blended dual lobe hair error

[Alessandro Padovani]

daz studio 4.21.0.5, blender 3.6.0, diffeomorphic 1.7.1.1688

There’s an error reported for the blended dual lobe hair unsupported shader. The error message is wrong the blended dual lobe hair is supported and correctly converted once we convert hair.

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[Alessandro Padovani]

I understand only basic attributes are supported for the shader, so the message may make sense as "partially supported".

Nonetheless the warning message is intended to warn the user that uber conversion should be done before exporting, or that a custom shader is found. In this case the blended dual lobe hair is partially supported yes, but because we can’t do better, not because it’s not supported. This is why I believe the blended dual lobe hair should be included in the list of supported shaders.

Let me know or I’ll close as invalid.

[Thomas Larsson]

The plugin doesn’t warn about the Blended dual lobe hair anymore. Are there any other known shaders that we shouldn’t warn about?

OTOH, there are now new warnings about meshes without faces, and a suggestion that they should be converted to hair.

[Alessandro Padovani]

daz studio 4.21.0.5, blender 3.6.0, diffeomorphic 1.7.1.1692

I prepared a scene with some primitives using the supported shaders. There’s still an error on 4-Layer that’s fully supported. As for strand shaders we support BDL but not RSL. Reason is RSL is used for SBH guides that we can’t import iirc.

bug. 4-Layer is fully supported.

bug. It’s odd that RSL is not reported with the label but with the path. Then yes it’s unsupported.

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warning. BDL RSL shaders on meshes. The BDL RSL shaders in daz studio are defined as strand shaders, nevertheless it is possible to apply them to meshes as I did in my test scene. On the contrary in blender the Hair BSDF shader doesn’t do any good on meshes. So it may be useful to warn if a BDL RSL shader is found on meshes instead of polylines.

suggestion. primitive/prop and armature names. I noticed that for props the suffix “Mesh“ is always added to the name. This is annoying it makes sense for figures having a armature but not for props. One alternative would be to rename the armature instead of the meshes, this would also allow to name the different rigs. For example a armature named “Victoria 8“ in daz studio could become “Victoria 8 DAZ“, then become “Victoria 8 MHX“, “Victoria 8 RIGIFY“ or “Victoria 8 IK“ for mhx, rigify or simple ik. Or we may go with a generic “Victoria 8 RIG“ and keep it among different rigs.

bug. dforce guides and tooltip. As for dforce guides it seems to me that they are always imported, even if the global setting is off. Test scene included dforce-guides.duf. Also, since we can’t import sbh guides, but only dforce guides, the tooltip would be better as “import dforce hair guides“ to avoid confusion.

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bug. sbh guides. As for sbh guides we can’t import them iirc, but a empty geometry is imported with strange materials since they are doubled. It would be probably better to detect empty meshes and avoid importing them, or ask/warn the user, unless there’s some reason not to. Test scene included sbh-guides.duf.

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[Alessandro Padovani]

test scene for supported shaders

[Alessandro Padovani]

test scenes for hair guides, they’re the standard mohawk in the G8 package

[Thomas Larsson]

Some issue have been fixed:

No warning for 4-layer.

RSL gets a proper name. However, the name is hard-coded in the plugin, since the only info in the duf file is the url.

Hair shaders make sense on meshes, if we keep the materials when the meshes are converted to hair.

The Mesh ending has been removed for props. It is kept for figures since it is normally the armature that we work with, so I want to reserve the proper name for that.

Hair guides work as intended. They appear e.g. in Genesis 8.1 Male Body Hair, where two polyline meshes are imported. The guides are in the daz database and the actual hair is in the dbz file. When the scene is imported with unmorphed mesh fitting, only the guides are imported (and don’t get the “_GUIDE” ending).

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[Thomas Larsson]

SBH hair can be imported, but Preview PR Hairs must be enabled before you export the dbz file.

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[Alessandro Padovani]

Commit 2debf7f.

Supported materials and mesh names are good.

bug. dforce guides. I’m not reporting that guides don’t work, but that they are always imported even if the global setting is off.

steps:

1. set guides off in global settings
2. import dforce-guides.duf as unmorphed, the guides are imported, even if the global setting is off

bug. sbh guides. Again I’m not reporting that sbh strands don’t work, but that sbh guides are imported as an empty mesh with doubled materials, that probably we don’t want to. As I understand it sbh guides can’t be imported, we can only import dforce guides.

steps:

1. set guides off in global settings
2. import sbh-guides.duf as unmorphed, the guides are imported as an empty mesh with doubled materials, even if the global setting is off

p.s. The correct name for RSL is “Strand-Based Hair RSL“, but this is minor.

[Thomas Larsson]

Dforce: If you turn on Generate PS Hairs, two hair meshes are imported with dbz fitting. In this case it makes sense to not import the hair guides, since there already is another, better, hair mesh. If there are no PS hairs, i.e. with unmorphed fitting or if Generate PS Hairs is disabled, the guides are the only hair mesh so it is imported.

However, the description of the option could be clearer.

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[Alessandro Padovani]

Thomas, in my example scenes it’s everything off there’s no PS/PR hairs, and the guides are always imported even if we have the global setting off.

Then this is minor I was reporting this if you want to fix it for the next stable version. But if you don’t want to then it’s fine for me I can close as resolved since the other bugs are fixed. Let me know.

[Alessandro Padovani]

update. Uh .. unless you mean the global setting is intended as you explained. If so the tooltip should be:

• option: Hair Guides
• tooltip: if unchecked, then for dforce hair we don’t import hair guides if PS hairs are generated

But this is rather convoluted, it would really be much simpler if the option imports guides or not, as per the user choice. Let me know.

note. about PR/PS. Guides as PR pre-render and PS pre-simulation serve different purposes. Guides are used to style or “comb“ the hair and are not rendered, PR is the actual rendered hair, PS is also rendered but they will simulate and make PR follow. In blender PS would be the actual strands with dynamics and PR would be the children. Or we can import guides then use children to approximate the daz hair.

[Thomas Larsson]

At least for the body hairs, I think the PS hair is better. So the option is a choice between importing all available hairs, or only the best available hair. Which is what it does.

But I agree that this may be confusing, especially that the hair guides are only sometimes renamed. Another possibility is to remove the option altogether, and always import all available hairs, and leave it to the user to delete what he doesn’t need.

OTOH, we almost always import characters with dbz fitting, except for debugging. In that case it may be confusing to import the hair in two different ways.

The extra materials for the sbh hair with unmorphed fitting are gone, so now we have an empty mesh with only the two hair materials. This seems good for me, since again unmorphed is a debug setting for characters.

[Alessandro Padovani]

Commit 8ee7bf2. The doubled material is gone but we import an empty mesh for sbh guides, that doesn’t make much sense.

Then yes we could always import all available hair, that is, global option always on. Or I can explain better the global option in the wiki, some explanation is needed anyway for PR/PS. Let me know.

[Thomas Larsson]

I think that the option itself makes sense, but it may be named and described better. E.g.

• Import All Hair Versions
• Import the hair guides even if the corresponding PS hairs are also generated in the dbz file.

The empty mesh for sbh guides makes little sense, but neither does importing a character with unmorphed fitting. So it is only a debug thing.

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[Alessandro Padovani]

Yes I agree.

[Alessandro Padovani]

Commit 715b63f works as intended. I also added some notes about hair types in the wiki.

https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/wiki/Setup/Hair