Blender addons to manage HD morphs and to generate .dhdm files [part 4]

[Xin]

[ Continuation of: https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/issues/1399/blender-addon-to-generate-rigged-hd-meshes ]

The source is available in the following repository: https://gitlab.com/x190/daz-hd-morphs . There you can also find compilation details for the .dll and .so, and documentation on how to use the addon. If you find this addon useful, consider supporting its development and maintenance here: https://xin888.gumroad.com/l/daz_hd_morphs .

The latest version (the main branch) includes documentation in the form of a .pdf in “./blender_addon/documentation/daz_hd_morphs_documentation.pdf”. It includes several step by step examples.

Instead of uploading files here, it’s more convenient for me if you downloaded the files directly from the gitlab link above. Once you get the files you need to place the directory “./blender_addon/daz_hd_morphs” in “…/AppData/Roaming/Blender Foundation/Blender/3.6/scripts/addons” manually if you downloaded it from gitlab. You can alternatively create a .zip from the daz_hd_morphs directory (call it “daz_hd_morphs.zip”) and tell Blender to install it.

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And here is the addon that lets you create .dhdm files. The documentation is also included:

https://gitlab.com/x190/daz-dhdm-gen (free)

https://xin888.gumroad.com/l/daz_dhdm_gen (for support)

As usual, they are both the same version.

[Xin]

There is now a Linux version for daz_hd_morphs on the gitlab page. I haven’t tested it much, so let me know if you encounter any issues.

[Xin]

I’m now testing and documenting a ZBrush version of daz_dhdm_gen.

After that, since the Linux version of daz_hd_morphs is currently faster than the Windows version, I will look into the compilation of the libraries used by the Windows version (I compiled those a long time ago), since I compiled the Linux version’s libraries recently with additional libraries that might have helped with performance.

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[Maneki]

Not sure if I do something wrong, but in Blender 4.0.2+ and the 1.0 daz HD addon, I can’t make import favorites work, when I select a daz importer generated favorite morph list. The addon just says “0 morph files added”

[Xin]

The problem is that import_daz now saves morphs' relative filepaths in the favorite file instead of absolute filepaths, which makes the favorites file not easily portable. I could modify the script to try to read the daz library root paths from import_daz’s scene properties but that would introduce an unnecessary dependency. I will ask Thomas first if he could add an option to save absolute paths.

[Thomas Larsson]

Save favorite morphs now has an option to use absolute paths.

[Maneki]

Is it possible to also add that the HD addon copies mute drivers, when available?

[Xin]

Thanks Thomas. I will add the changes soon.

Maneki, what do you mean by copying mute drivers? could you give a simple example?

[Maneki]

daz importer has a option to add mute drivers to every morph, which turns them off completely when they are at a 0.0 value. The drivers are on the right side of shapekeys:

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[Thomas Larsson]

One thing I found was that it is not possible to drive shapekey mute with the value of the same shapekey; that results in a dependency loop. Instead both shapekey value and mute must be driven by the same external property, e.g. an object or armature property. The creation of mute drivers is done in the function addShapeDriver at line 499 of load_morph.py.

[Xin]

Now the favorite files should work, and the mute drivers, if any, will be copied too.

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[Maneki]

Thank you!

[Maneki]

Trying to merge rigs causes a error now.

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[Maneki]

There’s also another bug I noticed: When I create custom shapekeys by sculpting in Blender and then generate a HD mesh, those custom shapekeys work fine on the HD mesh. But when I copy driver from one morph to these custom shapekeys because I want both get activated by the same condition, and then generate the HD mesh, the custom shapekeys with drivers don’t work at all. The drivers work but it doesn’t seem to transfer the mesh deformation.

[Thomas Larsson]

The crash should be gone now. It didn’t happen when only running my code, but Xin must have done something differently that triggered the crash.

[Maneki]

The error with the rig merge seems to be fixed now, thanks.

[Maneki]

For the issue with the custom shapekeys which don’t work. I imported them into Daz and saved them and tried to manually load them on the HD mesh and get this error:

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The morphs get applied to the mesh but don’t work.

[Xin]

Maneki, I can't reproduce that issue. I follow these steps:

1. Add shape key to base mesh and sculpt some deformation.
2. Right click an existing shape key and press Copy Driver, the right click the new shape key and press Paste Driver.
3. Generate HD mesh with “Import base morphs” and “Copy other meshes” enabled.

The drivers work fine on the HD mesh. Could you explain the process you are following more closely?

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[Maneki]

I’ll look deeper later but I basically imported a morph I already have to blender, then adjusted it by sculpting, exported the morph as obj and applied it to a base G9. Afterwards I ERC rigged those morphs and tried to import them on the HD mesh. But the issue that shapekeys don’t seem to work in a certain scenario even appears without the Daz forth and back. I take a look tomorrow if I’ve a general issues of custom sculpted morph with drivers not working or just with a very specific process.

[Maneki]

If I remember correctly, the HD addon also transfered vertex groups, weight maps and attributes in the past but it doesn’t seem to appear to transfering them anymore.

EDIT: To make the weight or color attributes transfer well, the base mesh needs a subD modifier of the same subD like the true HD mesh with simplify turned off otherwise the maps are jagged.

[Xin]

DAZ filed copyright notices against the ZBrush plugin and has been taken down from Artstation. I will publish it in another market if Artstation refuses to follow the law, since reverse engineering is fair use. Not my fault that DAZ has no competitive advantage and wants to profit off artificial barriers.

[Vincent Burmeister]

Wow, until now I didn’t even know the Zbrush plugin existed. That’s super awesome. My utter respect for not backing down to DAZ. Please share the info here when the Plugin is up again on artstation or elsewhere, I definitivly want to buy it.

[Alessandro Padovani]

Historically DAZ has always been “strange“ over competition, for example it is a TOS of their forums that it is not allowed to link or talk about competitive products, you can be deleted or even banned for that. This is unique to DAZ I didn’t witness such behavior in any other site. That they even attack fair competition on other sites is new.

[Azaz]

I have a question if the addon has options to create partial morph or be able to isolate and save only the created changes.
I care about creating corrective morph and if there is a symmetry option for example I have a morph where thighs in A-pose position overlap and I would like to mirror according to -x axis .
For any answer thanks in advance.

[Xin]

Azaz, the addon itself doesn’t have any tools that facilitate it, but you can achieve that by using Blender’s native tools in combination with the addon. For example, by using a shape key for the original morph, and a new shape key for the modification. Then you could create a morph from the modification only.