Rigging from a Blender FBX import - complications and questions

westernnomad

I'm new to rigging, just learned it from an online Blender course, and I've had some good results exporting from Blender to Daz with an FBX file. I use FBX, because with every conceivable option for OBJ files, the result is to importing a static mesh into Daz Studio. However there are some issues that I'd like to take note of if I'm ever going to fulfill my ambition to become a content provider for Daz Studio. Because, as I see it, Blender/FBX imports, though functional as any other rigged props, are far from Daz Standards and therefore will probably be denied publication because they cause unnecessart headaches to users with specific expectations.

I'm asking if it's possible to take these complications and make them function the way the end user expects from Daz published products.

Please correct me if at any point I'm incorrect.

1) FBX files do not work with Figure Setup - it only works with OBJ files. Question, If the model behaves as intended as an FBX import, is it even necessary to go through Figure Setup?

2) Blender/FBX Heirarchies bear very little resemblance to every DS product I've seen. This apparently affects the way the user would manipulate the model - selecting bones directly rather than their child meshes... is it true, by the appearance of it, that the bone is a child of its mesh in Daz?

3) Blender/FBX bones are not visible and possess no means to be made visible in the Daz Viewport. The bones can only be selected from their heirarchies in the Scene navigator.

4) Though the material zones remain intact during the export/import, the actual materials get stripped away. No big deal to me. I don't mind applying Daz shaders and textures, however the product review board, I'm sure, would require me to use my own on a stand-alone model.

5) How do you fix the error "Rigging Limitation: Bones Without Root Skeleton"?

Richard Haseltine

1) Figure setup is for creating a hierarchy of bones for a skeleton-less model, if you have a skeelton then it's not needed.

2) and 3) In DS, at least for weight-mapped figures (which I assume these are) the mesh belongs to the figure and the skeelton is a separate child of the figure. You can select a bone by clicking on the mesh because the mesh has polygons groups (which can be created in Blender) and the groups are assgned as selection sets for the bones (in the Tool settings pane with the Joint Editor active)

4) you will usually need to rework materials on moving from one application to another. PBR is simplifying the process, but it isn't anywheer near automatic (we can, of course, dream of direct Substance support).

5) I don't know - it's not an error I have come across; are they perhaps bones that are not parented to a root bone (the Hip in standard Daz figures, though its name is uninportant) but are siblings of the root bone? Though I thought there were some props set up that way.

FSMCDesigns

5) would love to know this as well since I try to import .FBX figures all the time with only a 1% success rate

basically if you are wanting to create figures/objects with rigging for DS, especially to sell, you will need to rig them in DS

westernnomad

Richard Haseltine said:

2) and 3) In DS, at least for weight-mapped figures (which I assume these are) the mesh belongs to the figure and the skeelton is a separate child of the figure. You can select a bone by clicking on the mesh because the mesh has polygons groups (which can be created in Blender) and the groups are assgned as selection sets for the bones (in the Tool settings pane with the Joint Editor active)

 

Can't say for sure if it's weight mapped or not, since it's just a simple armature. I'm sure weight mapping will come up as the class advances. (attachment)

Richard Haseltine

I don't think Blender or FBX support the alternative paarmetric rigging. You can tell by the icon next to the figure in the Scene pane - for a weight mapped figure it is a stack of cubes but the separation is faint (reflecting that the emsh beklongs to the figure), for a parameteric figure the outline is the same but the internal lines are solid (mesh sort-of belongs to the bones, though internally it's the same as a weight mapped figure).

Singular Blues

westernnomad said:

2) Blender/FBX Heirarchies bear very little resemblance to every DS product I've seen. This apparently affects the way the user would manipulate the model - selecting bones directly rather than their child meshes... is it true, by the appearance of it, that the bone is a child of its mesh in Daz?

As noted, Daz figures exist as a root Object which is not really user facing. The root object owns the mesh and the skeleton.

Blender is a bit different, in the sense that the Blender object model don't really contain the idea that armatures and geometry live in the same object. Instead, you connect the two by a modifier. At which point you could, conceptually make either the parent of the other, or parent both to something else, though I'm not sure that would it would be a good idea to parent the armature to the mesh. Never really thought about it since, once the modifer is in place, the mesh follows the armeture in pose mode. Either way, they are always completely separate objects. It's not quite the same in Daz. From a purely heirarchal POV, I believe the skeleton is higher up on the chain than the mesh, but that might be wrong

If you build a single model, and attach bones to it, you can define the bone's influence either by weight or vertex group, in blender. In Daz it's weight only in the current product standard. Assigning a face group to the bone allows the user to click on the mesh to select the bone, but you don't need to do that (look at Genesis3/8's face for examples of bones without related face groups).

I would recommend, personally, following Daz's figure setup tutorial, rather than trying to rig in Blender. As noted, Daz FBX import is somewhat unreliable at the best of times.