FSMCDesigns said:

Almost any renderer with import functions will work, but the majority of them will have you exporting your scene from DS as another format such as .OBJ so they can import it and read it. In most cases you will also have to reapply any textures and tweak the surface settings to work in that renderer.

here are some to try if interested. Vray and Maxwell are freakin awesome, but pricey.

List of unbiased renderers

• Arion
• Arnold[2]
• Cycles
• Indigo Renderer
• Kerkythea (Hybrid)
• LuxRender
• Mantra
• Maxwell Render
• mental ray (optional)
• Octane Render (GPU)
• VRay (optional)

None of these are, except for Octane and Lux, available from within DAZ and in my eyes, then they are irrelevant. Having to export and re-tex or even redo materials and stuff then I'd say they're not supported in any way, as you said yourself.

hfilb said:

I haven't used Sagan in many many months now, but I decided to pop in and am happy to see at all the progress you've made on this. I used to use it to import into Houdini and it worked perfectly for my needs. I remember you mentioned somewhere in this thread that you also used Houdini for some things. Have you ever seen this DaztoHoudini bridge ( https://github.com/SideswipeeZ/Daz2HouNeo )? Perhaps it can help with your own development needs, whatever they may be. I'll be trying it soon once I get into the swing of things again.

@hfilb No, in truth I hadn't seen that! There are so many Daz-To-Houdini projects that get announced, the author gives progress saying "I'm almost done", and then that's the last you hear of it, or the author gives bizarre reasons for not finishing it. I will certainly check it out; thank you!

I haven't used Sagan in many many months now, but I decided to pop in and am happy to see at all the progress you've made on this. I used to use it to import into Houdini and it worked perfectly for my needs. I remember you mentioned somewhere in this thread that you also used Houdini for some things. Have you ever seen this DaztoHoudini bridge ( https://github.com/SideswipeeZ/Daz2HouNeo )? Perhaps it can help with your own development needs, whatever they may be. I'll be trying it soon once I get into the swing of things again.

Not sure if anyone's here to see these reports anymore,  but on the off-chance someone is or yet another new team comes in...

"Import Failed"   on almost every model once again, with Morphs not loading in.   Cinema 4D R23,  D|S  4.21.

DazToC4D: Python Version is 3.7.7 final
DazToC4D: ERROR: Unable to load redshift module.  Redshift conversions will not work: No module named 'redshift'
DaztoC4D: Redshift not installed can not convert.
DazToC4D: has successfully loaded, version v2022.2.12.24.
DaztoC4D: Intermediate folder location is "C:/Users/User/Documents/DAZ 3D/Bridges/Daz To Cinema 4D/Exports".
Import FBX from : C:\Users\User\Documents\DAZ 3D\Bridges\Daz To Cinema 4D\Exports\FIG\FIG0
Import Failed
>>>

Halcon Bluesky said:

@Catherine3678ab, I went to the TurboSquid site you did mention (to get there, use uncle Google and presto) 

I found some items of intest, those that visit the place must try to sort by lowest price this will show the free items first and then comes the priced up.

Most of them are in FBX, OBJ  and another file format, there is no mention of Daz format.

If one has Blender and Blender files are offered, those are usable [at least in Blender].

However for D/S - go with the .obj files. Import them into D/S {may have to experiment a bit to get the size right} so that they are the correct size on import, texture how you please and then save out a prop file. {if using your own textures, have them first in the Runtime > textures > your subfolders before applying}

FBX files are hit and miss in D/S - can try them if obj is not available.

I assume those items have the breasts far away from the figure. The current templates works best with tight fitting clothing.

You will get better results with that kind of outfit if you use the dev tools and the steps in the video in the beginning of this thread. Basically you'll set the G8 female shape as the base shape, autofit the clothing to that, dial in the G9 base shape and use smoothing to get rid of any of the problem areas. Export the result and and then import those objs and use the templates on them. That will give you the best results by far.

Moved to Technical Help as it is not a Daz Studio issue.

This is an issue with the metadata that the store supplies - you ca, unless you turned tool tips off, see the values it is giving if you hover the mouse pointer over a product.

Greetings,

I am trying to make a basic animation to import into UE5.1 for an idle animation. The issue I am having is that all of the changes are SHAPE changes, not morph changes. So the FBX export doesn't 'see' those changes and incorporate them into the FBX animation.

My thought is that If I turned these shape changes into a morph, I could export that and use UE5.1's Animation/Sequencer to create the animation right in UE5...

Is there a Tutorial someplace that explains how to do that? I am not looking at changing anything else within the model, just these basic shapes (Revolves around breathing, so Chest depth, ribcage size and etcetera.)

Any help on this would be great.

Thanks,

V

@artisanhaven00 As for the hair material you can import as bsdf or principled then ajust the specularity as you wish of course, I don't see what's the problem with that. As for loading a pose I can confirm the issue and it's reported to Thomas.

https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/issues/1286/

Gordig said:

Oso3D said:

And if anything Genesis 9 makes it easier to do details because the Base Resolution has twice the polygons. I find it easier to define the face with that extra detail without needing HD.

This is what really baffles me about the whole conversation: the people complaining about how G9 "requires" HD also don't have the ability to import HD morphs, and they don't seem to consider that a more dense mesh gives them more polygons to work with in base resolution.

My understanding is that, because of how the mesh grid is laid out, even double density doesn't give the sculptor enough polygons to work with in certain areas where it matters.

Anyway, re the main question here, obviously it's possible to create great G9 characters. just look at V9 or Joe's Toon Heroes.

Oso3D said:

And if anything Genesis 9 makes it easier to do details because the Base Resolution has twice the polygons. I find it easier to define the face with that extra detail without needing HD.

This is what really baffles me about the whole conversation: the people complaining about how G9 "requires" HD also don't have the ability to import HD morphs, and they don't seem to consider that a more dense mesh gives them more polygons to work with in base resolution.

WendyLuvsCatz said:

yes installing D|S sets up content manager and the metadata, you only need open D|S once 

Wow.  That's a first for me.  But many thanks.

I think these are all the steps now start to finish for creating a custom "couture" fit.  There are extra steps from creating the pattern for the G9 Base Mesh. I'll update if I think of anything else. *Asterisk indicates any figure you want to create custom fit for.  Avatar and Garment geometries absolutely must stay the same throughout.  Simulate and drape before each MD export.

yes installing D|S sets up content manager and the metadata, you only need open D|S once 

WendyLuvsCatz said:

glad it works and understand the hesitancy as even with DAZ studio metadata not everything does

Thanks.  Yes, I've only tried a handful of DSON products in DS over the last several months, one did not work. This is the first time I've tried DSON import to Carrara in a very long time, having given up long ago.  I dunno why I tried it, but I'm glad I did.

I don't remember the last time a Poser format product did not work in Carrara, and I've use hundreds, maybe thousands.

BTW, I said above that you (or somebody) suggested that to get a DSON file to import to Carrara, I needed DS "loaded".  I meant to say "installed".  When the file worked in Carara, DS was not running, but was installed, which was not the case in my earlier DSON import attempts that failed in Carrara.  (I'm saying DSON, but I'm not sure the difference between that and DUF).

Hi DaremoK & Mystery,

Thank you both for your comments. I'll definitely look into those things you mentioned.

Yes, I fully agree on how fickle Blender can be on those sim settings, and how insanely advanced a subject like Cloth Sims is for someone like me. That was why I had originally planned on just doing all those morphs first.

But there was something in all those tutorials that I watched which just made me want to give it a try, and the surprise I got from my initial results through following their advice instantly hooked me into fully pursuing it. I saw that I wasn't the first to pursue the idea of doing bat/dragon wings (seems to almost be like a Holy Grail pursuit for some of us ), both with just webbings between the fingers along with a sleeve around the elbow joint (that was an idea I had started out with, too), and other people who had chosen to use entirely enveloping meshes. I did discount the idea of just using webbing for the main sail, as my goal was to get the elbow to slide up and down within a sleeve just like real bat wings do. Several of my initial efforts did involve the stitching function, but I soon found that they didn't hold up very well once the bones begin to move, so I had given up on that idea and opted instead for a fully solid, enveloping, but closer-fitting, mesh, with just the fingertips poking through openings specially made for them. Many of the efforts by others posted on Blender discussion boards had left several clues for me to consider, try out, and got me much closer to what I needed than I could ever have imagined on my own.

Of course, most all the advancements and setbacks I had were due to the Cloth settings—as well as a handful of adjustments that needed to be made to the membrane mesh (poke-throughs, where the membrane was far too close to the wing bones, were a major cause of detonations, it seems). Rereading many of those lessons learned from other people helped me find what was going wrong there. Fortunately, I am quite aware of the need for frequent saves--right now, I have something like 80 files (most @ 390MB, with several at 780MB & 1+GB--and my Hard Drive will thank me for when I get around to cleaning up some of this!) saved from when I started playing with this on Nov 18!

And yes, I did remember to use the Hook function, as nearly all the tutorials I saw had made quite a lot of noise about them. The Hook in Blender is clearly similar to the Pin function that exists in DAZ Studio's Cloth Simulator, and I knew Blender had to have something like that, although it did take me quite a while before I could locate any tutorials on how to make Hook Objects follow the Armature/Bone movements of the wing fingers—which was the critical factor I needed to know how to do before ever seriously thinking about trying to make this work. I already knew DS had such an ability to have Pins follow figure bones, but it is way too early to think about trying to import this crap into DS because of the trouble I have in getting figures to rig in it.

However, I was evidently still doing something wrong with how I was doing the anchoring in Blender, as you can see from those screen shots in my last post. There are portions of the cloth still attached to the ends of the fingers, even as the rest of the skin was being shredded into confetti. LOL! Fortunately, after a bit more fiddling with pinning the Hooks over the last few tries, I finally succeeded with my first Cloth Sim the day after my last post! Whoot! :D

I can hardly believe it had only been a couple weeks since I started playing with Cloth Sims! TBH, I really still have NO idea of what I did to finally make it work--other than just paying lots of attention to those tutorials and advice from far more experienced folks, like you guys! Thank you so very much!!

There were clearly multiple issued I had to T/S, and I suspect the final problem was due to my pinning the cloth anchors only with the edge vertices of the mesh to the fingers rather than anchoring several faces around the finger joints, as I had evidently done along the body segments, where the results were far better right from the start. I had tried doing that much earlier in my efforts, but I did so by anchoring the mesh along ALL the finger bones rather than just to the end bones--evidently I mistakenly took it to extremes in both directions before eventually finding that happy middle ground.

And I'm still seeing quite a bit of glitchiness creep into the membrane mesh, especially as the dragon begins drawing the wings back in. But I made sure to save all the custom changes I had made to the Cloth Sim settings (in TWO .blend copies of the final work, AND in a handy Word Document, no less!) Right now, I think my mesh just needs a bit more refinement at this point.

So, while I needed a few days to render the images for showing off my acomplishment, I'm planning to give it another go, hopefully with a better mesh, and I'm definitely going to apply what I learned to this new one, and we'll see. Also, I'll look into the things you guys mentioned, as they'll probably help speed up the processing times--although exploding meshes very early in the sims before baking had generally told me I was on a wrong track, so I didn't waste too much time trying to take every single simulation to its conclusion.

In the meantime, I needed to take a few days to respond to your comments. I created some renders in DAZ from this first successful effort and have posted the results in the Gallery here and on my DevianArt account. And yes, I know Blender can do the same level of, if not superior, renders over DAZ (I've seen Sintel), but I'm far more experienced in DAZ and I've got zip in the way of making anything look decent in Blender--although I want to eventually learn how to do that, too. Here is a beauty shot of the dragon from my Gallery page:

And the animated .gif file I made from the Baking is posted at my DeviantArt account, with a far less taxing texture used.

(BTW, the issue with the dragon's hands poking through the floor in the .gif animation are entirely due to the way the dragon was created in Blender and imported into DAZ--there's really not a good floor-level default pose for the figure--and at the time, I was more concerned about getting the Cloth Sim to work with the wing bones than worrying about the rest of the dragon.... oops!  Just so you know, for my future work, I've added a floor plane in the .blend file to give me a reference surface--I promise I'll do better with the next results! )

Cheers,

Ryuu

glad it works and understand the hesitancy as even with DAZ studio metadata not everything does

Yeah same question as OP. Just need a method to make the hairs a bit more shiny/glossy. Anyone got any good custom shader setups for that or any advice?  I really don't wanna use particle hair even tho there is an exceptional hair converter by Cinus, cause with the standard imported hair I can just use the bones to move parts or import custom morphs for shaping/adjusting much easier than having to comb or rig particle hair. 

Also side question, any particlar reason when importing a pose into blender using the daz library why does the character have to move back to world orgin with the newly imported pose? Is there a way to stop that or is that just how it has to work?

Daywalker Designs said:

I'd love to see a way to tell Microsoft "Hey, if these settings are turned off, leave them off when you install the update; I don't want them on at all."

Yes, then how would they spy on you? After using the program and exporting the settings, import your settings after the dreaded updates. Then, tell me why they want this.

^Vanity folders are now required by Daz (putting 2 of my products in a different folder from their related products). It's not always something PAs have control over.

The metadata is all done by Daz. No PA input here.