mcjTeleBlender:Daz Studio scenes/animations w/Blender's Cycles Engine

Dean_2026310

Casual said:

deanb247 said:

O.k , so basic primitives with your daz shader presets applied and lights and cameras come across perfect , which is amazing in itself !! but I can't seem to get textures transferring across on figures. Just all this crazy purpleness........mmmmh

you could try yesterday's update of the mcjTeleblender script

just the daz script

( though later today the update will involve the mcjBlendBot kit of Blender scripts too )

Hey , If I don't collect the maps it seems to be working with the new updates , Im on win 7 64bit , blender 2.74 latest test build & Daz Studio 4.7.

Thanks A lot Casual.

mCasual

deanb247 said:

. . .If I don't collect the maps it seems to be working with the new updates . . .
Thanks A lot Casual.

i think the problem may be that the Daz Studio obj/mtl exporter which teleBlender uses doesn't actually ''collect'' all the images involved in surface shaders. eventually i guess i'll have to put teleblender itself in charge of collecting the missing maps

note that teleblender doesn't benefit at all from having those advanced shaders and works best for old school DSDefault material

mCasual

looks like my last update which added among other things Ambient strength support for Genesis2 Shaders
causes problems for the Victoria6 shader

when i look in the surfaces tab, i see ambient strength is at 0% and all black

but when teleblender asks Daz Studio, the answer it gets it , oh it's 75% !

i'll fix that Saturday, so, stay tuned !

Legs 0.75
EyeReflection 0
Nostrils 0.75
Lacrimals 0.75...
Tongue 0.3499999940395355
InnerMouth 0.5
Ears 0.75

Fig 1 , When Victoria 6 dreams of high heels she emits light

Fig 2 - This could be intentional or this could be an accident but AoA's Subsurface shader had the Subsurface strength with the name "Ambient Strength" - the moderately quick fix is to set it to 0 when rendering with teleblender but Satuday's update will correct that

The Ambient Strength property's internal name is Ambient Strength2 which means this was a choice by the shader writer
probably to get in the 3DViewport some visual cues

so my teleblender patch will be very specific, i'll first search for "Ambient Strength2" and if found , this will be the Ambient Strength telePorted to Blender alse it's the "Ambient Strength"

mCasual

today's test scene DS-3delight render

atticanne

Yay! She found her shoes.

mCasual

TeleBlender Update - TeleBlender Update - TeleBlender Update - TeleBlender Update - TeleBlender Update -

April 11th 2-15 9:34 pm

mcjTeleBlender v10 - now correctly handles ambient strength for the AoA Subsurface shader which uses the name "Ambient Strength2"

https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts4/mcjteleblender3
direct download TeleBlender 310

https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts4/mcjteleblender3/mcjTeleBlender3.zip?attredirects=0&d=1

direct Download BlendBot 311
https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts4/mcjteleblender3/mcjBlendBot.zip?attredirects=0&d=1

note 1 : best material transfer happens for Daz Studio default shaders, not the newer shaders

note 2 - an mcjBlendBot v11 update was posted on April 9th 2015

note 3 - Gen2 renders work slightly better now, so if you had traumatizing experiences rendering her with teleblender you may give it another try and what's the worst that can happen !? more trauma :) kidding kidding, actually in my case it even fixed the white-eyes issue

note 4 - i'm waiting for the Blender render to complete so i use the time to post notes that only you took the time to read

note 5 - if your Gen2 materials show up as magenta/pink in Blender, it's usually because the images cant be found, you can try turning the "collect maps" option off - You can try replacing .tif images with .tga - you can try most of all, using basic Daz Studio default materials, not the 3Delight ones because they are detrimental to the material transfer. You can also look in the scene.mtl file which mcjBlendbot reads during the import process and see what the image paths look like.

----

Fig 1 Blender Cycles Render - In DS: the AoA subsurface shader on Gen2/V6 - the ambient strength was set to 15% ( which is added in Blender using an emissive node if you work in TB3 mode )

Fig 2, 3, 4 - 3Delight renders - maybe soon i'll post the (static props ) shoes i made for V6 ( since i had almost no clothes for her (
, but they need 1 or 2 tweaks ... ( maybe the peplum and skirt and bustier too but for now they are just props )

atticanne

Many thanks for all the hard work you do to make my CG experiences better.

yajoojmajooj

I had been using your mcjteleblender script to transfer my Daz Studio scenes to Blender Cycles, but all of a sudden it’s not working anymore.
I’ve re-installed Daz, updated it and even tried putting all three versions of scripts in it. Also re-installed Blender and put BlendBot scripts in it but nothing is working.
Don’t know what happened. The dialogue box opens when I try to export it but then the small dialogue box saying “Geometry” shit comes and disappears really quickly.

Any solution?

mCasual

yajoojmajooj1 said:

I had been using your mcjteleblender script to transfer my Daz Studio scenes to Blender Cycles, but all of a sudden it’s not working anymore.
I’ve re-installed Daz, updated it and even tried putting all three versions of scripts in it. Also re-installed Blender and put BlendBot scripts in it but nothing is working.
Don’t know what happened. The dialogue box opens when I try to export it but then the small dialogue box saying “Geometry” shit comes and disappears really quickly.

Any solution?

a few questions

- is the 'geometry' dialog box in Daz Studio or blender?
- is it a new version of Daz Studio?
- is it a new version of Blender?
- could you try it with a simple scene containing a plane and a box?
- could you try turning on or off teleblender's 'use plugin if available ' option
- could you try turning on or off teleblender's 'collect maps ' option
- did you tell teleblender to export the 'obj in a folder that does not exist or to which you are prevented from writing?

yajoojmajooj

1. The Geometry box is in Daz Studio. I never reach Blender. It doesn't even open.
2. Yeah, I'm using Daz Studio 4.7 64bit.
3. Yes. Downloaded Blender 2.74.
4. Yes. Tried it with a basic plane, simple V4.2, a stool and a couch. Same result. The dialogue box appears and says 'Writing OBJ file' Saving Geometry but then nothing happens.
5. Yes, done that too.
6. Same answer as above.
7. Instead of C drive, I just browsed and located in D drive. Base folder.

Now if you have any solution please give me. I'm frustrated.

Dean_2026310

Two things to try -

1 - https://builder.blender.org/download/ - download the latest blender build - there was an association problem in blender 2.74 if memory serves me correct

2 - find your blender.exe folder shift+right click and "open command window here"

type in - "blender.exe -r" less the quotations ! hit return

This will set associations so that Casuals teleblend can actually open blender. I find I have to do this every update....

yajoojmajooj

I also forgot to mention when nothing was changed, I mean no updated Daz Studio or Blender, I was having this problem.

yajoojmajooj

Nope. No luck. Even tried deanb247 solutions. OMG, I hope there is a way around this.

mCasual

yajoojmajooj1 said:

I also forgot to mention when nothing was changed, I mean no updated Daz Studio or Blender, I was having this problem.

just now i downloaded blender-2.74-bc160d8-win64

it got installed in C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\blender-2.74-bc160d8-win64

but i move it to C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\blender

so the blender.exe is in C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\blender.exe

i place the mcjBlendBot files in

C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.74\scripts\modules

i open Daz Studio 4.7 Pro 64 bit

i create a plane and a box

i start mcjTeleBlender3

i click the "Restore Defaults" button

in the "Auxiliary options" Tab, i make sure the "Location of Blender.exe" is correctly pointing at
C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\Blender.exe

in the "Main Options" Tab i change "Export Scene As Obj" from
c:/scene.obj
to
C:/Users/Public/Documents/scene.obj

because i'm pretty sure Windows wont block me from writing to that folder
which may not be the case for root folders like D:\ and C:\

i set the render settings for GPU rendering instead of CPU

i leave all the other options alone

i click "Export current frame"

yay it worked

----

now if i look in C:/Users/Public/Documents/s

i see that mcjTeleBlender succesfully got Daz Studio's exporter to export the scene

as scene.obj and scene.mtl

mcjTeleBlender created a blender python script named scene.py

which contains instructions telling blender how to import and process the .obj and .mtl, it also orders Blender to create lights and cameras and use settings that were not exported in the obj file

mcjteleblender also created scene.bat which you can use to
do all that Blender and open that scene
independently from D|S

---

also dont forget to re-enable CUDA/GPU rendering in Blender's User Preferences

---

Equirectangular/Spherical World/Environment background image by Alexandre Duret-Lutz
https://www.flickr.com/photos/gadl/

----

it still works with Victoria 6 / Genesis 2
but since my CUDA card can handle the humongous texture images i rendered it in CPU mode
i'd just need to resize the textures to something like 2Kx2K to get GPU renders

yajoojmajooj

1st thing. I don't have an nVidia card. I have an AMD Radeon R7 250, which only supports OpenCL. So no CUDA. And also, I'm not getting any option like CUDA in Blender either. Just CPU.
2nd. All four files are being created successfully in Documents folder.
3rd. The only thing I'm doing differently is that my Blender is located in D:\Softwares\Blender\blender.exe. And I doubt that that could be causing any problems.
Can't get this to work, OMG!

yajoojmajooj

Guess what?! I changed the location of Blender and I can't believe it worked!

It must have been causing some restriction problems in drive D.

As always, your help is greatly appreciated.

mCasual

yajoojmajooj1 said:

1st thing. I don't have an nVidia card. I have an AMD Radeon R7 250, which only supports OpenCL. So no CUDA. And also, I'm not getting any option like CUDA in Blender either. Just CPU.
2nd. All four files are being created successfully in Documents folder.
3rd. The only thing I'm doing differently is that my Blender is located in D:\Softwares\Blender\blender.exe. And I doubt that that could be causing any problems.
Can't get this to work, OMG!

make sure you did "tell" mcjTeleBlender that Blender is D:\Softwares\Blender\blender.exe

also if you double-right-click on scene.bat, you can launch Blender independently from Daz Studio

if this doesnt work

open scene.bat in notepad

you can see what the batch file tried to do and could not

in my case scene.bat reads

"C:/Program Files/Blender Foundation/Blender/blender.exe" 
"C:/Users/Public/Documents/lutz.blend" 
-P 
"C:/Users/Public/Documents/scene.py"

so it opens blender
and tells blender to run the script scene.py
the part about lutz.blend is just there because i was using mcjTeleBlender's option to re-use an old blender scene

scene.py is harder to understand
but basically it tells blender to import scene.obj and scene.mtl and add lights and cameras to the scene and build materials

--------

if using a text editor like notepad or wordpad you open scene.bat

and add a line that reads

pause

and save it

the next time you run scene.bat

the screen where you see blender start will stay open

and you'll be able to see error messages that explain why it didnt work

maybe it will be a message like

"command blender.exe does not exist"

or

you'll see that blender sort of gives up importing your scene for some reason

mCasual

yajoojmajooj1 said:

Guess what?! I changed the location of Blender and I can't believe it worked!

It must have been causing some restriction problems in drive D.

As always, your help is greatly appreciated.

Great !

yajoojmajooj

One more thing Casual.
Is there anything I can do to improve my Blender Cycles renders even more?
Below are the type of renders I'm getting.
Any suggestions are welcome. :)

mCasual

yajoojmajooj1 said:

One more thing Casual.
Is there anything I can do to improve my Blender Cycles renders even more?
Below are the type of renders I'm getting.
Any suggestions are welcome. :)

well actually you probably could give me more advice that i could give you :)

one trick i found is that if you create a sun, the default "size" is 0.1
if you change it to 0.02 you get sharper shadows
with 0.1 the shadows are very blurry and faint

other is, if you place a big emissive ball, very bright, far away in front of the figure
very far so the light doesn't light your scene too much
and set moderate reflectivity ( glossy-sharp) on the cornea
then you will get the eye glint which gives much life to the faces
since reflectivity is low, you wont get the whole scene reflected in the eyes just the bright spot

a more recent finding is that if you apply a very fine random-noise bump map to the figure
even if you cant see the bumpyness of it from far away
it will scatter the glossiness make it smoother
and it will hide the polygon edges in areas where polygon edges are large
( example: when your figure lifts an arm, the polygons get stretched )

well maybe the trick to hide the polygon edges would be to increase the Blender "smoothen" modifier strength

if you make an extra long 3000 samples render, the cycles noise is not there to hide that issue
and you can see the visual signs that the figure is faceted

yajoojmajooj

Okay, I somewhat knew the sun trick but that emissive ball trick is a new one.
Definitely gonna try that one. Although I didn't quite get your explanation about the placement of the ball. Do you mind telling me that again with an image attachment? Please?

Thanks a ton.

Nice render BTW.
;)

mCasual

hope i dont forget to fix this
the type of glossy effect for non-mirror materials is supposed to be "Beckman"
but mcjBlendBot when "talking" to new versions of Blender ends up specifying the GSX type
which is way too specular (almost like 'Sharp' )
next version will correct this
( i kinda knew the lazy way i wrote that part of mcjBlendBot would punish me ! )

well it's GGX and its indeed the new default glossy type for Blender Cycles's Glossy BSDF node
by it's not really more 'mirrory than Beckman contrary to what i suspected

in the next version i will correct this, The Beckman will be the default type created by mcjBlendbot

the precautions remain the same

1 - in Daz Studio materials, avoid a 100% white specular color unless you
want something to look plastic, the glossiness strength, specular strength
sliders should also be carefully adjusted because they
have consequences on the materials in Blender

mcjTeleBlender also has global "Gloss Factor" and "Roughness" settings
also see the "Gloss Mix" option

yajoojmajooj

Thanks for explaining this Casual.

Roygee

Hi :)

When unzipping the latest Blendbot to Blender 2.74a scripts/modules, I got the attached error. So I unzipped to a temp folder and pasted to the modules folder. I now get the attached pic. Previously it was working fine, except that the render was badly overexposed and washed out.

The mats in the Roma file are correct.

What the heck have I done wrong?

Please help:)

mCasual

Roygee said:

Hi :)

When unzipping the latest Blendbot to Blender 2.74a scripts/modules, I got the attached error. So I unzipped to a temp folder and pasted to the modules folder. I now get the attached pic. Previously it was working fine, except that the render was badly overexposed and washed out.

The mats in the Roma file are correct.

What the heck have I done wrong?

Please help:)

the "cannot open file" message seems to indicate that you did not have write privileges to that folder
or your unzipper app ( 7z?) needed to be executed in administrative mode

the magenta renders usually happen when blender is unable to load the texture images
sometimes the images are .tif images, but the .mtl or the .py file mention jpg images
so you could open the .mtl and 'py file using notepad
and notice the files and paths mentioned
and try to reconcile what's written there and what the real-life files and locations are
sometimes using the "collect" option of mcjTeleblender solves the problem
also, mcjTeleBlender has an option named something like "fix materials for blender" which is usually ON

also, it's preferable if your figures use the DSDefault material
not the complicated shaders for genesis
from the point of view of teleblender and Blender, those complex shaders are a nuisance
When the materials are DSDefault teleblender finds all the surface properties of interest
and the DazStudio obj exporter correctly transmits them through the mtl file
so teleblender doesnt need to use complicated tricks to send them through the .py file

Roygee

Thanks for the quick response - all working correctly :)

The mats were in .jpg format and I was using default shaders. Must have inadvertently changed a setting - after resetting to default, all was well.

Thanks so much for all your hard work and dedication to developing this great tool :)

yajoojmajooj

Casual, how's it going?

I just wanted to ask you if there is a script for rendering DAZ models with Blender Cycles in an HDRi Background plate. And that too with the shadow catching and everything. I don't want to render cars or other 3D objects. I just want to render my human models on HDRi background plates.

Cheers.

mCasual

yajoojmajooj1 said:

Casual, how's it going?

I just wanted to ask you if there is a script for rendering DAZ models with Blender Cycles in an HDRi Background plate. And that too with the shadow catching and everything. I don't want to render cars or other 3D objects. I just want to render my human models on HDRi background plates.

Cheers.

in mcjTeleBlender, in the "Auxiliary Options" tab, there's a "World Environment" panel
and you can specify any image, including hdr images, as the Environment texture

In Blender, this texture gets assigned to an environment Sphere

Normally the appropriate HDR ( or standard ) image type for environment spheres
is not a normal photo, but rather a 360° X 180° panoramic photo
this format is called "spherical" or "equirectangular"

i usually get my equirectangular images here http://www.hdrlabs.com/sibl/archive.html

a normal (non-panoramic) photo can be applied to an environment sphere
it will create a credible illumination of the scene
It wont look good as a background though.

You can tell Blender to not-render the environment sphere
The lighting of the scene will still come from the environment sphere
but the background will be transparent .... if you save the rendered image using a format like PNG or TIF, not JPG

the background can then be added using a program like Paintshop

or it can be done in Blender if you learn to use layers/compositing

----

For the ground shadows, i sometimes used an equirectangular image which i projected on a plane
in Daz Studio, using mcjSphericalUV
https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts4/mcjsphericaluv
It's not super easy but i got it working a few times

The other way to add ground shadows, are totally a Blender Cycles issue
It involves render passes, layers and compositing

some video tutorials about it (not by me ) https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=cycles+ground+shadows

yajoojmajooj

Thanks for your reply man.
Okay but where do I find good free back plates for my renders?
I want a good interior and exterior environment from time to time.
Where do you find your back plates from and also do you find images/back plates/backgrounds or just use an HDR back plate?

mCasual

yajoojmajooj1 said:

Thanks for your reply man.
Okay but where do I find good free back plates for my renders?
I want a good interior and exterior environment from time to time.
Where do you find your back plates from and also do you find images/back plates/backgrounds or just use an HDR back plate?

usually here http://www.hdrlabs.com/sibl/archive.html

but there's others on deviantart, quite huge though

google keywords : hdr equirectangular spherical environment

http://zbyg.deviantart.com/art/HDRi-Pack-3-112847728

you could also do the ground shadows in Daz Studio and composite them with the Blender Render
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qo2OVy9tf8E

an august 2014 video about ground shadows in blender cycles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ke7plNnwYl0