Daz bridge to Blender and back to Daz as morph

j11011

I've looked at videos of how the Z brush bridge works and am looking for a solution how to do that using Blender

Problems I'm having:

1) posing a character, then sending it to Blender makes the pose to be slightly off, not talking about jcms, talking about joint angles being off, what causes that?

2) even if this pose is slightly off, trying to send it back to Daz just doesn't seem possible, tried server combinations of settings, and either run into big distortions or it reverts to the standard pose

now, I'm familiar with standart pose export/import from Daz to Blender and back using Morph loader pro, hair morps, fixing other minor things that can be done in A or T pose,s culpting faces etc, I can do all that with no problems, the problem is that this bridge doesn't seem suitable for fixing things while having characters in pose for a scene, some things I can fix with meshgrabber, but it just doesn't compare to tools in Blender

in short - is it possible to achieve comparable functionality to GoZ using the Daz to Blender bridge and Morph loader pro?

Richard Haseltine

For morph creation the OBJ route would be the normal route to take, rather than using the bridge (which is intended for sending content from Daz Studio to Blender - it isn't meant to be analogous to GoZ)

j11011

I tried that, but ran into an issue (that problem is not present when exporting to Blender via the bridge, which is why I asked about it in the first place) that when you import the obj in Blender, in object mode it looks fine (surfaces are smoothed), but once you switch to sculpt mode, surface loses smoothing, and the base mesh is way too coarse to be workable in that condition, smoothing is a MUST, I can apply a modifier, but that doesn't quite work and I'm not that proficient in Blender to figure out what is wrong, there don't seem to be any import options in Blender that help with this, and addition export options in Daz for obj also doesn't seem to say anything about smoothing

edit: found the problem - in object mode right click and Shade Smooth, that fixes that issue

But I find it very weird for the Daz to Blender bridge to not have this functionality back and forth functionality like GoZ, unless they do it on purpose to steer users towards payed Z brush, and I tried to use the free Zbrush version, and the cheaper subscription, GoZ doesn't work with those, it only works with the full one, which is not exactly cheap (nor necessary for the quick back/forth to fix collisions or make some small morphs)

I had high expectations when I saw that there was update to the Daz2Blender bridge, only to find that it addressed none of this... when it seems pretty trivial to do considering where they are with that tool already

 

so now on the wish list is an option in the OBJ export window to export everything in base resolution (so as not to forget to switch to base/high every single time for every single item you might need to bring back)

edit: another wishlist item would be to be able to click a particular morph in Daz and have an option in context menu to update it from the source OBJ instead of having to dial it out, delete, reimport with Morph Loader again or importing it as another morph, that would be an extremely useful feature when you want to check intermittently the progress you're making, since sometimes how it looks in Blender is not exactly how it looks in Daz, despite setting viewport focal length to be similar etc

Richard Haseltine

GoZ is a standard system, the bridges are Daz' own development. The Bridges are for getting content into the destination application, they are not (currently, at least) intended as content creation tools. GoZ doesn't add functions that are not available through standard export/import, it's just a  convenience tool (and even there, it is limited in some respects - for example it doesn't preserve any grouping so using ZBrush for texturing either requires regrouping, which is not hard but a bit fiddly, or using OBJ).

j11011

you can "create content" with the Daz to Blender already, send a default figure over, sculpt and bring back, that all worked, but what was missing (from Blender bridge), and IMO should have been there, was a quick and easy way to switch to, fix what was broken, and then bring back quickly, that is not "creating content", that is filling in the gaps in Daz functionality, like I said - fixing poorly fitting clothing, or creating depressions in soft tissue when character is sitting down on something, or interacting with another figure, because Daz obviously can't do that (and Meshgrabber is quite limited), and I find it weird that they don't fix things like this, which would make working with their figures and software a lot easier - which in turn makes users want to stay with them, instead of switching over to completely different software and probably ditching the Daz shop altogether, and the shop is what brings in the $$ after all

 

marble

I send OBJ files over from DAZ Studio to Blender every day and I use Blender to create morphs. I have also noticed that change in resolution when switching to Sculpt Mode (which is what I use for making morphs as I am not proficient with the Edit tools). I just thought it was a quirk of Blender and I know that I am limited to the actual base resolution (no subdivision) of the exported OBJ from DAZ Studio. I don't have ZBrush but I had assumed that you would have to work with Base resolution there too - is that not so?

By the way - I don't use any bridges to send content to Blender as I assumed that they (The DAZ bridge and also Diffeomorphic) were intended to transfer scenes for rendering or animation, not for morphing purposes.