Finis' Experiments and Scribbles

[jamesmc]

Programs that I have:

Lightwave is the only program (non Daz) that will import Daz3D figures with pose, animation and bones.

Carrara does it, but in T-pose. There are other ways to do it, but don't know how.

Hexagon will import the pose and the figure's clothing, but no animation because Hexagon doesn't do animation.

Bryce will import the figure with pose and clothing, but don't know enough about Bryce animation to work with it.

3Dcoat will import the t pose

Zbrush will import the t pose and morphs and send it back to Lightwave or Carrara if you have GoZ for them.


There is a GoB for Blender to Zbrush that will give you the pose, I'm not sure if it transfers the clothing or props.

[Finis]

I've seen how to's that are complicated and useful only if really needed. The least bad I saw was use collada for mesh and bones in T pose then export a BVH file for pose or animation.

I would only want to ex/im poses or animation from daz to blender if it was easy. I don't foresee any need that merits difficult methods.

FBX ex/im had bones, an animation track (didn't try playing it), and the pose was semi-present. Distorted but not a T or other standard pose. If FBX lacks documentation, not just documentation for Blender but generally, then its definition is unstable and any working path found might change to be incompatible or suffer from different implementations.

[RAYMAN]

Finis its not unstable..its meant to not work properly..!
Thats a hint from the long interview! Collada is an open file ..but has different slangs..and alembic is open..but fbx is Alias proprietory...!
I posted about nugraf some time ago..its the only company that Alias..and Sketchup and all are working together on and it has TS SCN and Cob import! But the basic version is 300$ But its worth it!!!! It pays off in very short time! There is a free trial that drops every 5 th poly or so! Its also a reason why I use Vue! Its works together with all big studios and swallows every format! Even Poser files! TS cobs..!!!!

Thats also a possibility...!
http://download.autodesk.com/us/fbx/Con ... ber=d0e892


https://blenderartists.org/t/fbx-import ... er/1125977

[Finis]

This method works to send a Daz figure and its clothes to Blender with pose and textures but the animation does not work. Be sure clothes are children of the figure in Daz. There are keyframes but no movement. The skeleton is present. You can select a bone and rotate it to pose but IK doesn't work so far. That is, you can't grab a hand and move it and have the arm follow. I don't know much about that in Blender so it might be settings or I don't know how to do IK there. You may need to check force connect children in Blender import too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27jcSK7tlPw

Edit: Well, some weirdness occured with rendering a character with cycles. The character and clothes were ok with cycles in the viewport but when F12 for full render disappeared and became invisible in the viewport with cycles. I found no settings that should cause the invisibility. Only Cntrl-Z, undo, would make it render in the viewport again. It wasn't deleted, just invisible. Another character worked well. So there is something to learn.

[RAYMAN]

There is only weirdness with the fbx format in Blender!
Its the same issue people have with some third party lenses on system cameras! Its not broken..Blender tried to decompile the fbx format..and you will always run into issues with fbx!
Its up to a point where Vue advises people NOT to use fbx on im and export to Blender on Vue Stream!!!
They use and advise to use Collada instead!!!
Collada has different slangs but many of the problems have been sorted up till now! FBX can work..but must not! I wont say that in all cases it doesnt..but in many it doesnt! To be honest....Alias isnt interested! They have the format sorted for the own products but the rest well they dont give a...! Alembic is a different story it isnt Alias its Sony consortium..and is well documented and open!!!!
One of the many reasons I use Vue is that it opens almost all files..TS Cob included....FBX import...because Alias shares with them the sdk..and they use Alembic file import as scene standard import! Even ...with that in mind no fbx export to Blender!
But everything works including Collada import from TS workspace! You can throw mdd at it works.. LWS..LWO...Poser...!

[Finis]

For me, transferring Daz to Blender is just a form of kitbashing. It is more about transferring stuff I already did or is easy to do in Daz. So high quality results with all abilities would be nice but certainly aren't needed for what I intend. If I try to do ambitious or high quality projects I'll create in Blender and use programs known to work well with it.

Collada does look like the better way. Most report that collada plus bvh works well for Daz to Blender transfer of figures with pose. I should learn about bvh in Blender anyway since that's how much mocap is applied. I'll try Alembic transfer too.

My current project is an animation for video Christmas cards. Just fun.

[Finis]

Daz to Blender export/import with collada. Animated in Blender. I used the pose library to store poses, T and ready, and paste them into the time line. The pose library looks like a useful tool. I saw tutorials about using actions to make clips of animation. That looks like a similar function to Daz's aniblocks.

https://vimeo.com/304961261/85ff9d5d33

[Finis]

I've studied some methods for character animation in Blender. Specifically walk and run cycles. I'm a beginner in that so nothing fancy. For my Christmas animation* I plan to key frame a walk cycle per tutorials. Each pose in the cycle will go into the pose library. Then I'll use actions to create an animation block for the cycle and maybe other movements. That allows walking along a path, blending movement actions, and other nice things.

I had an idea that the animation nodes possibly could be used to do walk cycles. Maybe with features to avoid foot slide. Might experiment with that sometime.

*Not for the challenge but I''ll try to enter something.

[RAYMAN]

Just a hint....you get those in aniblocks for daz...they can be exported as bvh! Poser..even the oldest version you can get off ebay like poser 5 has a walk cycle designer in it that allows you to export via bvh!!!
If your skeleton and T pose conforms to Blender you should be able to hook it up as bvh in Blender!

https://youtu.be/NoRCwyyPXiI

https://youtu.be/x5wTzV1M-QY

[Finis]

In Blender I keyframed a run cycle for a collada export/import from Daz. Each pose is in a pose library and I made an action for the cycle in the NLA. I got it to repeat the cycle and run along a path curve.

Question:
UPDATE: This video shows how to do it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gb152Qncn2s (bring in from a blend file with Append then find the action on the thing on the Action Editor. I did this and it was pretty good. Will need some clean up since the bones are aligned a little differently.)
Does anyone know how I can copy that run cycle action or the pose library or the keyframes to another character? I don't want to do the run cycle from scratch for each character. I want the action/keyframes/poses copied and applied to the armature/bones of the second character. No need to change the weight connection of bones to skin but just how the bones move.

I did sort of transfer the run action to another character by duplicating the armature and connecting it to the second character's skin with Parent -> Automatic Weights. Even though they were Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 characters that worked minus some weight mapping trouble for the toes. It made a big mess of the parenting of the original object though.

I could not use the copy keyframes and paste reversed to do the last half of the run cycle with the Daz imports. I think it is naming conventions.