Blender and/or DAZ Studio?

brainmuffin

DomiekGames said:

CG Cookie is an amazing resource. For $20 a month, you have access to some of the best Blender training courses broken down into logical progressions + instructor feedback. You can even just download all the courses you want and cancel your subscription after the first month. Don't be discouraged by the Blender Renders thread. A lot of those people are absolute beginners as well so those renders are not a reflection of what you can actually achieve.

To each their own, I guess. Their courses look horrible.

brainmuffin

marble said:

DomiekGames said:

marble said:

@Padone: thanks for the advice. My thoughts are (or were) that Rigify seems to be the choice of most of the people who make tutorials. I can find very little online about the MHX rig so that's why I tried to go with Rigify. The problem being that it just did not work for me and I can't seem to get to the bottom of why it didn't work. Like I said above, people who make tutorials often assume that the people who watch the tutorials will have a level of knowledge such that they don't need to state what seems obvious to them so they omit some critical steps. This is especially so when transferring figures from DAZ Studio to Blender because most of the tutorials assume that people are working with figures created in Blender. As for MHX, the assumption is that the figures are MakeHuman.

The second reason that my latest foray into Blender has gone the way of all the previous efforts is that the results are just so poor compared to what I can produce in DAZ Studio. I know that it takes years to become competent with Blender but when I look at the thread in this forum showing renders done in Blender, I can't believe that people would think that they are on a par with IRay renders. The downside to IRay is that it is so slow and Blender's superior animation tools mean there is a genuine imperative to use Blender for animations (where render quality is not so critical). It is just frustrating to me that every time I try again with Blender I seem to hit a road block.

One day, some very clever and skilled person will produce the definitive workflow tutorial for using DAZ content in Blender. Either that or the industry will move towards universal formats that work in all applications.

Blender doesn't take years just to reach competence. 3-6 months and you'll be up and running. It really isn't as big of an obstacle as you seem to believe. The problem is that with Daz, there are very little transferable skills to other software so it's easy to get frustrated when things go wrong in Blender. Unless Daz is necessary for you to make a living, I highly suggest to just set it aside for 6 months and focus entirely on Blender. Otherwise it's easy to get frustrated and head back to the comfort of Daz. CG Cookie is an amazing resource. For $20 a month, you have access to some of the best Blender training courses broken down into logical progressions + instructor feedback. You can even just download all the courses you want and cancel your subscription after the first month. Don't be discouraged by the Blender Renders thread. A lot of those people are absolute beginners as well so those renders are not a reflection of what you can actually achieve.

 

 Trying to move over to Blender as the alternative to DAZ Studio was sort of my initial motivation but I don't really think it is practical from my point of view. I am just a hobbyist but I wanted to take advantage of the better tools afforded by Blender. However, it has become apparent that Blender has serious limitations too. I've mentioned many of them already but to recap:

1. I have more than half a TB of content that I can load with a simple click into DAZ Studio. Not so with Blender which doesn't even have a Content Library as far as I can see (as of 2.92).

2. Importing using the official Blender Bridge is a non-starter because geografts don't work.

3. Diffeomorphic has its own issues which I have outlined above.

4. IRay materials don't convert well so a lot of work would be required to correct them.

5. HD is DAZ Studio propietary and doesn't export.

6. Figures can wear dForce clothing in DAZ Studio and, although it is painfully slow, they can be draped pretty well. It is no simple matter to export the figure to Blender and drape that clothing. Yes, other clothing can be bought elsewhere that might work well in Blender with the cloth sim but that defeats the object of using my already purchased content.

To be honest, I am not sure why Blender artists who are so entusiastic about doing everything in Blender bother with DAZ Studio at all. I remember reading some Blender users forums years ago and the comments were extremely dismissive about DAZ Studio (and Poser, for that matter). As I said above, Blender tutorials (and I have paid for several too) tend to assume that everything is being done in Blender. They do not assume that DAZ content is being imported (nor should they). So someone who wants to bridge skills as well as content is facing an immediate impediment.

I agree with your points and would add Blender's brain dead UI. It is very non-intuitive and does not follow the UI standards of any of the OSes upon which it runs. I also find that Blender tutorials assume you are in Windows and have a keyboard with a numeric keypad. I run Blender in macOS (standard wireless and magic mouse) and Linux (expanded keyboard and trackball), so 2/3rds of the time I searching to understand what the keyboard shortcuts do and how to find those in the menus. I am constantly amazed how many commonly used shortcuts are Windows only. I've never found a tutorial that explain WHY something was done a certain way.

margrave

brainmuffin said:

I agree with your points and would add Blender's brain dead UI. It is very non-intuitive and does not follow the UI standards of any of the OSes upon which it runs.

The Blender UI is great. It's flexible and intuitive for its purpose, it's tightly-integrated with Blender-specific functionality (such as the data-block menus), and it's not bound by third-party libraries. Daz Studio on the other hand literally will not run on Mac's because they're using a severely outdated framework (Qt4) and GIMP's support for non-destructive editing has been crippled by its reliance on GTK2.

As they say, if you want something done right, do it yourself.

TheMysteryIsThePoint

marble said:

wolf359 said:

". If only DAZ Studio had a better animation toolset, better IK and/or the ability to import animations saved in BVH or similar. " Again Daz studio has the ability to import animations saved as BVH from the proper retargeters I named..to claim otherwise is an unfair critisism of DS

OK so I take it that Blender does not export BVH correctly? Apparently the same applies to FBX or is that a DAZ Studio issue?

Whatever the reason, inter-operation between DAZ Studio and Blender seems to be hamstrung.

The problem, as I've come up against several times now, is that we have a general file format, and we use it to exchange data between two applications that depend on specifc assumptions. Mathematically speaking, there are few things more simple than an armature; it's just a directed acyclical graph of rotations. The problems arise when DS has certain assumptions, Blender has certain assumptions, the BVH format has certain assumptions, and all three violate each other's assumptions. There is absolutely nothing complicated about armatures, different applications just create assumptions in order to provide more functionality that unfortunately, say, the ancient BVH format knows nothing about and cannot represent explicitly. Add to that the fact that BVH is ambiguous about a few things, creating an opportunity for the exporting and importing application to interpret things differently.

So, it's not DS doing anything wrong from its context, or equally Blender doing anything wrong for its context, it's just the two of them doing different things. What we need is a DS-BLENDER armature format. I'm building on Alex's work to define exactly that. All of these BVH problems will go away.

tapanojum

marble said:

tapanojum said:

 

1. Content libray is in 2.93. This isn't a Blender limitation, it's a convenience thing and you're used to the Daz library.

2. Diffeo imports work perfectly fine

3. Diffeo works perfectly fine. I can't stress the "perfectly" enough.

4. Daz Iray materials don't convert well anywhere outside of Daz. This is a Daz limitation not Blenders. Download Octane for Daz (it's free), you will notice that auto-converted Daz material looks similar to Cycles. Hell, even Substance painter/Designer/3DCoat uses Iray for the preview renders, this converts well to Blender and anywhere else. It's just Daz that handles things it's own special way.

5. HD exports perfectly fine with Diffeo

6. I use Daz clothes perfectly fine in Blender. Even better than in Daz actually because I can further manipulate it and control the simulation any way I want.

There is nothing wrong with using Daz, it's a great software. The only reason this discussion is taking place is because obviously you want to learn Blender but are frustrated when hitting some road blocks. It's not always easy having to relearn everything, I get that. But what you are listing here are just excuses coming from a place of ignorance. Daz makes it very easy to get up and running quickly without having to spend any time learning the hows & why's behind everything. Blender does have it's own limitations, it's not some perfect software, but none of these limitations exist in the issues you're experiencing.

Again, there's absolutely nothing wrong with sticking to Daz. If you're unhappy about the limitations you face in Daz, then you must understand that leaving an ecosystem that's entirely designed around making things work in one or two clicks will be frustrating. Every frustration you listed, I also experienced. Learning new things takes time and learning Blender may not be worth your time, which is completely understandable. At the end of the day, if you're miserable learning Blender then that's all the reason you need to not continue.

All I can say is that "perfectly fine" is not a term I would use from my experience and I get the impression that I'm not alone in that. I feel like abandoning the quest but I know that in two month's time I will get frustrated with DAZ Studio again and look at Blender again. It seems to be my Groundhog Day.

Yeah of course, but your experience is that of someone who doesn't know how to use Blender. For example, there's a huge difference between HD not exporting from Daz and HD not exporting from Daz for you. Again, I can't stress this enough. If you really want to be able to use Blender then set aside some time on learning it properly. Forget about bringing Daz chars and making cool renders. Spend a few months learning the fundamentals, render your donut, animate a bouncing ball. The tools work perfectly fine and it's up to you if you'll come up with some excuses and repeat Groundshog Day or if you'll be further advancing your journey in 3D.

Nothing about it is complicated. I'm an idiot who barely knew how to open Daz a couple of years ago so if I can do it, so can you.

Padone

@marble We can now import dforce outfits with diffeo.

@tapanojum If you have a good experience with the cloth simulation in blender please let us know your impression and suggestions.

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/487296/hear-ye-hear-ye-dforce-outfits-for-diffeo

marble

Padone said:

@marble We can now import dforce outfits with diffeo.

@tapanojum If you have a good experience with the cloth simulation in blender please let us know your impression and suggestions.

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/487296/hear-ye-hear-ye-dforce-outfits-for-diffeo

Thanks, I will definitely take a look. I read your entry in the Diffeomorphic "Issues" section and I thought it was a request for Thomas to improve the import of dForce cloth rather than an explanation of how well it does it already. When Thomas said that your comments amounted to a tutorial, your said:

Alessandro Padovani REPORTER

Thomas, I see the plugin already imports some basic dforce attributes. So why can’t we improve it ? By importing collisions and the dforce strength together with weight maps, as explained above, we’d have a good support for dforce outfits that’s the goal here.

 

 So I assumed that this was someting waiting for further action. Are you saying that such action is now complete?

marble

tapanojum said:

marble said:

tapanojum said:

 

1. Content libray is in 2.93. This isn't a Blender limitation, it's a convenience thing and you're used to the Daz library.

2. Diffeo imports work perfectly fine

3. Diffeo works perfectly fine. I can't stress the "perfectly" enough.

4. Daz Iray materials don't convert well anywhere outside of Daz. This is a Daz limitation not Blenders. Download Octane for Daz (it's free), you will notice that auto-converted Daz material looks similar to Cycles. Hell, even Substance painter/Designer/3DCoat uses Iray for the preview renders, this converts well to Blender and anywhere else. It's just Daz that handles things it's own special way.

5. HD exports perfectly fine with Diffeo

6. I use Daz clothes perfectly fine in Blender. Even better than in Daz actually because I can further manipulate it and control the simulation any way I want.

There is nothing wrong with using Daz, it's a great software. The only reason this discussion is taking place is because obviously you want to learn Blender but are frustrated when hitting some road blocks. It's not always easy having to relearn everything, I get that. But what you are listing here are just excuses coming from a place of ignorance. Daz makes it very easy to get up and running quickly without having to spend any time learning the hows & why's behind everything. Blender does have it's own limitations, it's not some perfect software, but none of these limitations exist in the issues you're experiencing.

Again, there's absolutely nothing wrong with sticking to Daz. If you're unhappy about the limitations you face in Daz, then you must understand that leaving an ecosystem that's entirely designed around making things work in one or two clicks will be frustrating. Every frustration you listed, I also experienced. Learning new things takes time and learning Blender may not be worth your time, which is completely understandable. At the end of the day, if you're miserable learning Blender then that's all the reason you need to not continue.

All I can say is that "perfectly fine" is not a term I would use from my experience and I get the impression that I'm not alone in that. I feel like abandoning the quest but I know that in two month's time I will get frustrated with DAZ Studio again and look at Blender again. It seems to be my Groundhog Day.

Yeah of course, but your experience is that of someone who doesn't know how to use Blender. For example, there's a huge difference between HD not exporting from Daz and HD not exporting from Daz for you. Again, I can't stress this enough. If you really want to be able to use Blender then set aside some time on learning it properly. Forget about bringing Daz chars and making cool renders. Spend a few months learning the fundamentals, render your donut, animate a bouncing ball. The tools work perfectly fine and it's up to you if you'll come up with some excuses and repeat Groundshog Day or if you'll be further advancing your journey in 3D.

Nothing about it is complicated. I'm an idiot who barely knew how to open Daz a couple of years ago so if I can do it, so can you.

It is entirely probable that I have misunderstood the HD import feature but I was under the impression that HD was something that DAZ holds close to their corporate chest so that the exporter mimics HD somehow, perhaps using displacement. As such, I doubted whether things that DAZ does with HD like, for example, muscularity, could be replicated in that way. 

You say  "Forget about bringing Daz chars and making cool renders" but that is precisely what I want to do. I will continue to sit through more tutorials and I do want to try my hand at modelling. I already use Blender for making morphs so I am happy using the sculpt tools. So it is not a case of Blender just being a DAZ Studio clone for me, I'm just having trouble getting the diffeo add-on to work satisfactorily. Perhaps my idea of satisfactory and your assertion of "perfectly fine" are in some disagreement.

marble

TheMysteryIsThePoint said:

marble said:

wolf359 said:

". If only DAZ Studio had a better animation toolset, better IK and/or the ability to import animations saved in BVH or similar. " Again Daz studio has the ability to import animations saved as BVH from the proper retargeters I named..to claim otherwise is an unfair critisism of DS

OK so I take it that Blender does not export BVH correctly? Apparently the same applies to FBX or is that a DAZ Studio issue?

Whatever the reason, inter-operation between DAZ Studio and Blender seems to be hamstrung.

The problem, as I've come up against several times now, is that we have a general file format, and we use it to exchange data between two applications that depend on specifc assumptions. Mathematically speaking, there are few things more simple than an armature; it's just a directed acyclical graph of rotations. The problems arise when DS has certain assumptions, Blender has certain assumptions, the BVH format has certain assumptions, and all three violate each other's assumptions. There is absolutely nothing complicated about armatures, different applications just create assumptions in order to provide more functionality that unfortunately, say, the ancient BVH format knows nothing about and cannot represent explicitly. Add to that the fact that BVH is ambiguous about a few things, creating an opportunity for the exporting and importing application to interpret things differently.

So, it's not DS doing anything wrong from its context, or equally Blender doing anything wrong for its context, it's just the two of them doing different things. What we need is a DS-BLENDER armature format. I'm building on Alex's work to define exactly that. All of these BVH problems will go away.

Good that the problems are known and you do a nice job of explaining them for the layman such as I. Good luck with your project, your community spirit is much appreciated. 

Padone

@marble Yes dforce outfits can now be imported in blender. That doesn't mean it's perfect but you can now drape in blender without having to setup the simulation youself. Then of course some knowledge of the blender simulation system will always help to tweak things and adjust the simulation better. But at least this way the user doesn't have to start from scratch.