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I use a similar workflow for some projects. Some people have reasons to use FBX instead of BVH when going back to DS. A big one is blendshapes / morphs. eg. In G8, some HD expressions are both bone/joint and blendshape (morph targets) driven. Facial animation, speech visemes, various pose controls , accessory movements like breathing, etc...are also a combination . The morphs that you export in the FBX from DS show up as blendshapes in maya/max/mobu for animation. BVH is only going to transfer bone/joint based movements.
Both DS's BVH and FBX importer have issues - well known - but the imported FBX is just used as a container for keys. (You ignore what it "looks" like in the DS viewport, the key data is ok). That FBX is saved out as an animated properties preset for shape/morph keys and bone/joint keys. If you only have bone/joint rotataions, then an animated pose preset is sufficient (if you are not using blendshapes, then actually a BVH is ok if you can get it to work - there have been issues, but apparently newer versions addressed some of those BVH issues). To apply an animated pose or properties preset, you merge it back to target character. Sometimes there are other "gotchas" , such as the naming convention is slightly different - maya or mobu might add a prefix to a blendshape channel - you might have to batch edit or remove prefixes in a text editor, it's very easy to do (and better than the alternative - animating in DS). I'm using older versions, and I typically do this from mobu , there might be a more streamlined way in newer versions. But run some tests end to end before you commit
External DazToBlender8 Thread over at blenderartists.org
If you need help with the plugin, or have some questions concerning functions, feel free to join the party and ask Mitchy, the developer, over at https://blenderartists.org/t/daz-to-blender8/1177588
Cheers,
Peter
Thank you for all of that.
Hi,
Anyone have any experience with UV Squares add on for Blender 2.8?
I got it, installed it and imported in my trainer shorts and can't find the panel that has the controls to try to get my wobbly UV's straightened out.
Thanks so much
Richard
So I found this video. Some notes you can see on the video description:
In this video, you will see how to automatically setup your material from substance painter to Blender. No need for a daily build like I said in the video, just activate Node Wrangler. - Select your Principled Shader - Press CTRL + SHIFT + T - Select your maps and accept.
I tried with Daz maps and only the SSS map got mapped. So then I went to this site and downloaded this set of PBR maps for https://3dtextures.me/2018/12/20/organic-matter-002/. Used those on a sphere and it worked perfectly, so I'm guessing the maps need to be named correctly. Roughness was specular.
I just duplicated some Daz model maps.
I added _COLOR to the diffuse map, _BUMP to the bump map, _ROUGH to the spec map and _SSS to the sss map. They all hooked up fine, bump added a node for bump with the map linked to height. I was pretty impressed how easy it was to do this.
No experience as yet, but the Github page says it is located in the 'N panel' in the UV editor.
https://github.com/Radivarig/UvSquares
There is an alternative for UV Squares
TexTools addon for Blender @ BenderNation
TexTools for Blender @ blenderartists.org
with alot of features but the equivalent function to UV Squares is called Rectify.
The tools can be found in the UV/Image Editor T pannel.
Unfortunately it is not yet compatible with the new Blender 2.8. I still use 2.79 until all addons I regulary use will get updated.
Youtube reviews of TexTools and other UV tools and technics:
TexTools for Blender Review
Texel Density Addon for Blender 2.8!
UV Pack Master Addon for Blender!
Quick Tip: UV Scalling in Blender
Thank you. I just copied and pasted all that text on the page to a text file for reference.
Good to know Cris, I'll try it with some renamed DAZ textures later. Thanks for pointing that out.
Let me know if it works.
Excellent tips and addons.
Cris: It does work, but we probably got different results right out of the box, so to speak. I put "_COLOR", "_BUMP", "_NORMAL", "_ROUGH", and "_SSS" at the end of my texture map names and it applied them all except the bump. I tried renaming that "_HEIGHT" and it stuck it to a displacement node that wasn't connected to anything. The real problem is that everything came in with ridiculous values; normals were like 3 times as strong as they should be, roughness didn't look natural at all, and I'm not even sure I noticed any SSS.
I still think all of these converters and quick methods create more headaches than they save time. I'm probably going to stick with manually making one good node setup for skin and just edit it slightly for whatever texture I need. Thanks for pointing that out though, it might work better for true PBR textures right out of Substance Painter or elsewhere.
Well couldn't figure out how to straighten out a UV island... some shorts I made. I could do this with the overly expensive one from RizomLabs but for the little bit I'm doing I can't justify the monthly cost so this SEEMED like a good idea. At first I didn't think the add on was functioning but when selected the waistband poly's and hit the RIP function the waistband lifted off of the rest with no issues but when I hit any of the straightening buttons... nothing happens. :-(
I did post over at the Blender forums at BlenderArtist.org but thought I'd ask here as well in case anyone can instruct me or give me some clues as to what I may need to do to make this work as expected.
Thanks so much
Richard
You've GOT to watch this video :) And get TexTools.
Laurie
OH MY.. thanks Laurie. Video was quite well done. Explained ALLOT!
Good to know, thanks, Snow.
Good catch. Really nice tutorial.
The UV squares addon seems to work i.e. will straighten out your selection - see images for a very quick example.
OK, Thanks so much!
I have a few more questions that I have not been able to find answers to so far - I don't think any of them are terribly difficult, so hopefully they won't trouble anyone.
1. I've given up on converters properly bringing Iray materials over to Blender, they're all insane and take ten times longer to even comprehend than to build a new one yourself. However, I'm not understanding why everyone puts Texture Coordinate and Mapping nodes at the beginning of the node tree. I'm able to get the same results with or without them, and unless you need your texture repositioned (which you would not when using figure or prop maps, etc), I don't quite know why either of these are necessary.
2. Why aren't people (or converters) using the Principled BSDF shader when building shaders for DAZ products? Is there an advantage to using separate Diffuse, Glossiness, SSS, and Transparency nodes instead of all the built-in ones in the Principled one? Again, I've been able to get what appear to be identical results using both methods so far.
3. Blender doesn't understand DAZ Studio's Smoothing modifiers to help clothing fit, so they're lost when a scene or figure is exported. Is there a way to bake these modifiers into the clothing so that the fixes are brought over to Blender intact?
4. Do rigged figures strain the system more than static objects? One DAZ-to-Blender plugin exports the whole scene as static OBJs and another loads native .duf content into Blender, setting up an armature for imported figures. If poseable figures do slow the system down more, could someone point out if there's a way to "flatten" a figure into a less-demanding static mesh inside Blender?
Thanks in advance for any help as always.
If you get the results you want without them, then don't use them. They give you options, and allow you to be specific instead of accepting a default that you may not know. I don't believe they are expensive computationally.
I think some 'converters' just haven't caught up yet, the Principled BSDF is fairly new. Some don't like the way it does SSS or the way it calculates Fresnel and want more control over these things.
I don't think there is a way to bake them, I'd like to know if there is. For clothing, you can use the Blender cloth sim with collision objects.
Posing a rigged figure can get laggy if you have a very high density mesh/high level of subsurf on. I would turn subsurf down or off when posing. I don't think there is any difference once it is posed (unless you have an insane number of bones). If you delete the armature(s), you will have a static mesh. You could alternatively delete the armature modifier from the mesh, or apply it: either way the mesh is 'static' afterwards. (Interesting new feature 'pose tool' being developed in the sculpt mode branch which promise to allow you to pose a mesh without it having bones - https://blender.community/c/graphicall/dcbbbc/)
The only way to get this out of DS is with a "baked" format like obj/mdd or alembic . You lose your rigging for whatever you're baking.
But if your imported character or collider object isn't also baked by DS - there are going to be some differences . You'd have to bake everything to match. eg. DS's application of subd or HD - is going to be different than blender's subd or lack of HD . It's going to matter more with tight fitting conforming clothing, than say, loose fitting
Or "recreate" the effect of collision deformer in blender or whatever other program
Thanks for the info Andya. The thing I don't get about the material conversions is that they just don't seem to make a lot of logical sense to me. I know very little about making complex nodes at the moment, but just plugging the textures into their correct slots on the Principled BSDF shader gives better results than the ones the converter makes.
pdro, I'll have to check but I think that the smoothing modifiers are baked in when using teleBlender (because it does convert them all to OBJ), if that's the case, that will probably be the way I'll go. Do you know if there's anything in Studio that is NOT baked in when exporting as an OBJ?
Couldn't you export the smoothed object as an OBJ and use it as a shape key? Save the smoothed object in A-Pose for the Basis and then in the posed state?
Everything is applied correctly with OBJ; it's basically the finalized version of the mesh .
I think DAZ should put some time into a bridge for blender, as they are never going to update hexagon, why not put some weight behind some free software that will always be updated win win !
The Blender preset in the Daz Studio OBJ exporter is broken, and has been for some time - since DS4.8 at least. Daz clearly don't think that's important enough to fix, so what chance an entire bridge to Blender?
Agree that they often don't make sense to me, which is why I presume the authors just haven't got around to updating the code to use the Principled BSDF. The 'Import Daz' plugin does create node setups using it, or it does by default for me. They still need tweaking because often don't use all the available maps, but I would adjust them anyway.