Blender Bridge for Daz Studio
Ghosty12
Posts: 1,983
in The Commons
Not sure if this has been talked about already, but came across what looks to be a very useful edition to the Daz Studio plugin/addon armoury on ShareCG.. Called GoB for Daz, it is a bridge script to help make creating morphs in Blender and importing into Daz Studio much easier..
https://sharecg.com/v/95232/browse/21/DAZ-Studio/GoB-for-Daz-[Blender-Bridge]
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Comments
Might be useful for some - it's Blender 2.79 only though.
Yeah not sure why they say 2.79 only, since 2.82 is out..
This is due to the major changes. This script won't work in newer blender so I use something else that does more than just morphs.
Ahh k, it is that this plugin looks good, just a shame it wont work in later versions..
Which makes me wonder why the creator of this plugin made it only for one version, and not work in later versions..
It might be that blender has changed so much that they'd need to totally recode the plugin.
When I saw this thread I originally thought, maybe the plugin was really old, but it was released just 3 days ago.
Maybe the developer is still working on making it compatible with 2.8x or maybe they intend to sell the 2.8x version later.
Could just be that it took so long to develop, that the version of Blender he started coding for was superceeded by the time he was done.
Or maybe it's something annoying like there is something in 2.8x that makes a bridge impossible, I don't think this is very likely though.
Ghosty12, thank you for the heads up - this is great. -- (EDIT: sorry Ghosty, I always thought it was Ghostly - fixed)
For everyone questioning this addon being for Blender 2.79 and not 2.8x series :
As a Blender addon developer myself who has literally been coding this type of stuff right now for my workhorse B2.71 and B2.79 all this week based on millighost's old (B2.6x series) Daz Studio DSF/DUF tools, Blender is a huge pain in the azz just trying to code against the same series versioning, let alone a whole new API with an all new structuring/rules put into place.
Blender coding is a giant moving target, and why many devs eventually abandon their addons - too much work to keep fixing what the Blender devs keep breaking.
Here's a personal example: When B2.80 beta became available, I was all excited to test out coding against the new (unfinished) API, so I started small by just trying to port another devs base addon that I used to create a bigger addon to be included in my Marvelous Designer cloth creation/simulation clone (for Blender).
I know, I am getting to the point... Going line for line in the code error checking and replacing against the new API everything that was needed to work, I was made to replace a significant line of code (one of the major changes), and when all was said and done, I had a vialbe working addon for B2.80 (beta) that came from B2.7x series. So, I shared it with the Blender community, and all was well.
Fast forward a couple of months later, and I was surprised to see people start to complain that my (ported) addon was no longer working.
I should mention, the original dev, who had not done anything with this addon for several years, including abandoning everything on his TODO list, took notice of my port and sprang into action with an official version as well as finally getting around to checking off his To Linux port (which works for 2.7 and 2.8 series).
Well, he fixed what the Blender devs broke by changing again something in the new API, so I was curious to see what needed to be done to fix it.
Here's the point (finally, I know, I suck) -- He completely omitted the major line code change that was needed while B2.80 was in beta. Simple as that.
Could I have done that? No, because the API at the time demanded that line of code, and with the major argument changes (for the new Depsgraph).
And, here's what this has to do with coding against either 2.7x or 2.8x series -- Without that line of code, it does not work in the 2.7x series, but now it ONLY works in the 2.8x series without it...
There are ways to add code to addons that allow to work for both, but some major changes are a stumbling block for some backwards compatibility.
Moving forward everyone seems to want devs to only create for the new Blender, and I fully undstand why, but there is still life in the 2.7x series, and you can actually use both. I'll eventually port all my addons to the new series, but I am still working on development of some that have been going for years (slowly) that the new Blender with the new API came to fast for me to keep up with -- I needed another couple of years before Blender changed that dramatically (coding wise) at my snails coding pace.
Who knows, this Bridge addon might be ported to the new version soon by the author, or someone like me just might pick up the mantle and port it over themselves. I'm off to start reading his code...
It's this. The changes are not so earth-shattering, but the internal data models have changed, things have moved around, etc... It's just enough to make updating all your scripts and addons something that you don't look forward to having to do unless you have a pressing reason.
Up until my laptop went nuts, I had 2.79 on the machine. But I'm pretty sure that it was downloading 2.79 that messed it up in the first place. If there's ever a release for 2.81, I'll be on it. But I'm not prepared to download 2.79, just incase the same thing happens again.
Lots of people still use Blender 2.79, simply because their workflow includes a lot of add-ons. Add-ons which are not (yet) available for Blender 2.8x. Some of those people have both versions of Blender installed. Others see no added benefit to switching between versions, and simply stick with 2.79
Not including an option to be backward compatible for add-ons is still hurting Blender, and slows its progress tremendously. It was a stupid decision. Understandable, but still stupid.
Thank you for the explanation of much of a pita it must be to code for Blender.. It is a shame this happens, and one would of thought that the Blender devs would of made it a lot easier for addon authors to code and or update their addons..
And, successfully ported to Blender 2.81...
I really hate all this new Depsgraph crap - that took the longest to figure out how to get the Shape Key morph targets to export correctly as they do for 2.79.
I was surprised how small and simple his scripts were (no modules with multiple script linking) -- I am both impressed, and not impressed at the same time.
He wrote a custom importer and exporter instead of utilizing one of the included I/O such as OBJ (like I use for my DS/Blender bridge and all my other bridges). The magic is in his DSA import script which auto-sets up the newly created morph target within DS. I'm still going through the Morph Loader Pro with mine, but I am going to look into adopting his approach. It's quite good.
Did anyone try it with 2.79?
If you did, were you able to get it to work?
He hard-coded the file path to what his is, and/or what he believes everyones is, so I had to change it to mine (created custom bridge folder instead).
If you don't have the same file path, it won't work for you unless you edit the Blender Python script to your file path.
When I get some other free time, I'm going to rectify that nonsense...
In Blender 2.82 there is UDIM support - https://www.blender.org/download/releases/2-82/
This should improve compatibility with Daz assets.
So 2.82 is officially out now ?
2.82 released somewhere last week afaik
https://www.blender.org/
Yes that really looks good !
I've been using a version of 2.83 (partly) for the new cloth physics brush in the sculpting section
I wonder if it's worthwhile to pursue gITF integration @daremok3
To be fair to the Blender devs, 2.8 was a long time coming, and if you don't break backwards compatibility every now and then, you cannot innovate.
But there is an Oscar-winning VFX guy at the Blender Meetup I go to, and he's still on 2.79 because of the addons, general stability, and right click to select.
I haven't yet seen if Diffeomorphic works for 2.82... that's, so far, the best Daz-to-Blender bridge out there IMHO, but of course all my add-ons got wiped when I upgraded. D'ohhhh.
Really stoked to try Manta Flow, tho'. To say nothing of the cloth sculpting brush that's to come in 2.83... oh yeah.
I'm on 2.82/3 and use right click to select.
And you can add moths!
I got excited about Blender 2.8 not because of the technical improvements because it's advertised as being much more user friendly - specifically not so dependant on hotkeys. Great! So I downloaded and went to Youtube to find some good tutorials about the basics and they all start off with something to the effect of "Blender 2.8 is game changing. Let's jump in. Here's a cube, no yse the hotkey G for grab. Then use the hotkey .... " and so on and so on. Arrrgh! Blender may not be dependant on the hotkeys anymore but all the gurus still are!