Upper and lower case names for all Setup > Morphs > Import options.

[Shane Berezowski]

Currently using Blender 3.4.1 (but tried this in 3.1, 3.2, and 3.3) with Diffeomorphic 1.6.2.1277.

I recently started working with Diffeomorphic for importing Daz characters into Blender. Noticed an issue when I was attempting to import expressions from my Daz library. The expressions came in way too exaggerated. I did read the blog post regarding Ugly Faces and do have python scripts enabled as suggested.

After some digging around and trouble shooting, it seems that the issue is that there are both upper and lower case morphs applied the my imported characters (see image above). My imported expressions were over exaggerated because both the upper and lower case face units for example were being utilized (shown in following image — left face has the double up effect). Oddly enough the lowercase names do no appear in the Face Units morph list, but I have noticed in some imported expressions that values exceed 1.0 for parameters when Show Final Morph Values is enabled.

All of my Face Units, Expressions, Visemes, Head, FACS, JCMs, Flexions, etc. have duplicate names for their upper and lower cases. My fix for this now is to not use the Easy Setup to apply all of these at import, and instead add them in afterwards by only selecting the uppercase versions.

I’ve gone through my Scanned DAZ Database .json files and none of those have the lowercase morphs names, so I’m not entirely sure where this duplication is coming from.

Is there an easy way to disregard or remove lowercase entries?

[Thomas Larsson]

I think I fixed that bug some time ago. Please update to the development version 1.7.0.1449.

https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/downloads/

[Shane Berezowski]

I did the update and no longer see lower case morphs. However, when I went to import an expression I was getting errors and couldn’t complete the function. I figured I would rescan my morph database thinking maybe it needed to be updated for 1.6 → 1.7. I’m no longer able to complete the scan and get booted out pretty early on. I’ve attached my console log from Blender.

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[Shane Berezowski]

On the subject of expressions, why is it that some imported expressions create a single custom morph slider while others only adjust individual morphs like face units and visemes?

Is there a way to go from one to the other? It’s nice to have the single slider for blockouts in animations, but to make their final transitions more natural I like to randomize the final face unit keys across time to make the transient part more organic and less robotic.

[Alessandro Padovani]

Be sure to make a clean install. As for the expressions question it is because it’s the same in daz studio, so the importer gets what it’s there.

https://diffeomorphic.blogspot.com/2022/11/safely-installing-new-version.html

[Shane Berezowski]

I did another clean install (there hasn’t been any leftover folders in my addons after uninstalling them from Blender). Getting errors thrown again. Unless is there somewhere else that needs to be cleaned up out side of %APPDATA%\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\3.4\scripts\addons\ directory?

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[Alessandro Padovani]

I don’t use the database myself so can’t give advice sorry. Better wait for an answer by Thomas.

Anyway, the database is not mandatory anything works fine without. The purpose of the database is to bake morph chains in a single morph when possible, this is especially useful with expressions. But you can keep the morph chains and they will work fine as in daz studio.

[Shane Berezowski]

For whatever reason it didn’t like me adding morphs without scanning database. Kept saying it was missing stuff.

[Thomas Larsson]

The crash while scanning should be gone now.

[Shane Berezowski]

Thanks @Thomas Larsson ! I’ll pull the latest and check things out.

One more question for you don’t mind me adding it to this ticket: Why is it that some imported face expressions come in as a single slider while others seems to adjust the individual morphs without a singular controller? And is there a way to go back and forth between the two manually?

I like the single controller when blocking out animations as it’s much easier to key a single value. But when I want to refine and polish my animation, working with the individual face units is better for me since I can vary the timing of parts of the morph to make it a little more natural. When it’s just a single slider I can see the face units' final values when enabled from the global options. Clicking on the add key doesn’t key individual morphs unfortunately.

Then it’s the opposite problem for some of the face expressions that come in without a single controller; that it becomes tricky to manage that many more keys when blocking animations. To somehow capture the face units as a singular expression afterwards would be nice.

[Alessandro Padovani]

I already answered that question, the plugin gets what’s in daz studio. You can save your custom expressions as pose presets in daz studio then import in blender. Or keyframe the face bones and save the expression in the asset browser. The poses in the asset browser will not support drivers.

If you need general help on how to animate in blender this is not the place. Please ask at blenderartists or at the daz forum.

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/categories/blender-discussion