Suggestion : add a new daz menu to invoke Blender automaticaly, and other things..

Hi Thomas,

First off, just a note of thanks for all your effort in developing this great Blender addon…. Your devotion to making it the best it can be is not missed on lots of people, myself included.

I also regularly read the new issues/suggestions notices you get, and since I sense the next formal release is going to include a lot of new features & improvements, I thought I’d throw in my free suggestion..

After using your program for a few years I made some changes to speed up my own workflow and thought I’d share them with you. (In case you think any of them would benefit the community by incorporating them in the formal versions…) The 3 changes are all contained in a modified “Export_basic_data.dsa” file:

1. Eliminate the need to remember the DAZ/Pose runtime folder paths :
My work flows means I keep my Daz & Poser library asset off line in an external harddrive, each in a compressed file. If I want to convert to “Blender World”, I create a new local Daz data folder or Poser runtime folder and set up link in the library, so it means I have to note the new paths and set them up in blender.

Solution : The script notes all the current Daz/Poser pathnames and write them into a new json format file. (These can then be read into your addon using the “load setting” command)

2. Eliminate the need to save each of the Duf & normal Json file separately :

Solution : The script asks where you want the json file to be kept. (You navigate to an existing folder, or create a new one as part of the process..) With that it creates of both them and stores them there in one step.

3. Now the big one.. I had previously used mjCasuals convertor (Still a popular addon..) and liked the concept of the Daz setup menu and single button push to invoke blender and automatically import the scene :

Solution : I have created a very simple menu structure (which could be expanded in the future if necessary..) which has a few simple SetUp options…
a) Do you want to keep your textures in a separate folder or keep them in the blender file?
b) Do you want to delete all the intermediate files after the conversion? (if you keep them, you can debug any faults or even re-run the input process again by running a .bat file)
c) It has a default blender .exe file location, and will tell you if it can’t find it or if you want to run another version..

d) Finally, there are 3 buttons you can press

Just create the duf/json files, so it acts just as current script does (also generates the separate DazPath .json file.)
As 1) above , but then invokes Blender, then reads the Daz/Path files automatically, so you still have control of the import options before you manually load the duf/json file
The “just doit” button…. As 2) above but automatically loads the duf/json files and imports it straight away…

The new folder can have a few files in it at the end, (unless you select the tidy up option..)

duf file
json file
DazPath json file
.bat file which invokes blender and runs a .py script of commands..
.py file
.blend (and textures folder if selected)

Anyway, that my script. If you thinks that any of the ideas/code are useful to your proper addon, please feel free to use them.

If the Daz menu concept doesn’t fit with your own idea, no problem, but the idea of gathering the current Daz/Poser paths and perhaps better still to include them in your own Json file as a new entry could be useful for other. (Especially for new starts, I always kept forgetting that step,..)

So you have a good day, and keep safe…

Richard

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