TheMysteryIsThePoint said:

But that's the thing: The mathematics of an armature is not difficult at all. It's just a DAG where each edge is a matrix multiplication. I started this task naively thinking it would take a few days, tops. DAZ made it difficult by not documenting adequately critical information needed to make it work. One day I just noticed that a bone's rotation seemed to always be off by what appeared to be about the same as its orientation, thought "Could it be?", and when I created the proxy armature like I described,

BAM! every pose started coming out perfectly. I mean perfectly. The way I thought it should and would, about 4 years ago.

And that is why I keep saying that we don't need more features. We need more documentation, and the features will come. I don't know why DAZ can't seem to appreciate how many people are trying to help make DS better and that they should make the barrier to entry as low as possible.

My issue with the math was the order of matrix multiplications and the generally terrible FBX file format even with (or especially with) the Autodesk SDK.  I used a library called Assimp in the end, which presents kind-of a single interface to a bunch of different 3d file formats.  At the time my own engine was OpenGL 4 (this was before Vulkan, DX12, etc.).  There's a lot of boiler plate needed to get to animation "hello world" unfortunately and I have a day job, so gave up.

But anyway, I've tried Diffeo (different versions) and I can categorically say animations don't come in correctly at all.  It's possible I'm doing something wrong when baking in Blender of course.  Unless I have to switch something somewhere before I bake to get the IK converted to FK properly.  When I click on each FK shape, I can see a key on every frame after baking however, so I think I baked it OK.  It plays back in Blender fine too.  It's just the feet slide in Daz and the hip is consistently wrong, so the entire animation is wrong.

I don't understand what content producers are doing to create quality animations and sell them in the store.  That's why I assumed there was some secret incantation.  Then I saw Daz's own Cascadeur tutorial video on YouTube.  I followed the instructions exactly except I just did a 3 key animation moving the hip up and down.  Same problem on import.  Feet sliding and hip in wrong place. 

At least it's consistent!

WendyLuvsCatz said:

Pickle Renderer said:

TheMysteryIsThePoint said:

Ha ha, don't worry. Help is on the way.

But I understand that Diffeomorphic can already do this. Have you tried it?

Wait, did I misunderstand what you're actually doing?  Is it two-way transfer, or just putting Daz data into Blender?   I'm hoping it goes both ways, and that you've learned the required black magic to retarget to a Daz rig (I won't ask what the magic spell was - I once read a blog on all the transforms involved in a standard FBX rig and I lost the will to live by the third paragraph).

Here's a list of what I've tried:

• FBX
• BVH
• BVH (Sagan's conversion)
• Diffeomorphic (Save As Preset)
• RigDNS
• Cascadeur

Literally nothing works.  It's all broken.  Well, either that or I'm so dumb I made the same mistake on all of the dozens of attempts and combinations I've tried.  Going the other way, out to Maya, Blender, Unreal Engine, etc.  no problem.

 

if you are prepared to use conversion methods in DAZ studio (and put up with foot sliding) Genesis 1 was the last figure to work with BVH import 

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/250726/so-if-an-animation-is-saved-using-genesis-it-works-on-genesis-3/p1

rather than derail TMITP's thread (unless it's about adding BVH to THE LORD of the Plugins) how to do it as is best discussed in that thread 

Hi Wendy,

Derail anytime :) Your input is always appreciated.

If I'm thinking about not using Alembic, I'm waaaay past not using BVH :) Knowing now what I do about how DAZ rigs work, I can assure you nothing that I develop is going to ever use BVH again.

No, you did not misunderstand. It is two-way. But I was under the impression that one could import via Diffeomorphic, and save it as a preset. People say that it works.

The difference with LotP is that it's literally you press a button to export a character mesh and armature from DS to Blender, and you run a single script to export the entire animation back to DS. I'm not going to say that no black magic was involved... it was a case of trying a million different things until everything worked. What worked was a combination of

1) Using Quaternions everywhere, no Euler Angles anywhere

2) Correctly accounting for DAZ bone orientation, which is aligned with the first axis of the bone's rotation order vs Blender's orientation, which is always aligned with +Y

3) And this one is the one that makes me angry everytime I think about it: If you set a bone's local rotation with Euler Angles, it is from the bone's oriented rest position, i.e. the bone's orientation is offset from that axis. But if you set the bone's local rotation with Quaternions, it is from the axis without applying the orientation. So the fix was to create a "proxy" armature that is constrained to follow the figure's armature, but its rest position is unoriented. It looks wierd, but the quaternions that get baked and sent back to DS are the unoriented ones, because only Quaternions are guaranteed to work correctly, even at extreme rotations. Well, as <> pointed out, that's not even true, as I never did figure out why I hade to negate the w component of all the quaternions.

So no, you're not crazy... you probably just never dreamed that DAZ would do something like have the same setLocalRot() function behave fundamentally differently based on the way the same !@#$ rotation is expressed, and not document it. I don't remember, but the "documentation" for both probably says "setLocalRot() - Set the bone's local rotation" Gee, thanks. For nothing.

Pickle Renderer said:

TheMysteryIsThePoint said:

Ha ha, don't worry. Help is on the way.

But I understand that Diffeomorphic can already do this. Have you tried it?

Wait, did I misunderstand what you're actually doing?  Is it two-way transfer, or just putting Daz data into Blender?   I'm hoping it goes both ways, and that you've learned the required black magic to retarget to a Daz rig (I won't ask what the magic spell was - I once read a blog on all the transforms involved in a standard FBX rig and I lost the will to live by the third paragraph).

Here's a list of what I've tried:

• FBX
• BVH
• BVH (Sagan's conversion)
• Diffeomorphic (Save As Preset)
• RigDNS
• Cascadeur

Literally nothing works.  It's all broken.  Well, either that or I'm so dumb I made the same mistake on all of the dozens of attempts and combinations I've tried.  Going the other way, out to Maya, Blender, Unreal Engine, etc.  no problem.

 

if you are prepared to use conversion methods in DAZ studio (and put up with foot sliding) Genesis 1 was the last figure to work with BVH import 

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/250726/so-if-an-animation-is-saved-using-genesis-it-works-on-genesis-3/p1

rather than derail TMITP's thread (unless it's about adding BVH to THE LORD of the Plugins) how to do it as is best discussed in that thread 

I added metadata to all my Generation 4 and 3 era items. When I went to convert it went better because they were identified. But it is a challenge to 'find' the products if you were not used to the Poser file system. 

This is the link to the Commercial thread where most of the initial problems were reported and answered. And where suggestions were incorporated.

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/304091/released-rssy-clothing-converter-from-victoria-4-to-genesis-8-female-commercial/p1

Heve you read the included manual?

http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/read_me/index/58887/start
"Items without metadata can be converted but will not show up in Smart Content. They may also need to be converted using a Force Convert Item(s) button."

Product https://www.daz3d.com/tactical-pants-for-genesis-3-male-s

I don't have them.

You can't increase mesh density used for dForce. Increasing subD will make the mesh smoother, but it is still the base mesh that is used for dForce (you can do collision detection on subD mesh).

You could take it into a modeller and increase mesh resolution there, and import back. In Daz Studio it would be considered a new item, so you would have to transfer rigging and materials.

I am a bit surprised though, that it should be necessary. My prime concern would be that the pants fell apart, due to missing seams.

Can you describe what happens (or a picture) when you simulate?

Padone said:

To import animations back in daz the best option should be the simple rig since it uses exactly the daz bones with no changes whatsoever. Then comes mhx with some minor changes, then rigify with some more changes. For original animation in blender mhx is better because jcms are more faithful to daz, but most figures work fine enough with rigify too.

As for performances you have to pay attention what you import from daz. Especially HD figures or 8K textures or heavy hair meshes can be the culprit. Remember that daz figures in general are not optimized for animation, so not everything in the daz shop makes sense in blender.

Padone I've tried that before and it doesn't import the animation back in correctly.  I had a similar problem with Cascadeur last night and every tool I've tried, some I paid for (a mistake I guess) do not work properly either.  Foot sliding, hip in wrong place, etc.  Given there's a key on every frame after baking, you really wonder what's going on there.

You don't miss anything it is all working fine. What daz calls "morphs" is not just shapekeys, but drivers for bones plus optionally shapekeys plus optionally drivers driving other drivers in a chain. This is correctly imported with blender drivers as far as possible.

If you import G1 G2 figures you will see shapekeys for expressions since G1 G2 use simple geometry morphs, this is not so in G3 G8 G9.

p.s. You can bake drivers to shapekeys with "convert morphs to shapekeys" in advanced setup > morphs.

To import animations back in daz the best option should be the simple rig since it uses exactly the daz bones with no changes whatsoever. Then comes mhx with some minor changes, then rigify with some more changes. For original animation in blender mhx is better because jcms are more faithful to daz, but most figures work fine enough with rigify too.

As for performances you have to pay attention what you import from daz. Especially HD figures or 8K textures or heavy hair meshes can be the culprit. Remember that daz figures in general are not optimized for animation, so not everything in the daz shop makes sense in blender.

I just followed the Daz tutorials on round-trip of animation through Cascadeur back to Daz.  I followed the tutorial really closely, especially when it came to checking properties on the FBX.    I'm told that Cascadeur doesn't represent twist bones on the export properly so it doesn't work correctly anyway.  My animation imported as shown, FBX below, Genesis 8 Male above.  FBX was imported to some negative Y position for some reason I don't understand but at least the anim plays correctly.  Exported as pose preset, applied it to the genesis 8 figure, his up and down motion completely wrong as feet not grounded and they're sliding.  Seems a simple thing but no, doesn't work.

So what did I read about people using this software for animation?  I don't see how you can do it.  btw this anim was just a basic 3 keys with a movement of the hip in the middle one.

Yea, I realised it was all the morphs causing the slowdown.

I'm so frustrated with all of this.  Think I've tried every tool out there (well, every tool I don't have to pay for) and I can't get a functioning round-trip anim back to Daz, and it seems I can't fully import a Daz character to Blender without it being really slow.  All I need to be able to do is import animation to Daz.  I tried Cascadeur this evening, going through the YouTube tutorial for Daz.  Translation issues on the imported animation, hip in wrong place, foot sliding, etc.  complete disaster.

Maybe my not understanding something important but I took a vanilla G8, removed eyebrows, nothing else there, exported via. diffeo (base, not HD).  Imported with Easy Import DAZ option, selected to include Expressions, Visemes, etc.  After import the only shape keys I have are the driven ones.  I don't see any expressions, visemes, or anything I can manipulate in the list.

Am I looking in the wrong place in Blender?  I feel there's something important I'm missing...

NGartplay said:

Hi Boojum, I always work Bryce to DS.  Richard said to try DS to Bryce but I have problems with that.  I end up using DS to make my figure then export it as a Bryce object.  I prefer Bryce to DS.

Did you install DS first or Bryce first?  I thought I heard that it makes a difference.

    Hi NGartplay.    I had Daz Studio installed, then I installed Bryce but the Bryce to Daz Studio didn't work.    I thin uninstalled Daz Studio, and reinstalled it.   Bryce to DAz Studio still didn't work.    After some earlier advice, I tried to open a character in Daz Studio and send it to Bryce.   That worked.   It seems the other direction is broken however.

     Once I got the character into Bryce, I saved it off as a Bryce file.   then I could create a new Bryce world and import the figure in using the merge option. 

does anyone have a 3D model of Raquel? I'd love to import the OBJ file and do something artsy with it. Dogwaffle now loads OBJ.

I met a classmate of Raquel once, and my parents lived in the house next to hers in La Jolla a few weeks after she had moved to Hollywood in 1956.

When using one of the sample scripts please make sure that you adhere to the CC 3.0 by attribution license.

If you are pasting use Edit>Paste>Paste Figure Pose; if you are using a script per node then you need to make sure what you are copying has has a relevant type - /modifier/pose - but I am not seeing how to retrieve that by script (it isn't in the DzPropertySettings for the property, although everything else from the Parameter Settings dialogue seems to be - maybe metadata instead).

CGI3DM said:

It is not recommended to create a morph and a pose at the same time. The best thing is to create the morph (save Assets), and then apply the pose and now create a controller.

This will apply the pose and morph.

Thanks much for answering!

So the answer to my question is "No", we cannot use a pose as input for a combined/spawned morph within Shape Splitter, without doubling the pose.

While making a new ERC controller to put the pose in is one good solution, in this case I would rather just export the figure with the pose applied and re-import it and re-rig it. I really do want the pose integrated with the morphs.

In my naivety I was playing with exporting animation from Blender to a text file (literally tail bone xyz and euler rotations), then running a Daz script to import them.  Then I thought god, it's is going to take days or weeks to work out who's oriented to what, in what vector basis, etc. and decided to give up.  I downloaded the Sagan bvh to convert Blender to Daz bvh.  I get an error popup saying  expected  CHANNELS 0 at line 5.  So I go and look at the .bvh in a text editor and ... there's a CHANNELS at line 5 (do I need to set a base directory for the convert tab?).

So far I've tried bvh, fbx, Rig-DNS (for Mixamo but should work with any Action I'd have thought), Sagan, Diffeomorphic Save Pose Preset and I don't know maybe some other things I can't remember.  I think through all this my conclusion was a plugin that gets animation from Rigify back into Daz, with feet that don't slide, hips in the right position, etc. would be able to make a bit of money. 

Dragovinian for Ravager Parasite for Genesis 8.1 Male - https://www.daz3d.com/dragovinian-for-ravager-parasite-for-genesis-81-male

Dragon Warrior Poses for the Dragovinian - https://www.daz3d.com/dragon-warrior-poses-for-the-dragovinian

Both of these had a few issues in Carrara

First of all it needs freebie Misty's preset - https://www.renderosity.com/freestuff/items/88523/carrara-presets-for-genesis-81

For the Dragovinian install when the data file is loaded it has the morph set at 1 when it should be 0, so the data file needs to be adjusted otherwise the Genesis 8.1 figure will load with Dragovinian fully on.    Edit - Joe has issued an update

Dragovinian for Ravager Parasite has Horns/Teeth and a Tail that need to be converted to blended weight in DAZ Studio.

When the material file DUF is used it will come up with a Warning notice and then figure not found, so you will need to save the DUF files as Material Presets in DAZ Studio.

Dragon Warrior Poses - when the poses are applied they come up with an error message, poses will need to be saved as Pose Presets in DAZ Studio

When the blended weight horns/teeth are applied to the default pose they look to be in the correct spot, after the figure has been posed the horns/teeth are skewif from the correct position. Will need to be rotated/moved to match the pose position. EDIT - When I applied the HD Morph to the figure I was getting the Horns/Teeth skewif when posed, found a fix, when you export the obj of the figure for the HD Morph include the Horns/Teeth, poses work if they are included in this step !!!

Dragovinian for Ravager Parasite - has detail subdivision in DAZ Studio set to 2, when opened in Carrara it defaults to one, losing some of the default detail. I used Philemos excellent HD Morph plugin to bring in Level 2 subdivision. Note don't use Level 4 as I got an obj file larger than 700MB which refused to import into Carrara on my computer.

Also when the HD Morph is applied to the figure and poses where applied some severe distortion was occurring to the figure.

Apply the HD Morph after you apply the Material and Horns/Teeth to the figure.

Philemos HD Morph plugin - https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/4532031/#Comment_4532031

I wrote a short python program to solve this problem:

import json
import re
import tkinter as tk
from tkinter import filedialog
import gzip

def getFileName( **kwargs ):
    '''
    #    parent - the window to place the dialog on top of
    #    title - the title of the window
    #    initialdir - the directory that the dialog starts in
    #    initialfile - the file selected upon opening of the dialog
    #    filetypes - a sequence of (label, pattern) tuples "typeName {extension ?extensions ...?}, '*' wildcard is allowed
    #    defaultextension - default extension to append to file (save dialogs)
    #    multiple - when true, selection of multiple items is allowed
    '''
    root = tk.Tk()
    root.withdraw()

    return filedialog.askopenfilename( **kwargs )

def removeTabsEtc( m ):
    # print( m )
    # return re.sub( r'[\r\n\t]*', '', m.group() )
    return m.group().replace( '\t', '').replace( '\r', '').replace( '\n', ' ')

def prettyPrint( dazObj ):
    # print(dazObj)
    x = json.dumps( dazObj, indent='\t', sort_keys=False )
    x = x.replace( '":', '" :')
    RE = re.compile( r'\[[a-zA-Z0-9,"\.\-\s\n\t\r]*?\]' ) # in almost everything included in [] (non-greedy) ...
    return re.sub( RE, removeTabsEtc, x ) # ... tabs and newlines will be removed
    # return x

def readDazZipFile( path ):
    print( "reading: " + path )
    
    try:
        dazr = gzip.open( path, "rb" ).read()
        return json.loads(dazr)
    except gzip.BadGzipFile:
        print( "this is not a zipped file - try to open directly" )
        try:
            dazr = open( path, "r" ).read()
            return json.loads(dazr)
        except:
            print( "can't open file - seems not to be a daz file")
            return None

def writeDazZipFile( dazObj, path ):
    print( "writing to zipfile: " + path )
    dazw = gzip.open( path, 'w')

    orderedObj = {}
    properties = [ "file_version", "asset_info", "geometry_library", "node_library", "uv_set_library", 
        "modifier_library", "image_library", "material_library", "scene" ]
    for p in properties:
        if p in dazObj:
            orderedObj[p] = dazObj[p]

    dazw.write( prettyPrint(orderedObj).encode('utf-8') )
    dazw.close()

path = getFileName( initialdir="S:/_DAZ_G3+8F/People/Genesis 8 Female/Hair/", filetypes=["DAZ-User-File {*.duf}"]  )
dazObj = readDazZipFile( path )

if "material_library" in dazObj:
    for mat in dazObj["material_library"]:
        if "extra" in mat:
            for obj in mat["extra"]:
                if obj["type"] == "studio_material_channels":
                    if "channels" in obj:
                        for ch in obj["channels"]:
                            if ch["channel"]["id"] == "Transmitted Color":
                                # obj["channels"].pop(ch) # seems not necessary
                                pass
if "scene" in dazObj:
    if "materials" in dazObj["scene"]:
        for mat in dazObj["scene"]["materials"]:
            if "extra" in mat:
                for obj in mat["extra"]:
                    if "type" in obj and obj["type"] == "studio_material_channels":
                        for ch in obj["channels"]:
                            if ch["channel"]["id"] == "Transmitted Color":
                                if "image_file" in ch["channel"]:
                                    ch["channel"]["image_file"] = None
                                # obj["channels"].pop(ch) # radical solution, seemingly not necessary

writeDazZipFile( dazObj, path.replace(".duf", "+.duf") ) 

Change the initialdir so that it points to your Daz Content where the OOT Hair .duf files are.

Then start the python program. Choose the original .duf file; this will be loaded and a file with a "+" in the filename will be written into the same location. This file will cause no crashes (I hope so)..