yuyu.atem said:

Ok, thank you very much! So, to be sure to understand well, you recommand a DS plane imported to Blender and re-imported again to DS after creating the Blender material, is it that? Not to use the "same" DS plane to test the maps, but the re-imported one? Or maybe directly a Blender plane imported to DS?

By the way, is there a number of polygons suitable for the plane?  Would an important number of polygons improve the quality of the final shader?

You create a plane in DS, export to OBJ and import it to Blender. After creating the procedural shader and baking the texture map, you just need to assign the texture map to the plane surface in DS... no need to re-import OBJ file.

As for the number of divisions / polycounts, it's not a big deal, more number won't improve quality of shader result as well as texture map if you make tileable ones. If you make a draping plane in DS, more number of divisions will just bring you good draping result with dForce. I made it with 80 division in this test case.

I attached DS scene file, Blender file as well as the baked normal map in a ZIP file, you may check and test. - https://mega.nz/file/ef4GGTgT#OOXS5uVTvpomR_8SesNsVPuwp2icl-Ksbr7uKx4VDsU

fearthefailure said:

I feel like my question is best suited for this pre-existing thread.  If not, I'll make the correction.

Is there a way to create a custom shader from scratch without using other apps?  If so, how is it done?  I need instructions from square one.  To be clear, I'm not trying to layer any existing shaders or materials, but create an entirely new one down to what primitive to use [if applicable].  If there's no way to do this without another app, I use Blender.  However, I've never needed to use the Bridge feature, so I have no idea how to do it.  I also use GIMP, Inkscape, and Krita because I can't afford Photoshop.  I believe those don't have Bridges, so I would need an effective workaround.

I somewhat made my own way to create and apply tattoos in Inkscape, apply them in GIMP, but it's definitely rough.  They come across as really extreme quality body paint rather than tattoos.  I could finetune the art for that.  I imagine I could do it somewhat like I did with the tattoos, but I haven't been successful with actually adding the pattern to an unchanged material because I can't find one in DAZ.  There may be clothing items, but it stretches that material over the object.

While I'm at it, has anyone figured out how to center a tattoo over the spine with Bridging into another 3D modeling app?  Or would I need to Bridge the character, place the tattoo, then import to DAZ some way?  I'm wondering how people creating tattoo content are able to center them over the spine for customers.

If you mean a "custom shader" rather than a "Shader Preset", Shader Mixer is the tool that you need. If you want to make a shader preset, Blender is surely a good tool, for free, with its procedural shader nodes. But for complex patterns, I'm afraid you need to create or find materials separately.

I'm a Ps user but also use GIMP, Krita + AI plugin from time to time, a nice combo to me. And you don't have to use any bridge, manual export / import will be fine enough.

As for placing a tattoo over the figure's back / spine, etc. Blender can quickly make it work with Texture Paint. I recommend a free add-on: ucupaint - https://github.com/ucupumar/ucupaint/releases. With this add-on, you can easily create layers and paint the tattoo image or texture across the seams. Then bake the tattoo texture map for being used in DS with LIE. A simple example is shown as below screenshot.

Not sure what Catmaster tried to say but from my experience the best way is to use several addons.

Diffeomorphic from Daz to Blender to get the geograft correctly merged then blender to Unreal (you can even import directly the FBX).

For the rextures use the oficial daz to unreal bridge and them assign the textures to the copy from blender. Ohh and you still need to merge the textures from the genitals in a single map before that.

Searching for a way to import CC4/Iclone 8 animations into Daz...

These Iclone animations cost me an arm and a leg, and I prefer to do my animation rendering in Daz.

Thank you very much for the advice, but unfortunately it didn’t work.
What should I do, how can I fix my teeth and eyes?
I can’t continue working with morphs until I solve this problem.
Here I will attach screenshots of my morph import settings.

crosswind said:

As G9's Eyes and Mouth are separate attachements, you need to re-rig the eyes and mouth with G9's Dev Tool for the imported morph.

Select the morph property, then click Adjust Eye Rigging. It'll re-rig Eyes and Mouth. Then ERC Freeze the morph property and save morph asset.

Thanks a lot! but it didn’t help, nothing changed (it’s a disaster.

Just in case, I'll attach a screenshot of my import morph dialog.
Maybe there are some other recommendations. Model gen9 dev version.

Yes, that's right. I did exactly the same way as Richard mentioned in the previous post with that dark metallic raspberry shader... made a plane drape on a sphere with dForce. You just simply export the objects to OBJ and import it into Blender, don't go for UV Unwrap of course.

And Ryan's channel is great as lilweep posted. I've shared it with you in another thread of How to create a pattern.... You just follow the above tutorial to make the tex. maps tileable. Pretty simple.

fearthefailure said:

I feel like my question is best suited for this pre-existing thread.  If not, I'll make the correction.

Is there a way to create a custom shader from scratch without using other apps?  If so, how is it done?  I need instructions from square one.  To be clear, I'm not trying to layer any existing shaders or materials, but create an entirely new one down to what primitive to use [if applicable].  If there's no way to do this without another app, I use Blender.  However, I've never needed to use the Bridge feature, so I have no idea how to do it.  I also use GIMP, Inkscape, and Krita because I can't afford Photoshop.  I believe those don't have Bridges, so I would need an effective workaround.

I somewhat made my own way to create and apply tattoos in Inkscape, apply them in GIMP, but it's definitely rough.  They come across as really extreme quality body paint rather than tattoos.  I could finetune the art for that.  I imagine I could do it somewhat like I did with the tattoos, but I haven't been successful with actually adding the pattern to an unchanged material because I can't find one in DAZ.  There may be clothing items, but it stretches that material over the object.

While I'm at it, has anyone figured out how to center a tattoo over the spine with Bridging into another 3D modeling app?  Or would I need to Bridge the character, place the tattoo, then import to DAZ some way?  I'm wondering how people creating tattoo content are able to center them over the spine for customers.

I feel like my question is best suited for this pre-existing thread.  If not, I'll make the correction.

Is there a way to create a custom shader from scratch without using other apps?  If so, how is it done?  I need instructions from square one.  To be clear, I'm not trying to layer any existing shaders or materials, but create an entirely new one down to what primitive to use [if applicable].  If there's no way to do this without another app, I use Blender.  However, I've never needed to use the Bridge feature, so I have no idea how to do it.  I also use GIMP, Inkscape, and Krita because I can't afford Photoshop.  I believe those don't have Bridges, so I would need an effective workaround.

I somewhat made my own way to create and apply tattoos in Inkscape, apply them in GIMP, but it's definitely rough.  They come across as really extreme quality body paint rather than tattoos.  I could finetune the art for that.  I imagine I could do it somewhat like I did with the tattoos, but I haven't been successful with actually adding the pattern to an unchanged material because I can't find one in DAZ.  There may be clothing items, but it stretches that material over the object.

While I'm at it, has anyone figured out how to center a tattoo over the spine with Bridging into another 3D modeling app?  Or would I need to Bridge the character, place the tattoo, then import to DAZ some way?  I'm wondering how people creating tattoo content are able to center them over the spine for customers.

My friend ~ 1st, pls re-unwrap the cloth, as per screenshot 1. Then bake and save a 4096x Normal map, as per screenshot 2. Export cloth to OBJ and import it into DS. Assign the Normal map and tweak the properties on its surface. You'll get the correct result, as per screenshot 3. Check screenshot 4 and 5 to get UV layout in DS.

If you need blend and DUF files, pls PM me.

Philippi_Child said:

Welcome! I used poser versions 2-11 I was one of those diehard poser users that once said they'd have pry poser from my dead cold fingers. I completely snubbed DS because I thought that the renders looked plastic. At that time DS only used the delight render engine But once that Iray came out with DS and I tried it I was hooked and have never looked back. 
 

I only use Poser to covert things from 3ds to .obj format.

DS does have .3ds import, it's provided as part of the FBX Importer.

so I feel you on Poser.

As a user, you have no way to create a morph with HD mesh...

Another simple way could be ~ You just export the partial geometry of G8M's head + neck, with High Resolution of course, then sculpt it in ZB. Import to DS as an OBJ, then rig it to G8M with Transfer Utility. In this way, you'll have HD mesh of head + beard and even able to pose it, dial other body morph on G8M, or add materials, etc.  Create a Selection Set for Head + Neck beforehand, then you can easily hide them or use Auto-Hide with the rigged one to hide G8M's Head + Neck.

I roughly did one with sculpting in Blender as the attached ss.

mding said:

I didn't recreate the smart content. I just continued to use it via the content library, like 3rd party content. Now I reinstalled DAZ and still can't access the files via categories, so i will download all again and use "content wizard" and "smart collections" if neccessary.

Thankyou @Richard Haseltine and @crosswind!

Oh, no..... Before categorizing, you have to have the metadata of that product first of all, e.g. install the product via DIM or Content Wizard...otherwise the categorized product will not separately show in Smart Content... Instead, it's in the "product" - LOCAL USER.

You may go to Content Library - Products - L - LOCAL USER... the categorized item(s) must be there.

PS: If you still have the cms database (e.g. ContentCluster folder, and not damaged of course...) on your old PC, you can copy the folder to your new PC...accordingly.

wolf359 said:

If you can save the HEAT animation as animated pose file (.Duf)  it would seem that the "import action"  feature of Diffeo would work.

mding said:

@crosswind:

I tried what you suggested, but unfortunately they don't show no matter where. I think I will delete the old library and reinstall everything. But i am glad to hear from you that normally, at least, every file no matter if smart or not, can be categorized.

@memcneil70:

That sounds as if the database has still not been fully developed. That is very sad for us users. I just recently bought a new tutorial about categorizing everything and it seemed to be so easy, this really is a bit disappointing.

I wonder how you recreated your Smart Content in cms database with your new PC... by re-importing metadata or re-installating the products?

It looks like Mixamo is splitting your character by groups when it exports. The object isn't actually separate meshes in DAZ Studio; parts of it are just assigned to different named groups, and Mixamo is separating them into mesh islands.

I'm sure someone much more familiar with Mixamo than I am will come along soon with more detailed advice, but the first thing I would suggest you try is scrutinizing your Mixamo import and export settings to see if there's some sort of "split by mesh groups" setting that you've missed, and turning that off if you spot one.

Blender being Blender, the quickest and dirtiest solution would be to just throw a weld modifier on this character and fiddle with the distance dial, if necessary.

Richard Haseltine said:

The id of the file itsdelf is OK - it isn't a call, and again I think this is because (with systematic naming of files) it is simpler, and more reliable, to do a search and replace in an exisiting preset than to manually apply the settings and then save a new preset.

Alright, I'll leave them be.  Thanks for the assist!  I had to totally break her installation to fix her, but, I learned in the process, so it was worth it.  I was just about to give up on it too... after I had replaced all the escape characters in every file in her character directory and reimported metadata there was initially no change, Daz kept wanting the file to be in /textures instead of /runtime.  Sooooo I opted to trial by fire and removed every single // from every single file in her directory (over 56,000 references lmao).  I fully expected that to break her install but it didn't, and Daz still wanted her texture to be in /textures even after all that.  Soooo, I browsed the shop for a bit because I needed to think... low and behold, I ran a full search on her files, and realized I'd missed a single file that was outside of her character directory.  It was only one level up, which made it really easy to miss when you're simply browsing paths and ensuring all the files line up to the same path.  After nuking the remaining three or four escape characters in that file, Daz stopped asking for the texture.  Woooo!  But I broke her eyelashes in the meantime by removing some double slashes from one of her morphs.  lol.  At least I can address this issue if it ever crops up again. :)

Now... to sleep.. before I pass out on my keyboard.  Thank you again, hope you have a great weekend!

robymeola said:

Hello.

I followed your instructions but when i do so, all the images in the smart content disappear. 

I can see clearly that the paths are correct. I did not change the path of MY Library folder, though. Even when i install something new with the DIM, i can see that the file is in the new drive, but the image is not appearing in the content manager. Any thoughts?

Have you done database maintenance since moving your directory?  I did the same thing when I moved mine and it caused a few issues.  As long as you set all the paths in DIM and Daz Studio, everything will work, but DIM will not be able to uninstall anything you had installed when it was on your C: drive because DIM reads the product's Manifest file to determine whether a file is located on your drive or not.  If you go into DIM and find any product that was installed before you moved it, and click the Show Files button, it'll say they're all missing. 

The easiest way to deal with that is to just uninstall everything, and reinstall it all.  DIM can't actually uninstall it because it thinks the files are somewhere else, and when you reinstall it'll just overwrite what is already there.  To clarify this a little more since it sounds a bit dumb, lol, when you install a product with DIM it also installs a Manifest file at the same time that contains the name and location of every file in the product.  When you update your installation path in the advanced settings of DIM, DIM does not correct this information inside the Manifest files.... soooo, all the manifest files say all of your products are still installed in their original location.

If that's not an option, you have to manually edit the Manifest files with something like Notepad++ to update the install locations.  Depending on how many files you had installed, this could take a very long time... Someone else lurking about the forum may know some Daz voodoo magic that might fix it differently, but that's just how I did it.

But, your Smart Content icons should return if you do reimport your metadata by clicking the hamburger looking icon near the Smart Content window pane at the top, and then go to Database Maintenance, and go through the re-import process.

EDIT:

Oh and reading over those steps above, there's one that was missed.  You have to go to the Content Library section of Daz Studio and also add the new folders under the DAZ Studio Formats folder.  Right click it, and choose Add a Base Directory.  The Content Library path and the one you set in Preferences (and the one you set in DIM), are three separate things.  I don't know why Daz doesn't add it automatically when you add it in Preferences, but.... it doesn't.  Content Library is your Smart Content but in a directory style format with much smaller icons, there's a window pane for it in Daz if you're uncertain where to find it or closed it out in favor of using Smart Content all the time.  Window Panes are in the menubar at the top, Window -> Panes -> Content Library (if you closed it out)...

Gordig said:

Ivy said:

SimonJM said:

SimonJM said:

Has anyone actually managed to get this to work? I have installed it via DIM and all the bits seem to be there, but I just get a HEAT Bridge is not connected message witha suggestion to download it - which I have.

I have a suspicion I know what  the issue is, the bridge does not seem to work under Windows 7. 

you have to have a unreal account that it connects to  https://docs.heat.tech/getting-started-the-heat-marketplace/quick-start

That only seems to be true IF you're using it with Unreal. I installed the Daz/Blender/Unity bridge, and was never asked for an Unreal account. I haven't yet figured out how to actually import animations to a Genesis figure in DS, but as far as I can tell there's no actual requirement to have an Unreal account.

I also saw this in the FAQ, which is potentially of interest, even if it's a little unclear what it actually means.

Yesterday I read this, https://heat.tech/terms and wondered if #8B referred to what we upload as users or what exists in their Database from officcial Creators?

Richard Haseltine said:

Metadata is not related to loading issues - those are down to issues in the .dsf or .duf files themselves. In this case, given the symptoms, I think the path in the .duf is probably //Runtime/Textures/SASE/Karma/SASEKarmaEyesB_1007.jpg and the double / at the beginning is causing the first name to be skipped - in fact this issue is known to affect the eye 7 materials from this vendor, as they used an existing file (with the issue) as a template for future sets rather than saving a fresh preset each time. DS used not to care, but changes to enable it to handle more characters in paths introduced this behaviour of treating two /s as an escape. You can manually edit the .duf files for eye 7 to remove the double characters, but I would check for updats first and report the issue to support if there is no update.

I thought one time I tried to open one of those and found it was compiled (or encrypted), so I hadn't tried to open another one since... hmm.  Maybe that was a *.dsa extension.  I don't remember now.

Anyway, you're the man, thank you.

Search "SASEKarmaEyesB_1007.jpg" (133 hits in 11 files of 100 searched) [Normal]

As you said, just about every hit is a path with 23 lines out of the 133 contain double slashes.  Tedious, but easy enough to fix.  Much appreciated. :)

All the Eye Colour*.duf, and the Karma All Maps.duf

Curiously, while I was looking for the *1007.jpg, I found some other attributes I think are also probably incorrect.

Should the id attribute of asset_info in the .duf files always reference the absolute path of it's container?  Example should "karma all maps.duf" be:

		"id" : "/People/Genesis%208%20Female/Characters/Karma/Materials/Karma%20All%20Maps.duf",

Because many of them are pointing to a file and folder that doesn't exist at:

		"id" : "/People/Genesis%208%20Female/CharactersRainey/Rainey%20Lashes%20Apply.duf",

Since I'm poking around in here I might as well fix it if it's supposed to be named after itself.  Karma All Maps.duf is okay, but without even looking I spotted five or six in the character's root directory that point at the Rainy character.