I’m not clear on the conventions here, so forgive me if this is the wrong place, but it involves other software. I also posted a question in the technical support forum, if that’s wrong I’ll remove it.
Anyway, I’m trying to import assets, up to and including rigged figures with poses, clothing, animations from Character Creator 3 and/or Daz Studio to Blender, but having little success beyond the basic meshes in OBJ format. I have watched numerous videos but I am new to Blender and there seem to be difference between 2.83 and the various versions these videos are based on, and I can’t get decent results. I have installed Diffeomorphic, but the instructions don’t match what I’m seeing at the Daz end (although the procedure for exporting fbx and dae seems to work), but even though it installs cleanly in Blender, it doesn’t import anything.
If anyone can advise me on ANY reliable method for importing as much as possible of rigged, posed, animated figures to Blender I would deeply appreciate it. And, please, be specific, because on other fora I receive some ‘just do (vague thing)’ answers that appear to be exactly what I’m already doing. If you know a specific procedure that works, please let me know!
Stick with Diffeomorphic - it works (almost) flawlessly. Here are the steps I use (this is assuming you’ve installed the scripts in both DS and Blender):
Set up your character in DS, clothing, materials, shape, etc. Save the file as a SCENE file.
In the “Scripts” section of the DS program, double-click on the “export_basic_data” icon. You should see a message that your scene has been saved.
IMPORTANT: Make sure you have all the correct directories mapped within the Diffeomorphic tool in Blender (Scenes, data, etc.) - this is the cause of most issues.
In Blender, find the DAZ tab and click on “Import DAZ file”. Navigate to the .json file that was saved in Step 2. Open it.
Your character should load with all clothing, hair, etc. Each item will have its own armature, so I usually select each one and merge the rigs in the “Corrections” section of the Diff tool.
Hope this helps. If you have other problems, there is a Diffeomorphic thread here at BA - the author of the addon is very helpful.
Thanks for responding!
I think the problem is with the file paths. I had Dropbox for a an hour, and during that time Blender decided everything was in Dropbox, and now I can’t make the import features abandon this. I have typed correct paths into boxes over and over again, but I still get fail messages, and Blender still defaults to Dropbox.
When I correct the default search path in the top bar of the import window, Blender can’t find anything that I don’t manually type in- it doesn’t see folders in the last folder I aim at, or items in folders.
Any help with this nightmare would be appreciated.
Thank you. I 've been trying to chew my way through that thread to see if anyone else has related problems, but my overall conclusion is that it’s not a problem with Diffeomorphic but with Blender. Even uninstalling and reinstalling blender doesn’t erase its memory of Dropbox, so it behave bizarrely even with ordinary .obj imports, which used to work fine and now fail.
I think RSEhlers has put me on the right path- I’ll have to figure out where all these pathways are stored, eliminate the files, uninstall Blender and reinstall it. While I truly hate Dropbox, I have to say that the opacity of this problem in Blender is a Blender issue.
Well, I tried to find the traces of Dropbox on my computer and eliminate them, thinking that Blender wouldn’t be able to see anything there and would revert to a condition that allowed it to accept new paths. This worked.
However, it appears that Dropbox converts all your folders on your desktop to somekind of dropbox folders, and it emptied all of them. Since there were too many for the Recycle Bin to hold, it asked to eliminate them- I gave permission thinking they were pointers to dropbox, not the files themselves. Now everything is gone.
Some is backed up elsewhere, but of course not everything, and sorting it will be a nightmare.
So- Dropbox is an absolute nightmare, it’s intrusive, it’s opaque, it’s non-informative and if you make an error it’s incredibly destructive.
I think my Dropbox nightmare is almost over, but I can’t be sure yet…
The nightmare continues. I was able to find a Dropbox folder that held all my files on my own drive- apparently what it does is to rename everything with it’s own pathways, so if you reactivate this it reactivates all the dropbox pathways, even though you don’t have dropbox… So the desktop you think you see is now a dropbox desktop stored on your own computer.
So, I backed up all the files to another drive, got rid of this desktop, which eliminated all the files on the desktop again, and restored the files from the other drive. This works- almost.
The problem is that Blender still has legacy ‘dropbox’ file paths set as defaults, and attempting to step through the file tree from the ‘user’ level, which gets behind the dropbox level, doesn’t allow you to go far enough to reach your actual files- it terminates at the desktop, and will find a file actually on the desktop, but not any folders on the desktop.
How do I change default paths in the import tree? It reverts to the dropbox tree because I can’t complete an import.
I’m not familiar with all this Dropbox situation, so I don’t know what to tell you. I will say, though, that I never “install” Blender… I use the portable version (which sounds limited, but it’s the same version) and unzip to my Documents folder in Windows and run it from there. This way, I can have different versions of Blender available in case a newer version breaks an addon that I’ve been using. It also only creates one folder (that I’m aware of) outside of the Documents folder and it resides here > C:\Users-username-\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation.
I’ll look into that. Maybe I can find the file that holds this bad memory in that directory, or maybe that kind of portable install will look somewhere else. Thank you.
This is in the Daz importer…
First…Set all your File Paths…and they have to be correct.
Once you have all of them, and it must include the Iray directory…the rest are a location that you pick to save your .duf out of daz…and you must save the .json file at the same time…The one included with the Daz importer.
Whenever you are going to import a file into Blender…make sure to open up settings in the importer and load the settings file…or it will load the defaults…
I don’t know why you are using Dropbox…but it is probably taking too long to access and timing out…Far better to pick a local directory…on your HD or on an external USB or Flash…
Here is what the settings I have look like…1. is to set the path, 2. is to load it!
If you can’t find a file…look in Appdata>Roaming>Daz3d the problem might be in there…
When a setting is wrong there is an error report right from the importer and that will point you to the problem…set that to a local directory…such as My Documents
I am not using Dropbox, it was using me. I went to download Diffeomorphic and it seemed to require that I have a dropbox account, so I made one, and it took over my file system and has taken almost a week to get rid of. In the process it destroyed my actual desktop and I had to figure out how to use a .bat file to restore it. Apparently this aggressive behavior is somewhat new and some older installations may not be doing this, but I recommend staying away from anything to do with Dropbox.
Anyway, I have a new install of Blender 2.83, but have not reinstalled Diffeomorphic yet. Nevertheless I have some persistent dropbox pathways in the native blender utilities for importing .OBJ and .FBX
I can override them now in the instance, but it doesn’t preserve the new pathway.
Is there a way to set a new default pathway in those utilities? The buttons at the top just clear it to C:, and do not even set that permanently.
Ahhh… In dropbox there is an option to save to dropbox or just download it…
Did you get Blender as the zip file and create the Prefs folder inside of the Blender 2.3 > Blender 2.3 folder? If not it will just load defaults and /or pull from a previous version…
I don’t see how it could have changed pathways to OBJ and FBX there isn’t one…
The only Pathways are inside of Preferences > under File Paths…it should be set to auto save when closed…but click on the Box lower Left and save just in case…
Also make sure that it is not loading previous preferences…check to see if Daz importer is not in the add-ons, as it could still be in appdata…it is better to remove the add-on inside of prefs as it will delete it from the system.
Explain what you mean by permanent Paths to Drpbox …are you talking about the Import Window? with on the left Volumes, System, Favorites ?
I got Blender from the blender.org download button, it pretty much did everything automatically. I didn’t create any folders. Daz Importer is not in the add-ons- didn’t want to reinstall until I sorted everything else, since that seems seamless for everyone else…
Yes, the Import Window. I keep resetting the top address bar to C: and then navigating to find the folder I want to import from. Blender seems unable to forget the address with ‘dropbox’ in it, even though that folder no longer exists. It has several different instances with different names/disguises that dropbox propagated for itself, stored in the various Volumes, System, Favorites, and the recently used list. Some of these have the same names as the now corrected versions, but different actual pathways (which don’t work, obviously).
Some of these on the left panel seem to be fading away with repeated cycles of using correct paths, but the one in the top address bar is persistent and I really, really want it to go away. What does ‘unset’ do? As far as I can tell, nothing. ‘Reset to default’ yields ‘C:’, but it won’t stay that way on next use.
Navigating to correct folder works now, but the address is not saved in the top bar and reverts to dropbox every time I open the Import Window. Any ideas how to make this stop?
I think you really needed to add the Prefs Folder in 2.82>2.82 directory BEFORE you run it for the first time! It really sounds as if it is loading with all the prefs from your previous install…which means it didn’t make a new 2.8 directory in Appdata for a separate preferences folder…
I have no idea what happened when you added dropbox I have it and it only created a folder that contains the same structure as on the Dropbox account…and stores the copies of the actual files
and any incoming there.
I would uninstall Blender and get the zip version…If you just have the one version of Blender and don’t want any older versions ( you can always add an older version following these same directions…go into C:\Users\YOUR NAME\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender, and I would just delete the Blender Foundation folder! Get rid of the whole thing…
or if you have other versions add the folder to 2.83>2.83 to get a new folder in AppData.
the structure should look like this in appdata…inside each of the folders is startup prefs and a script folder that will hold individual add-ons for each version…
Thank you! I will get on this after breakfast, but it looks like just the info I needed.
At this point in my Blender Journey, I don’t think I can deal with more than one version at a time- do you think the tasty stuff in early 2.9 makes it worth other potential problems, or should I stick with 2.83LTS?
Personally…I would just stick with 2.8 and go forward…It is brainwracking trying to go back and forth between 2.7x to 2.8X and not blow a fuse!
I do have copies that I use every once in awhile like 2.64…and I only have it as there is ONE plugin that I use and that ONE for 2.64 is the only one that works…it never carried forward to 2.7X…same with 2.79…just a couple plugins that have never been updated!
Also going to just one version…you can update to the next version just by deleating the one folder and replacing, and adding the Prefs folder…
NOTE: there will still be the folder left in Appdata…so don’t forget to delete those also…
