DAZ Importer

[ThomasL]

@slawdos

How about limits for bones rotation? So hard to add it manually…

There seems to be some remnants of that in the code, but it is not available now and it never worked correctly. The problem is that bones in Daz and Blender are oriented differently; in Blender, the Y axis always points along the bone, but there is no such condition in Daz. So limiting rotation around a single axis in Daz corresponds to several limits in Blender.

The plugin locks rotations and translations by default, though. But lock rotation only lock twist bones from rotation around the X and Z axes, and lock location locks all bones with a parent, except for the face rig.

[ThomasL]

@atticr

what is the difference between the high def and basic data scripts

The HD export script is experimental and I’m not sure whether it’s really useful. It exports both the cached geometry (with subsurf applied and geografts merged to the mesh) as well as the underlying mesh at base resolution. For baking purposes I think you can just as well export the mesh as an obj, which also seems to export the cached geometry.

I had hoped to do something more useful with the HD mesh, like add it to a multiresolution modifier, since baking from multires should give better results that baking from another mesh. But it does not seem possible to specify vertex locations for higher resolutions, and besides the idea would require that Daz and Blender multires do subdivision in the same way, which I doubt.

[jeroen_b]

Hi Thomas,

I alway’s use the addon from engetudouiti to correct the bone-roll. This appears to be working very well, resulting also in better JCM’s when posing bones.
(Though this addon still relies on the old JSON file, so I have to use the old export script as well)

I was wondering if it would be possible to combine engetudouiti’s addon in your plugin, so after import all the bones are oriented correctly and perhaps (and please correct me if I am wrong) setting the limits would be basically a copy/paste job from DAZ settings to Blender settings?

Ideally min/max rotations would also be copied to the IK properties of bones, but maybe I am just asking for something quite impossible.

Thanks for sharing your plugin and keep up the good work!

(NB this post was intended to reply to slawdos post an hour ago, but I hit the wrong button)

[Safetyman]

I believe there is a paid addon for DAZ|Studio that creates a normal map from HD figures, so if I was concerned with getting higher res figures out of D|S, that would be an option instead of trying to import something directly.

[Ulysses_1]

You deserve the 3D Novel Prize for your work on this, and providing it to the world for free. It’s an amazing piece of work and code. Thank you.

[nickvisuals]

what addon are you talking about?

[Safetyman]

I can’t remember the name of it… When I come across it again, I’ll post a link.

Edit - I found it, but unfortunately it’s no longer for sale. Bummer.

Daz Sculptor HD

[dream3]

Guys can we import from daz with default addon settings and retarget the rig with this?

rokoko free addon

Daily Blender Secrets - Retargeting with the free Rokoko add-on

[killarny (Luke Graybill)]

I think I found a bug in 1.4.2 and up (including the most recent development zip of 1.5) where poses are not imported correctly almost all of the time. However, before I open an issue on the bug tracker, I wanted to see if anyone else can confirm, or maybe point out what I’m doing wrong. It seems odd to me that nobody else has reported this since 1.4.2 was released, so maybe I’m making a dumb mistake.

• In Daz, I load up a plain G8M figure and save it as testing.duf. Then, I use the export script for 1.4.2 to create a testing.dbz file.

• In Blender 2.83.3, using 1.4.2 version of the importer plugin, I create a new file (deleting the default cube and light) and import testing.duf.

• I select the eyelash armature, then shift-select the character armature, and in the corrections subpanel I perform Merge Rigs, Add Extra Face Bones, and Make All Bones Posable.

• Next on the morphs subpanel I import Units, Expressions, Visemes, Pose Morphs, Standard JCMs, and Flexions.

• Now I go to the posing panel and use Import Pose to select the People\Genesis 8 Male\Poses\Base Poses\Base Pose Kneeling A.duf (pretty sure this is a standard pose that comes with the G8M figure).

Here is what I see in the viewport:

If I hit CTRL-TAB to go to pose mode, almost all the bones are green, and I can’t move them around because they have their rotations locked by drivers. I’m not sure if this is a clue (?) as I’m not super familiar with the internals of how rigging works.

Very occasionally, if I repeat this process over and over with new blend files enough times, it works as expected and the pose seems to load and apply properly. I can’t get it to work reliably though, and I have no real estimate of what might be going on when it mysteriously works. However, if I then save the apparently working blend file and reopen it, the rig and pose are both broken again.

Note again that this problem is also present in the most recent development zip of 1.5.

I’m reasonably sure that nothing about my Daz installation or my Blender setup are causing this, because I can reproduce the steps (more or less, as some names of the plugin controls have changed) using version 1.4.1 of the importer plugin and it works perfectly every time. What’s more, if I import the figure and pose using version 1.4.1 and then open the file with 1.4.2 or 1.5 loaded, everything continues to function.

For reference, here’s what the pose is supposed to look like, as imported by 1.4.1 of the plugin:

Edit: aha, I realized there is now separate documentation for 1.5! The docs for the morphs section there seems to also apply to 1.4.2: https://diffeomorphic.blogspot.com/p/morphs-section-version-15.html

Specifically, the part regarding the Import Pose Morphs button, which I think is what is causing my problems. After following the advice on that page (to run Make All Bones Posable again, selecting layers 4 and 5 instead) the kneeling pose imports mostly correctly:

The rig looks odd unless I manually go into the armature tab and shift-select both bone layers 1 and 4. Also, the leg and head don’t seem to have the correct rotations, but it’s probably usable with minor manual adjustments at this point.

Edit 2: If I simply omit pressing the Import Pose Morphs button entirely during character import, then everything works as well as it did in 1.4.1. I guess that’s what I get for just pressing buttons in order and assuming they are cosmetically renamed from old buttons!

[Shiroi_Akuma]

When you wanna fix the teeth problem just select all teeth in edit mode and set edge crease to 1 for all of them. Or 2nd solution select all teeth too, set pivot point to individual origins and scale along X-Axis. Pretty sure it has to be along X-Axis if not just try the other two too.

[Domiek]

Teeth can be fixed by turning of hd mouth realism morph on hidden parameters in daz on the figure when you’re still prepping the duf for blender.

[Hookflash]

What’s the recommended method for importing JCMs for genitalia (for example, the official Daz “anatomical elements” seem to have custom JCMs for thigh rotations and whatnot)? When I select the gens mesh and choose “Import Custom JCMs”, they come in without drivers set up, and I’m not quite sure how to set up JCMs drivers manually.

[jeroen_b]

Hi,

In the shapekey’s tab;
Rightclick on the corresponding default JCM’s (purple area) and select “copy driver”, disable these JCM’s (deselect NOT delete) and rightclick “paste driver” to the corresponding custom JCM’s.

[dream3]

I was wondering, is there documentation on how to retarget the rig in order to use animations from mixamo?
until now I have been exporting to blender, doing a bunch of tweaks for it to be exportable to mixamo, then redownload to finally get the DAZ model with the mixamo animation. If I could simplify this workflow it would be great!

[ThomasL]

@Hookflash

What’s the recommended method for importing JCMs for genitalia (for example, the official Daz “anatomical elements” seem to have custom JCMs for thigh rotations and whatnot)?

I usually use Transfer JCMs, from body to genitals. It should discover any custom made JCMs with the same file names, and if those are not discovered the shapekeys will be auto-transferred. This takes forever (and spews out a lot of error messages in the console window), but the result is usually quite good for tight-fitting clothes.

[Hookflash]

Are there any plans to have an option to automatically apply Daz-style rotation limits to the IK rigs that the importer generates? Imo, rotation limits in Daz are actually pretty useful (for non-pros like me, at least), as they act as a safeguard against poses that don’t make anatomical sense.

[Rocksteady]

Corrections Section

I’m trying to understand the “Add Extra Face Bones” section, following the explanation step by step.
I found the layers in the object data properties tab, I select the layer 32 to show all the bones.

And that’s the part I don’t understand (I’ve never used drivers before):
“When expressions are loaded later on, the “Drv” bones will be driven by rig properties, whereas the deform bones are freely posable. The idea is to first pose the face with a generic expression, and the tweak the expression with the posable bones to make it unique.”

Could you be more specific here please? I feel like I’m missing some knowledge to fully understand the workflow. I don’t understand what I’m supposed to do at this stage.
I didn’t know it was possible to load expressions. And I don’t understand how to make my own expressions/modify them, bones are not responsive.

Thanks in advance.

[Domiek]

Hi Thomas, no questions here. Just wanted to thank you again for this great plugin. Every time I come to check for any new features it seems to be getting better and better!

[slawdos]

Hi, Thomas!
Can you remove this window from script? Or what I can do to remove this?

[Domiek]

Hi Thomas, is it possible to restore the neck/head control as it used to be? Maybe even something I can tweak on my end?

I find the new single neck control to behave very different from the previous one and am having trouble using it.

Thank you!