note about the ground shadows in the Blender Cycles render seen above
since the beach is an environment sphere
Amy doesn't cast shadows on what we perceive as the ground
there's many ways to add fake ground shadows
you just have to search google or youtube for recent tutorials about [ Blender Cycles shadows]
usually this involves layers
------
in this case i used my method
there's 1 10 ft x 10 ft white plane under Amy's feet
there's a direct light ( sun ) in font of Amy to match the sun angle used in the environment sphere
in Blender i went into Amy and Amy's clothes/hair "object" settings, Visibility, and i made her invisible to the camera
but i left her shadows visible
then i change the view/render camera to a top-view camera
and i framed the white plane so it fit the 1024x1025 render frame
i rendered this
and in PaintShop i turned it into this shadow mask
this involved
turning the image into a grayscale image,
negate colors, ( shadow areas white since daz studio is an opacity map not a transparency map )
making sure the non-shadow areas are perfectly black
i closed Blender
in Daz Studio i applied the shadow mask to the white plane's opacity channel, and made the plane's diffuse color black
in Daz Studio, since i use a sky-sphere ( a primitive sphere with ambient 100% )
i could use mcjComeHere aim my camera at the sky-sphere's sun
then "shoot" a direct light in the sky
though i think i hard-coded a maximum distance ( i knew it i knew it i knew it i shouldn't have done that )
then i'd have to manually point the camera at me
actually i simply made Amy the Distant light's persistent target
( note that this is a DS 3delight render )
now all i'd need is a way to generate the opacity/shadow map ... i will
Hello
when i run the script in daz studio 4 pro .. it seems like its doing its thing but blender doesn open like it does when i do a scene
so i open daz then run .py script
it loads .. but when I run animation in blender it just stays at first scene obj.file .... even thought the blender animation is running
what am I doing wrong ???????
i have blender 2.72 , daz 4 pro
mcjTeleBlender3
and related scripts
Hello
when i run the script in daz studio 4 pro .. it seems like its doing its thing but blender doesn open like it does when i do a scene
so i open daz then run .py script
it loads .. but when I run animation in blender it just stays at first scene obj.file .... even thought the blender animation is running
what am I doing wrong ???????
i have blender 2.72 , daz 4 pro
mcjTeleBlender3
and related scripts
for animations it works this way
the daz script mcjTeleBlender exports 1 .obj file per animation frame
this usually takes a few minutes
and in the same folder as the .obj files
a .bat file is also created
running this batch file will render each frame/obj/scene
and the rendered images will be created in the folder you specified in mcjTeleBlender
rendering is done with Blender in invisible (batch) mode
so all you see is a black ( DOS ) window which gives you an idea of the progress of the batch file
this is similar to the way render-farms render animations
it's not like transferring an animated scene in Blender
Hello
when i run the script in daz studio 4 pro .. it seems like its doing its thing but blender doesn open like it does when i do a scene
so i open daz then run .py script
it loads .. but when I run animation in blender it just stays at first scene obj.file .... even thought the blender animation is running
what am I doing wrong ???????
i have blender 2.72 , daz 4 pro
mcjTeleBlender3
and related scripts
for animations it works this way
the daz script mcjTeleBlender exports 1 .obj file per animation frame
this usually takes a few minutes
and in the same folder as the .obj files
a .bat file is also created
running this batch file will render each frame/obj/scene
and the rendered images will be created in the folder you specified in mcjTeleBlender
rendering is done with Blender in invisible (batch) mode
so all you see is a black ( DOS ) window which gives you an idea of the progress of the batch file
this is similar to the way render-farms render animations
it's not like transferring an animated scene in Blender
it's rendering obj/scene/frames
Thank you very much ....
Now
after running .bat file ... I get images but they are all gray
...
Now
after running .bat file ... I get images but they are all gray
one possibility is that you told mcjTeleBlender to render frames 0 to 30
but didnt tell it to also export scene/frames 0 to 30
or maybe you told mcjTeleBlender not to export the (daz studio) camera
one possibility is that you told mcjTeleBlender to render frames 0 to 30
but didnt tell it to also export scene/frames 0 to 30
or maybe you told mcjTeleBlender not to export the (daz studio) camera
one possibility is that you told mcjTeleBlender to render frames 0 to 30
but didnt tell it to also export scene/frames 0 to 30
or maybe you told mcjTeleBlender not to export the (daz studio) camera
just possibilities
i did 0 -10 on both
exported curent and all cams
I found the problem
daz start up didnt have default camera checked ....
Casual, I have seen your thread, but had not read through all of it. Do you have or plan a video that shows how to go from DAZ Studio to Blender with your script? Your work on all of this looks very interesting.
Casual, I have seen your thread, but had not read through all of it. Do you have or plan a video that shows how to go from DAZ Studio to Blender with your script? Your work on all of this looks very interesting.
Thank you.
i don't really plan to make a video tutorial
i think the manual of the first version should help you , it does cover pretty much everything
but i eventually will have to update it for teleblender version 3
This was an interesting link for a utility that can take genesis to Blender, and add (or bring, I haven't yet finished reading) rigging. Not sure if it can work with Casual's stuff, but wanted to post it here, based on interest of Daz->Blender here: http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?321572-Khalibloo-Panel
This was an interesting link for a utility that can take genesis to Blender, and add (or bring, I haven't yet finished reading) rigging. Not sure if it can work with Casual's stuff, but wanted to post it here, based on interest of Daz->Blender here: http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?321572-Khalibloo-Panel
seems to be a case of, exporting/importing in collada format
then using blender script to fix the rigging for Genesis peculiarities
a few pages ago, i think i did a collada test unless it was fbx format, on Aiko3 i suppose :)
i remember that the collada files from Carrara, didnt behave well when imported in Blender , and i was thinking, if i get some time someday, i could write a script to fix the issues, the collada format is not too hard to figure it looks like xml
in the vague future of 2015 i may also complete a program i wrote that converts the obj files exported by mcjTeleBlender into a MDD file, which Blender handles very well, and the resulting animated scene/figure will use mcjTeleBlender's neat Cycles material trees
mdd is like a big set of morph, 1 morph per animation frame, but the whole thing is in blender's memory
so you can render the animation right in Blender, and adjust/animate the lights and materials
but there's memory issues, that's why in this example i used my custom low-poly Aiko figure not the real 70000 vertices one
Casual, I have seen your thread, but had not read through all of it. Do you have or plan a video that shows how to go from DAZ Studio to Blender with your script? Your work on all of this looks very interesting.
Thank you.
just now i found a video that seems to be what you are looking for !
mcjTeleblender 3 is basically the same as version 2, but with better handling of opacity, glossiness, lights
but 90% of the buttons and checkboxes/options are the same, so a version 2 tutorial works for version 3
today i was rendering a scene that includes Aiko3
and i had the shldr, collar and chest bones visibility turned off
when i attempted to render this scene in Blender, the materials were all mixed up !
the same scene with the shldr, collar and chest bones visibility turned ON rendered correctly
so until i figure what's going on, you can use this trick to get around the problem
I was playing with the new version of Teleblender and I am really happy.
The work you have done is fantastic and I am very grateful.
Thank you.
However I have one issue.
If I use the anatomy attachments the skin tones are all wrong.
This didn't used to be a problem.
in the image below you can see the options you may tweak to get different render results
In Daz Studio's Surfaces Tab, it's better to review the settings of the
Specular Color, Specular strength and Glossiness
because TB3 uses their values, whereas TB2 only used the specular color
So the specular color should rarely be left at fully white
the glossiness should not be left at values like 0% and 100%
Also in Daz Studio's Surfaces Tab, the ambient color should be fully white
only if you do want lightness to be added to the surface color
else the Ambient color and strength should be lowered
then the other factor left is the diffuse color and diffuse strength
looks like there's a problem with the Daz Studio 4.7 exporter(s)
say i make Aiko's chest non-visible
mcjTeleBlender uses Daz Studio's scripted .obj exporter
the resulting .obj file contains geometry associated to the nipples material !
meaning the .obj exporter uses a defective list of materials or something
if i "manually" export the same scene using Daz Studio's File/Export,
the obj file does not contain geometry associated to the nipples material !
which is the way it should be
i still have to make sure it's not mcjTeleBlender that corrupts the .obj file
but i dont think mcjTeleBlender "touches" it
in the meantime, if you encounter the problem wherein the wrong materials
get applied to the wrong surfaces ... avoid using the "turn visibility off" trick
to hide poke-through
found another issue that appeared with Daz Studio version 4.7
if you want pixel-perfect matches between your DS renders and your TeleBlender renders
then set your render camera's "frame width" to 35 mm
because that's the value Teleblender and the value previous versions of Daz Studio used
figure 2 is the Blender cycles render if you look at the lower left corner of the image
this would net match the Daz Studio render
Figure 3 but after setting "frame width" to 35 mm
i get this DS render
Fig 4 and i can now mix the DS render and the Blender render
so i could do some special effects in DS or Blender and mix it with footage rendered in DS or Blender
Comments
by default, Daz Studio doesnt apply things like the "smooth" modifiers, just before it exports the scene
so you have to tell Daz Studio to apply the smooth modifier at all times
and this is done ........ ( i didnt use DS4 often until recently ) ..... and this is done in ...... in the clothing item's properties
turning On "interactive smoothing"
note about the ground shadows in the Blender Cycles render seen above
since the beach is an environment sphere
Amy doesn't cast shadows on what we perceive as the ground
there's many ways to add fake ground shadows
you just have to search google or youtube for recent tutorials about [ Blender Cycles shadows]
usually this involves layers
------
in this case i used my method
there's 1 10 ft x 10 ft white plane under Amy's feet
there's a direct light ( sun ) in font of Amy to match the sun angle used in the environment sphere
in Blender i went into Amy and Amy's clothes/hair "object" settings, Visibility, and i made her invisible to the camera
but i left her shadows visible
then i change the view/render camera to a top-view camera
and i framed the white plane so it fit the 1024x1025 render frame
i rendered this
and in PaintShop i turned it into this shadow mask
this involved
turning the image into a grayscale image,
negate colors, ( shadow areas white since daz studio is an opacity map not a transparency map )
making sure the non-shadow areas are perfectly black
i closed Blender
in Daz Studio i applied the shadow mask to the white plane's opacity channel, and made the plane's diffuse color black
i rendered the scene in Blender/Cycles
another note about world/environment spheres
how to spin the World (environment texture ) around
because the ocean is a nicer view than a rock cliff
( that thing? it's a wildly morphed mcjPlaneOneCyl mechanical prop ... just a test )
Someone pointed out to me this Sun position script for Blender, which can help positioning the sun with your HDRI backgrounds as well! :)
Sun Position Script
thanks !
in Daz Studio, since i use a sky-sphere ( a primitive sphere with ambient 100% )
i could use mcjComeHere aim my camera at the sky-sphere's sun
then "shoot" a direct light in the sky
though i think i hard-coded a maximum distance ( i knew it i knew it i knew it i shouldn't have done that )
then i'd have to manually point the camera at me
actually i simply made Amy the Distant light's persistent target
( note that this is a DS 3delight render )
now all i'd need is a way to generate the opacity/shadow map ... i will
i know !!!!
i already used Carnite's method to add shadows in my VooDooCam camera tracking experiments
if i do this , see below, then i set the view cam to **** drum rolls **** Bottom View !!!!
and if the ground plane is well lit, i got my ground-plane-shadow-map right there !! don't need to do complicated angled projections
and we're in luck, there's nothing to obstruct our view below the ground plane !
we do have to mirror the render image though, or rotate the ground plane, or use the Surface Tiling ( -1 tile )
.......
awwwwh bummer, when i render from below, the surface is all black
.....
wish i could do like in Blender, have Amy generate shadows but not be visible
...
or i suspect i can "bake" the shadowmap into an image .... but i always delayed learning to bake
...
well i was not able to really bake textures,
and i cant render the shadow catcher plane using a camera located below that plane
( which is odd because i remember making GoBos using opacity maps )
but, using the fact that distant lights cast light and shadows in a parallel
i can place a plane below ground level
and place it behind the real ground plane, from the point of view of the shadow generating distant light
then i can place my camera up in the air, looking down and i get my shadow mask !
Hello
when i run the script in daz studio 4 pro .. it seems like its doing its thing but blender doesn open like it does when i do a scene
so i open daz then run .py script
it loads .. but when I run animation in blender it just stays at first scene obj.file .... even thought the blender animation is running
what am I doing wrong ???????
i have blender 2.72 , daz 4 pro
mcjTeleBlender3
and related scripts
for animations it works this way
the daz script mcjTeleBlender exports 1 .obj file per animation frame
this usually takes a few minutes
and in the same folder as the .obj files
a .bat file is also created
running this batch file will render each frame/obj/scene
and the rendered images will be created in the folder you specified in mcjTeleBlender
rendering is done with Blender in invisible (batch) mode
so all you see is a black ( DOS ) window which gives you an idea of the progress of the batch file
this is similar to the way render-farms render animations
it's not like transferring an animated scene in Blender
it's rendering obj/scene/frames
for animations it works this way
the daz script mcjTeleBlender exports 1 .obj file per animation frame
this usually takes a few minutes
and in the same folder as the .obj files
a .bat file is also created
running this batch file will render each frame/obj/scene
and the rendered images will be created in the folder you specified in mcjTeleBlender
rendering is done with Blender in invisible (batch) mode
so all you see is a black ( DOS ) window which gives you an idea of the progress of the batch file
this is similar to the way render-farms render animations
it's not like transferring an animated scene in Blender
it's rendering obj/scene/frames
Thank you very much ....
Now
after running .bat file ... I get images but they are all gray
one possibility is that you told mcjTeleBlender to render frames 0 to 30
but didnt tell it to also export scene/frames 0 to 30
or maybe you told mcjTeleBlender not to export the (daz studio) camera
just possibilities
i did 0 -10 on both
exported curent and all cams
Thank you for updating to fix for blender 2.72b - I get a 415 error when attempting to download!
i did 0 -10 on both
exported curent and all cams
I found the problem
daz start up didnt have default camera checked ....
all good :) ... thank you very much ...
Casual, I have seen your thread, but had not read through all of it. Do you have or plan a video that shows how to go from DAZ Studio to Blender with your script? Your work on all of this looks very interesting.
Thank you.
i don't really plan to make a video tutorial
i think the manual of the first version should help you , it does cover pretty much everything
but i eventually will have to update it for teleblender version 3
the manual is here
https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts/mcjteleblender-for-ds1-2-3-4
most of what is said is still valid
the current, latest version of the Daz Studio script mcjTeleBlender3 and "blendBot" the kit of python scripts for Blender
is found here:
https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts4/mcjteleblender3
i have a lot of projects i'm trying to get back to complete
and updating the manual for teleblender 3 is in that list
I am unable to download any of your exporting scripts from the links provided - Chrome and Firefox both give a message that the URL is not available.
for mcjTeleBleender 3
the download page is
https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts4/mcjteleblender3
the 2 downloadable zip files are at the bottom of the page
you have to click on the "down arrows" ( as shown below ) to download the zip files
but just in case
here's direct links to the 2 zip files
https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts4/mcjteleblender3/mcjBlendBot.zip?attredirects=0&d=1
and
https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts4/mcjteleblender3/mcjTeleBlender3.zip?attredirects=0&d=1
Thank you, the direct links worked, the link on the mcasualdazscripts4 page didn't work.
Thank you for your work on these scripts.
Yes, I was also able to download - thank you so much for all your work :)
This was an interesting link for a utility that can take genesis to Blender, and add (or bring, I haven't yet finished reading) rigging. Not sure if it can work with Casual's stuff, but wanted to post it here, based on interest of Daz->Blender here: http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?321572-Khalibloo-Panel
seems to be a case of, exporting/importing in collada format
then using blender script to fix the rigging for Genesis peculiarities
a few pages ago, i think i did a collada test unless it was fbx format, on Aiko3 i suppose :)
i remember that the collada files from Carrara, didnt behave well when imported in Blender , and i was thinking, if i get some time someday, i could write a script to fix the issues, the collada format is not too hard to figure it looks like xml
in the vague future of 2015 i may also complete a program i wrote that converts the obj files exported by mcjTeleBlender into a MDD file, which Blender handles very well, and the resulting animated scene/figure will use mcjTeleBlender's neat Cycles material trees
mdd is like a big set of morph, 1 morph per animation frame, but the whole thing is in blender's memory
so you can render the animation right in Blender, and adjust/animate the lights and materials
but there's memory issues, that's why in this example i used my custom low-poly Aiko figure not the real 70000 vertices one
This is always the difficult thing these days :) I have a hard time finding time just to render a scene for fun these days!
I like Aiko McDonald! ;-)
just now i found a video that seems to be what you are looking for !
mcjTeleblender 3 is basically the same as version 2, but with better handling of opacity, glossiness, lights
but 90% of the buttons and checkboxes/options are the same, so a version 2 tutorial works for version 3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqaYsE8UNxY
Bug to fix
today i was rendering a scene that includes Aiko3
and i had the shldr, collar and chest bones visibility turned off
when i attempted to render this scene in Blender, the materials were all mixed up !
the same scene with the shldr, collar and chest bones visibility turned ON rendered correctly
so until i figure what's going on, you can use this trick to get around the problem
I was playing with the new version of Teleblender and I am really happy.
The work you have done is fantastic and I am very grateful.
Thank you.
However I have one issue.
If I use the anatomy attachments the skin tones are all wrong.
This didn't used to be a problem.
in the image below you can see the options you may tweak to get different render results
In Daz Studio's Surfaces Tab, it's better to review the settings of the
Specular Color, Specular strength and Glossiness
because TB3 uses their values, whereas TB2 only used the specular color
So the specular color should rarely be left at fully white
the glossiness should not be left at values like 0% and 100%
Also in Daz Studio's Surfaces Tab, the ambient color should be fully white
only if you do want lightness to be added to the surface color
else the Ambient color and strength should be lowered
then the other factor left is the diffuse color and diffuse strength
thanks I'll have a play with that.
looks like there's a problem with the Daz Studio 4.7 exporter(s)
say i make Aiko's chest non-visible
mcjTeleBlender uses Daz Studio's scripted .obj exporter
the resulting .obj file contains geometry associated to the nipples material !
meaning the .obj exporter uses a defective list of materials or something
if i "manually" export the same scene using Daz Studio's File/Export,
the obj file does not contain geometry associated to the nipples material !
which is the way it should be
i still have to make sure it's not mcjTeleBlender that corrupts the .obj file
but i dont think mcjTeleBlender "touches" it
in the meantime, if you encounter the problem wherein the wrong materials
get applied to the wrong surfaces ... avoid using the "turn visibility off" trick
to hide poke-through
found another issue that appeared with Daz Studio version 4.7
if you want pixel-perfect matches between your DS renders and your TeleBlender renders
then set your render camera's "frame width" to 35 mm
because that's the value Teleblender and the value previous versions of Daz Studio used
figure 2 is the Blender cycles render if you look at the lower left corner of the image
this would net match the Daz Studio render
Figure 3 but after setting "frame width" to 35 mm
i get this DS render
Fig 4 and i can now mix the DS render and the Blender render
so i could do some special effects in DS or Blender and mix it with footage rendered in DS or Blender
Hi
PROBLEM in Blender 2.7 in Imported objs.
Problem Long Load Time in Blender 2.72 and Teleblender(2 & 3) and Underscore in "Names Files" and "materials"
Export Scene in Teleblender with files image with Underscore (body_Aiko_tex.jpg),
Scene with 62 references file body_Aiko_tex.jpg,
Time load in Blender is 20 minutos.
Solution temporary: rename files image bodyAikotex.jpg in "Maps" (mtl), and delete references in "scene.mtl".
Time load: 5 segundos
Affect names files image and names newmtl and obj
Windows 32 bits
Daz 3.1
Thank you these scripts mcasual