Hello

 

Is their a process to import charecters from blender to daz? And how would you uplaod the charecter as a morph into daz? Any advice would help.

When I import characters with clothes and choose JCMs in the easy import tab, the import seems to get stuck forever. I tested importing the character without JCMs easy import, then load the JCMs onto the character and transfer those shapekeys to the clothes separately and it works fine and quite quickly. I think something goes wrong in the easy import section? I'd say it's smarter to do it manually to only apply specific JCMs to clothes depending on where they're located but I wanted to point that out.

If I understood you correctly you have a mesh exported from DAZ Studio, imported to ZBrush, subdivided it, and you want to import the subdivided mesh back to Studio for rendering and are looking for a way to quickly slap on the materials?

My knowledge of ZBrush is limited but I would assume that Zbrush does not allow you to assign materials based on UV shells, but keeps the UV data of each mesh you import there intact ... since it's a sculpting app and not a 3D modelling or texturing app. What you can do is: You can import your subdivided mesh in Zbrush as obj which keeps the multi tile UV set intact. You can load the obj in a 3D modelling app of your choice, anything that can handle UV shells should suffice. You assign a material to every UV shell or group of UV shells as needed (ideally same as Studio does with G8, although you will notice eyemoisture and Cornea share the same UV shell) and export the obj. If you re-import to Studio, the assigned materials should be imported into Studio as individual material zones.

I know you asked whether you can bake a new texture from Zbrush but I think you will need DAZ textures as a source, right? I'm not sure whether this is practical when you want to texture your subdivided mesh for rendering purposes in Studio. Therefore wouldn't it be easier for you to stick with the original UV layout and use the original maps and shaders? I assume you only subdivided the mesh and did not add additional vertices or change the UV layout.

SnowSultan said:

I have some questions about using Zbrush with DAZ Studio, and since we still do not have a Zbrush forum, I figured I'd try and ask them all in one shot and hope someone more familiar with the workflow might be able to make suggestions. Thank you in advance for any help.

TEXTURES: In order to retain a DAZ texture on a mesh that's edited in Zbrush, would the following work?: 
- Export from Studio using GoZ, subdivide to 12 million or so polygons in Zbrush, load the texture in Zbrush, then bake to Polypaint. When editing is complete, bake the Polypaint back to a texture before reducing the mesh's resolution. I know this will not create a texture that will work with other DAZ figures, but is it a workaround to retaining an existing texture on an edited Zbrush mesh?

Which figure? It would work (though you need to reverse the V coordinates to use maps in ZBrush compared to other applications - there is a button for this) with flat mapped items, but soemthing with stacked or UDIMed UVs you would want the original groups and GoZ from DS loses all grouping. Export to OBJ, then on import to ZBrush use the Mats as Groups option to get the model split into its original surface groups. You then need to hide all but one group before baking to or from PolyPaint.

CONFORMING: If clothing or other conforming items are made in Zbrush based on an imported DAZ figure, can the item be rigged and fitted properly (or made into a dForce item) *completely* within DAZ Studio? From what I understand, it can, but I have never done it myself.

Yes, if it's a morphed figure then you would need to set the Source Shape to match and enable Reverse Source From Target in the Transfer Utility.

DETAILS: Similar to the texture question above, if a DAZ figure is sent to Zbrush via GoZ and its resolution drastically increased, can *sculpted* skin detail be baked into a normal map that will be compatible with similar figures back in DAZ Studio? I know normals can be baked from geometry, but I don't remember at which point in the editing process do the UVs become incompatible.

Yes, just set the divisions back to 0 and bake to normals/displacement. The comments about flipping the V and hiding groups apply here too.

ADDONS: If you want to create high-resolution but small edits to a figure, such as adding spikes or bones protruding from the skin, webbed hands, or such, can they be created on a high-res mesh and then be saved as detailed IMMs that can at least be fairly seamlessly added onto other figures brought into Zbrush? Is this done by masking the area containing what you want saved as the IMM or can it be created as a separate subtool from the figure?

Not a feature I have used (pooor ZBrush is in the neglected applications corner, along with too many others). I'm not sure how well Zbrush would work for creating GeoGrafts.

 

Thanks again for any confirmation or corrections.

If you want to reuse the cat mesh you have 2 option: geograft or convert the face cat into a weareable mask. I suggest the second solution: take your cat head, close mesh holes, import in DAZ and parent to Head joint

Sven Dullah said:

Don't know if this helps (Mac user). This is what I get when I load M4:

With M4 root figure selected:

That's PowerLoader - there should be a package for the main figure, which installs the base cionfiguration, plus an extra for each ExP set, which adds the metadata so you get thumbnails and can select individual morphs.

Having a 'ton' of hairs installed, has no effect on loading times. DS does not care(*) about whatever you have installed, only what you are loading into the scene.

(*)Exception being, if you are logging into DS and/or allowing DS to log in to DAZ servers automatically with your credentials, in which case 'updating' the metadata for your installed products may take quite awhile.

I don't think you need to rig the character from scratch. What you can do is transfer an existing skeleton in Maya. This should be covered in your rigging exercises, as this was the first thing I learned when I started learning rigging. If you use Daz to Maya to start out you should already have a working skeleton. You can always adjust the joints as you need with an existing skeleton definition and it's way easier than starting from scratch.

Yes, I totally agree with you, animation is easier in Mata, also with more options, but that's not surprising given this is Maya's main purpose. The moment I decided to learn Maya I never looked back and never do anything else in Studio except assets over or setup stuff. So therefore unfortunately I have no knowledge about how to bring back animations back to Daz but Wendy's guess looks spot on to me.

The setup of clothes or props should be relatively easy, most of these assets use bump map and/or normal maps. In animation sometimes you ca get away without these maps of the prop is far away because you won't see them anyway. I think the major challenge are characters, especially Gen 8 characters, because some Iray maps are incompatible with Arnold and still relevant for non close-ups, like the specular map. Also, Arnold is seemingly built better for displacement maps because normal maps can cause some weird bugs but displacement maps are heavy for animation rendering.

What you can also try if the shader is the problem or just you tiresome to tweak - you can import the clothes character and export the animation sequence in alembic. If you keep the standard materials during conversion these should be properly translated into material zones in Studio, and you can assign the shaders like you do normally to characters in Daz Studio.

felis said:

Essentially you can't import anything to Daz Studio and keep rigging and textures.

What you can do is creating morphs to the item inside Daz Studio.

Aw bummer, is there a way to fuze pixels together on a model? (in daz)*

Essentially you can't import anything to Daz Studio and keep rigging and textures.

What you can do is creating morphs to the item inside Daz Studio.

st3ph3nstrang3 said:

Splatterbaby said:

Hey st3ph3nstrang3. Was wondering if there is a tutorial on this method from start to end. I can import my character but the clothes and hair dont come through. Only one way works . Import morphed characters one. All the other buttons or import ways dont work. So I can get the character in. Its low res. I can get the modifier working but I dont see details. I guess I need to import all the morphs etc. Still alot to discover with this way but I can see the potential:) Thanks again.

Unfortunately I have yet to see a tutorial using the Daz > Diffeomorphic > Unreal workflow. It's something I had to work out myself, but I had a natural transition from using Daz to using Blender and then deciding to experiment in real-time, so I was familiar with all the software used. There are tutorials on just Diffeomorphic though, this one is good. Diffeomorphic should send over any clothing that is attached to your character just fine. What you should have is:

-A Daz studio scene file with the character and clothing

-A .dbz file exported along with the scene file (this is used by Diffeomorphic)

It sounds like you may not have remembered to create the .dbz file, which must be done any time you want to import something into Diffeomorphic. This is just a script you run inside Daz that will create it for you. I went ahead and put the script on my toolbar, so it's right next to the rotate/translate tools on the toolbar in Daz for easy access.

If you aren't getting good results with your HD morphs with a single subdivision, consider subdividing again or even a third time. This will of course make your character ridiculously high-poly and not really suitable for real-time, but if you were doing cinematics or something like that it would be fine.

Hair works a little bit differently. You can import it the standard way, as you would clothing, but Unreal has a groom feature for hair that is quite nice and looks far superior to importing traditional mesh hair. You can find more info about that (and tutorials) here: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/489721/tutorial-daz-hair-to-unreal-grooming-system-via-blender-pit-stop

 

 Ill test this out. Really appreciate your help and input. Hair im pretty waxed at. I use the blender hair plugin. Yes definately groom all the way. The power of putting it through blender is that I can repose and resculpt anything. Its like a non distructive workflow which is a MASSIVE win. Ill get this right as its definately the way forward with using unreal or rendering in Blender. Thanks again. Massive thanks and love for your help and response buddy.

I want to import a figure from daz, bring it to blender, fix up a few things with the mesh then import it back and hopefully everything still functions as it did before (rigging, texture, ect).

I want to fuze two different meshes together, basically.

I know it sounds silly, essentially posting a google search in the forum here but I wasnt confident in the searches I found for what i am looking for.

Im not familiar with blender at all. I used 3ds max back in college but lost my copy since.

Or if anyone has a suggestion for anything else to use I am all ears and happy to hear them.

Thanks!

 

Thank you all for the comments

adbc - Wow..That is a very nice futuristic landscape. Love the terrain and the city.

---

Proudly presenting the very first- (I think) fully integrated Unreal Engine 5/Bryce hybrid render.

Unreal Engine (UE for short) has an option (it has 1000nds of options but that is neither here nor there) to import hightmaps.

What if I could import hightmaps from Bryce? Well, as it happens, that is very simple. The "ultra fine" terrains translate 1 on 1 to UE.

Ah well, I now had a Bryce-made terrain in UE but tthat doesn't give me a Bryce render and so this doesn't qualify as post-able in this forum, right?

Right! Hmmm..

First, I changed the terrain material in UE, found myself a nice spot on the terrain with a good view, added some houses and liberally sprinkled trees, flowers and grass all over the place.

This gave me something like this:

Nice indeed, but still not qualified for posting in here. Hmm...

I made a screenshot from within UE of this scene and started up Bryce.

Then, I Spuddyfied this scene onto a terrain and added some birds and a different sky.

As they say in Greece "Et voila!" a full Bryce render as a hybrid of Unreal engine 5 and Bryce:

It even picks up the typical Bryce lighting from the sky, which is nice ofcourse and it gives me the opportunity to make more lifelike landscape renders in Bryce with help from Unreal engine.

Now all I need is to import the Erasmus into UE and away we go.

I hope you all like this.

 

Splatterbaby said:

Hey st3ph3nstrang3. Was wondering if there is a tutorial on this method from start to end. I can import my character but the clothes and hair dont come through. Only one way works . Import morphed characters one. All the other buttons or import ways dont work. So I can get the character in. Its low res. I can get the modifier working but I dont see details. I guess I need to import all the morphs etc. Still alot to discover with this way but I can see the potential:) Thanks again.

Unfortunately I have yet to see a tutorial using the Daz > Diffeomorphic > Unreal workflow. It's something I had to work out myself, but I had a natural transition from using Daz to using Blender and then deciding to experiment in real-time, so I was familiar with all the software used. There are tutorials on just Diffeomorphic though, this one is good. Diffeomorphic should send over any clothing that is attached to your character just fine. What you should have is:

-A Daz studio scene file with the character and clothing

-A .dbz file exported along with the scene file (this is used by Diffeomorphic)

It sounds like you may not have remembered to create the .dbz file, which must be done any time you want to import something into Diffeomorphic. This is just a script you run inside Daz that will create it for you. I went ahead and put the script on my toolbar, so it's right next to the rotate/translate tools on the toolbar in Daz for easy access.

If you aren't getting good results with your HD morphs with a single subdivision, consider subdividing again or even a third time. This will of course make your character ridiculously high-poly and not really suitable for real-time, but if you were doing cinematics or something like that it would be fine.

Hair works a little bit differently. You can import it the standard way, as you would clothing, but Unreal has a groom feature for hair that is quite nice and looks far superior to importing traditional mesh hair. You can find more info about that (and tutorials) here: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/489721/tutorial-daz-hair-to-unreal-grooming-system-via-blender-pit-stop

there are plenty of programs that convert stl to obj.

otherwise if you do a dressed A pose scan

with Genesis 8 base male scale and rotate the bones to fit your obj then select the bowtie shaped joint editor tool and rightclick edit bake rotations then use the transfer utilty.

unparent it and delete the G8M

Then load another G8m and pose and scale etc the rigged one to fit that one and under edit rigging convert the rigged scan to a prop

then use the transfer tool on that one.

again unparent it and delete the base male again

then under edit figure morphloader pro import the original back to it as a morph

under edit rigging adjust rigging to shape 

in parameters edit mode with morphloader morph selected run erc freeze

save it as a support asset figure 

it won't be a G8M but it will take its poses

Also, is still the script by @jag11 the only way to activate the "iray visible to primary rays" property ? I tried the official "create advanced iray node properties" in the beta but it doesn't work, only creates the "enable iray matte" property. Plus the script by jag11 only works for emissive surfaces so I would prefer a way to do it myself.

I remember there were instructions to do this without the script, probably by jag11 as well, but can't find them.

 

p.s. I'm working to support both the ghost light "bug" and the new 4.20 iray properties into diffeomorphic for import in blender.

Hey st3ph3nstrang3. Was wondering if there is a tutorial on this method from start to end. I can import my character but the clothes and hair dont come through. Only one way works . Import morphed characters one. All the other buttons or import ways dont work. So I can get the character in. Its low res. I can get the modifier working but I dont see details. I guess I need to import all the morphs etc. Still alot to discover with this way but I can see the potential:) Thanks again.

That's because iray doesn't support material layers, so in daz studio the geometry shells are used instead. That's also why diffeo doesn't import the shell geometry in blender and uses a material layer instead. As for merging the uv maps you can do it in diffeo but will not be compatible with the fbx by daz. Again you can export the fbx from blender though so I don't see what's your problem here.

pipeline: daz > blender+diffeo > fbx > C4D

Then as a personal advice you may leave C4D and go for blender since exporting to fbx you lose a lot over the native diffeo figures. That is, thanks to diffeo blender is the best platform now to import daz assets.

Here in Montreal, we have a scanning service to make figurines of ourselves called Doob ( a variation of the word double in french )

https://www.3ddoob.com/en-ca/

So im thinking of getting one ( about 149 bucks i think ) 

so can i ask for the scan file after and convert it to a DUF to import it into Daz ? 

I would have to go down to my briefs right ? if i do that, i'll feel like Jeff Goldblum in the fly stepping in his machine. LOL

Thanks.

 

So the issue I am having currently is i am trying to get Mixamo Animations to work on a G8F and then Export into Blender. I can get the animations to work in Daz Studio but cannot seem to set the export up right on daz's side, or the import Fbx on blender's side. Are there any stepps i can take or a starting point to reference for this? 

I have tried all sorts of combinations and have gotten nowhere has anyone else tried this and succeeded?