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Sagan: A DAZ Studio to Blender Alembic Exporter

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  • marblemarble Posts: 7,500
    edited February 2021

    I have to admit that I'm a little clueless when it comes to understanding the differences between all these 3D apps. Why use Houdini instead of Blender, for example?

    I watched a YouTube video which suggests that Blender can't compete with Houdini when it comes to simulations but Blender is better for sculpting. Then again, the video suggests that Blender is not so good at animation but recommends other applications (Maya or MotionBuilder). This is when it all gets too much for me. I find Blender confusing enough to get to grips with but Houdini is supposed to be even harder to learn and the likes of Maya or MotionBuilder are just non-starters for me due to cost.

    But that is all from a personal perspective and there will be others who want to work in any and all of these other applications with a near-seamless pipeline from DAZ Studio. So the very best of luck in all your efforts.

    Post edited by marble on
  • TheKDTheKD Posts: 2,691

    Houdini is better for simulations, and anything to do with procedural generation. Once you know what you are doing, what you can make is only really limited to your imagination. I have seen some crazy stuff people made. Like a tool that can build a cityscapes or villages. Since it's done procedurally, no two are ever the same.

  • TheMysteryIsThePointTheMysteryIsThePoint Posts: 2,948

    Houdini is so powerful that it's difficult to even say what it is better at. I saw a guy use Discrete Element Simulations to prevent his mocapped character's hands from penetrating its body. I would not have even thought of that. With Houdini, one gets the distinct idea that, like @TheKD said, the limiting factor is not Houdini, but your own ability to think of creative ways to solve problems.

  • marblemarble Posts: 7,500

    TheKD said:

    Houdini is better for simulations, and anything to do with procedural generation. Once you know what you are doing, what you can make is only really limited to your imagination. I have seen some crazy stuff people made. Like a tool that can build a cityscapes or villages. Since it's done procedurally, no two are ever the same.

    Heh, I don't even know what procedural means in this sense. I need to watch a few more videos. 

  • TheKDTheKD Posts: 2,691
    edited February 2021

    Like say you wanna make a helix shape from scratch. Regular modelling you plop points down in the shape you want. In houdini you plop down a attribute wrangle node and type this in the box

    int numpoints = chi("PointNumber");
    float angleratio = chf("PointSpread");
    float pointheight = chf("PointHeight");

    vector positions[] = array();
    for(int i = 0; i<numpoints; i++){
        float x = cos($PI * angleratio * i);
        float z = sin($PI * angleratio * i);
        float y = i * pointheight;
        vector pos = set(x, y, z);
        
        push(positions, pos);
    }
    for(int i=0; i < len(positions)-1; i++){
       vector pos1 = positions[i];
       vector pos2 = positions[i+1];
       vector dir = pos2 - pos1;
       
       int pt = addpoint(0, pos1);
       setpointattrib(0, "N", pt, dir);
    }

    And boom, you got a "tool" that will do it for you, along with a couple sliders to play with. That's what "basic" vex looks like lol. I don't even wanna think of the equations people are typing up to make cities.

    Post edited by TheKD on
  • brainmuffinbrainmuffin Posts: 1,205
    edited February 2021

    TheMysteryIsThePoint said:

    I would love to work together with all interested parties to come up with this protocol that would essentially abstract away all the details, and produce a platform agnostic model of Daz Studio's scene data that could be used in any software package that has support for the protocol. It'd be open source, so that is conceivably all of them.

    As much as I'd like to see an abstracted interface, this would preclude my typical way of running Blender and that is on Linux. Unless Studio were to be released as Open Source and a Linux fork be made, I can only use the exporters to get items from macOS to Linux. Now if the communication was a bit abstracted, a network shem might allow two disparate systems to exchange data. As Sun Systems used to have as a slogan "The Network IS the computer".

    Post edited by brainmuffin on
  • TheMysteryIsThePointTheMysteryIsThePoint Posts: 2,948

    brainmuffin said:

    TheMysteryIsThePoint said:

    I would love to work together with all interested parties to come up with this protocol that would essentially abstract away all the details, and produce a platform agnostic model of Daz Studio's scene data that could be used in any software package that has support for the protocol. It'd be open source, so that is conceivably all of them.

    As much as I'd like to see an abstracted interface, this would preclude my typical way of running Blender and that is on Linux. Unless Studio were to be released as Open Source and a Linux fork be made, I can only use the exporters to get items from macOS to Linux. Now if the communication was a bit abstracted, a network shem might allow two disparate systems to exchange data. As Sun Systems used to have as a slogan "The Network IS the computer".

    C'mon @brainmuffin you know me better than that :) I myself only use Blender on Windows to run Diffeo with no path/case problems. After that, I never use it again.

    The protocol would also be a wire protocol so that it could talk to Blender on the same desk, or on the other side of the world. Shared Memory is more interesting only because there is literally no transfering of anything from one process to another... it's very, very fast. I foresee the protocol describing not only how to request the parts of the abstract model, but also how to marshall/demarshall it on the wire. You're covered because you're essentially me :)

  • TheMysteryIsThePointTheMysteryIsThePoint Posts: 2,948

    TheKD said:

    Like say you wanna make a helix shape from scratch. Regular modelling you plop points down in the shape you want. In houdini you plop down a attribute wrangle node and type this in the box

    int numpoints = chi("PointNumber");
    float angleratio = chf("PointSpread");
    float pointheight = chf("PointHeight");

    vector positions[] = array();
    for(int i = 0; i<numpoints; i++){
        float x = cos($PI * angleratio * i);
        float z = sin($PI * angleratio * i);
        float y = i * pointheight;
        vector pos = set(x, y, z);
        
        push(positions, pos);
    }
    for(int i=0; i < len(positions)-1; i++){
       vector pos1 = positions[i];
       vector pos2 = positions[i+1];
       vector dir = pos2 - pos1;
       
       int pt = addpoint(0, pos1);
       setpointattrib(0, "N", pt, dir);
    }

    And boom, you got a "tool" that will do it for you, along with a couple sliders to play with. That's what "basic" vex looks like lol. I don't even wanna think of the equations people are typing up to make cities.

    That was one of the things I had to start to get my head around. When I went to the HUG at USC where the creators of the Diablo IV trailer we giving their presentation, it blew my mind that that part of the trailer where that creepy organic looking membrane forms before Lillith was summoned, the veins that grew were programmed as a finite automaton, and allowed to simply "grow" organically however it would, not explicitly programmed to grow in any specific way. That's why it looked so natural.

  • marblemarble Posts: 7,500

    TheKD said:

    Like say you wanna make a helix shape from scratch. Regular modelling you plop points down in the shape you want. In houdini you plop down a attribute wrangle node and type this in the box

    int numpoints = chi("PointNumber");
    float angleratio = chf("PointSpread");
    float pointheight = chf("PointHeight");

    vector positions[] = array();
    for(int i = 0; i<numpoints; i++){
        float x = cos($PI * angleratio * i);
        float z = sin($PI * angleratio * i);
        float y = i * pointheight;
        vector pos = set(x, y, z);
        
        push(positions, pos);
    }
    for(int i=0; i < len(positions)-1; i++){
       vector pos1 = positions[i];
       vector pos2 = positions[i+1];
       vector dir = pos2 - pos1;
       
       int pt = addpoint(0, pos1);
       setpointattrib(0, "N", pt, dir);
    }

    And boom, you got a "tool" that will do it for you, along with a couple sliders to play with. That's what "basic" vex looks like lol. I don't even wanna think of the equations people are typing up to make cities.

    You might have just put me off Houdini for life. ;) 

  • marblemarble Posts: 7,500
    edited February 2021

     

    Sorry - duplicate post 

    Post edited by marble on
  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 38,220
    edited February 2021

    mmm Carrara has formulas too

    Post edited by WendyLuvsCatz on
  • TheKDTheKD Posts: 2,691

    It's pretty crazy lol. And so many different kinds of nodes(it's node based). It's like getting a huge bucket of mixed legos, and a 3d printer in case you want to make some of your own legos if there isn't a shape you need, and then go forth and build :P   You can do a whole lot without even learning the vex code, because of all the prebuilt nodes. But if you want to do the really crazy stuff, it helps to learn the code.

     

  • wolf359wolf359 Posts: 3,828

    @Marble Just one man's opinion but SideFX Houdidni, and to a great extent Blender, are applications Designed for builders.

    For those who use premade content, the complexity of procedural node based systems is not 
    really needed.

    That said, procedural systems offer a level of speed & variety for us "builders"
    that cannot ever be matched by using premade content from Daz,Realusion or the poser market
    particualry for environments.

    I needed to quickly make a very sci-fi like interior environment for my new weekly internet micro series
    "HALO Reclaimer"

    Using a node based based procedural plugin Called "Decal machine" for Blender
    I was able to generate an amazing amount of Non geometry surface detail
    on simple geometry for this animation ,with no coding, in minutes.

    and it remains edtible as far as the light color and intensities etc.

    For a filmaker like myself this type of creative freedom is pure joylaugh

    PROMETHEA INTERIIOR rendered.png
    1680 x 987 - 1M
    PROMETHEA INTERIIOR unrendered.png
    1680 x 987 - 451K
  • TheMysteryIsThePointTheMysteryIsThePoint Posts: 2,948

    wolf359 said:

    @Marble Just one man's opinion but SideFX Houdidni, and to a great extent Blender, are applications Designed for builders.

    For those who use premade content, the complexity of procedural node based systems is not 
    really needed.

    That said, procedural systems offer a level of speed & variety for us "builders"
    that cannot ever be matched by using premade content from Daz,Realusion or the poser market
    particualry for environments.

    I needed to quickly make a very sci-fi like interior environment for my new weekly internet micro series
    "HALO Reclaimer"

    Using a node based based procedural plugin Called "Decal machine" for Blender
    I was able to generate an amazing amount of Non geometry surface detail
    on simple geometry for this animation ,with no coding, in minutes.

    and it remains edtible as far as the light color and intensities etc.

    For a filmaker like myself this type of creative freedom is pure joylaugh

    That set is gorgeous, Wolf.

  • marblemarble Posts: 7,500

    wolf359 said:

    @Marble Just one man's opinion but SideFX Houdidni, and to a great extent Blender, are applications Designed for builders.

    ...

    For a filmaker like myself this type of creative freedom is pure joylaugh

    Yes, I get that. I admire your dedication to the task and your ability to take advantage of these technologies. I suspect that people with your level of committment are pretty scarce, even on a forum such as this dedicated to discussing those technologies.

    I make no apologies for the fact that I am not immersed in the esoteric mechanics of these applications. I am one of those who buy pre-made sets almost exclusively. My hobby is to make pictures which tell stories - not sci-fi epics, not the next Star-Trek episode, not some vast Blade Runner type city scape. I have a few people in scenes interacting with each other and the story plays out over a number of still images (although I'm incresingly adding short little animations into the mix too). So not very ambitious and, to be frank, I don't have the starting skills anyhow - I don't know how to code nor do I, at 70 years of age, intend to learn how. I spent a career in computer support without having to write more than a few lines of Unix shell script, as did many of my colleagues.

    Yet my demands, modest as they may be, are quite specific and easy to define:

    1. I want my humans to look human, not look like plastic dolls or painted statues. So skin and anatomical details are important to me.

    2. I want my humans to have weight so that their soft parts are affected by gravity - especially if animated. So this requires soft-body physics.

    3. I want the clothing to look like it is made of cloth - not sheet metal with zero thickness. So dForce was a welcome addition but I long for something better as can be seen in other cloth sims.

    4. If I animate, I want the movement to look natural. I don't want the foot to suddenly and unnaturally slide away from where I put it. And, again, I want the soft parts to move and distort according to gravity.

    5. I want walls and other objects to have natural looking edges. Too many products are offered with laser-true straight edges. Together with many of the hair products, this is a sure-fire give away that what I am looking at is a set of polygons, not a real world wall or cabinet.

    DAZ gives me a platform for my hobby but I am very interested in how I might realise my requirements if I could, as seamlessly as possible, switch into another application which has better tools. So when Donald and Thomas, etc., come up with plugins which go some way to enabling that switch-over, I am excited. It is not seamless enough for me yet but it is getting there. And what Donald said above - what I described as "Holy Grail stuff" - has me even more excited.

  • wolf359wolf359 Posts: 3,828

    @Mysteryisthepoint, thanks 

    "Decal machine" was money well spent
    particulary for a sci-fi guy like me.
     
    @Marble your creative objectives are quite modest and that was my point.

    everything you describe can be done in Daz studio for your still renders
    with the notable exception of adding edge thickeness to clothing.

    learn to do that in Blender ,after diffeo import, and you are in a good 
    position creatively 

    MY advice is to try not to get distracted with all of the new and shiny
    ( UE4 metahumans, Houdini etc)
    and stick to your core creative goals because IMHO,
    some times trying migrate to those other complex environments
    just for stills and  it seems you spend most of your time laboring to restore
    Genesis functionalty that was a given back in Daz studio.

  • marblemarble Posts: 7,500
    edited February 2021

    wolf359 said:

    @Mysteryisthepoint, thanks 

    "Decal machine" was money well spent
    particulary for a sci-fi guy like me.
     
    @Marble your creative objectives are quite modest and that was my point.

    everything you describe can be done in Daz studio for your still renders
    with the notable exception of adding edge thickeness to clothing.

    learn to do that in Blender ,after diffeo import, and you are in a good 
    position creatively 

    MY advice is to try not to get distracted with all of the new and shiny
    ( UE4 metahumans, Houdini etc)
    and stick to your core creative goals because IMHO,
    some times trying migrate to those other complex environments
    just for stills and  it seems you spend most of your time laboring to restore
    Genesis functionalty that was a given back in Daz studio.

    I think you make a good point and I have realised that it is often better to try to use the tools I know rather than dive into a whole new environment. Yes, it is worthwhile to learn Blender over time but it suits me best to just learn the little bits of Blender that I need because DAZ Studio doesn't have those bits. Morphing and sculpting, for example - I'm getting pretty handy with the Blender sculpting brushes these days. And when @DaremoK3 completes his project, we will have a Blender equivalent of GoZ which will make life that much easier too.

    Also, I now have a decent GPU at last (RTX 3090) so the impetus to send to Blender for rendering is not so strong now. However, Eevee is still tempting to render animations. And, speaking of animations, the DAZ Studio timeline along with Keymate and Graphmate (I still use them) does most of what I need but that damn foot sliding (and other limbs jerking out of position) is a PITA. Casual probably has a script for that though.

     

    Post edited by marble on
  • TheKDTheKD Posts: 2,691
    edited February 2021

     

    A 3090 you say?

    precious.jpg
    736 x 849 - 90K
    Post edited by TheKD on
  • brainmuffinbrainmuffin Posts: 1,205
    edited February 2021

    marble said:

    Also, I now have a decent GPU at last (RTX 3090) so the impetus to send to Blender for rendering is not so strong now. However, Eevee is still tempting to render animations. And, speaking of animations, the DAZ Studio timeline along with Keymate and Graphmate (I still use them) does most of what I need but that damn foot sliding (and other limbs jerking out of position) is a PITA. Casual probably has a script for that though.

     

    Yeah, the foot sliding with animations is completely annoying.

    Post edited by brainmuffin on
  • marblemarble Posts: 7,500

    TheKD said:

     

     

    A 3090 you say?

    It is amazing how soon you start to take the power for granted. I had a GTX 1070 for 4 years and longed for something quicker. Now I have it - I want something quicker! 

  • brainmuffinbrainmuffin Posts: 1,205

    marble said:

    TheKD said:

     

     

    A 3090 you say?

    It is amazing how soon you start to take the power for granted. I had a GTX 1070 for 4 years and longed for something quicker. Now I have it - I want something quicker! 

    Yeah, I resemble that remark a bit. I replaced my old GPU that couldn't be used for rendering with a used GTX 960. It didn't take long to blowout the 4GB with a Blender scene and now it can't be used for Cycles.
  • PadonePadone Posts: 3,700
    edited February 2021

    @TheMysteryIsThePoint

    Donald, is there any news as for the diffeo HD exporter ? I mean if you plan do make a package with copyright notes and some instructions. Your latest version works fine enough, and lately Thomas improved the HD importer so there's no need to enter the geometry editor anymore. That is, the importer can now import merged geografts then transfer the rig over the HD mesh. Plus there's an amazing work in progress by Xin to import HD morphs as vector maps, normal maps, or true HD geometry.

     

    I uploaded the latest version at diffeo in #191, please let me know if you need to change anything.

    https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/issues/191/possible-speedup-for-the-hd-exporter

    https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/issues/223/after-merging-geografts-hd-body-base

    https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/issues/357/it-is-possible-to-read-dhdm-files-directly

     

    Post edited by Padone on
  • TheMysteryIsThePointTheMysteryIsThePoint Posts: 2,948

    Padone said:

    @TheMysteryIsThePoint

    Donald, is there any news as for the diffeo HD exporter ? I mean if you plan do make a package with copyright notes and some instructions. Your latest version works fine enough, and lately Thomas improved the HD importer so there's no need to enter the geometry editor anymore. That is, the importer can now import merged geografts then transfer the rig over the HD mesh. Plus there's an amazing work in progress by Xin to import HD morphs as vector maps, normal maps, or true HD geometry.

     

    I uploaded the latest version at diffeo in #191, please let me know if you need to change anything.

    https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/issues/191/possible-speedup-for-the-hd-exporter

    https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/issues/223/after-merging-geografts-hd-body-base

    https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/issues/357/it-is-possible-to-read-dhdm-files-directly

    Hi @Padone I'll make a package after figuring out how to move the Action from the Edit menu to File|Export. There's no DzExport action base class for some reason. There's lots of exiting stuff going on all over the place.

  • PadonePadone Posts: 3,700

    @TheMysteryIsThePoint

    Ok thank you, your plugin is the best as for HD export speed, in my tests it's about 6x faster than the standard diffeo exporter. And, if for some reason you can't change the menu, it will be fine anyway. Thank you again for this amazing job and for your time.

  • TheMysteryIsThePointTheMysteryIsThePoint Posts: 2,948

    Padone said:

    @TheMysteryIsThePoint

    Ok thank you, your plugin is the best as for HD export speed, in my tests it's about 6x faster than the standard diffeo exporter. And, if for some reason you can't change the menu, it will be fine anyway. Thank you again for this amazing job and for your time.

    @Padone No problem at all. I am glad I could contriubute something useful. I feel a definite debt of gratitude particularly to both you and Thomas and often think of where my projects would be if I didn't have the benefit of your tools and advice. This is what Open Source is supposed to be like.

     

  • TheMysteryIsThePointTheMysteryIsThePoint Posts: 2,948

    TheKD said:

    Bummer lol. Seems I didn't understand the plugin lol. Still, pretty cool. I am sorta getting the hang of basic vex script, so in like 50 years I will probably be able to do somethin in houdini :P

    @TheKD

    Just because I'm that kinda guy and I love you guys :)

    Alex was true to his word... he is a true wizard at Houdini. It isn't finished, as it only supports Mantra, but is coming along well. Thattached photo shows the fix for the thin-walled eye-moisture.

    Anyone who is interested can help me better define our requirements. For example, I didn't know that Mantra was old and outdated compared to other renderers.

     

    daz_to_houdini.jpg
    258 x 360 - 39K
  • TheKDTheKD Posts: 2,691

    I think the new one is called karma? I never really tried any of the new fancy stuff, still stuck on the basic training really lol. There are plugins of cousre like arnold, but those cost money I think so I never really bothered looking into those.

  • TheMysteryIsThePointTheMysteryIsThePoint Posts: 2,948

    TheKD said:

    I think the new one is called karma? I never really tried any of the new fancy stuff, still stuck on the basic training really lol. There are plugins of cousre like arnold, but those cost money I think so I never really bothered looking into those.

    @TheKD,

    I'll mention that to Alex. I have never actually rendered anything in Houdini, just imported stuff in and exported stuff out, because I am happy with Cycles.

    So, it looks like Karma is still in beta, with a lot of missing features as it stands, volumetrics being the deal-breaker.

    What do you think about Octane, since it's available for both Houdini and Blender?

  • TheKDTheKD Posts: 2,691

    Far as I know, you need to buy octane standalone, in order to use the octane X or whatever for houdini. I haven't looked into it too hard though, so I could be wrong lol. Weird they would release karma with no volumetrics! Volumetrics is like a huge part of what houdini users are using it for.

  • TheMysteryIsThePointTheMysteryIsThePoint Posts: 2,948

    TheKD said:

    Far as I know, you need to buy octane standalone, in order to use the octane X or whatever for houdini. I haven't looked into it too hard though, so I could be wrong lol. Weird they would release karma with no volumetrics! Volumetrics is like a huge part of what houdini users are using it for.

    Well, in their defense, they did say that it was 80% implemented. I have no idea what that means.

    I thought Octane was free for single GPU use?

     

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