender or Daz script to fix the issues with the animation
though i think i saw some people use BVH to tranfer animations to Blender, not the animation in the collada file
First off, let me just say that this is an awesome tool - thank you so much for making it!
I finally got around to trying it out and it worked fantastically, except for one minor glitch...
I set up a scene in Daz Studio with a G2F character, dressed and with hair and accesories, sitting in a car and ran the script. Everything transferred over perfectly, except the car was missing some textures. In the Image node there was a texture with the correct name, but it was blank. No big deal to just load the right texture since I wanted to adjust most of them from the defaults anyway, but I am curious if there is something I failed to click, or was I maybe just trying to transfer over too many things at once? Has anyone else reported this?
Thanks again!
mcjTeleBlender uses daz studio's built-in exporter, to export the scene as an .obj file plus a .mtl file
in the .mtl file, sometimes it will write "mytexture.jpg" when in fact the texture image on-disk and in the scene is "mytexture.tif"
When you use mcjTeleBlender's "Collect texture images" sometimes this problem is solved.
Maybe your texture image filename contained bizarre characters that caused problems when Blender imports the scene or when BlendBot builds the cycles material
note that the .mtl file and the .py files produced by teleblender can be opened in notepad, it's plain text, so you can search for your image filename as see how it differs from the other images in the scene.
Also note that mcjTeleBlender produces a .bat file - if you launch Blender using that method, you then nave access to
Blender's console, which is an MSDOS-like black window that displays warning and errors that happened when loading your scene.
Thank you for such a fast response. :) I'll check that out next time I use it!
The "Collect Texture Maps" option worked beautifully by the way. Attached are a couple Blender Cycles renders made using various things transferred from Daz Studio via your script. On the mage I made some major changes to the robe materials, but the character and hair and all the characters in the dark blue one and the courtyard in the tree one are all just the unchanged cycles materials created by the script.
I can't begin to tell you how much fun I am having with this (especially once I figured out how to create a custom action for it so I didn't have to keep loading it in the editor
)!
welcome
your images look great
if you have a PC, recently i posted on my site a de-speckler utility that is almost made for the type of speckles found in Blender Cycles render ( works best if you render to an uncompressed file format
it's here ===> https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts7/mcjdespeckle
https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts7/mcjdespecklefrontend
UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE
mcjBlendBotForCarrara with Blender 2.77 still works BUT there's a problem
in a nutshell, there's a step of the import process called "Gamma-Fix"
when the .obj/.mtl scene comes from carrara, the mechanism i put in place to avoid "gamma-fixing" materials more than once fails
since the gamma-fix has the effect of darkening the material colors, you end up with figures with some tan skin and some black skin
the solution is to disable that step
if you wanted to fix your version "manually", you could open your copy of C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.77\scripts\modules\mcjBlendBotForCarrara.py
But i also uploaded a new version of the mcjBlendBot kit of scripts - which includes this modified mcjBlendBotForCarrara.py
- - - -
notes: the version for Daz Studio relies on the daz-script mcjTeleBlender for things like transparencies
mcjBlendBotForCarrara doesn't have that extra help so you still have to manually select the corneas of your figures and change their material to "BSDF Transparent"
- - - -
mcjBlendBotForCarrara.py is in V.16 of mcjBlendBot here --> https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts4/mcjteleblender3
he manual for mcjBlendBot for Carrara and poser is here --> https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts2/mcjblendbotspecial
I have to say I love the plugin, use to use it before in an older version of blender, but now with Daz4.9 and Blender 2.77 it keeps giving me an error.
Every time I go to run the script it just highlights this part of the script. Im on a mac and everything else seems to work. What am I doing wrong?
the mcjBlendBot i use
is located in my folder C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.77\scripts\modules
the date is 3/23/2016
so if yours is older than that you should get the latest version ... here https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts4/mcjteleblender3
there were minor updates in May and August
the highlighted line in your render-script should not cause problems, i checked and mcjBlendBot has the mentioned setImageSize function
the line that follws mentions CPU and CUDA which i find a bit odd
maybe it's better on a Mac to have OpenCL selected when CPU is selected
also note that on my Blender i sometime had to go in the Blender Settings, in a System Tab and enable the CUDA rendering capability there
I've re-downloaded the Bot but and turned on OpenCL but I am still getting the same error.
What else can I do to help you help me?
here's an excerpt from a render script i obtained after clicking mcjTeleBlender's "Defaults" button
i then set mcjTeleBlender's .obj output file to something realistic, so in my case i:/snowtrick/snow.obj
and i made sure the loacation of Blender.exe was correctly set in mcjTeleBlender
setTreeType( 3 )
mcjBlendBot.setRenderEngine( "CYCLES" )
mcjBlendBot.setImageSize( 640, 360 )
notice the "setRenderEngine" line which is missing from your listing
it means that you were attempting to use mcjTeleBlender's "Render Engine" option called "Scene File (.blend)"
so the .py script doesnt attempt to set Blender's renderer, instead it loads the Blender Scene file you specified, so, this .blend file must exist, you cant leave this at its default value
The .blend file in question is passed to blender through the .bat file which is found in the same folder as the .py
if , for mac related reasons you dont let mcjTeleBlender remotely start Blender or if you dont use the .bat file, then your Scene file wont be loaded
so - you could try setting the "Render Engine" to "Cycles" or "Blender Render" and see if it helps
----------------
maybe if/when you run the .py script "manually", maybe maybe blender cant find mcjBlendBot.py
which in my case is in a sub-folder of where blender is installed
so my blender is c:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\blender.exe
and the kit of mcjBlendBot scripts was unzipped in C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.77\scripts\modules
blender 2.77 is the most recent version of blender i unstalled
there's an old 2.76 folder too but it's now useless, so if i had my mcjBlendBot files in there, it wouldnt help
so - just make sure the mcjBlendBot files are unzipped in the appropriate folder of the blender.exe you use
another thing you could try is to avoid using names that include blank spaces for your .obj file ... that's probably not the issue but just in case
and you could try to unzip mcjBlendBot in the same folder as the .py file you showed me
or, place that .py file in the same folder as mcjBlendBot's file ... to increase the chances Blender can find them
duplicate removed
Boy do I feel dumb...
The whole reason it wasn't working was because I never took the files out of the folder. Mac already unzips into a new folder when you download anything (it gave me a mcjBlendBot folder) and I figured I could just drop that straight into the modules folder.
User error. Keep up the good work mCasual lol.
glad to know it didn't start not-working for Macs!
yesterday's test which was using the scene/.blend render option, daz studio 4.9 exported the sphere
Once again I thank you mCasual
I was wondering if you think it would be hard to import the modifiers with the materials from a material library.
I have been playing with the new subdivision coolness that is happening in Blender and while my materials are beging transfered correctly the required modifiers are not.
I have not yet looked into the code but am happy to work on a patch but if your already hacking away then I wont.
Thanks again Greg
Works like a charm!
But, why does the Blender log say: Progress ... .obj ':b'Km 0.02' (ignored) ?
A dozen Km's ignored.
Km is the bump strength for each material
Daz Studio does write it in the mtl file
but Blender's .obj importer ( which is called into action by mcjBlendBot ) does not support this upon import
which is why teleblender exports the bump strength through the Blender python file created for your scene
--------
Fascinating. Congratulations!
And, again: THANK YOU!!
I just discovered this script and it's awesome! I'm new to Blender, but I've been able learn enough to render some descent images with cycles.
I noticed last night that geo-grafted items were not being imported into blender unless they were unattached (not "fit to"). Once I get both items in blender I have a hard time repositioning them so they look "attached". Does anyone have any tips on how best to export G3 figures with geografed items? I was using RawArt's Elebeast.