Blender imports - missing vertex groups (randomly)...

Mephisto3

Dear all,

I am getting quite annoyed at some features of Daz, to be honest... (not even talking about the "jumping viewport" issue here, which drives me as crazy as all the others it affects).

Imports from Blender (using the same import settings that everybody else uses) are randomly missing vertex groups... why is that? What I mean is if I have an object that consists of 100 vertices, and I split them into 10 groups of 10 vertices each, then export-import. I get maybe 7 groups in Daz... then I go back to Blender, define the groups again (same groups etc. - but I have to start from scratch, i.e. delete the old ones and create them again), export-import... now I get maybe 9 groups... and so on and so forth. It is never all of them.

Why is that? What am I missing?

 

Thank you & kind regards,

M.

Syrus_Dante

I think this is a problem with how Blender is handling the Vertex Groups. Keep in mind as the name says its based on vertices not only on faces or the polygon groups like they are handled in DazStudio or the OBJ file. You can also asign vertecis to more than one group and thats the problem if you try to export these vertex groups with the obj file. You only get those vertex groups imported to Daz Studio that don't share vertices with other groups in Blender.

One way to fix this would be first to make shure you are in face selection mode if you are pressing the Assign button in the blender vertex groups panel. Go to all groups and press Select/Deselect to check if the groups don't overlap. If so first make a face selection on one group then choose the other group in the list and press Remove. You can also use Invert Selection Ctrl+I, Grow/Shrink Selection Ctrl+[numpad+] or Ctrl+[numpad-] before pressing Remove. But its tedious trying to get the vertex groups right at the seams with this beacuse even though you are in face selection mode you are assigning vertecis and this can lead to the result of having one extra loop of polygons assigned to the group. I know it once drove me mad thinking of how this works in Blender it isn't easy to work with.

Another method would be to use the Daz Studio Geometry Editor Tool to fix the Face Groups in the Tool Settings pane. There you also have Grow/Shrink Selection Ctrl+[numpad+] or Ctrl+[numpad-] Symetrical selection and the biggest advantage in my opinion is that you emediatly see which face belongs to which group by the red highlighting if you select a face group from the list in the Tool Settings pane. Also what faces you are assign to one face group gets removed from the other group automaticly.

Mephisto3

Hi Syrus_Dante - first of all (again): thank you so much. Your answers are (a) to the point / solve the exact question I'm asking and (b) they are explained in a way that they can be understood (and put to use) without a PhD in Daz3D ;) Very much appreciated.

Excellent - this tells me why, which is great.

As of now, I agree with you, it seems easier / more straight forward to do this in Daz3D - therefore, I will just stop assigning Vertex Groups in Blender (and stick with the Material groups... or what do you think, create both surface and face groups in Daz3D - that seems the right choice, as I cannot use the Blender Materials in Daz3D anyway, no?).

If you still have a moment, I have three follow up questions (and one unrelated):

1) now I have the figure - the bones, however, seem to always be "wrong" by default (for example, if I have a sphere, the bone will start at one "outside-end" of the sphere... so if I scale it, for example, it scales towards one side) - in my opinion "obviously", I want the bone to to start (pivot point / green gismo) in the MIDDLE of the sphere) - is there any way to have Daz3D do that by default, or at least tell it to "go to the middle", instead of manually moving the points?

2) the default is TriAx (which, again, I find to be the exception rather than the norm) - can I change the default to General Weight somewhere?

3) even if the answer to 2) is "no", I know how to do this manually... however, if I start off with "fit by bone selection group", for some reason, one bone (even if I have only unconnected / individual bones) always gets the whole figure and the other bones get nothing... so again I would have to do this manually (I know how), which seems ineffective... any way to optimize / automate?

 

Here is the unrelated question (just because you seem to know this program so well ;) Sorry if this bothers you, just ignore then!): do you know how to fix the "jumping viewport" issue? That is the issue explained in other posts where the mouse "jumps" (apparently because the Daz3D Event Handler is not prioritizing the mouse correctly... so you press a botton, say Alt+MiddleMouse, to start scrolling, but Daz3D misses the initial position of the mouse so your viewport "jumps" and spins the camera out of control if you are unlucky... same happens if you click on the world global rotate thingy to start to rotate...). I know there is an auto-hotkey script that solves this, but I don't think I want to use that... any other options?

In any case, again, thank you so much! I hope you ever have a quesiton I can help with (although I kind of doubt it... ;)) :)

 

Have a good Tuesday!

M.

Syrus_Dante

It's the topic of the questions that I am able to answer by experience. I've ecountered the same issues in the beginning of working with Blender and Daz Studio.

I spent many hours tying to solve these and found workarounds that I want to explain in detail here, to share the knowledge so others can start over to actually create and edit things rather than trying to find a solution by themselfs or searching for tutorials that may end up in more confusion.

I'm glad to help with some beginner questions but don't ask me about rendering, lights or IRay shaders.

 

First of all I can explain more about the Blender / DazStudio OBJ import/export process in this post. Here is some link with more details on that Interconnecting cables for guitar pedals on pedal board

The following questions are more about the DazStudio rigging I have written about in other posts - but there are some interesting details that I could write about if I find the time in a following post.

Here are some forum links for further info on rigging:

• Easiest way to rig a new character

• Simple Bone/Model Question

 

You can find other posts around this forum about the Viewport jumping issue that as far as I heared could have something to do with runing DazStudio on a Windows 10 system. I never had these extreme mouse jumps maybe a short unresponsive interface while heavy loading scene times.

 

 

or what do you think, create both surface and face groups in Daz3D - that seems the right choice, as I cannot use the Blender Materials in Daz3D anyway, no?)

Have a look at the default Blender OBJ export settings on the left, for shure you can export the materials with Write Materials means a file type of MTL gets saved along with the OBJ.

You can import these OBJ files to DazStudio to have the materials converted to Surface Groups.

For me both the Blender method with Vertex Groups and the DazStudio Geometry Editor Tool with Face Groups, Selection Sets, Surface Groups and so on have their advantages and disadvantages.

In Blender I pefer the way you can select, edit and seperate parts of the mesh. If I try to create, edit or fix something with the geometry/topology or the UV map of the mesh Blender is my toolset of choice.

See the Polygroups option in the Export OBJ settings. If you take care of the vertex groups not sharing vertecies in Blender the PolyGroups from the OBJ file become FaceGroups in DazStudio of course you have to check all the settings in the DS-OBJ Import Options as seen below.

Mephisto3

Syrus_Dante - again, that is excellent. Thank you very very much! I will go through all the links and ressources you posted and I am certain that I will have learned a lot by the end of it :)

If you ever need something, please post, maybe I can help!