DTB bridge for DS6 and Blender 5.1.2.0? (without Diffeomorphic)

Calv

I'm just wondering if there's a community-made DAZ to Blender bridge that works in DAZ Studio 6 (or if not 4.24 at least) and Blender 5.1.2.0. I tried installing the official DTB bridge and it doesn't work in DS6 yet, but it does in DS4.24 which I also have installed. It doesn't work in Blender 5.1.2.0 though. It installs but won't enable.

Thanks.

Edit: I'm hoping to avoid using Diffeomorphic if possible.

 

Padone

No, unless DAZ updates it, the DTB bridge only works with DS4 and blender 4.2. With the last version there's also a bug with rigify which doesn't work, unless you use blender 3. This is fixed in a unofficial fork, apparently the pull request never got accepted by Daniel Bui.

https://github.com/cuddlyogre/DazToBlender

Calv

Oh I see. I'd rather not go back to Blender 3 or even 4.2 and I also prefer DS6 to 4.24 now, so it looks like I'm going to have to wait, probably quite a long time for getting Genesis 9 into Blender properly.

Thanks for the info Padone.

 

Padone

It is reported that diffeomorphic works fine with DS6, if you change your mind.

p.s. Or you can also import DS4 in blender 4 then load the scene in blender 5, if you want to use the bridge.

p.s. I'm also curious why you prefer the daz bridge, as I don't see any reason for that, so I may miss something.

Calv

I did actually give up trying to find the download of the DTB Genesis 9 patched bridge, because it's obviously been forcibly removed from most of the internet by DAZ 3D, just because it's 3rd-party.

I then tried Diffeomorphic 5.1.0 from DS6 to Blender 5.1.2 with GPT-5 guiding me through it and so far it's a time consuming nightmare just to get to an actual render of Genesis 9 in a Blender scene, so I've given up on that as well for now at least.

Using DS4.24 and Blender 4 for the sake of using the DTB bridge and then loading the resulting scene in Blender 5 is a good idea though.

I was avoiding Diffeomorphic because of it being too much faffing about, for me anyway and it looks like I was right about that.

Thanks again Padone.

 

Padone

Diffeomorphic it's two script addons, one for daz to export, one for blender to import, to be installed as usual, apart specifying your daz library folders on the blender side. As for using it once installed, you export the daz scene to dbz, then easy import in blender with the preset for the specific genesis generation, so G9 for a G9 figure. There's nothing else for the basic use, then yes there's plenty of tools but nobody forces you to use those if you don't need them.

https://github.com/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/wiki/Install_Save_the_DAZ_root_paths

https://github.com/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/wiki/Export_Export_To_Blender

https://github.com/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/wiki/Import_Easy_Import_DAZ

Calv

Thanks Padone. I'll use those links for future reference. For the time being at least though I downloaded Blender 4.2 LTS because like DS 4.24 it works with the official DTB bridge. The very first time I imported a Genesis 9 figure, complete with body morphs, all the textures, hair, clothing and pose, it worked without any adjustments at all, except for the pose. So I've done my first Blender render using Genesis 9 now and it looks great in my opinion. :)

 

Padone

Try her with some shells and geografts and you'll see the difference. As for materials DTB only transfers some basic textures as soon as it gets a little complex it breaks. Not to mention HD where DTB exports the subdivided mesh which becomes unmanageable soon enough for animation, while Diffeomorphic converts it to multires. There's plenty of other advantages in Diffeomorphic as proper IK rigs for animation, hair conversion to strands, instances support for large scenes, handling material sets to copy and paste etc.

However, if you're happy with DTB it means you don't see its limitations so probably you don't need any of the advanced features in Diffeomorphic.

Calv

I've since seen and been very frustrated by it's limitations. 

Now though, I've got my eye on the BJ Cycles renderer for DS4 and DS6. Hopefully it all works out and I'm sure it'll be awesome.

Padone

We don't export to blender because of cycles, iray is as good, almost. We export to blender because once there you can do anything you want with your figure, far beyond the limitations of daz studio. That means from modeling to texturing to animation to post processing and video editing. Holwever, a cycles renderer for daz studio will be most useful for those without a nvidia card, though I seriously doubt it will support all the shaders in daz studio, if any, so some manual conversion for materials is probably expected, same as it works for the Octane renderer.

https://www.daz3d.com/octane-render-kit

p.s. For people without a nvidia card the easy way is to render in iray with the cpu, will be slower of course but accurate.

Calv

In my experience, which isn't extensive to be honest, Cycles is way better than Iray, but I suppose that's straight out of the box as it were. Maybe I'm a bit harsh on Iray as I tend to do all the environment, tonemapping, etc. settings manually to the best of my knowledge, without having used bought presets to learn from. Therefore perhaps my rendering results are more primitive than they should be and I'm blaming the render engine. Yesterday I purchased a set of render settings presets from the DAZ 3D store, which wasn't expensive at all and I was reasonably impressed. Even so, I still believe Cycles is considerably better with many features that Iray is lacking. I'm reliably informed by Richard Haseltine that Iray is actually still being developed though. I just hadn't noticed.

As for exporting to Blender for other reasons, I'm satisfied with DAZ Studio for what I do, although only having small scale environments is an issue.

As someone in the Nvidia camp for GPUs I'm still enthusiastic about Cycles for DAZ Studio and I hope BJ Cycles gets as much support as possible. Hopefully it'll be a success and surpass the late Octane Renderer before it.