Export to High Def Seems to be Behaving Differently for the Past Several Months.

[CookItOff]

Hey,

For the past few months I’ve noticed Export to High Def is loading characters into Blender differently causing issues on mostly Gen 9 characters.

• Characters now load with both the Base mesh with Sub-D and and another base mesh with Multi-Rez together, even with “Keep Base Meshes” unticked in the Global Settings. Previously the Sub-D mesh would automatically be removed. This isn’t a huge issue except that many times the HD mesh is missing materials and not parented to the rig.
• Several items like clothing just don’t load properly for Gen 9, either not parented or weight painting is completely jumbled.
• Certain Gen 9 items (Hair mostly) causes the entire import process to fail; debugged by going back into Daz and removing items one by one until character loads.
• “Import Daz Manually”, in the advanced tab, seems to fail a lot…

I can work around most of these issues like I mentioned, but sometimes no matter what I do I can’t get a character to load at all and have to scrape what I set up in Daz. My main issue is that this wasn’t always the case for HD to Blender.

I’ve read on the blog that the latest script version for HD to Blender needs to be setup in Daz, which I have done. Something may have changed that I just can’t find on the blog where I need to use different global settings, but I just haven t seen it on there.

Why I don’t use the base import:

For Gen 9 and the new topology Sud-D just doesn't look correct; lips spread open on the mouth, ears are incorrectly shaped and at different heights, belly buttons and nipples are just a flat mesh. And worst of all, Sub-D with the base mesh will look different in the face, they’ll look similar but obviously look like a different person.

The base mesh with the multi-rez modifier enabled looks correct and so much better.

As always, thanks for the work y’all put into this add-on, and if you need any logs or scenarios don’t be afraid to ask for a file.

Tim

Using Blender 4.2 and the latest build of Diff.

Comparison between Sub-D and Multi-Rez below.

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[Alessandro Padovani]

4.2.0.2253, blender 4.2.0

I tried to import G9 with FACS and I get an error. Only HD is affected, base mesh works fine.

steps:

1. in daz studio load G9 and export HD
2. in blender easy import with FACS and “transfer to face”

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[Thomas Larsson]

Alessandro’s bug has been fixed. The code that checks if an object is rigid apparently assumed that the multires mesh has the same topology as the base mesh, which isn’t the case for the G9 eyes.

[CookItOff]

• I’m still getting several errors with Handsome Hair exported with my character.. Also all HD meshes will be missing the materials.

* If a remove Handsome Hair then I only get this error; which doesn't seem to cause any issues.

* Gen 9 items can still get wonky weight painting with certain items like these shoes.

Sorry for the photo dump… I just wanted to give as much info as possible. :)

Thanks.

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[Thomas Larsson]

The issues with hair should be fixed. For (hair) meshes without faces, the base mesh is now used as the HD mesh (different objects, same mesh data block). Since the importer no longer tries to use the HD info for such meshes, the HD export script doesn’t write it to the dbz file either. Make sure to update the HD export script in DS. The old script still works, but it is unnecessary to write a lot of data that is not used.

The eyes info is just a warning, not an error. It signals that the multires mesh doesn’t have the same topology as the base mesh. Sometimes the multires modifier succeeds to rebuild subdivisions, but the result is not the same as the original mesh, usually due to triangles.

Does the shoe problem only affect the HD mesh or the base mesh as well?

[Alessandro Padovani]

4.2.0.2256

The issue with FACS is fixed thank you.

I don’t have any issue here with the snakers. You may want to give exact steps. Be sure to update.

https://www.daz3d.com/hl-pd-550-sneakers-for-genesis-9-8-and-81

my steps:

1. in daz studio export HD
2. in blender easy import with jcms and “transfer to clothes”
3. convert to rigify and pose

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[CookItOff]

@Thomas Larsson Yes, it only happens with the Export HD to Blender version of the shoes and not when I use a Base Mesh export. Minus the shoe weight painting all the other issues are resolved. Thanks.

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@Alessandro Padovani I’ve haven't had this happen before even without JCMs applied. Normally the weight painting will be fine regardless of JCMs used or not. Saying that and testing that theory I still get busted weights with JCMs. You can also see that it’s trying to pull vertices from the other shoe. This only happens with Export HD to Blender and not the base export. Thanks.

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[Alessandro Padovani]

Very odd, doesn’t happen here. Be sure to update both the blender and daz scripts then re-export. If it’s not fixed then provide a test scene as simple as possible with exact steps.

See #2129.

[Xin]

Just a note in case it’s relevant for import_daz: since at least Blender 4.2 any base mesh import into Blender (either through .obj or import_daz) will have a different edge order than before, which in turn will result in a subdivided mesh (either through multiresolution or subsurf) with different vertex order than before.

This could be problematic if you are loading old .blends and doing new imports. Vertex matching by index of HD meshes won’t work well in that case.

[Alessandro Padovani]

Thank you Xin for the information.

It should be not relevant as far as the vertex order of the base mesh and multires is the same, that seems the case since HD works fine. If the vertex order in 3.x and 4.x is different then I suppose we can’t mix 3.x 4.x models as you say, but that is true in general. It is always better to keep a project into the same version of blender, and don’t cross versions.

[CookItOff]

Thanks for working through this. I did several little test and these exact Gen 9 shoes seem to be the only ones effected. Maybe my actual item file for the shoes is corrupted and I need to uninstall that product and reinstall it. I remember the OS Hair thing a few months ago which need something similar.

Thanks again, and with the other issues resolved you can close this if necessary.

[Alessandro Padovani]

I am importing the exact shoes in your screenshot, also linked above, and it works fine here. So yes it’s probably a corrupted file in your content folder.