Daz to Maya Bridge [Morph Exporting Problem - Reason and FIX]

moreffector_3290526

Hello everyone. As you know, Bridge plugin was very good. But morph exporting is very hard and weird. Now i solved the problem. I explained below.

You have to open Daz install folder. Open this file with notepad : " C:\Daz 3D\Applications\64-bit\DAZ 3D\DAZStudio4\scripts\support\DAZ\Daz to Maya.dsa "

And search this : " Morph Rules "

And you will see this line

oSettings.setStringValue( "rules", "head\n1" );

 

This means it would export all morphs that have head in the name.

I edited it like this : oSettings.setStringValue( "rules", "Genesis3Female\n0\nEye\n1\nSmile\n1" );

This means, Export selected morphs about Eye and Smile. But becareful, i didn't export all morphs. Genesis3Female\n0 => Don't export all morphs

nEyes => Morph name contains " Eye "

 n1 => nExport (so 1 = True)

 

NOTE 1 : 

But sometimes its not working well. So you can use like this too : oSettings.setStringValue( "rules", "nHead\n1\nEyes\n1\nhead\n1" );

NOTE 2 :

You can also use Daz To Maya v1.5 and FBX Morph Export Rules (.csv file) (Not from Daz Bridge. From 3DtoAll - You can find it on web. Just search it. Its working well.)

Asari

I cannot overstate how grateful I am that you posted this workaround. I needed to bring over a morph which I forgot to bake in my blendshape and the Maya blendshape system, although it recognizes deltas, behaves differently ... I was able to bring over the morph with the bridge with your method! Awesome!

For the next update of the bridge, a possibility to bring over favorited morphs would be totally awesome ...

moreffector_3290526

Yes absolutely. But i think they will add all of the useful options into the plugins. Especially the first issue is converting all textures and materials into the Maya Vray or Arnold. This is really need..

Asari

Yeah, for the moment u setup my shader manually because I'm not happy with how maps created for Iray look in Arnold. But yes I agree this is useful generally.

Thank you again, I would have spent days painting weight maps or redoing all my custom sculpts or sculpt the morph manually without this. You saved me a lot of time.

moreffector_3290526

Thank you. No problem :)

I sent an detailed email to Daz about this texture and material problem. But i don't know they read it..

marquism

How do you get pose-based stuff or JCM stuff like easyflex? Says they're compatable to bridge but don't know how to get that.

And also, how would I go about getting facial expressions that I like? Don't know much about n1, etc.

 

Thanks

giancayard

Thanks moreffector for the workaround: it did not work for me but it points me in the right direction. I'm sharing here below my solution, which is just a workaround. Hopefully, Daz3d will integrate this in the next version of Daz2Maya.

I wish DAZ3D would be better are beta testing: issues like this one could be solved real quick within a day with some more rigorous internal testing... The Daz3D to Maya bridge is a very powerful tool (the new rigging is awesome) but tarnished by some gnarly Morphs/BlendShapes handling.

When it first came out the new Daz to Maya completely broke my workflow: after spending hours in a circle I abandoned for the time being till either Daz3d would fix the issues or I find the time to get a decent workaround that actually delivers a workable and dependable character in Maya.

What are the issues?

• Morphs will not export at all
• or all Morphs will export
• or all the unwanted Morphs will export
• naming convention inconsistency

The Daz 2 Maya bridge relies on:

• FBX
• The FBX Option Dialogue in Daz3D
• The "Daz to Maya.dsa" config file that in my case resides in "C:\Program Files\DAZ 3D\DAZStudio4\scripts\support\DAZ\"
• The FBX Options in Maya

So the first thing I did was to test a straight Daz3d > FBX > Maya export/import, and troubleshoot that workflow to determine what can be actually be transferred.

The first image attached is a screengrab that shows the Leroy8 character in Daz3D before the FBX export: notice I changed the Morph rules to make sure Leroy Shape Morphs are baked while the "CTRL" Morphs  (AKA Pose Controls) exports as Morphs (AKA Blend Shapes in Maya).

The second image is a screengrab showing the result of the FBX import in Maya: a note on the shape tab on the top right that the "Genesis8MaleBlends" did import, and only the ones that were designated as "CTRL" in Daz3D, which is what I want. Also, in spite of the usual FBX woes with naming most of the blend shapes came with clean and consistent names. Most of them. I wish the Daz2Maya will include a post-import script to keep naming consistent, to ensure a proper back and forward between Daz3d and Maya, especially considering the new Daz Studio Tools for Maya.

Well, this is promising, but does Daz3D respect the Morph rules set during the FBX export? It does.

You can expose the FBX option dialogue during the Daz2Maya export by changing the "Daz to Maya.dsa" config file. Look for the "var bShowOptions = false;", and change as below (I've included the commented line to show what it does)

    // Define whether or not to show options
            var bShowOptions = true;

Now next time you invoke the Daz2Maya it will show the same option dialogue as the FBX exporter. There is one extra step though...

To make sure that the FBX options are respected I had to comment out the line in the "Daz to Maya.dsa" config file, so they are ignored and only the FBX options are regarded while exporting.

In other words, if you haven't previously tweaked the "Daz to Maya.dsa" config file, look for the line 

oSettings.setStringValue( "rules", "head\n1" );

and change it to:

// oSettings.setStringValue( "rules", "head\n1" );

The last image is the result in Maya: I got the new cool rig, AAANNND the Blend Shapes for only the face, which makes it an awesome character rig in Maya, ready to have fun with.

Not perfect though: the naming convention is way worse than the straight FBX import... lots of "FBXASC045" (should be underscores), few undesired shape morphs (instead of strictly pose controls) which led to a much bigger file for this character, but I can live with that.

I can fix all these issues, but I'm pretty sure that would break the character capabilities to go back to Daz3d through the Daz Studio Tools for Maya.

Also, I wish that the eyelashes blendshapes would be automatically linked to the face ones: I will do a simple script to do that later, but I think to integrate that in the Daz2Maya would be more robust.

Best,

Giancarlo Lari

www.giancayard.com

 

SilusCrow

This is exactly what I was hoping to find for this issue, though I do have a question regarding the .dsa file and the...permissions?  The FBX morph export thing.

How would I go about including or excluding separate categories, not by morph names?  Like let's say I want all the head morphs, but NOT anything in the Expressions category under Head?  Would it be like "Genesis8Female\n0\nhead\n1\nexpressions\n0"?  Or would I have to go in and add exceptions based off the individual morphs I would and would not want?

 

Edit: Or is there a way to specifically target favorited morphs?

wherewolfjohnson

I don't understand why they don't do it like G8 for maya plugin. It only exports favorited morphs for those not baked. G8 has worse performance than current dazbridge though.

moreffector_3290526

Morph exporting could be more easy to use and creator friendly.. There is a lot i dont understand about Daz.

stepharamburu

Hi There! Please How I can export body G8 blendshapes from Daz to Maya using the Bridge Plugin? I got a lot of lines like this from any G8 body part: "pJCMCollarTwist_n30_L","Export" all these lines imported as CSV file into "export" option. When I used the plugin, those blendshapes are not exported with the G8 character in Maya. Thanks in Advance!