marth_e said:

Krys Kryngle said:

I have a tutorial on youtube that goes over using Xin's add-on (Export DAZ to Blender using Diffeomorphic - Part 3 of 3). 

One thing I've discovered and hopefully I can save you some time and frustration is that adding a lot of HD Shapekeys in Blender will slow Blender to a crawl and make it almost unusable.  I imported all the normal shape keys along with some extra div-2 shape keys while my character had 2 subdivisions (264,000 verts I think).  It might work if you only import a limited number of shape keys, but I stopped using it and stay at base resolution because of the performance issue.  Of course I could have been doing something wrong that made it perform so poorly but I did try it multiple times with the same result. 

Thanks for the videotutorials, Krys. I've found them very informative and useful. Are you planning to do more tutorials?
Thanks a lot,

Martha

So glad you could find some useful information in them.  I thought about doing some shorter 2 minute vids, maybe after I learn rigging and animation...

Krys Kryngle said:

I have a tutorial on youtube that goes over using Xin's add-on (Export DAZ to Blender using Diffeomorphic - Part 3 of 3). 

One thing I've discovered and hopefully I can save you some time and frustration is that adding a lot of HD Shapekeys in Blender will slow Blender to a crawl and make it almost unusable.  I imported all the normal shape keys along with some extra div-2 shape keys while my character had 2 subdivisions (264,000 verts I think).  It might work if you only import a limited number of shape keys, but I stopped using it and stay at base resolution because of the performance issue.  Of course I could have been doing something wrong that made it perform so poorly but I did try it multiple times with the same result. 

Thanks for the videotutorials, Krys. I've found them very informative and useful. Are you planning to do more tutorials?
Thanks a lot,

Martha

Krys Kryngle said:

I've spent many hours experimenting with different approaches.  Here is what I've discovered so hopefully it can save others some time.

To preserve DAZ HD details (sub 4/5 details found in the HD Add-Ons), we have 2 approaches.  

    1) Import DAZ character into Blender using Diffeomorphic and MultiRes
    2) Bake out the HD details to displacement/normal maps.

 

Bake Displacement Maps for HD details-

Bake using Blender - I've tried (using bake from multires), but always get seams between the uv layers on the final render.  I've searched for a solution but have not found one yet.  Blender is planning on improving their baking process so maybe this will be fixed in future versions.

o go for wrinkles in the face and other places on the character, although I have not gotten that far yet.  I'm thinking we can generate wrinkle maps in Zbrush and use drivers in Blender to activate those maps.

Well, in fact, I found a solution for the seams issue.  The Bake Wrangler addon works well for this, because it allows you to set a margin for the displacement maps.  I tried it, and set a 16 pixel margin, and there are no seams on my figure.  I even viewed the displacement maps by connecting a material output node to the displacement setup - there are no seams.  The addon is worth it, and is quite flexible.   It's also node based, which is interesting.

https://blendermarket.com/products/bake-wrangler

Krys Kryngle said:

I've spent many hours experimenting with different approaches.  Here is what I've discovered so hopefully it can save others some time.

To preserve DAZ HD details (sub 4/5 details found in the HD Add-Ons), we have 2 approaches.  

    1) Import DAZ character into Blender using Diffeomorphic and MultiRes
    2) Bake out the HD details to displacement/normal maps.

MultiRes-
Pros - Easy and quick, preserves all the details up to Sub 4.  DAZ has some HD details in sub 5 which should be baked out to normal or bump maps so sub 4 is sufficient.  We can keep the character at 0 subdivision levels in the viewport so we can pose/animate without Blender lagging too badly.  We can also sculpt in various levels of MultiRes to modify our characters (but we lose detail, see below).
Cons - Difficult to change HD details.  If we need to smooth out some issues when posing, the fine HD details get lost.  For example, if our character had a bend at the elbow or knee which requires some sculpting, using the smooth brush destroys the fine HD details.  We could bake out the fine details to normal/bump maps, but at that point why bother with multires?  Another example is using geografts.  They often need some smoothing and adjustment, which destroys the HD details.  Also, we can only import the HD details that already exist.  If we add additional HD details or change something, we have to repeat that change on every import. Our edits are not saved.  There is a 'Sculpt Layers' add-on that may fix some/all of these issues but I have not tried it yet.

Bake Displacement Maps for HD details-

Bake using Blender - I've tried (using bake from multires), but always get seams between the uv layers on the final render.  I've searched for a solution but have not found one yet.  Blender is planning on improving their baking process so maybe this will be fixed in future versions.

Bake using Xin's addon - Works, but the HD details did not seem to be very strong.  I could not get the level of detail I was hoping for.  Also, there is no way to adjust any details such as smoothing a wrinkle or bump, adding a crease, etc.  What you get from DAZ is what you get.

Bake using external program - Best so far, and what I currently use, except I had to buy Zbrush.  There may be other programs that are equally good at baking displacement maps, but Zbrush just works.  Export OBJ from DAZ (or maybe even use the GoZ link) and bake.  Flipped Normals has a tutorial on youtube which goes over the settings and process.  After getting the model in ZBrush, we can adjust any HD details we want with some additional sculpting.  Then we have displacement and normal maps that we can use on multiple characters.  Back in Blender we can sculpt and fine tune our characters all day without worring about losing any HD detail.  I also think this is the way to go for wrinkles in the face and other places on the character, although I have not gotten that far yet.  I'm thinking we can generate wrinkle maps in Zbrush and use drivers in Blender to activate those maps.

Krys, 

I'm sure you've already seen the works of Chris Jones at BA. He's working with wrinkle maps and drivers.

It seems he will release some updates 'very very' soon.

https://youtu.be/gh6WbaYzwFc

Using a Geoshell to make custom clothes, even a tight body suit, is not the best idea.

A solution could be to :

- 3D model your suit on Genesis 8 base default shape (even using the geoshell, why not).

- Import a Genesis 8 with bigger breast in your modeling software and adjust a copy of your finished cloth onto that version of Genesis 8.

- Unwrap the copy of the cloth once adjusted to Genesis with bigger breast. This way UVs will be perfect for huge breast without stretching.

- Copy UVs from that unwrapped version onto the original modeled onto Genesis 8 defaut.

- Bring that into DAZ.

You won't get stretching for the specific body shape you're interested in. But you will get some "pinching" issues if you ever use that cloth on a girl with smaller boobs.

Good thing about Genesis 8 base is that it's an average human body shape. When you wanna hit extreme difformations of the mesh, well you get pinching or spreading of the corresponding polygons unwrapped. There's just no easy way around that, except by doing 2 or more versions of the same cloth, with different unwrappings. Or one unique cloth with eventual morph options and multiple UVs for average and big boobs.

I've spent many hours experimenting with different approaches.  Here is what I've discovered so hopefully it can save others some time.

To preserve DAZ HD details (sub 4/5 details found in the HD Add-Ons), we have 2 approaches.  

    1) Import DAZ character into Blender using Diffeomorphic and MultiRes
    2) Bake out the HD details to displacement/normal maps.

MultiRes-
Pros - Easy and quick, preserves all the details up to Sub 4.  DAZ has some HD details in sub 5 which should be baked out to normal or bump maps so sub 4 is sufficient.  We can keep the character at 0 subdivision levels in the viewport so we can pose/animate without Blender lagging too badly.  We can also sculpt in various levels of MultiRes to modify our characters (but we lose detail, see below).
Cons - Difficult to change HD details.  If we need to smooth out some issues when posing, the fine HD details get lost.  For example, if our character had a bend at the elbow or knee which requires some sculpting, using the smooth brush destroys the fine HD details.  We could bake out the fine details to normal/bump maps, but at that point why bother with multires?  Another example is using geografts.  They often need some smoothing and adjustment, which destroys the HD details.  Also, we can only import the HD details that already exist.  If we add additional HD details or change something, we have to repeat that change on every import. Our edits are not saved.  There is a 'Sculpt Layers' add-on that may fix some/all of these issues but I have not tried it yet.

Bake Displacement Maps for HD details-

Bake using Blender - I've tried (using bake from multires), but always get seams between the uv layers on the final render.  I've searched for a solution but have not found one yet.  Blender is planning on improving their baking process so maybe this will be fixed in future versions.

Bake using Xin's addon - Works, but the HD details did not seem to be very strong.  I could not get the level of detail I was hoping for.  Also, there is no way to adjust any details such as smoothing a wrinkle or bump, adding a crease, etc.  What you get from DAZ is what you get.

Bake using external program - Best so far, and what I currently use, except I had to buy Zbrush.  There may be other programs that are equally good at baking displacement maps, but Zbrush just works.  Export OBJ from DAZ (or maybe even use the GoZ link) and bake.  Flipped Normals has a tutorial on youtube which goes over the settings and process.  After getting the model in ZBrush, we can adjust any HD details we want with some additional sculpting.  Then we have displacement and normal maps that we can use on multiple characters.  Back in Blender we can sculpt and fine tune our characters all day without worring about losing any HD detail.  I also think this is the way to go for wrinkles in the face and other places on the character, although I have not gotten that far yet.  I'm thinking we can generate wrinkle maps in Zbrush and use drivers in Blender to activate those maps.

To fix that you need (let's say I'd use) a 3D modeling app. Easiest option being to Relax and/or smooth the breast area and import that back as a morph in DAZ. You can see the enlargment of quads in the breast area (Viewport set to Wire Texture Shaded) when you make them bigger. There might be a bundle as TheCediz explains that takes care of that for those who don't want to use another app (such as ZBrush of Blender). But, often, the best option is to consider DAZ as part of a workflow. Not as a tool that will do-it-all.

EDIT : I just read a bit of  https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/539521/breast-utilities-2-for-genesis-8-and-8-1-females-commercial, and indeed the stretching happening to your pixels when projected on the default UVs from Genesis, should be fixable using this Breast Utilities Bundle. But this bundles relies on the use of a Geoshell rather than on a morph that relaxes the wireframe, or a slightly modified version of the default Genesis UVs, so... if ? this bundle can fix your problem, it might very well create lots of other complications.

I recently had to reinstall my library and Daz3D thinks that should apparently be a nightmare. I'm trying to use this product https://www.daz3d.com/old-warehouse and installed through DIM and also installed in Daz Studio because I guess DIM doesn't install everything anymore. I'd like some help understanding this, thanks.

2022-04-26 18:58:19.944 [INFO] :: Prepare asset load (merge): /Environments/Architecture/Tesla3DCorp/Old Warehouse/Zero Props/Old Warehouse Can.duf

2022-04-26 18:58:19.944 [INFO] :: Locking viewport redraw...

2022-04-26 18:58:19.944 [INFO] :: Viewport redraw locked.

2022-04-26 18:58:19.981 [INFO] :: Native format content directories: 2

2022-04-26 18:58:19.981 [INFO] :: Poser format content directories: 2

2022-04-26 18:58:19.981 [INFO] :: Other import format content directories: 0

2022-04-26 18:58:19.981 [INFO] :: Begin asset load (merge): /Environments/Architecture/Tesla3DCorp/Old Warehouse/Zero Props/Old Warehouse Can.duf

2022-04-26 18:58:19.981 [INFO] :: C:/Users/defaultuser/OneDrive/Documents/DAZ 3D/Studio/My Daz Connect Library/data/cloud/1_47063/environments/architecture/tesla3dcorp/old warehouse/zero props/old warehouse can.duf (1,1): Syntax error - expected '{' or '['

2022-04-26 18:58:19.982 [INFO] :: Error loading asset: C:/Users/defaultuser/OneDrive/Documents/DAZ 3D/Studio/My Daz Connect Library/data/cloud/1_47063/environments/architecture/tesla3dcorp/old warehouse/zero props/old warehouse can.duf

2022-04-26 18:58:19.982 [INFO] :: Operation failed

2022-04-26 18:58:20.364 [INFO] :: Unlocking viewport redraw...

2022-04-26 18:58:20.364 [INFO] :: Viewport redraw unlocked.

Padone said:

@Singular3D Just to clarify. The purpose of diffeomorphic is to import daz assets, thus daz materials as well. It is certainly possible to get better shaders in blender, but they would not convert daz materials.

Understood. I really like Diffeomorphic. My goal is to get the characters to Blender and optimize them, even if I have to adjust the texture maps in Photoshop. I also love to combine different maps and add microdisplacement in future. Add HD stuff as displacement maps as well. Cycles has become a really capable render engine. 

UnifiedBrain said:

Yes, that was disturbing. :)  However, it was also well done, and got me curious about the process.  Was this in Carrara, or Octane?  Is Nozzlehead a character?  What was the background?

both were Carrara, the first one used the Octane Render Plugin, the second one was Carrara native

the first one was also interpolated 8X with Flowframes, I didn't do the second one as did not need another long video

it finished unlike the Octane one that crashed about a quarter of the way in

the character is an FBX import exported from Unreal, I bought some cheap mutants, I added motion in iClone 3DXchange

I could have done that in Unreal too or used Mixamo

First background a plane with displacement and a weird texture with a Sky of Economy HDRi

Second one Infinity Cove 3 with the Spring texture (IC3 apparently culled from DAZ store but it's a morphing ground and cyclorama) 

the Nozzle is the simple water one with some modifications, I mostly modify existing Particle

I made it free in scene with more metaball influence (and objects a sphere for the Octane one as it doesn't see Carrara particles only objects referencing them)

Waves :)

When I have exported large items, quite often the program doing the exporting will appear done, and only after trying to import the object in a different program have, I noticed that part of my object is missing. Allowing the computer some more time usually remedies the problem(must be writing to disk?). It also could be a system issue like not enough ram or storage space to both run and simultaneously export. Have you tried exporting out at subd4? 

This happens when you merge the geograft in diffeomorphic. Anyway diffeomorphic can import daz morphs and animations so you can do it all in blender. I mean there's no need for the daz fbx and the blender fbx to get the same vertex order. Or don't merge the geograft so you'll do it in C4D after importing the animation.

Another difference is if the geograft uses a shell, as GP vs G8F genitalia, since diffeomorphic doesn't import the shell geometry but just uses a material layer for it.

Yes as noted above true HD doesn't fit animation. As an alternative you can bake to displacement always with the Xin addon. But personally I'd avoid to use HD morphs in blender and just import the HD shape with multires for animation.

I have a tutorial on youtube that goes over using Xin's add-on (Export DAZ to Blender using Diffeomorphic - Part 3 of 3). 

One thing I've discovered and hopefully I can save you some time and frustration is that adding a lot of HD Shapekeys in Blender will slow Blender to a crawl and make it almost unusable.  I imported all the normal shape keys along with some extra div-2 shape keys while my character had 2 subdivisions (264,000 verts I think).  It might work if you only import a limited number of shape keys, but I stopped using it and stay at base resolution because of the performance issue.  Of course I could have been doing something wrong that made it perform so poorly but I did try it multiple times with the same result. 

silvioarturi_d26d1707cd said:

esha said:

This doesn't have anything to do with the script.
As far as I know, Genesis 2 doesn't use UDIMs. Stacking the UVs on top of each other was the usual method back in the good old days. The UV placement is set in the base geometry. If it doesn't have UDIMs, it will not export UDIMs.

You could set up the UVs the way you want them, import them as an additional UV set for Genesis 2 and make sure those UVs are selected in the surfaces before you export. That *should* work (but I haven't tried it and it has been a long time since I last worked with G2).

Yes that works, with this trick I could use G2F in Substance Painter with the UDIM layout. 

Awesome!

That is the problem, there is no Daz Volume folder

"I've never heard of a command called "rebuild asset list".", I was paraphrasing,

There are several related, I was referring to Re-Import Metadata

Richard Haseltine said:

What feud? Daz provided the DSON Importer for Genesis and Genesis 2, but later versions will not import due to their using a feature (Dual Quaternion Skin Binding) that Poser lacked. I would imagine that the fact that the importer was limited to the older figures may waell have meant itwasn't worth recoding for the new version of Python In Poser 12. I can't see wht Renderosity would have deliberately excluded Daz content either, considering they sell add-ons. I am unconvinced that the issues have anything at all to do with feuding.

    I'm not going to rehash all the details, that would just start a flame war and I really don't want to do that.    It also goes all the way back to smith micro days.  The sad truth is that as of today the current daz figures don't work with the current poser, and the older figures are starting to not work with the older DSON capable Poser.    For me, as an artist, this is just bad all around and I really don't care who's at fault.   All I know is that it took me 3 days giving up sleep and the help of another user (who used Daz Studio to change some UV files in Daz Genesis Mouse) before I could even begin making art.   Those UV files were making it not work in both Poser 11.5 (with DSON) and Carrara.  That was just to load and use a single character who used to be supported.  Going over how we got here just distracts from making things better now.

Why do I keep getting these ugly seams on Genesis 8.1 Female when I import it into Unreal Engine 5 using DazToUnreal?  I used version 5.0.0.71 of the DazToUnreal UE5 plugin I got from here.  Looks like there is something wrong with the UV mapping.

What feud? Daz provided the DSON Importer for Genesis and Genesis 2, but later versions will not import due to their using a feature (Dual Quaternion Skin Binding) that Poser lacked. I would imagine that the fact that the importer was limited to the older figures may waell have meant itwasn't worth recoding for the new version of Python In Poser 12. I can't see wht Renderosity would have deliberately excluded Daz content either, considering they sell add-ons. I am unconvinced that the issues have anything at all to do with feuding.

felis said:

There is another option.

You can remove the rings from the mesh, and import them as props and then attach them to the clothing with rigid follower nodes.

Yes, this is the way to prevent distortion like that. Here are a couple video tutorials to help:

Rigid Follow Node - Mada

Rigid Follow Node - Josh Darling