Hi there, I have some experience animating in Poser, I recently tried daz and the animation tools there are atrocious.
I was hoping to create a pipeline where I port gen2 into blender, animate it and then export the animation back into daz to take advantage of all the background stuff it does to make the characters bend nicely.
I read through this thread and watched some blender tutorials, however I have a question-
I assume that if I export bvh using the new rig it wont work in daz, so is there a way to animate using the rigify rig, make the original one âfollowâ and in the end export the animation using the original one, so it matches up in daz?Thanks a lot for your help.
@Rikolo, Edtion is absolutely right. Bone constraints are the way to go. If youâve got experience with mocap, that might be an alternative but iâd still strongly recommend bone constraints.
Start small. make a simple animation and see how well daz studio is able to import it. In my experience daz studioâs exporters and importers are some of the worst, so better to verify it works first before making any serious animations.
Sounds good. I did a small test and the animation using the collada rig transfers rather well, hopefuly when I constrain it it wonât create some issues. Thanks.
How do I âbestâ export characters from Daz?
I found that DAE doesnât keep poses or transforms, so a smaller/larger character or one with conforming objects (such as heels) distorts things due to the lost pose. OBJ keeps the scale/pose but gives too many duplicate texture slots, requiring recreating or editing multiple slots to clear duplicates (plus no vert groups if you âcareâ about that). I also tried fbx 2012 and mostly default settings because I wouldnât know what to change in that, and it also doesnât help.
Is there a way to apply the pose/scale in Daz since there doesnât seem to be setting for this in the DAE exporter?
Thanks, I managed to export the animation, but now I have some issues with import. Mainly, the DAZ character has bones for hip, pelvis and abdomen, however the metarig only contains bones for abdomen and up. Do you create some custom bones or how do you link them?
Iâm not sure if thereâs a way to apply poses and such in daz studio. iâve tried several times using the morph tab in the export settings with no luck.
So whenever iâm faced with such issues, i export both in collada and obj. within blender, i can easily transfer the vgroups and material slots from the collada to the obj⌠OR just join the obj as a shape key of the collada figure and then delete the âBasisâ shape key so that the obj shape becomes the default, then i delete that as well to have a fresh slate.
Depending on your exact situation, you might have to make a few modifications to this procedure. Try that and letâs see if it works for you
@Rikolo, metarigs by default come with a complete set of bones. you might have deleted them accidentally or something went wrong along the way. Try adding a new metarig from blenderâs âAddâ menu and you should see a full set of bones.
If youâre using the khalibloo panel, simply âRigifyingâ your character should produce both a full metarig and an animator-friendly rigify rig in addition to the already existing collada rig. You should try again in a new blender scene following the instructions more closely.
Yeah, I think I have all the bones in metarig, the issue is that genesis 2 simply has more bones. I see hips, spine and chest for metarig, but the collada rig from daz has hips, (pelvis), abdomen, abdomen 2 and chest. So here comes my confusion.I would prefer to attach the collada rig to the rigify rig, is that possible? What does the hookup rig function do?
the âhipsâ in the collada has no weight influence. itâs useless. the pelvis in the collada is the equivalent of the hips in the rigify and metarig rigs. so in the end the number of useful bones are pretty much the same.
the hookup metarig is a tool i created for whenever iâm using an already rigified character in a game engine. the rigify rig itself is bloated with lots of bones that would make it non-efficient in a game engine. it makes more sense to modify and use the metarig. so in that case i just duplicate the metarig and select it and shift + select the rigify rig and just click the hookup metarig button.
this then hooks up the metarig to the rigify rig using bone constraints for all corresponding bones. that means i can still animate the rigify rig and have my metarig follow. i can then bake all animations to the metarig which is exported with the character model for game engine use.
Keep in mind, the genesis licence doesnât permit game engine use. The hookup metarig is useful with any kind of character that has a rigify rig.
Hello, great work! Worked fine with the Gen2! Now Iâm trying to find the DAZ script âListAllPropertiesâ in the Script IDE tab with no luck.
Could you please help me out on this one?
Thank you so much!
When you open the script IDE tab, at the top-left corner, select âFile -> Open scriptâ. This will open a file explorer window where you can navigate to your ListAllProperties.dsa file.
Ideally, you should put all your DAZ studio scripts in a folder inside your DAZ studio library. This will make it easier to find them.
@jbjavad, I donât think blender has any convenient way of accomplishing that. I canât say for sure if itâll work, but try the following methods:
ignore the breast bones and use softbody simulation instead. read through the blender manual on how to use that effectively. also search youtube for softbody tutorials. sorry, Iâve never successfully used softbody, so I canât really guide you here.
use joint constraints and rigidbody on the breast bones. iâm not sure if itâs possible to that directly on bones. if itâs not possible, then use the constraints on a couple of âemptiesâ and then use copy rotation/position constraints on the bones to follow those empties. itâs a long process, but if it works, itâll be worth it. It will offer better performance and control than the first method
try those and let us know how it goes. itâll certainly help a lot of us.
many thanks for quick replay i did it for makehuman in blender by this add on JiggleArmature Jiggle bone animation tool for blender this is a jiggle bone animation add-on for blender, to enable jiggle physics first enable Jiggle on the armature and then enable Jiggle Bone on the bones demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwkNO93XBH4 quick usage tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cWIcoIApGw features: - Jiggle bones with volume conservation, stretch and shape constraints - Test mode for quick preview of the simulation, enabled by default - record simulation intro animation if you want to support the project you can donate to the following bitcoin address: 3CZjZzS9UyZiYf3mfdxM5VwN9dgFB7XKht or support cheece on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=2597243 in g3 rig lpictorial &rpictrial bones has no effect on mesh if it affects we can use this addon i think you are the expert in rigging and best man to do this thanks in advance
Thanks for the info. The addon looks quite useful.
Iâll try it out when time permits. It would require some modification in the rigging code though. In the mean time, you can try using the addon with the default collada rig that was exported with your model from DAZ studio.
By default the pectoral bones have some influence. The rigify process takes away control from the collada rig and gives it to the rigify rig, so donât rigify if you intend to use those bones. If youâve already rigified, click unrigify vgroups first. Then reassign your collada rig in the armature modifier of the figure.
when i import g3 dae file has its rig i can export animation as bvh but idont know how to use this bvh to animate figure i downloaded hours of tutorials but still no sucsess
you could simply change the armature modifier of the g3 figure to use the bvh rig instead of the default dae rig. the 2 rigs should match exactly.
you could also use one of the mocap addons for blender. my favorite used to be âmakewalkâ from makehuman. a mocap addon basically allows you to copy animations from one rig to another.
mocap is a pretty advanced topic, so expect a lot of problems
thanks one sentence of you helped me now i can apply bvh but for clothes not conforming good there are a lot poke through , makewalk works by your rig but not daz rig i tried soft body for jiggle but whole body deforms not target vertices
mocap can be a real pain, you just have to keep trying. thereâs definitely a way to retarget from daz bvh rig to daz collada rig. perhaps going through makewalk documentation might help you out.
Also, reading the softbody documentation or following some youtube softbody tutorials might be of help.
