Export both base figures as OBJ, import to Blender, 'wrap' G8F to G8M, export the resulting G8F to OBJ and import to DS as a morph.

SofaCitizen said:

Yeah, as I don't use it I can't comment but I imagine that if you use ONLY Daz Central then you'll probably be ok - it's just the mix-and-match that gets things in a muddle. I started using DIM over Daz Central as I first installed Daz on my Mac and I read something about Daz Central not being as well supported on OSX (whether that was right or wrong I don't know for sure). Then when I moved to also using a Windows machine that install got itself into a bit of a mess due to Daz Central. This was probably all because I was doing something wrong but I now have a setup that seems to work so I don't want to change it incase I break it again.

You said you couldn't find the stuff that Daz Central installed - I assume you know that there are two tabs in Daz where you can look for these? Daz Central should add your installed content to both. The Content Library will give you more of a "Filesystem" view where you can find stuff based on where it's been installed, in addition to a Product view where you can find installed content alphabetically. There is also a Categories list which I haven't looked into directly but appears to just be another way to look at the Smart Content. In the Smart Content you can find stuff by the metadata categorisation. This has two tabs at the top for Files and Products which changes whether the items listed are the grouped Products that you have purchased or all the separate items (materials, props etc) that the products contain. A few things to note here is that some products do not have complete metadata and so will show up in the "Lost and found" section at the top, the search bar only seems to work with complete words (atleast for me it does) and so to find the 1920s items these would show up if you searched for "boudoir" but not if you searched for "bou". There is also the "Filter by Content" tick box that limits the items to only things that have been defined as compatible with the item you have selected in the scene.  So therefore if you cannot see something you can try unchecking the filter, clearing the searchbox and clicking "All Products" in the Smart Content tab and this should show everything.

I too have a long way to go but the more we practice the better we become and the software will become less daunting :)

The installer inside DS is DAZ Connect, not DAZ Central.

DAZ Central is the installer offered when one clicks at the "Download Studio" menu, and it is simplified version of DIM (DAZ Install Manager)

The problems with content are usually caused by logging in to DS and letting DAZ Connect within DS to install stuff, when the content has already been installed using DAZ Central, DIM or manual installation.

JenX said:

DoctorJellybean said:

JenX said:

AHA!! Found an error code log. I don't know what any of this means. If anyone has any idea, or what I did wrong, I just want to fix this :/ 
 

2022-07-26 15:36:59.732 [WARNING] :: ..\..\..\..\..\src\pluginsource\DzIrayRender\dzneuraymgr.cpp(1486): MDL Import Error (4006) : C120 could not find module '::daz_3d::basic' in module path
2022-07-26 15:36:59.732 [WARNING] :: ..\..\..\..\..\src\pluginsource\DzIrayRender\dzneuraymgr.cpp(367): Iray [ERROR] - MDLC:COMPILER ::   1.0   MDLC   comp error: C120 could not find module '::daz_3d::irayubermaterial' in module path

How did you install DAZ Studio, Install Manager or DazCentral? The 2 missing modules (basic.mdl & irayubermaterial.mdl) should be in C:\Program Files\DAZ 3D\DAZStudio4\shaders\iray\daz_3d. Can you verify that they exist?

I have 4.16 installed via the install manager (I kept it in case the version introducing Volumetrics didn't work and I still had something), but I installed 4.20 manually, and have updated it from within the program since. That file location doesn't exist on my PC. 

Having a mix of install emthods can itself cause problems.

Yeah, as I don't use it I can't comment but I imagine that if you use ONLY Daz Central then you'll probably be ok - it's just the mix-and-match that gets things in a muddle. I started using DIM over Daz Central as I first installed Daz on my Mac and I read something about Daz Central not being as well supported on OSX (whether that was right or wrong I don't know for sure). Then when I moved to also using a Windows machine that install got itself into a bit of a mess due to Daz Central. This was probably all because I was doing something wrong but I now have a setup that seems to work so I don't want to change it incase I break it again.

You said you couldn't find the stuff that Daz Central installed - I assume you know that there are two tabs in Daz where you can look for these? Daz Central should add your installed content to both. The Content Library will give you more of a "Filesystem" view where you can find stuff based on where it's been installed, in addition to a Product view where you can find installed content alphabetically. There is also a Categories list which I haven't looked into directly but appears to just be another way to look at the Smart Content. In the Smart Content you can find stuff by the metadata categorisation. This has two tabs at the top for Files and Products which changes whether the items listed are the grouped Products that you have purchased or all the separate items (materials, props etc) that the products contain. A few things to note here is that some products do not have complete metadata and so will show up in the "Lost and found" section at the top, the search bar only seems to work with complete words (atleast for me it does) and so to find the 1920s items these would show up if you searched for "boudoir" but not if you searched for "bou". There is also the "Filter by Content" tick box that limits the items to only things that have been defined as compatible with the item you have selected in the scene.  So therefore if you cannot see something you can try unchecking the filter, clearing the searchbox and clicking "All Products" in the Smart Content tab and this should show everything.

I too have a long way to go but the more we practice the better we become and the software will become less daunting :)

The reason I think just letting the end user link between models is better than trying to have it done in program is- well a couple fold. First off, while alphabatizing the material names isn't a bad idea itself, since ALL exports from DAZ don't use it, it makes things awkward when working with other formats. Next up, your exports of geometry, faces, UV coordinates, groups and everything else are spot on and don't even require a diffeomorphic version of the file to be in the scene. Myself I like to import diffeomorphic, attach the materials to planes or blanks and then link materials from them, deleting all of the diffeomorphic models to save space, but every change I make risks the material transfer being broken down.

If the original DAZ file is changed too much, it seems the Sagan program will eventually lose track of the materials, so the program, which is otherwise perfect, will shoot out a perfect model with weirdly placed materials- at which point the end-user has to start scrapping things or has to build each material tree themselves. I have asked and so far, there is no control to alphabetize materials in blender, otherwise I would just tell people to do that.

If anybody runs into this problem, Blender has a really annoying open bug:

https://developer.blender.org/T68058

where by default, it destroys the vertex order both during import AND export.  So you have to explicitly open a "Geometry" disclosure triangle and tell it to keep the vertex order during import, then check a checkbox to preserve it on export.  Otherwise, your morphs will be garbage.

Now that I've figured that out, I have a working approach.  Basically, I morph the undesirable bits into a tiny ball about a millimeter across and hide it inside one of the parts that I want to keep.

Morphs also don't work, or at least not when created with Blender.

• The Blender export gets the axes wrong.
• If you literally export a model and reimport it with Morph Loader Pro, unless you specify Daz as the scale in both directions, the size changes.
• When I collapse all of the meshes but one down into a single point inside the remaining mesh (by repeatedly scaling it down, then moving the result) and import it as a morph, the result looks like Picasso.  The part that isn't supposed to change collapses, the one from the other end moves into its place and ends up moved grossly distorted with extra material going in various directions, and the whole thing looks kind of like it melted.  It's really unpleasant.

I'm not sure if the vertex order is changing or what's happening, but the behavior I'm seeing isn't even remotely usable.  Maybe I'll see if FreeCAD can do a better job.

Also, I keep forgetting to choose the base mesh resolution, and it fails, which wasted a lot of time.  :-(

DoctorJellybean said:

JenX said:

AHA!! Found an error code log. I don't know what any of this means. If anyone has any idea, or what I did wrong, I just want to fix this :/ 
 

2022-07-26 15:36:59.732 [WARNING] :: ..\..\..\..\..\src\pluginsource\DzIrayRender\dzneuraymgr.cpp(1486): MDL Import Error (4006) : C120 could not find module '::daz_3d::basic' in module path
2022-07-26 15:36:59.732 [WARNING] :: ..\..\..\..\..\src\pluginsource\DzIrayRender\dzneuraymgr.cpp(367): Iray [ERROR] - MDLC:COMPILER ::   1.0   MDLC   comp error: C120 could not find module '::daz_3d::irayubermaterial' in module path

How did you install DAZ Studio, Install Manager or DazCentral? The 2 missing modules (basic.mdl & irayubermaterial.mdl) should be in C:\Program Files\DAZ 3D\DAZStudio4\shaders\iray\daz_3d. Can you verify that they exist?

I have 4.16 installed via the install manager (I kept it in case the version introducing Volumetrics didn't work and I still had something), but I installed 4.20 manually, and have updated it from within the program since. That file location doesn't exist on my PC. 

JenX said:

AHA!! Found an error code log. I don't know what any of this means. If anyone has any idea, or what I did wrong, I just want to fix this :/ 
 

2022-07-26 15:36:59.732 [WARNING] :: ..\..\..\..\..\src\pluginsource\DzIrayRender\dzneuraymgr.cpp(1486): MDL Import Error (4006) : C120 could not find module '::daz_3d::basic' in module path
2022-07-26 15:36:59.732 [WARNING] :: ..\..\..\..\..\src\pluginsource\DzIrayRender\dzneuraymgr.cpp(367): Iray [ERROR] - MDLC:COMPILER ::   1.0   MDLC   comp error: C120 could not find module '::daz_3d::irayubermaterial' in module path

How did you install DAZ Studio, Install Manager or DazCentral? The 2 missing modules (basic.mdl & irayubermaterial.mdl) should be in C:\Program Files\DAZ 3D\DAZStudio4\shaders\iray\daz_3d. Can you verify that they exist?

AHA!! Found an error code log. I don't know what any of this means. If anyone has any idea, or what I did wrong, I just want to fix this :/ 
 

2022-07-26 15:36:59.732 [WARNING] :: ..\..\..\..\..\src\pluginsource\DzIrayRender\dzneuraymgr.cpp(1486): MDL Import Error (4006) : C120 could not find module '::daz_3d::basic' in module path
2022-07-26 15:36:59.732 [WARNING] :: ..\..\..\..\..\src\pluginsource\DzIrayRender\dzneuraymgr.cpp(367): Iray [ERROR] - MDLC:COMPILER ::   1.0   MDLC   comp error: C120 could not find module '::daz_3d::irayubermaterial' in module path

Next I reverted to DS 4.15 General Release and tried the full set again. It failed again - similar log entry to the previous failure:

----------------------------------------------------------

2022-07-27 08:45:09.270 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER ::   1.0   IRAY   rend info : Initializing local rendering.
2022-07-27 08:45:09.299 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER ::   1.0   IRAY   rend info : Initializing OptiX for CUDA device 0
2022-07-27 08:45:09.757 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER ::   1.0   IRAY   rend info : Rendering with 1 device(s):
2022-07-27 08:45:09.757 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER ::   1.0   IRAY   rend info :     CUDA device 0 (NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090)
2022-07-27 08:45:09.759 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER ::   1.0   IRAY   rend info : Rendering...
2022-07-27 08:45:09.762 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER ::   1.7   IRAY   rend progr: CUDA device 0 (NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090): Processing scene...
2022-07-27 08:45:15.647 Iray [VERBOSE] - IRAY:RENDER ::   1.10  IRAY   rend stat : Geometry memory consumption: 21.185 GiB (device 0), 0.000 B (host)
2022-07-27 08:45:15.649 WARNING: ..\..\..\..\..\src\pluginsource\DzIrayRender\dzneuraymgr.cpp(359): Iray [ERROR] - IRAY:RENDER ::   1.10  IRAY   rend error: Sum of number of triangles/primitives (551950688) over first 1 build inputs out of 1 build inputs exceeds device context property OPTIX_DEVICE_PROPERTY_LIMIT_MAX_PRIMITIVES_PER_GAS (536870912).
2022-07-27 08:45:15.657 WARNING: ..\..\..\..\..\src\pluginsource\DzIrayRender\dzneuraymgr.cpp(359): Iray [ERROR] - IRAY:RENDER ::   1.10  IRAY   rend error: optixAccelComputeMemoryUsage(context,&opt,input,1,&output.sizes) failed: Invalid value
2022-07-27 08:45:15.658 WARNING: ..\..\..\..\..\src\pluginsource\DzIrayRender\dzneuraymgr.cpp(359): Iray [ERROR] - IRAY:RENDER ::   1.7   IRAY   rend error: CUDA device 0 (NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090): Scene setup failed
2022-07-27 08:45:15.660 WARNING: ..\..\..\..\..\src\pluginsource\DzIrayRender\dzneuraymgr.cpp(359): Iray [ERROR] - IRAY:RENDER ::   1.7   IRAY   rend error: CUDA device 0 (NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090): Device failed while rendering

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I tried again with the Public Build and the Full set and started deleting parts of the set to try to find the culprit. I deleted the group of objects containing all the street lamps but it still failed. I checked the loh and noticed this which does not look right to me:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2022-07-27 08:52:16.930 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER ::   1.0   IRAY   rend info : Geometry import (1 triangle object with 552 M triangles, 0 fiber objects with 0 fibers (0 segments), 1 triangle instance yielding 552 M triangles, 0 fiber instances yielding 0 segments) took 29.781 s

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Does that mean one object with 552 million triangles? Surely not?

weirdsciencex said:

Daz Studio: 4.20.0.17

Blender: 3.2.1

Daz Studio Plugin: 2022.1 revision 15.38

Blender Plugin: 2022.1.15.38

When trying to import a pose, tried with CD Dakota 8.1 and Base Genesis 8 female I get a traceback error

---

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\wsx2k\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\3.2\scripts\addons\DTB\DtbOperators.py", line 415, in execute
    pose.pose_copy(durPath)
  File "C:\Users\wsx2k\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\3.2\scripts\addons\DTB\Poses.py", line 347, in pose_copy
    transform = sep[3].split(":?")[1]
IndexError: list index out of range

If you are trying to import a user-made pose, then this currently is not working.  A temporary workaround is to export user-made pose as a single frame animation.

arstropica said:

Not sure if this has already been addressed in a previous post, but is there a way to completely remove products installed through CW? 

I've tried copying the zip file to the DIM directory and install/uninstall from there, but the files and metadata are unaffected.

Thanks

No, there is not.  You need to uninstall the product (using DS Smart Content) and then delete files (which can be tricky and very manual unfortunately)

Not sure if this has already been addressed in a previous post, but is there a way to completely remove products installed through CW? 

I've tried copying the zip file to the DIM directory and install/uninstall from there, but the files and metadata are unaffected.

Thanks.

thanks.. looks like an even more streamlined version than the ones I found. 
---
Yes, of course I should seriously learn the scripting language .. but my bucket list is filled for  the next 20 years anyway ... and I only have 19 if I make it to 95 like my Ma. 
I still remember enough generalized programing to change targets etc within a script. 
---
OTOH.. I build a lot of buildings startting with a wall object with window knockouts
I wonder if I could script a function that would locate the holes in the mesh, import one of my window units, fit it in and go on and look for the next. .. NEVER MIND that way lies maddness and I skirt that too often anyway. 

Diffeomorphic can import both the HDRI environment and the backdrop. You have to set "world = always" in the global settings to get both. Be sure that in daz studio you have these working and setup properly. If you're using other methods for the environment as custom shaders then diffeomorphic doesn't support them.

Torkuda said:

So... working with the program for a bit and I have continuous problems getting the model to receive materials properly- but more to the point, why can't I just manually link the materials in Blender myself? I've tried several times and a few different ways but the materials don't seem to go to the proper parts of the mesh. Seems just having the program allow that would be an interesting solution to all the material issues. Then you wouldn't need to attach the materials at all and just let the user do that with Blender's interface. Material linking isn't hard once you know how.

@Torkuda

The best way is to select "Use Diffeo Materials", import via Diffeo first to get the materials, and then import the Alembic to have the excellent Diffeo materials automatically applied. There's no need to manually link anything. Unless there's been a change in Diffeo, causing the slot names to no longer match between Diffeo and Sagan...

But what you are describing sounds like bad UVs, which I have not seen. Do you mean they are totally messed up, or do you mean that they just look out of order for the reasons you correctly identified. It's hard to tell without an example.

On that, say you export a diffeo of a clothed Genesis 8 female into blender.

Now export the same figure as an obj with the following selections: write faces, write separate objects and write surfaces.

On import, the obj will be able to recieve a material link from the diffeo objects without issue, regardless of any changes made to the diffeo materials, long as none of them were deleted or renamed. 

Is there a way to have an alembic export able to do the same thing- maybe with similar settings somehow?

I know it's not a one button solution and puts some of the burden on the end user rather than the program doing everything but- it seems that's how blender tends to work.

The trouble with linking seems to be that Alembic alphabatizes the materials on a mesh, thus they get jumbled when linked to a mesh that doesn't have them alphabatized- so how does one aphabatize the materials on a mesh in blender? (Or better yet, does alembic really need to do that in the first place?)

I was frustrated enough to try hitting the "forbidden button" since losing all my data wouldn't make things worse.

This worked, but I am not sure what damage it may have done.

1. Open Database Management in the Smart Content pane.

2. Select Reset Database. Warning message will come up about User Data. I selected No here because I have no customized User Data, that I know of, and was worried the bad icons might come over with the User Data.

3. When done, Smart Content will be completely empty. Go back into database management and pick Re-Import Metadata.

The one warning is it might be a good idea to check Re-Import Metadata before performing the Reset Database. If there is no Metadata to reimport, you will lose all of your Smart Content entries (presumably). I can't fathom a situation where the Metadata queue would be empty, other than intentionally deleting it outside of DS.

Results, the same view from my first post. Sun-Sky looks like it is missing its icon naturally, since that's one of them items that is installed.

We have noticed since the new version of Twinmotion that importing models in *.obj format works without problems, also the hierarchy levels are displayed, but if you put a texture on it, the whole model is assigned this texture.