An Accurate Daz Studio to Blender tutorial/method?

JQP

fuzzums_wuzzums_b2d044dcdb said:

The figures Daz uses are made within Daz therefore will only work properly within Daz. It is simply impossible to use something created in software A in the same exact way in software B. There are several work-arounds to this by using intermediary formats which both software A and software B can read. OBJ and FBX are the most common. OBJ is to transfer the mesh by itself. You only get a static object with UV's and material set-up, and nothing more. FBX is to transfer poseable figures, i.e. the information found in the OBJ + the skeleton + the weight maps. A lot of information is lost when converting something into FBX like most of the propreties you see in Parameters tab.

 

TwoCats said:

I've tried the customer exporter/importer approach, as well as exporting directly to FBX, DAE and even OBJ. Every one of them comes with problems. None of them import into Blender correctly. The character's pose will be correct, but the clothing and hair won't be adjusted, stuff comes in all warped and crazy looking, etc.

Personally I have always had trouble with using custom importer-exporters in programs. I just either export OBJ/FBX from one program, then important manually said export into another program.

Does importing the figure by itself as an FBX with no clothes and hair work? What figure are you using? Genesis 3 and up should more or less work properly, Genesis 2 uses a proprietary weight system which no other program can read so you will have issues with the bends.

The hair and clothes are figures by themselves. There's probably a complicated way of attaching these two your main figures in Blender to be fair. A workaround is to have your finished character in Daz with all the clothes and hair attached. Then go to Geometry Edit > right click > Geometry Editing > Merge Fitted Figures's Geometry. Be sure to back-up your scene file because this is an undoable edit.

The end result of this is a figure with the hair and clothes attached which Blender should be able to read properly.

Don't get your hopes up, though. Even though you do everything corectly the end result will still be unsatisfactory. There's always something missing or not working as expected.

Good info here, thanks.

Padone

@JQP The diffeomorphic plugin has improved a lot from february. I'd advise you to give it a try. It can imprort lights and cameras, instances, jcms and custom morphs, poses and animations, geofrafts, shells and LIE. Plus it provides a prebuild ik rig for animation in blender. Then it can convert hair to blender strands, and it can also import static hd meshes that you can then use for baking or to add a multires modifier.

see https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/389931/true-iray-skins-for-blender-are-on-the-way

nicstt

I now do all my rendering in Blender, well except for the occasional test renders when checking something.

I find the Diffemorphic plugin to be highly efficient at getting a posed figure into Blender. I have my own custom shader for skin, but what it has does look good.

I never use the cameras or lights in the export to Blender.

If I want props and scenes/partial scenes, I export as an obj and texture as required in a separate Blend file so I can Append them to other projects.

Leonides02

nicstt said:

I now do all my rendering in Blender, well except for the occasional test renders when checking something.

I find the Diffemorphic plugin to be highly efficient at getting a posed figure into Blender. I have my own custom shader for skin, but what it has does look good.

I never use the cameras or lights in the export to Blender.

If I want props and scenes/partial scenes, I export as an obj and texture as required in a separate Blend file so I can Append them to other projects.

Does diffeomorphic export in HD?

j cade

Leonides02 said:

nicstt said:

I now do all my rendering in Blender, well except for the occasional test renders when checking something.

I find the Diffemorphic plugin to be highly efficient at getting a posed figure into Blender. I have my own custom shader for skin, but what it has does look good.

I never use the cameras or lights in the export to Blender.

If I want props and scenes/partial scenes, I export as an obj and texture as required in a separate Blend file so I can Append them to other projects.

Does diffeomorphic export in HD?

Diffeo currently will export out static hd meshes.

If you use 2.9 I have a whole method for losslessly converting those static meshes to multiresolution modifiers (blender's closest equivalent to hd morphs) with video demonstration right here  Theres a posibility it will be automated in the future but the conversion process to get the hd mesh rigged and working like the base mesh takes me 2 minutes at this point

Leonides02

j cade said:

 

Diffeo currently will export out static hd meshes.

If you use 2.9 I have a whole method for losslessly converting those static meshes to multiresolution modifiers (blender's closest equivalent to hd morphs) with video demonstration right here  Theres a posibility it will be automated in the future but the conversion process to get the hd mesh rigged and working like the base mesh takes me 2 minutes at this point

Cool! But if you're creating images, the static mesh should be all you need, right?

j cade

Leonides02 said:

j cade said:

 

Diffeo currently will export out static hd meshes.

If you use 2.9 I have a whole method for losslessly converting those static meshes to multiresolution modifiers (blender's closest equivalent to hd morphs) with video demonstration right here  Theres a posibility it will be automated in the future but the conversion process to get the hd mesh rigged and working like the base mesh takes me 2 minutes at this point

Cool! But if you're creating images, the static mesh should be all you need, right?

well yes- however using a rig makes adjusting things way easier. If you notice the arm pose is a bit off and interseciting something you can tweak it - you want to reuse the same character in a different pose you can just load the pose. If you have to  reëxport odds are you'll have to retweak your materials. (diffeo actually does a really good autoconverson and ha some goot tools to help you adjust multiple material zones with much less pain, but not having to redo any work is still easier)

Also, personally, I'm starting to create what basically ammounts to a library of blender strand hairs - much easier to adjust them to the character in a t pose and then load the character pose rather than trying to position it to a posed figure

nicstt

j cade said:

Leonides02 said:

j cade said:

 

Diffeo currently will export out static hd meshes.

If you use 2.9 I have a whole method for losslessly converting those static meshes to multiresolution modifiers (blender's closest equivalent to hd morphs) with video demonstration right here  Theres a posibility it will be automated in the future but the conversion process to get the hd mesh rigged and working like the base mesh takes me 2 minutes at this point

Cool! But if you're creating images, the static mesh should be all you need, right?

well yes- however using a rig makes adjusting things way easier. If you notice the arm pose is a bit off and interseciting something you can tweak it - you want to reuse the same character in a different pose you can just load the pose. If you have to  reëxport odds are you'll have to retweak your materials. (diffeo actually does a really good autoconverson and ha some goot tools to help you adjust multiple material zones with much less pain, but not having to redo any work is still easier)

Also, personally, I'm starting to create what basically ammounts to a library of blender strand hairs - much easier to adjust them to the character in a t pose and then load the character pose rather than trying to position it to a posed figure

Likewise lol

 

Singular3D

nicstt said:

I now do all my rendering in Blender, well except for the occasional test renders when checking something.

I find the Diffemorphic plugin to be highly efficient at getting a posed figure into Blender. I have my own custom shader for skin, but what it has does look good.

I never use the cameras or lights in the export to Blender.

If I want props and scenes/partial scenes, I export as an obj and texture as required in a separate Blend file so I can Append them to other projects.

Love your approach. Fits to mine intended one. Just leaving Cinema 4D and switching to Blender.

nicstt

Thank you.

Appending files is really simple, especially if all that's needed is put in its own Collection.

I also have a file I keep Materials I re-use; there is a materials library, but I find it unreliable.

I understand that is due in either 2.9 or 3.0. I'm sad they've abandonned the iterative releases.

brainmuffin

TwoCats said:

Hi there,

As the title says, I'm looking for a procedure to get characters from DAZ Studio to Blender (2.81) that's actually accurate and consistent. I've followed several YT videos, to the letter, and none of them are working right. So either those people configured some setting they don't include in the video, or something's changed since they created them. 

I've tried the customer exporter/importer approach, as well as exporting directly to FBX, DAE and even OBJ. Every one of them comes with problems. None of them import into Blender correctly. The character's pose will be correct, but the clothing and hair won't be adjusted, stuff comes in all warped and crazy looking, etc.
 

Yeah, I've noticed the same things. Warped in all manner of ways.