Diffeomorphic worked! Now, how do I...?
Sphinx Magoo
Posts: 586
Greetings, all!
I'm a longtime DAZ Studio user, first time Blender user. I promise to teach myself more about Blender, but I have workflow questions for things I'm used to doing in DAZ but which I don't know how to do in Blender.
For instance, ...
1) Diffeomorphic did a great job importing my scene. How do I switch from the Blender camera view to the DAZ scene camera view?
2) How do I apply Blender shaders to my figure? I've tried finding tutorials for changing DAZ shaders, but many videos I've found seem content with keeping the DS settings. Help?
3) In line with #2, is there a way to select multiple Material Zones that share similar qualities? In DS, I can select Material Zones based off color or texture maps; it makes it easy to make one change that applies to multiple zones. Is something like this possible from within Blender with DS assets?
4) Can I bring HDRI files that I've set up in DS into Blender?
Thank you in advance for any help/advice/links/etc. I'm really excited about the possibilities offered by using Blender with DAZ Studio, and am very aware that I probably missed many basic things in my excitement to get up to speed.
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Comments
Hi.
To integrate the information by Donald.
1. Diffeomorphic will import all the daz cameras with their main properties, so you can use them in blender. To switch cameras there's: scene properties > scene > camera.
2. Go to the shader editor, there you can modify all the shader properties as you like.
3. I agree with Donald that this is a weak point in blender and oddly never addressed by the blender developers. Creating and editing material groups is not supported. That's why Thomas implemented a set of tools for materials, so you can load/save palettes that's the same as material presets in daz studio, and also edit material groups as you do in daz studio. You may want to read the material sections in the docs for a set of available tools.
https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/wiki/Setup/Materials/Launch Material Editor
https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/wiki/Advanced/Materials/Make Palette
4. Diffeomorphic will import the daz environment, including the HDRI and background images. Be sure that you have it enabled: global settings > world > always.
https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/wiki/Global/Materials
Thank you both for your replies! The option to use Blender on my old laptop is very exciting, and your answers to my questions make the transition easier.
I asked about the Material Zones and Shaders because I'm interested in trying toon shading on my DAZ scenes. There are options for toon shading within DAZ Studio, but they don't seem to be as well-supported as the options available in Blender.
Thank you again for your help and support.
@Sphinx Magoo
Welcome to the Blender world! :) Do yourself a favor and go through a formal Blender tutorial. As Padone said somewhere else, Blender is not DAZ Studio, and you will become one of two kinds of people: Those that don't put this into practice and end up thinking that Blender is "hard", and those that do put this into practice and end up thinking that the Blender devs were not stupid and instead really knew what they were doing when they made it the way it is. I still suggest the Donut Tutorial.
Also, appreciate that Blender is a huge application with many nooks and crannies. For that reason, it is also a good idea to watch Blender tutorials even on subjects that you are not particularly interested in. Because you just don't know how much you don't know, i.e. you are not likely to search for, and learn how to do, something that you don't even know exists. And you never know when you'll need that knowledge to do something you are interested in doing.
In any case, good luck, and remember that there are lots of people everywhere willing to help you just as not so long ago they were helped out in turn by someone else.
Real quick regarding toon shading, I have yet to get a character to look perfect with this method (but to be fair, I haven't spent a ton of time trying to tweak it to be perfect for characters) but look up the lighting boy plug-in as it is pretty awesome. I've used it on props and environments and have gotten it to work really cool, but the lips are what always look weird when I try it on characters. But maybe if you have time to fiddle around with it, you might be able to get it to work great if it's something that interests you!
I`ve been trying lots of Toon shaders in Blender . And most of them need manual setup for DAZ studio object or characters (building from scratch) .
Its tedious but you can utilizing Collection ibrary to save and reload your custom shader presets . LightingBoy Shaders and genshii (from artstation store) really easy to use . But again you need to reattach every textures in any surfaces you have
For note : Your shape determined how good the final toon shading look . Low poly object tend to outputting better results . Check this BNPR yooutube video about detail explanations . Tooning DAZ figure will be not as easy compare what we`ve get in studio .
If you`re not doing animation and doesnt wanna manually re-attach hundreds of textures in your scene just like me , You might be considering render it as multipass and make it like it toon via stacking and manipulation each render passes in Photoshop or learn how to do that in Blender`s compositor.
Otherwise you need to create it by your hand .If you have a time check my DA links for some examples from my technique
juvesatriani,
Look into Blender's library overrides. Think of this feature as a virtual reference between .blend files.
The idea is to create a base file with the object having custom materials. Then when you want to use it in a derived .blend file, do (1) File->Link and select the base object/collection; follwed by (2) Object->Relations->Make Library Override. You can then translate and rotate the linked base object, pose the figure if it had a rig in the base file, and render it with the custom materials. Any updates done to the object in the base file cascades to its linked objects in all the derived files.
Should you need to customize the base object in the derived .blend file, choose from an set of options in Object->Relations->Make Local. Blender will then append the object from the base file, effectively duplicating it the derived file.
I used to rely on Python scripts to load the custom materials, but since discovering library overrides, I simply set up the base file and re-use its contents in derived files. Ninety-percent of the time Blender behaves well; sometimes the link fails and Blender throws an error as it opens the derived file. In that case, there's no remedy I've found other than to locate the linked object in the Blender FIle View, delete the offending linked object, and repeat the linking process. Also, undo operations (ctrl-z) doesn't always work on a linked object. It's hard to describe the problem -- the linked mesh just explodes and warps badly!
Cheers!