Diffeomorphic DAZ-to-Blender

marble

I did look for YouTube videos on Multires and I keep finding indications that it is broken in 2.83 but will be working in 2.90 which is only a couple of weeks away. Is the 2.83 version working enough for the procedures described in the las few posts?

Krys Kryngle

It works but honestly I'm thinking there are other things you could probably focus on first.  Multires and displacement maps should come after learning how to import your character, set up basic material nodes, basic mesh manipulation, etc.  I bought a tutorial on Blender basics when I first started and it helped.  Many others have done the free donut tutorial and things like it.  BlenderGuru has some decent ones.  Just my opinion though.

To answer your question, I have used multieres succesfully and made displacement maps using it.  That doesn't mean it's not broken, just that it did what I needed it to do.

j cade

marble said:

Padone said:

@marble LOL nice video. Yes I guess you have to "update" a little, luckily there are plenty of blender tutorials on the web. Here's a couple of them from a quick search.

 

 

Yeah, I know there are lots of videos out there. I seem to be spending most of my free time watching them but as I get older it takes longer for things to sink in. Plus there's the problem of not knowing what to look for. I'd never have looked for a tutorial on Multires because it had not arrived on my horizon. Blender is so huge in terms of total workflow that I could probably spend the next two years watching tutorials and still be a novice.

Another useful resorce is blenders manual, Its not necessarily going to teach you how to do stuf but it can give you a description of absolutely everything. At some point early in my blender learning, for instance, I read through the descripion of every modifier in the manual, and in addition to a basic rundown it gave me a good idea of what I needed to do more research on.

 

 

Krampus said:

Singular3D said:

Krampus said:

Singular3D said:

I'd love to use a combination of displacement and normal maps for closeup details in HD morphs (e.g. wrinkles for old men and women).

Any hint how this can be done?

I posted a node setup under the topic "Blender: How to?".  Just replace the bump texture with a normal map texture, and replace the bump node with a normal map node (vector->normal map).  Also, as someone else pointed out, I think it was nicstt, you have to enable displacement in the material settings.  Make sure you are rendering in cycles, go the the properties panel on the right, click material properties->settings->surface->displacement and bump.  I think you can only see the displacement when rendering, either viewport rendering or final render.  If it is set too high, everything will look seriously deformed, so keep the displacement setting low and work your way up.

Thanks for the information, but I wonder how to bake a displacement/height map from a HD morph. I don't want to work with a SubD Level 4 in Blender. I'll try to do that in Substance Designer, but maybe there is another way.

 

Here is the basic outline, not a step by step -

Import base sub1 model into blender in the a/t pose.

Import sub4 model into blender in the a/t pose.

Apply multires to the sub1 model, 4 times.

Add shrinkwrap modifier to sub1 model - target sub4 model, then 'apply'.

If I remember correctly, you can now delete the sub4 model from your scene.

Now you have a base model that will only show HD details when you increase the multires number, from 1-4, just like daz.

 'bake from multires' will enable you to make diplacement maps.  That is a whole process in itself.  Took me quite a few hours to figure it out, but definately doable.

If your using shrinkwrap you're going to want to mask out the mouth teeth and eyes with vertex groups - fingernails can also cause issues

 

 

marble said:

I did look for YouTube videos on Multires and I keep finding indications that it is broken in 2.83 but will be working in 2.90 which is only a couple of weeks away. Is the 2.83 version working enough for the procedures described in the las few posts?

The main brokenness is a bug that relates to sculpting whilst going up and down the subdivision levels: ocassionally giant spikes will pop up that cannot be fixed by undoing - a bad bug for sure, but not one that effects just sub-ding for shringwraping

 

with that said you should still use 2.9 as the rebuild subdivisions tool is the best thing since sliced bread and will cut out a bunch od those steps 

for baking just 

• inport yr hd mesh
• add a multires modifier 
• hit rebuild subdivisions
• set up yr textrures for baking
• bake from multires

speaking as someone who has used shrinkwrap a lot  (among other things I've used it to improve shape conversions from the different generations or from entirely seperate figures I have an Antonia morph for G8) I  try to avoid it wherever possible

marble

Krampus said:

It works but honestly I'm thinking there are other things you could probably focus on first.  Multires and displacement maps should come after learning how to import your character, set up basic material nodes, basic mesh manipulation, etc.  I bought a tutorial on Blender basics when I first started and it helped.  Many others have done the free donut tutorial and things like it.  BlenderGuru has some decent ones.  Just my opinion though.

To answer your question, I have used multieres succesfully and made displacement maps using it.  That doesn't mean it's not broken, just that it did what I needed it to do.

You are quite right and I really am watching tutorials on the basics. For example, I still have trouble with the camera view and need to get a sense of how to view things in the Blender viewport like I do in the DAZ Studio viewport. I also, as you suggest, have a lot to learn about importing content into Blender, on how to manipulate that content (materials, armatures, etc.) and how to save the results, the textures and poses. So much to learn that it is daunting.

I do read Manual pages - I used to write manuals during my working life - but my attention span has really dropped off with age. I guess we all find things that we can't do as we used to but reading manuals is a stark example of my attention deficiency these days. I tend to fall asleep in minutes so I have to take small bites. In other areas, I've even started opting for audiobooks instead of print or Kindle.

Singular3D

Krampus said:

Singular3D said:

Krampus said:

Singular3D said:

I'd love to use a combination of displacement and normal maps for closeup details in HD morphs (e.g. wrinkles for old men and women).

Any hint how this can be done?

I posted a node setup under the topic "Blender: How to?".  Just replace the bump texture with a normal map texture, and replace the bump node with a normal map node (vector->normal map).  Also, as someone else pointed out, I think it was nicstt, you have to enable displacement in the material settings.  Make sure you are rendering in cycles, go the the properties panel on the right, click material properties->settings->surface->displacement and bump.  I think you can only see the displacement when rendering, either viewport rendering or final render.  If it is set too high, everything will look seriously deformed, so keep the displacement setting low and work your way up.

Thanks for the information, but I wonder how to bake a displacement/height map from a HD morph. I don't want to work with a SubD Level 4 in Blender. I'll try to do that in Substance Designer, but maybe there is another way.

 

Here is the basic outline, not a step by step -

Import base sub1 model into blender in the a/t pose.

Import sub4 model into blender in the a/t pose.

Apply multires to the sub1 model, 4 times.

Add shrinkwrap modifier to sub1 model - target sub4 model, then 'apply'.

If I remember correctly, you can now delete the sub4 model from your scene.

Now you have a base model that will only show HD details when you increase the multires number, from 1-4, just like daz.

 'bake from multires' will enable you to make diplacement maps.  That is a whole process in itself.  Took me quite a few hours to figure it out, but definately doable.

Thanks a lot. Didn't know that and I love this information!

andya_b341b7c5f5

Krampus said:

Singular3D said:

Krampus said:

Singular3D said:

I'd love to use a combination of displacement and normal maps for closeup details in HD morphs (e.g. wrinkles for old men and women).

Any hint how this can be done?

I posted a node setup under the topic "Blender: How to?".  Just replace the bump texture with a normal map texture, and replace the bump node with a normal map node (vector->normal map).  Also, as someone else pointed out, I think it was nicstt, you have to enable displacement in the material settings.  Make sure you are rendering in cycles, go the the properties panel on the right, click material properties->settings->surface->displacement and bump.  I think you can only see the displacement when rendering, either viewport rendering or final render.  If it is set too high, everything will look seriously deformed, so keep the displacement setting low and work your way up.

Thanks for the information, but I wonder how to bake a displacement/height map from a HD morph. I don't want to work with a SubD Level 4 in Blender. I'll try to do that in Substance Designer, but maybe there is another way.

 

Here is the basic outline, not a step by step -

Import base sub1 model into blender in the a/t pose.

Import sub4 model into blender in the a/t pose.

Apply multires to the sub1 model, 4 times.

Add shrinkwrap modifier to sub1 model - target sub4 model, then 'apply'.

If I remember correctly, you can now delete the sub4 model from your scene.

Now you have a base model that will only show HD details when you increase the multires number, from 1-4, just like daz.

 'bake from multires' will enable you to make diplacement maps.  That is a whole process in itself.  Took me quite a few hours to figure it out, but definately doable.

Have you considered using the Reshape option of the Multires modifier instead of shrinkwrapping?  I think you may get better results, specially where the HD details take the higher res mesh beneath the lower res mesh.  Reshape will copy the vertex coordinates from the high subd mesh to the multires level with the equivalent level of  subdivision; shrinkwrap pulls the verts towards the other mesh, which I think will be less accurate.

Padone

@andya Unfortunately reshape alone doesn't work because the imported HD mesh from daz has a different vertex order than the mutires mesh. This is why we have to use shrinkwrap first. Or rebuild subdiv with 2.9.

Mendoman

Hmmm, maybe it's just my build, but after importing body morphs, pose loading from Daz files is not working anymore. All other stuff like import units, expression, jcms etc. does not seem to break pose import, but at least in my version importing body morphs breaks pose importing. I'm using Diffeomorphic 1.5.0 and Blender 2.9. Can anybody else confirm that?

 

EDIT: Also merge geografts seems to break import pose functionality, or maybe I'm just doing it wrong. Anybody has correct steps how to merge geografts and keep inport pose functionality? Nvm, I got it working. I had several rigs and merging geografts only made something go wrong, but after I merged everything, it seems to work now

ThomasLarsson

Mendoman said:

Hmmm, maybe it's just my build, but after importing body morphs, pose loading from Daz files is not working anymore. All other stuff like import units, expression, jcms etc. does not seem to break pose import, but at least in my version importing body morphs breaks pose importing. I'm using dDiffeomorphic 1.5.0 and Blender 2.9. Can anybody else confirm that?

This is actually the normal behaviour. Most morphs are implemented as bone drivers; when you move the slider the bones move. But once a bone is driven, it cannot be posed by hand, nor by loading a pose file. The same thing happens to the various face morphs, but since they only make the face bones unposable you probably did not notice. You can tell that a bone is driven if the transform channels turn purple. The bone also turns green in the viewport, indicating that it has a constraint, but that is actually harmless.

To fix this, go back to the Corrections section and press Make All Bones Posable. That tool adds an extra bone for each driven bone, which can then be posed.

Zebratech

Is anyone else suddenly having issues with importing sets with Diffeo in the lastest dev builds?

For instance, I tried loading this set: https://www.daz3d.com/subway-station via the latest dev build and got errors when previously, on the same build minutes earlier I imported it without issues. The only thing that changed between attempts was I unhid 2 of the wall instances.

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

 

ThomasLarsson

The bug should be gone now.

Krys Kryngle

ThomasLarsson said:

The bug should be gone now.

Thank you for the awesome work you do on Diffeomorphic Thomas.  I wish I would have started using it sooner instead of trying to pose in DAZ and then export to Blender.  Building the character in DAZ and exporting in the A/T pose is a much better workflow. 

nicstt

I've got a character using Rigify without issues; did I see it said that one can't use imported poses?

Because... It is possible.

Padone

@nicstt There are recent fixes to rigify thanks to Engetudouiti at diffeo. But the main issues are there yet I just tested the latest commit. Specifically daz poses and animations don't work fine with rigify. To correctly import daz poses and animations you have to use mhx instead. Then with rigify you can get a close or exact pose depending on the pose, but it will not always work.

I find it annoying that this is not reported in the user docs.

https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/issues/68/convert-pose-from-daz-to-mhx

https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/issues/73/rigify-and-import-pose

nicstt

I must have been lucky; I have noticed that trying to tweak the pose once imported can run into issues. Even merging the FK/IK can alter the pose, which shouldn't occur.

TheKD

Oh, in case anyone else was oblivious to the change like I was until today, either the limit on runtimes/libraries was removed, or it was set higher than the number of ones I have installed. I have linked all my 22 libraries now, yay

nicstt

That's good; some aren't essential, such as posing, unless of course there is something in there other than poses and that does happen

SadRobot

Is there a walkthrough for getting a rigged character with HD morphs using this plugin? I see scattered posts here and there, but nothing very step-by-step. I've tried following some posts with mixed results. I was hoping maybe I missed a post, or maybe someone made a YouTube video or something by now.

thanks. 

nicstt

Trying to import Stonemason's Urban Sprawl 2 gave me an error:

MISSING ASSETS:

... many others of a similar ilk, but these were the last 4.

  /data/auto_adapted/u2seprops1_15321/geometry_cf909cfc_e781_ed41_e429_779e6d2159fe/geometry.dsf
  /data/auto_adapted/u2sebuild12_16441/geometry_10e3d689_d82e_085c_a20c_32b3794355c7/geometry.dsf
  /data/auto_adapted/u2ebuild4_7474/geometry_5e3a752c_ac82_1e24_c6fa_32a4cc608865/geometry.dsf
  /data/auto_adapted/u2sebuild5_9775/geometry_f317c38a_118b_51c8_9d86_15705b69c723/geometry.dsf

Is it something I'm not doing or a bug?

I seem to recall a post relating to the fact that auto_adapted is no longer used by Studio. It certainly doesn't exist in any of my libraries, not just the one where the product is located.

TheKD

I think that used to be made by DS back in the day when a user brought an item for poser, then saved it for DS.

Singular3D

nicstt said:

Trying to import Stonemason's Urban Sprawl 2 gave me an error:

MISSING ASSETS:

... many others of a similar ilk, but these were the last 4.

  /data/auto_adapted/u2seprops1_15321/geometry_cf909cfc_e781_ed41_e429_779e6d2159fe/geometry.dsf
  /data/auto_adapted/u2sebuild12_16441/geometry_10e3d689_d82e_085c_a20c_32b3794355c7/geometry.dsf
  /data/auto_adapted/u2ebuild4_7474/geometry_5e3a752c_ac82_1e24_c6fa_32a4cc608865/geometry.dsf
  /data/auto_adapted/u2sebuild5_9775/geometry_f317c38a_118b_51c8_9d86_15705b69c723/geometry.dsf

Is it something I'm not doing or a bug?

I seem to recall a post relating to the fact that auto_adapted is no longer used by Studio. It certainly doesn't exist in any of my libraries, not just the one where the product is located.

Honestly I would recommend to import static things via OBJ and disect them. Gives a much better flexibility. At least this was my experience with Stonemason items in Cinema 4D and I assume that it will be easy with Blender as well.

nicstt

Yeh, that one I'm going to have to.

Streets of Old London and Streets of Asia came across well though.

TheKD

Does cycles have an equivilant to turning on spectral options?

JClave

By design, Cycles is not a spectral renderer unlike Iray which allows toggleable Spectral rendering (but Daz's Iray has bugs with Spectral I heard).

Any spectral effects such as caustics are best faked using custom shaders

Padone

To be fair, both reflective and refractive caustics are supported by cycles and they work quite fine.

Then for a spectral render engine caustics are just second nature and they are computed faster and converge better. But a spectral renderer has other issues. Namely the srgb colors, including textures, have to be converted to spectral and this conversion is not univocal. So intents are used and what we get is not a true spectral rendering anyway. The only way to get a true spectral rendering is to get spectral properties for the materials.

This basically means that spectral rendering, for its nature, can't work fine with standard srgb textures. That's probably why it's not supported and/or used extensively in CGI.

TheKD

Not gonna pretend to even know what specral really is or does under the hood. I just know it seems to make skin look less like a plastic/rubber surface. It also does have issues like showing seems, and changing the colors, render times shoot way up.

 

jimlin

you might think im stupid but where do I save scene export to blender files

TheKD

Doesn't really matter, as long as the file and the saved scene are in the same place I think. I just been using my desktop for easy fiding to import.

nicstt

I had an issue importing into Blender 2.9.

It wasn't the most recent release as I noticed an issue on the import, which I'll report when I have more info.

In a nutshell, the rig's bones were lower than they should be  when comparing to previous versions.

nicstt

Can definitely repeat it.

Blender 2.83.5

This character has a little Aiko 8 dialled in; works fine in an earlier version of 1.5.0; most recent download I get the rig mis-aligned. As though scaling is off?

Can anyone else reproduce with most recent version (I downloaded a few minutes before trying.)

It might be related to if the character's height is different from the default?  I tried with Twillig, the scaling is still 100% in studio, but the character's height is slighly lower than normal, and the bones look to be slightly out

Edit:

The version I'm using that works, is from when we had to uncheck the Daz Bones as it was stated to be a work-in-progress; that checkbox is no longer available.