The Great 2020 Daz to Cinema 4D Challenge!

david_23523141

Hi All, 

Daz Studio can export rigged characters, clothes, morphs, objects, aniblocks to Cinema 4D using the FBX file format. The shaders, including iRay shaders can also be exported along with the figure and converted to Redshift shaders and/or C4D shaders for just the physical render engine. All of these procedures have been done already so at a minimum the Daz C4D bridge exists. How far can we go with this Daz-C4D exchange, that is the question! As of 2019 the transfer is possible with a few tips and tweaks. 

If anyone who owns and uses Cinema4D is interested in discussing advanced transfer procedures and general possibilities and limitations of moving between Daz and C4D perhaps there is the possiblity to form a small group of advanced users to share common knowledge, experiences, research and help one another as a group. Also interested in establishing a permanent Daz Forum space for C4D users who appreciate the power and potential of Daz Studio as a character resource. Currently I have only found random videos and posts on the Daz-C4D subject and would be highly interested in establishing a go-to thread on the subject. 

Open to suggestions, if this has been done, exists already on the Daz Forum, etc. I did not find a previous, general discussion C4D thread so if anyone knows of one, please advise. 

Look forward to hearing from C4D users. 

Thank you
David 

wolf359

All Daz content. Exported to Maxon Cinema4D via .obj/mdd.

Gordig

I wouldn't have much to contribute due to how new I am to both Daz and C4D, but I would welcome any dedicated discussion on the matter.

kenshaw011267

I think this would be great, I don't do animation but do a lot of hardware testing and Cinebench is a very common test that has come under a lot of criticism as not being actually real world (it's a test of the C4D render engine). I'd love to see how well it actually works without spending the money on SW I don't have a use for.

p0rt

you are better off waiting for daz to get GPU accelerated viewports, it will still be quicker then animating a decent length movie in cinema 4D using daz assets

wolf359

p0rt said:

you are better off waiting for daz to get GPU accelerated viewports, it will still be quicker then animating a decent length movie in cinema 4D using daz assets

I animate in realtime in Iclone pro..... Retarget to daz figures in DS...... export as pre-animated meshes to C4D to render.

p0rt

wolf359 said:

p0rt said:

you are better off waiting for daz to get GPU accelerated viewports, it will still be quicker then animating a decent length movie in cinema 4D using daz assets

 

I animate in realtime in Iclone pro..... Retarget to daz figures in DS...... export as pre-animated meshes to C4D to render.

fair enough, cinema has to many button and little controls to bother with for to long

 

it need a seperate animating tab on the side, with all the control taking up the whole side of your screen with bigger controls on

Gordig

p0rt said:

wolf359 said:

p0rt said:

you are better off waiting for daz to get GPU accelerated viewports, it will still be quicker then animating a decent length movie in cinema 4D using daz assets

 

I animate in realtime in Iclone pro..... Retarget to daz figures in DS...... export as pre-animated meshes to C4D to render.

fair enough, cinema has to many button and little controls to bother with for to long

 

it need a seperate animating tab on the side, with all the control taking up the whole side of your screen with bigger controls on

It’s a much more powerful and fully-featured program than DS. After I got used to C4D’s interface, I actually found myself wishing it had MORE buttons, because I have to switch interface modes too often. Of course, that could also be a product of not having a refined workflow yet. 

Speaking of interface modes...have you tried changing your interface to “animation”?

prixat

I've extracted the scenes from each version of cinebench and run them in the full program. They run the same, it's as close to a real world test as possible ...for cinema users! ????

p0rt

Gordig said:

p0rt said:

wolf359 said:

p0rt said:

you are better off waiting for daz to get GPU accelerated viewports, it will still be quicker then animating a decent length movie in cinema 4D using daz assets

 

I animate in realtime in Iclone pro..... Retarget to daz figures in DS...... export as pre-animated meshes to C4D to render.

fair enough, cinema has to many button and little controls to bother with for to long

 

it need a seperate animating tab on the side, with all the control taking up the whole side of your screen with bigger controls on

It’s a much more powerful and fully-featured program than DS. After I got used to C4D’s interface, I actually found myself wishing it had MORE buttons, because I have to switch interface modes too often. Of course, that could also be a product of not having a refined workflow yet. 

Speaking of interface modes...have you tried changing your interface to “animation”?

nope, if you can't work everything out in 30 minutes without a manual, its not worth the money

Daedalus-7

Here is a Workflow: 

ANIMATION:

1) Animate your characters in DAZ. You can also import Mixamo animations [it takes some doing via MotionBuilder] [PS: YES FOR G8] 

Why in DAZ? You have many poses, expressions, animations, in other words many CHARACTER based resources.

There are also animations and poses for animals that can be animated.

You can use dForce Hair, dForce Clothes, and even Wind nodes (if you want flowing hair, for example).

2) Add your clothes, make up, etc everything for your characters also in DAZ. Again, tons or resources for doing it there.

3) Export your animated objects/characters as Alembic WITH subD. Otherwise it breaks the UVs.

- Alembic exports everything except the rig [morphs, animation, all textures, etc, all included]. -> USE THIS!

- FBX exports animations badly in C4D (it has a different rotation system for the rig) so your animations from DAZ will come out wrong. It also does not export morphs, only Rig + Animations. Also, it      doesn't export all textures. 

- OBJ. This file system does not store Rigs nor animations...so it's only good for static objects. Also, it doesn't export all textures.

 

TEXTURES & MATERIAL CONVERSION:

4) Merge Alembic [this will load the model with the animation].

5) Make each Alembic item an Editable Geometry. Then invert its Normals (they point towards the inside of the geometry otherwise). 

This is important to be able to add SSS.

6) Create Materials and drag them onto the Alembic entry in the Objects pane (directly onto the name, as if parenting them to the object).

Now, click on the newly created icons on the right of the name of the alembic files (one icon for each material dragged), and in each one do the following:

Go to to TAG. Drag the yellow triangle [tag in the objects pane] with same name as the material (for example for the Face, drag the dzmat_Face triangle) into the Location field.

This will load the Diffuse Map onto each region of the Alembic File.

7) Load all other textures (Bump, etc. you will find them neatly organized in the same folder where you saved your Alembic file) into the model(s) and do material editing based on your render engine.

8) Create a Specular map for the eyes, so that you get no reflections in the iris. 

6) Add VFX in C4D (your imagination is the limit, and maybe your PC too).

NOTE: C4D R20 introduced more controls and support for Alembic, so use R20+

6) Add lights, cameras, render!

patorhh

daedalus7 said:

Here is a Workflow: 

ANIMATION:

1) Animate your characters in DAZ. You can also import Mixamo animations [it takes some doing via MotionBuilder] [PS: YES FOR G8] 

Why in DAZ? You have many poses, expressions, animations, in other words many CHARACTER based resources.

There are also animations and poses for animals that can be animated.

You can use dForce Hair, dForce Clothes, and even Wind nodes (if you want flowing hair, for example).

2) Add your clothes, make up, etc everything for your characters also in DAZ. Again, tons or resources for doing it there.

3) Export your animated objects/characters as Alembic WITH subD. Otherwise it breaks the UVs.

- Alembic exports everything except the rig [morphs, animation, all textures, etc, all included]. -> USE THIS!

- FBX exports animations badly in C4D (it has a different rotation system for the rig) so your animations from DAZ will come out wrong. It also does not export morphs, only Rig + Animations. Also, it      doesn't export all textures. 

- OBJ. This file system does not store Rigs nor animations...so it's only good for static objects. Also, it doesn't export all textures.

 

TEXTURES & MATERIAL CONVERSION:

4) Merge Alembic [this will load the model with the animation].

5) Make each Alembic item an Editable Geometry. Then invert its Normals (they point towards the inside of the geometry otherwise). 

This is important to be able to add SSS.

6) Create Materials and drag them onto the Alembic entry in the Objects pane (directly onto the name, as if parenting them to the object).

Now, click on the newly created icons on the right of the name of the alembic files (one icon for each material dragged), and in each one do the following:

Go to to TAG. Drag the yellow triangle [tag in the objects pane] with same name as the material (for example for the Face, drag the dzmat_Face triangle) into the Location field.

This will load the Diffuse Map onto each region of the Alembic File.

7) Load all other textures (Bump, etc. you will find them neatly organized in the same folder where you saved your Alembic file) into the model(s) and do material editing based on your render engine.

8) Create a Specular map for the eyes, so that you get no reflections in the iris. 

6) Add VFX in C4D (your imagination is the limit, and maybe your PC too).

NOTE: C4D R20 introduced more controls and support for Alembic, so use R20+

6) Add lights, cameras, render!

The alembic feature is the one you need to buy for 90$ in daz store?

jamslut

wolf359 said:

you are better off waiting for daz to get GPU accelerated viewports, it will still be quicker then animating a decent length movie in cinema 4D using daz assets

 

I animate in realtime in Iclone pro..... Retarget to daz figures in DS...... export as pre-animated meshes to C4D to render.

I've heard of this and it looks amazing, is iClone that easy to use? How long did it take before you got comfortable in it? 

jamslut

I'm so glad for this thread, I hope more people join in. Well, I finally got the DazToC4D bridge to work properly. I found that it doesn't bring in the morphs in version R19 and for a while the materials haven't been transfering over. The plugin doesn't work at all in R23 but it does work in R21. It's really slow though because of all the pose morphs and to my knowledge, it doesn't bring in the morphs for clothing. I also figured out how to set the characters up to use C4D's new mocap library, it took a lot of trial and error but I have a preset for it now. I just need to know if and how you can add Mixamo animations to the mocap library, I don't see why you couldn't considering how you can create Mixamo rigs now. Still not a lot of info on the mocap library out there.

3dhermit

jamslut said:

I'm so glad for this thread, I hope more people join in. Well, I finally got the DazToC4D bridge to work properly. I found that it doesn't bring in the morphs in version R19 and for a while the materials haven't been transfering over. The plugin doesn't work at all in R23 but it does work in R21. It's really slow though because of all the pose morphs and to my knowledge, it doesn't bring in the morphs for clothing. I also figured out how to set the characters up to use C4D's new mocap library, it took a lot of trial and error but I have a preset for it now. I just need to know if and how you can add Mixamo animations to the mocap library, I don't see why you couldn't considering how you can create Mixamo rigs now. Still not a lot of info on the mocap library out there.

Would you be so kind to share the c4d  preset for the mocap library re-targeting?