Hello.

Does Blender 2.63 work in any way with Daz?

Like importing textures with objs etc , or if the Daz file was  converted to 3ds format would this work with textures?

***Thanx

Your best bet would be to export to obj from Daz... Blender has little issue with that.

You can also use Collada I believe.

Laurie

found this the other day but not tried it yet

http://maddieman.wordpress.com/2012/04/23/exporting-daz-studio-4-figures-to-blender/

let us know if it works well

If you're exporting rigged characters, I think Collada is your best bet. However, there can always be issues with more complex scenes, and rigs especially are difficult to export correctly and get working properly.

There is Poser tools 2 for blender available at blender3dclub,  but I'm not sure how far they've gotten along in getting  the cr2 format into blender.  It's been a while since I've played around with PT2,  but it might be an option to get Poser/Daz stuff into Blender

Depends on what you want to do.

If you're looking to create morphs, there's a set of scripts for importing .dsf files (geometry, morph ,uv maps) and for exporting morphs that were posted by millighost to these forums a while back. The Search doesn't bring them up, but they're still available at this link:

https://market.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/friendly_thread.php?thread_id=2834649

If you're looking to just bring the model over, there are options for that as well.

Exporting the model using WaveFront OBJ will work, but you'll lose the armature. You'll preserve the pose and a good deal of the material and texture data (though some advanced features will have to be done manually, like reflection maps, etc.)

Exporting the model using Collada will work also, but it's limited. Until the latest version of 4.5, Collada export didn't export animations or poses in a way that Blender could import, and the material assignments would get screwed up, assigning everything to the first material.

With the latest version of both Daz and Blender, the Collada export is working much better. The material issues have been fixed, and poses and animation can be imported. The latter isn't perfect yet. Some "leaf" bones (bones with no children) don't get the right transformation. Also, when you export with animation, it doesn't set the rest position to the T-Pose. This means, if you want the animations and poses, you're probably going to export at least two separate files - one with and one without animations, and then you're probably going to have to manually add constraints from bone to bone.

Every release, things seem to get better, but there are definitelys some gotchas going back and forth between Daz Studio and Blender.

FYI there is a free set of scripts/plugins for Daz Studio and Blender that exports your daz scene to blender and sets it up to render with cycles.

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewthread/2877/

Considering it's Cycles, they could have made those images look a LOT better, but it seems like it's a useful tool ;).  It also seems the PoserTools fellow has gotten something sort of useable. He said only one character generates an error, but he didn't say which one! LOL. He does have some other useful tools as well like a prop importer that may work for DS too for props in the pp2 format ;).

Exciting times :).

Laurie

Let's say I rig and apply materials, textures and UV image maps to a model in Blender; and the model is a series of separate objects jointed together to form the whole model.

How would I export the model with all of that in place, including the armature skeleton, so that it can be imported into DAZ Studio 4.5 Pro? What issues would I need to deal with in this process? Will the armature export with the model, or would I need to rig it in DAZ Studio 4.5 Pro?

As for importing models from DAZ Studio 4.5 into Blender 2.63, I can get them in if they are in Wavefront .obj format; but they have no rigging. I have not tried using Collada yet, so I don't know anything about it.

I understand that Hexagon is more compatible with DAZ Studio, but I am more familiar with Blender, and actually prefer it for my modelling operations. There seems to be a lot more educational videos and documents associated with Blender.

If there are some rivalry issues between DAZ 3D and Blender, I think it would benefit us all if those issues could be resolved.

@Agent0013 Since daz owns hexagon, bryce and daz studio they have been able to implement a higher degree of interoperability between them all via bi-directional "bridges."  So you can open studio, load a figure and select it then hit a button or menu item to "send to" either hexagon or byce.  Studio then does everything behind the scenes and the chosen app opens with the figure automatically there for you.  The biggest difficulty with going from blender to daz studio is the fact that the orientation changes.  Meaning, daz studio considers the Y axis to be "up" while in blender I believe it is the Z axis that is "up" so anything moving from one to the other will need to be rotated 90 degrees to get the proper orientation.  I don't do this type of thing myself so I can't speak from experience, only from what I have read on the subject.

* Since daz owns hexagon, bryce and daz studio they have been able to implement a higher degree of interoperability between them all via bi-directional "bridges."*

In response to the above statement:

I already know about the bridges that exist between the different applications fron DAZ 3D. I also know that the Bryce/DAZ Studio bridge work well in just one direction, from DS to Bryce. In using it from Bryce to DS, material and texture files will not move with the object. The DAZ Studio/Hexagon bridge works pretty well both ways. By the way, there is no bridge I have found that works between Bryce and Hexagon, and I have not seen any kind of bridge to or from the other DAZ application, Carrara.

It is not this that I am concerned with, however. I know about the differences in the axis systems of Blender and DAZ Studio; even so, I have been able to work around this problem with some of my unrigged models. As you say, a 90 degree rotation is needed to orient the model correctly in DAZ Studio.

The reason I create models in Blender is because it is a lot easier to use than Hexagon. There are so many extras in Hexagon that it will take a long time to learn enough about it to make model creation worthwhile. All I use the software for at this time is to create mesh changes in existing models found in DAZ Studio. I can export models from DAZ Studio, Bryce, or Hexagon; and then import them into Blender or another program. It is the rigging that I would like to be able to move with the model from Blender to DAZ Studio.

I'm not doing soft body models at this time. That is a ways off for now, So the armature rig does not need weight mapping for the model to work. I would only be exporting the parts of the model with the armature rig and the .mat files. If I can get all of that into DAZ Studio from Blender, I could use tools in DAZ Studio to create a product with articulation, materials, as well as some pose presets the could be uploaded to Renderosity or Share CG so that others could have the opportunity to use them if they wish. Unrigged models have their place, but rigged and posable objects work much better in certain scenes.

Hopefully someone will say I'm wrong. but as far as I know getting the rigging from blender to Daz wont work!! at the moment, am sure someone is working on plugins etc but at the mo' its a nono

Carrara dosn't need a bridge lol it opens a runtime ok makes landscapes an can model but not very well lol never did like its modeler but thats just me , ps you can rig in carrara but that wont transfer to Daz or poser

Now I get a problem with what your saying?, when you say soft body do you mean soft body or organic ?? then you say you dont need weight mapping so that sugests things like doors/drawers or machines (hard body? lol) thats easy to do in poser(never tried in Daz) but imagine it should be a similar process, but no point me trying to help if we are thinking dif things

Quote - Hopefully someone will say I'm wrong. but as far as I know getting the rigging from blender to Daz wont work!! at the moment, am sure someone is working on plugins etc but at the mo' its a nono

Carrara dosn't need a bridge lol it opens a runtime ok makes landscapes an can model but not very well lol never did like its modeler but thats just me , ps you can rig in carrara but that wont transfer to Daz or poser

Now I get a problem with what your saying?, when you say soft body do you mean soft body or organic ?? then you say you dont need weight mapping so that sugests things like doors/drawers or machines (hard body? lol) thats easy to do in poser(never tried in Daz) but imagine it should be a similar process, but no point me trying to help if we are thinking dif things

I actually do not have Carrara, firstly because it cost money I don't have at this time, secondly because there are hardly any tutorials for it, and thirdly because it is not promoted as well as the other DAZ applications. If you say it is not that great, I believe you.

I kind of figured that the rigging might not be able to be moved from Blender to DAZ Studio. I have seen models that were created in Blender that are rigged, but I think they may have been rigged using the rigging feature of DAZ Studio after being imported as a Wavefront .obj file. I believe the textures may have been applied in Blender, including UV image surfacing maps.

Soft body is in reference to any mesh that deforms during posing, such as animals, humans, clothing, etc. A rigged soft body model must be weight mapped to smooth the deformed vertices so the pose looks more natural. Indeed a model that does not need weight mapping when it is rigged would be hard body, since the parts would work as though they are on hinges, sliders, axles, or what have you. Machines, doors, and drawers are good examples, as robots, automobiles, and other types of vehicles would be also. So we are definitely thinking along the same lines.

Anyway, I guess what I need to do is look for tutorials I can follow easily on rigging in DAZ Studio. I have 4.5 Pro now and nearly all of the plugins are green so I know that the feature is available to me. I'll hop on over to the DAZ Studio forum and see what I can scare up.

By the way, I tried to add you as a friend in my Site Mail, but I don't know if it registered. Nice to see you weighing in on this request from me.

Stay awesome!

Agent 0013.

One thing to try, but I'm not 100% sure on this since I really don't do modelling would be to try exporting your rigged figure from blender using COLLADA instead of wavefront .obj.  I believe collada will export rigging information, but I don't really know how successful that will be when trying to import into daz studio.  According to daz, the collada import in studio has been much improved with the 4.5 versions.  The worst case will be that you will have to re-do the rigging using the tools in studio at least the 4.5 pro version is still free and gives you access to all the advanced tools like rigging.

I hope you can find a solution that works for you, best of luck and I will be interested to see your end result in studio.

for a simple door, the frame needs nothing doing, then select door and set its parent to the frame, then open joint editor and set the origin start point to the door edge(where it meets frame)(start point is green end point is red) for a simple door the end point can be in same place as start point but for something like a bi-fold door then the end point needs to be on the start point of second door. Door should rotate corectly with y rotate, some times you may have to change the rotation order (top right of joint editor)

hope thats a help an not something you already knew ;-), this method is ok for about 3 maybe 4 joints, more then that an it gets hard to use easily there is 2 plugins I know for poser (easypose underground and all tied up) but dont know if they work with DS or you could read up on ERC,IK and FK is quite a few tuts on that

Thank you, heddheld, for  the information about the origin. I did not know it had a start point and an end point. I will look into that and see what I can do with it. I wonder if it will work with bilateral symmetry? In case you don't understand the term, bilateral symmetry is what a model has when one side somewhat mirrors the other.

Some of my models would have that type of symmetry, and I plan models that will have trilateral, quadrilateral, and even higher multilateral symmetries. I think it may be neccessary to use armature rigging for those types of models.

greymouser69, Thank you for the suggestion concerning exporting a model using Collada. I do indeed have DS 4.5 Pro, and all my plugins except AniMate 2 are green, which means they are good to go. Ill rig a simple model using the armature rigging method in Blender, export it using Collada as you suggest, then import it into DS 4.5 Pro and see how good it works. This may take some time, as I am still quite new at this. I will let the good people here know how I do with it once the experiment is completed.

Stay awesome!

Agent 0013.

@RobynsVeil, LOL!  I just did that tuorial that your avatar is made from...  :tongue1:

Using the link that heddheld posted I've found that exporting V4 using the collada export works fine using Daz 3.  The rigging imports in to blender okay.  Unfortunately the Daz 4.5 export messes up the rigging a bit and I haven't been able to get it to work without having a go at re-rigging it.

I'm not sure if Daz 3 is still available though  

I also haven't been able to get a satisfactory result with the Transmaps for the eyebrows and lashes

I may edit this later when I'm more awake. (I've just realised that the medication I'm on has turned me into some of the seven dwarfs.  Dopey, Dozey, Pissy and Windy).

Moilly

**Update: **I finished the experiment I mentioned in my last post to this thread. here are my results:

FAIL! - After creating and rigging a simple chained together object with the bones for each part simply connected end to end in an aligned chain orientation and their respective parts properly connected in the Child to Parent relationship, I exported the model using Collada .dae format. Upon importing the file back to Blender, the model works the way it was designed to work; however, this is not the case when it is imported into DAZ Studio 4.5. The model and the bones do make it into the application, but the bones are no longer connected to each other. Posing the model's sections only causes the parts and their particular bones to spin around the object center point. In other words, each object that makes up the model works independently of the other objects in the model. Translation and scaling also work independently in a similar manner.

Now it may be that I need to rejoin the bones together to get the model to work properly, or I may need to join the objects and their bones together in Blender before exporting the model in Collada .dae.

So in conclusion, I have 2 more experiments to conduct using the armature method of rigging. One is the joining in DS 4.5 Pro method, and the other is the joining in Blender method. If neither of these experiments produce positive results, I shall have to resort to creating the model in Blender and rigging it in DAZ Studio. For that I will need to find tutorials that teach rigging within DAZ Studio.

As before, I will let the good people here know how I do with them once the experiments are completed.

Stay awesome!

Agent 0013.

**@ Moilly: **"I'm not sure if Daz 3 is still available though."

I found something that indicated that you can still get DS 3, but it could be an old outdated posting. Since it is a product offered by DAZ 3D it may not be an allowed download from other sites, which is within their rights; and any third party offering of the software would constitute a copyright infringment. I would steer away from such things because of the legal rammifications it could bring.

Anyway, I'll step over to DAZ 3D and see what I can find out. I did learn that you can have 2 versions of DAZ Studio on the same computer as long as they are not of the same series numerical prefix, (example: 4.0 and 4.5 cannot be installed on your computer at the same time, but 4.5 and any version of 3 can). So if you want the benefits that were phased out of 3 when the versions of 4 were released, and you already had 3, don't uninstall 3 when you install 4. If it is still available to download at DAZ 3D or not, when I find out, I'll let you know here.

Using the Daz script, mcjTeleBlender, I was able to make this pretty quick! (Daz to Blender)

Agent0013, I have followed your progress here with great interest. I have similar interests and I have some experience with Blender and DAZ Studio.

I would like your opinion on final render quality: At some future time I intend to make fully animated work in either DAZ or blender but both have plusses and minuses.

For example, rigging in Blender is tedious while DAZ already has the rigging done for you including speech morphs (something I would not want to struggle through creating in Blender). It would be nice to only do the shots you want in one program and then others in the other one but I am sure that lighting and texturing would not give a coherent result: so what do you suggest ?

Of course, I could be wrong about any of this too - there is just so much complexity and too much to learn !

Quote - Agent0013, I have followed your progress here with great interest. I have similar interests and I have some experience with Blender and DAZ Studio.

I would like your opinion on final render quality: At some future time I intend to make fully animated work in either DAZ or blender but both have plusses and minuses.

For example, rigging in Blender is tedious while DAZ already has the rigging done for you including speech morphs (something I would not want to struggle through creating in Blender). It would be nice to only do the shots you want in one program and then others in the other one but I am sure that lighting and texturing would not give a coherent result: so what do you suggest ?

Of course, I could be wrong about any of this too - there is just so much complexity and too much to learn !

 

One thing that I have learned about animations is that they can take a lot of time to render, due to several factors.

First is the amount of frames you want to have in your video. Each frame will require a certain amount of time to render, and then the next one starts to render. Since any animation is made up of a series of still images, you can see that the render time is going to be massive. A good rule of thumb to have fair quality in your animation is to have 25 to 30 frames per second of video. It makes the motion look smoother.

Second is the complexity of your scene in the animation. If there is a lot of static content in the scene, (things that do not move in any way), they will be included in the rendering for each frame. If something moves in the scene due to camera panning, that too must be figured into the render time. The more you have moving in a scene, whether it is due to camera panning, or to the characters and other objects moving according to a predetermined setting for each of them, the greater the render times will be. This is why a lot of computer generated animations have simplified scenery.

Third is the size of screen you want your video to fit. You can compromise here by lowering the resolution some but the quality of the video will be lower as well. Large screens obviously will require greater resolution, which will in turn require more render time.

Finally, there is the processing power you have access to. This is determined by the amount of RAM you have. The more your computer has the better, but if you are using the 32 bit version of DAZ Studio it will only render using up to 2 gigabytes of RAM, even if you have a significantly greater amount. So if you Operating System is 64 bit, I reccommend you have the 64 bit version of DAZ Studio. DS 4.5 Pro is currently being offered for free, so if you do not have it already, now would be a great time to upgrade.  

I have not done any animations with Blender at all, so I cannot say much about it. Still if you think you can pull it off, I see no reason to not use both for animating a single production. I know the first part of this post is a bit discouraging, but if you have the patience, skill, and determination for it, I say go for it. I personally do not have the resources to make a video that would be worth much. My computer only has 4 gigabytes of RAM so animations of any good length would be too much to ask of it.

Anyway, thank you for asking me for my opinion. I hope I have been able to give you as good as I am can, but I suspect that you will need to continue your search for information concerning this subject.

Stay awesome!

Agent 0013. 

Thanks, I have done a few simple anims in Blender and DAZ and I am well aware of the time issue, actually I have not really done any serious animation in DAZ yet - I am still working out how to get good renders.

Blender OTOH I am now annoyed with because they brought in Cycles which means I now need a new computer to get the same render times I had before it. (Sometimes I think the coding geeks get caught up in newness rather than actual improvement.)

I'm really wanting to go all out for DAZ rendering I guess -  to cut down the time taken setting things up. Blender is great for modelling IMHO but it is easier to texture in DAZ once you have the UV maps set up.

I am still uncertain about how to rig in DAZ but if I work things out I'll post it here.

I am still uncertain about how to rig in DAZ but if I work things out I'll post it here.

That would be most appreciated. I have seen a few rigging tutorials for earlier versions, but this version (4.5 Pro) is far more advanced than those were. I've heard that there are several things in this version that have been vastly improved, such as the generation 4 clothing fit to Genesis feature. It may be that rigging is a lot better as well.

As for Cycles in Blender, I have not tried it. I just use blender to create models and sometimes to UV map a model. Even so, some of my other friends have said that you don't have to use the Cycles render engine if you would rather use the older render style. As I don't do much actual rendering in Blender, I cannot really vouch for those things.  

I also have UVMapper Classic, which if you can learn the basics, is a good bit easier to use than Blenders UV mapping. I also have Hexagon 2.5, which also can be used for UV mapping, but I am still a newbie with that one. It is supposed to be a great modeller, and does have good compatibility with DAZ Studio. For simple modelling I have Wings3D, and my photo and image editing app is Gimp 2.8 which I have yet to install as 2.6 is still quite useful to me. To round out my digital art apps I have Project Dogwaffle; wierd name I know, but for paint style work it is way better than the default Paint program that came with my computer. Resolution is much much finer. I use Microsoft Office PowerPoint also. You would be surprised at what I have been able to do with it alone! I'll post an image I made using it soon. It is limited in what it can do, but I have discovered ways around its limitations.

Anyway, if you can discover the ins and outs of rigging in DAZ Studio 4.5 Pro, and pass that info along for the rest of us, I'm sure it will be most appreciated.

Stay awesome!

Agent 0013.

Let me know what you think.

The models in the first two images cannot be exported for use in other applications. 

You may have noticed that they seem to have been UV mapped and had image maps applied. In actuality everything concerning the ships and the planets was done using PowerPoint, which has no UV Mapping feature. What I did was create separate skin image maps that matched the shape of the ships. Even the textured looking surfaces and the paint schemes were done this way. As for the planets, I used photo images as skins which when applied to the spheres wrapped to them.

To make the shapes 3D I used the Bevels feature, which I learned to adjust to get most of the shapes to look the way I wanted them. I had to compromise with some of them because of the limitations of the program. Also, assembling a model takes a bit of creative thinking, because the grouping of the shapes will push them together in ways that may not be what you want. What has to be done is each section of your model must be made and grouped separately, and then brought together to create the model without grouping the sections together. This gets around the program's tendency to push the sections together the wrong way.

Anyway, have a look and tell me what you think. How do the first two images compare to the third one?

Stay awesome!

Agent 0013.

I don't know if you have looked here but there is plenty of useful information on using DAZ Studio.

http://www.youtube.com/user/WWWDAZ3DCOM?feature=watch

Thanks for this link. I have watched several of the tutorials there, but have to search through them to find the ones I can actually follow. Some are good & easy to follow. Others either leave things out, or muddy the water with too much unnecessary information. It would be great to find some good PDF or other type of document style tutorials. I find them easier to follow.

Its worth trying the new FBX import for DS. I often use the FBX when exporting to C4D. I've not tried the import before.

I'm not familiar with Blender's FBX export, so I exported a Genesis figure from DS in FBX format as a test file and reimported it. (with the  latest DS 4.5.1.6)

It comes in posed, textured, with morphs and rigged!

It loses the IK and comes in with FK only but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

The morphs it comes with are the ones I chose during export.

**@ prixat **I don't know anything about FBX. The only Export/Import formats I have used are Wavefront .obj, .3ds, Collada, .mat, and certain image formats for textures and backgrounds. 

If I may ask, what is C4D? I'm unfamiliar with that term.

Rigging remains a problem for me between Blender and DAZ Studio. I have not yet tried exporting a Collada file from the latest Blender build to DAZ Studio 4.5 Pro, so I cannot give an opinion or report concerning how well or if it works.

C4D is the program I normally export Genesis figures into, Cinema 4D.

In my opinion FBX has become the more stable of the two open formats.

Studio has had FBX Export for a while but the FBX Import into DAZ Studio is a relatively recent feature and looks like its been very well implemented by DAZ.

Given the choice between Collada or FBX, I'd always go with FBX.

From my quick test reported in my earlier post, the rigging was successfully transfered with FBX.

@ prixat So what about the Y axis orientation differences between Blender and DAZ Studio? Has that problem be solved yet? My reason for asking is that so far I am unable to get things to work right with the rigging because the Y axis is not representative of the same direction in the two applications. Y is vertical in one, while it is on a horizontal orientation in the other. This causes the rigging to act in unwanted ways when I import a rigged Collada file from Blender into DAZ Studio. If the FBX format works better, I will start using it instead.

As I had not heard anything about Blender FBX I did some reading about it.

Bad news! It looks like they can't get past the Autodesk licencing so there won't be FBX support till Autodesk change the terms of the SDK.

@ prixat So FBX is not supported in Blender. That is unfortunate indeed. It seems the conflict will continue for the foreseeable future. I suppose I'll have to create my models in Blender without rigging, export as a .obj file, and import it into DAZ Studio and rig it there. I just need to find a tutorial that will teach me how to rig a model in DS4.5 Pro.

And the search goes on. :-(

Quote - Bad news! It looks like they can't get past the Autodesk licencing so there won't be FBX support till Autodesk change the terms of the SDK.

This is true in terms of using the official FBX SDK from Autodesk inside Blender, and that's an issue that's unlikely to ever be resolved. The licensing of Blender and the SDK are just not compatible.

But that does not mean that all hope is lost for Blender FBX importing.

There's a Google Summer of Code project currently in the Bratwurst branch that's leveraging assimp to create an FBX importer. Not sure when that'll hit Trunk, though. The earliest would be 2.65, but possibly not until 2.66. 

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Aramis_acg/FBX2012-AssimpIntegrationFrom the TODO list, it looks like it's getting close to done, too. You can get access to the FBX import by downloading the latest Bratwurst branch from graphicall.org. You'll need to turn it on in the User Preferences / AddOns, and it won't show up unless you hit the "Tested" support level button.