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So question then.... If I export a scene as alembic, it includes everything the way it is in the viewport? Like if there is no pokethrough in viewport when I export, it won't have any when import alembic?
@TheKD
Yes, Alembic only exports finalized geometry. This is, of course, assuming I've correctly figured out how to wait for all the modifiers to finish, which I think I have... :)
Thanks for the tip to import before the alembic file and as far as multiple uv's go yes, seen that on one model but for what I want to use it for at this moment not a big deal and already solved so many things that I had issues with prior.
@TheKD yes I can kinda confirm this, if you have viewport holes it will export in alembic so if you have clothing just do a final check, adjustments, smoothing etc. before export and once in blender it will be like you expect it to be.
Excellent! As much as I love diffeo for the material work, the rest overkill for my uses. I only do still shots, so the rigs and whatnot is a bit much to deal with lol.
And that is the primary reason I hope to eventually add support for another data format, or a direct bridge with no files at all. Poke-through can be fixed with proportional editing, but the biggest disadvantage of Alembic is that it's imported as a vertex cache, meaning anything you do to it in Edit Mode is lost. If we were instead using MDD or something tailored specifically for the use case, it'd be more feasible to allow editing the mesh once it is in Blender, and updating the underlying file. MDD would be good for that because, as a fixed length format, calculating where in the file a certain frame is is just multiplication. But MDD is an ancient file format and uses Big Endian encoding because the equally ancient MC68000 machines it was use on did. It's a pain to have to reverse the byte ordering of every single value after they're read, and before they're written.
In any case, there's still a lot we will be able to do in the future, once all the basic functionality works perfectly.
Everyone who has helped out with Diffeo really has my sympathy... I know how much of a pain it has been just to get the geometry data correctly and can only imagine how it was to work with autofit, the armatures, and JCMs, etc. I am still amazed that Thomas just rolled up his sleeves and figured it out.
Doing everything in Daz and exporting as alembic seems like a much simpler solution, but realise there is a need and use-case for both.
If you export the character in the pose you need for import by Diffeo, then it can be used as is in Blender; no need to pose, it will already be posed as you exported.
At least that is how it used to be, I haven't tried that in 1.5 as I usually want to experiment with poses and scene setup in Blender.
Do you drape the clothes using dForce or the Blender Cloth sim? I guess it would be impossible to take advantage of the Blender cloth with Alembic. Disclaimer: I have yet to try the Blender cloth sim but I've read that it is superior to dForce.
Not sure why you would think this. You just export an animation...
I've found it superior in general, but dForce clothing tends to work better with dForce because it's been perfected by a PA to work with dForce. I know of no export method which preserves the dForce metadata in a way that the Blender cloth engine understands, and so items that appear connected in DS fall to pieces in Blender, or even explode because the weight map that kept intersections from being simulated in DS are not present in Blender. But some simple stuff works.
To be honest MD is far superior to both, and I now do 80% of cloth in MD and that's why I included MD scaling and the subD cage options.
Idea I had, but no time to test it now, maybe someone that is playing can. Or maybe someone knows off the top of their head why my idea is crap lol. Anyways, if you import a person using alembic in the A pose, is there a way to import another posed version, then use that as a shape key? Been learning shape keys lately to make morphs, super useful lol. The point count, point order etc should be the same, not sure if there is a way to use it like I am thinking though.
Animation - of course. Doh!
And I do have MD8 but I had trouble with clothes exported from DAZ Studio falling apart in MD too. When I asked questions I was advised to weld the pieces if I remember correctly (not that I know how to do that). I should give it another go if only to justify my investment in MD. So, if I understand the workflow - you animate the unclothed figure in DAZ Studio and export the animation to MD. Then Export the clothing, fit it to the DAZ figure and run the imported animation. Then what? Back to DAZ Studio or directly to Blender using what? MDD or Alembic?
Welding requires modelling knowledge. Do you really want to learn yet another thing?
What Daz clothing is so precious to you that you cant just buy a Marvelous Designer alternative for $2 NZD on artstation?
I only buy Armour, Gloves, Footwear on Daz Store. For most fabric/soft clothing, you can usually get better quality photogrammetry assets or MD garments from 3rd party stores for the same price or cheaper. Some photogrammetry stuff can be expensive though...
My MD and photogrammetry garment folder is bigger than my Daz garment folder, for sure.
or an app that welds without destroying UV mapping like Ultimate Unwrap 3D
is this a relatively simple process?
Some garments can have tens of different seams that need to welded and sometimes hidden by other parts of mesh.
I have many video game clothing assets and other assets i had originally hoped to sim in MD but they fell apart because not welded.
does not seem to work on everything but most stuff it's a matter of selecting all and under 3D tools weld model
I don't have MD but it works on Skyrim mesh and Poser Legacy mesh
where it oddly doesn't work is some Genesis 3 and 8 clothing
Indeed, there seems to be something new to learn at every snag I hit and it is all getting a little overwhelming. I am understanding why so many people just put up with what DAZ Studio has to offer - slow dForce, slow IRay, VRAM limitations, poor or broken animation tools. But I am envious of the skills of those who are familiar with modeling and material node systems and Inverse Kinematics and rigging and UV maps. Maybe I should just find a less demanding hobby.
Nevertheless, thanks for the good tip about Artstation - I'll take a look. I'll also google photogrammetry garments :P
I tried, failed lol. I probably messin something up. Here is what I tried:
1 Export with diffeo HD
2 Exported with sagan(I think), checked blender/houdini current subd level, and put start frame 30 end frame 60
3 import with diffeo
4 import alembic
5 delete diffeo group
6 render, mesh looked great, but had no materials hooked on
That's the right exporter right?
On the materials tab, did you have "Diffeomorphic Daz Importer" selected?
If so, that should have worked and I'd appreciate a minimal duf file that can reproduce the error.
+1
I don't even bother with Daz dForce clothing anymore... just get native MD assets somewhere else.
@TheKD More likely is to check is to make sure you always start with no vestiges of prior imports; i.e. materials. Blender renumbers the materials and so new Alembic imports will not match any previous Diffeo imports.
You can detete the imports and purge the orphan materials, but it'd probably be better to just start from a pristine scene. This is the prodecural price we pay for Diffeo's gorgeous materials.
Oh, I was using the wrong exporter, now I see the sagan on my edit list. I had to remove alembic_exporter.dll from my plugins, then sagan showed up. OK, success! Once you wizards got geographs working with this system, good to go. This is exciting. Does the hair importer only work with dforce hairs? I am gonna try to make some time to figure more out tomorrow.
Ok - so I've been browsing the assets available at Artstation and they do look impressive. Do you load your DAZ characters into MD as MDD or OBJ or Alembic (and does Sagan work for MD)? Also, do you just drop the garment on to the avatar or do you work from the pattern and sew it from scratch? Lastly, do you export directly to Blender for rendering and is that export in Alembic format?
Sorry to be a nuisance, I'm just trying to get the workflow clear in my mind.
Well, dunno what happened lol. The materials look OK in the viewport, but in cycles render got this, scary lol.
That's the UV map issue I am currently working on. Never seen it that bad, though :( For now, for every material you'll have to go into the shader editor and re-select the correct UV map in the Normal Map node. You will see it hilighted in red.
Oh, yeah, sorry, I changed the project name from alembic_exporter to sagan to avoid confusion with the other more official exporter. So you were using the old version before it supported materials at all, I think.
I don't think anyone considers it a nuisance, we're all kind of just trying to figure things out :)
What I would do is to export your animation as Alembic, using both Blender/Houdini at current, and MD as subD cage. Impor the MD subD into MD, simulate it there with the garment from Artstation, retopo it and export via Alembic. Now go to Blender and import the Diffeo, the original Blender/Houdini at Current animation, and the garment exported from MD.
Others may have other workflows, but this worked for me.
Just to be clear (I confuse easily):
"What I would do is to export your animation as Alembic" ... I take it you mean export from DAZ Studio using your Sagan Alembic export with an option for Blender/Houdini selected?
"and MD as subD cage" ... I don't follow what you are saying here. Could you be a bit more specific? What is a subD cage? I don't see that as an export option in MD8.
"retopo it and export via Alembic" ... I have MD8 which doesn't have the retopology feature that is in 9. There is a remesh (beta) option which converts the triangles into quads but I don't know if that is sufficient.
"Now go to Blender and import the Diffeo, the original Blender/Houdini at Current animation, and the garment exported from MD." ... OK, so the Diffeo is to get the materials over, right? Can it then be deleted at some point? The Blender/Houdini is the Alembic animation using your Sagan export from DAZ Studio? The garment is the MD animated version, yes?
actually simulating part of a figure that is vertex morphed can go better than bone rigging
this is something I found out in Carrara where it's softbody ignores bone rigging and subsequently I have done with Dforce in D|S too using morphloader
so I can see how it would work in Blender on alembic with cloth
I've seen videos of the Blender cloth brush which is in the sculpting tools. I've also seen a pose brush which seems to pose mesh without rigging.