G8F Model Import Shell issue

[Balkazzaar]

Hi, I am using the diffeomorphic DAZ plugin latest development version 1.6.2.0990 (NOT the stable 1.6 version)

I am stuck in the diffeomorphic material setup method. I have not yet done the subsequent steps. Following all the usual steps, I am able to bring in the model into blender without major issues. I used the Easy DAZ import method.

But there are some annoying minor ones which I would like to address and fix.

Below is the DAZ model screenshot.

Below is the Blender cycles render

Below is the Blender EEVEE render

As you can see from the Blender renders above I see the following issues: 1) I am not seeing the suspender stockings on the model. Its not even shown on the Blender right panel collection. 2) I tried using the normal DAZ import and still not seeing the suspender/stockings

The product is a G3F product being used on a G8F. Here is the link ==>https://www.renderosity.com/rr/mod/bcs/stockings-suspenders-collection-for-g3-females/118637/

EDIT:

I am using the latest version of DAZ and Blender which is version 4.20 and 3.1.2 respectively. I tried both standard DAZ Import and Easy DAZ Import and still in both cases the stockings did not show. I mentioned that in the original Description. I dont think i have customized Blender in anyway. I am using BVH retargeter and MHX Rig as mentioned in the documentation. I am not using an HD related stuff on my models, so no HD Blender addons.

I do not use Octane render in DAZ and i dont know how and why it got imported into Blender.

[Midnight Arrow]

Geoshells are implemented as materials inside the shader. You access them by opening the Diffeomorphic panel on the sidebar and going to the “Visibility” tab.

[Balkazzaar]

Checked and not seeing anything there that helped. Either that or i am looking at the wrong place.

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[Midnight Arrow]

Open the shader for the legs and see if there’s a node group right before the material output. Also open your system console (under “Window” at the top) and see if ther are any errors when you imported.

[Alessandro Padovani]

I noticed you have octane installed and set cycles as experimental. Try with a “standard” setup of blender and the stockings on a standard G8F, just to check if it works this way so we have a start. Also please state your versions of daz studio and blender and eventual customizations of the blender setup you did.

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edit. Also be sure that the shell method in the gloabal settings is set to “material“, since you’re using the last build that gets experimental shells with geometry nodes.

edit. Just tried one preset and works fine here on a standard G8F. Test scene included stockings.duf.

daz studio 4.15.0.30, blender 3.1.2, diffeo 1.6.2.0990

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edit. If you’re using additional shells other than the stockings, be sure that the shell visibility under “surfaces” is correct, since blender can’t work with the “face groups“ visibility, not with the “material” method at least.

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[Alessandro Padovani]

test scene for stockings shell

[Balkazzaar]

@Alessandro Padovani

I updated the Original Description to include the versions of DAZ and Blender and also include statements regarding Octane and Standard/Easy DAZ Import.

the shell visibility under “surfaces” is correct, since blender can’t work with the “face groups“ visibility, not with the “material” method at least.

What should the shell visibility setting be set to?

[Alessandro Padovani]

The visibility is for the materials that the shell does affect. For example if you look at the stockings they affect the legs, and the suspenders affect the legs and torso. Does my test scene work for you ?

[Balkazzaar]

@Alessandro Padovani

My apologies for the late response. I just finished work.

I tested your test duf file in blender and as expected, it works. But, you cannot expect all models to be this simple.

what must i be looking for in my file then? I checked the shell visibility settings and they are more or less the same as yours. Do i need to check the skin material i used?

If there are more shell involved besides the stockings and suspenders, what should i be looking for then?

[Alessandro Padovani]

You can add one element at a time and see what’s causing the issue in your scene, starting from G8F. Or remove one element at a time that’s the same.

[Balkazzaar]

@Alessandro Padovani

I deleted all the assets leaving only the stockings and suspenders and the thing still did not show up.

But in the very beginning i was getting the following error during the import process when i tried to open the model in blender. the error is as follows:

MISSING ASSETS:
/data/daz%203d/genesis%208/female/genesis8female.dsf#Face_Eye%20Mask

I dont see how this error would have anything to do with suspender/stockings not rendering. since the error did not seem to say anything abt the suspender/stocking, i did not think much of it.

I have made sure that my paths in blender are correct.

The asset error does not make sense and i dont know how to search or fix this issue now.

i removed everything on the model and am still getting suspender/stocking not rendering in blender issue.

I am sharing my model file with you which i attached to the Jira issue description. hopefully you will be able to make sense of this.

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[Alessandro Padovani]

Your test scene renders fine here. Apart that I don’t have the assets so morphs and textures are missing. If you can upload the scene you simplified with only the stockings that don’t render I can check that too so we avoid the missing assets.

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[Balkazzaar]

@Alessandro Padovani

I dont get it. The file i shared above scene_3_v2.duf is my original scene file with all morphs zeroed out and no other assets other than the stockings and suspenders. When i try to import the scene/model into blender, i get the “missing assets” error as i mentioned earlier and the stocking/suspenders do NOT render.

How is your machine not giving you blender import error, but mine is? Can you share your global settings for the plugin? I may be missing something or doing something wrong.

[Alessandro Padovani]

Nope, in your scene there’s a ton of missing files that are referenced so you use them somewhat. My diffeomorphic and blender settings are pretty much the default. May be you should try to rebuild the scene from the start. As you said yourself my example with g8f works fine, while if you strip it from your scene it doesn’t work. So it’s likely that there’s something wrong/corrupted in your scene. I have to load and resave your scene in daz studio to get rid of the missing assets so of course there’s no missing files reported when I import in blender.

In any case this doesn’t seem an issue with diffeomorphic, or at least I can’t reproduce the issue. If rebuilding the scene doesn’t work, then you may also try to reproduce the issue with a minimum set of assets for us to check.

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[Midnight Arrow]

I’d like to say, I think this issue is more proof the exporter would be better getting away from scene-to-scene import and towards import directly from Duf files. The less reliant we are on Daz Studio being Daz Studio (meaning “borderline broken”) the easier it would be to work.

[Alessandro Padovani]

That’s already possible to import directly from the daz library. You don’t need to open daz studio.

https://diffeomorphic.blogspot.com/2021/03/importing-morphed-character-without-dbz.html

[Midnight Arrow]

I meant the ability to import clothing/geoshells/hair etc. from the vendor Duf files and apply them to a figure we imported separately.

Unless this workflow can do that?

[Balkazzaar]

Midnight’s suggestion is great. Just the way the plugin treats clothes, jewellery, shoes etc as separate assets to the model, it should do the same with geografts and shells too..

@Alessandro Padovani

I was able to clean up the scene file and i believe i was able to get rid of the import error. but still no stocking or suspenders…

I am truly frustrated and angry with this process and not being able to solve it. every single time i come back to this plugin, there is always some issue its not able to solve…i dont know what am i missing or doing wrong…

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[Alessandro Padovani]

You can update a test scene as simple as possible reproducing the issue. Your previous duf works fine for me so I can’t tell what’s wrong on your side. But that scene was quite messed up to start with so it’s probably not a good test file.

You could start from my scene that works fine for both of us then add things to trigger the issue.

[Balkazzaar]

@Alessandro Padovani

I truly mean no disrespect or don't wanna be rude to anyone when i say the following.

I have been following the development of this addon almost during its genesis by diffeomorphic. And as the years passed by it has become better. It is the only plugin out there which is much better than other daz to blender plugins offered by other vendors.

But every single time there is some issue with blender import of the model, the only way to solve or get to the root cause of the issue is to simplify the model painfully and slowly by removing the morphs, then may be the textures and then the genitals so on and so forth and then hopefully we get to the bottom of the issue.

And then when an end user of the plugin faces a blender import issue, the replication steps followed by you or other developers of this addon is to load a base genesis 3/8 model and then put the item or the asset that the reporter is complaining about and then say that you/developer is not facing the issue.

But the reality is, DAZ models and scenes are complex. A DAZ model may have very complex skin textures or sometimes DAZ Skin shaders which i have no clue how Blender will render or handle.

The one constant issue i see re-occurring in blender is the way plugin handles geografts/shells materials and skin textures. It never handles it well or never replicates the render nowhere near close to DAZ. The plugin has yet to solve this issue 100% in any scenario. Like Midnight said, i believe we should import the shells/geografts in DAZ as it is into Blender and then give the end user the option to merge or get rid of it.

The only way to make the plugin work properly is to keep everything in DAZ scene simple. Which means no complex models with many 3d assets or multiple shells/geografts.

Only people who have enough time on their hands can go through the nook and cranny of the plugin to fix the issue by themselves. But for people like me, free time is a luxury and i dont have any time to spend debugging the issue by simplifying the model.

I know i am ranting on and on and demanding too much from the plugin which is unfair of me. I just wish there was some way for any kind of DAZ model to be imported into Blender without issues and then start rigging and animating… And i am very well aware of how difficult and complex the translating or transferring of a model from one 3D software to another is…

This is just my experience. May be people who are better in 3D or who were able to import complex DAZ models into blender can share…

I will probably give up on this process and just stick to DAZ and come back to this probably when i am 50 or 60 years old…

Sorry for the rant…i just needed to vent.

[Alessandro Padovani]

I agree most daz scenes are complex and that simple scenes transfer better. As for having no time to debug unfortunately that’s the only way to try to improve the plugin, that I agree it’s not perfect and will never be. As daz and blender are so different in many ways that there’s no hope for a full match, thankfully.

Then overall I believe the plugin is good enough for most cases.

[Balkazzaar]

@Alessandro Padovani

Thank you for your response.

Leaving all the issues aside, what about the translation of DAZ shader/skin materials to Blender? Why has it not improved?

For example, if you look at the first pic of the issue i posted above which shows the DAZ skin render of the model and compare that to the Blender version, it looks like Blender just overtanned the skin and its ended up looking more plastic.

Furthermore if i attach a genital (Futalicious or Golden Palace) to the DAZ model and i try importing it into Blender, be it Easy Import or Normal import, Blender applies the same skin material to the genitals also. So if the model has Futalicious asset attached to it, the glans of the penis which is supposed to look pink has the brown overtanned skin material washed over it.

Will i have to play with shading/geometry nodes in Blender everytime i try to import the DAZ model into blender to make it look good?

I can try tinkering with assets if they are not rendering in blender, but geometry/material nodes in Blender is like trying to understand a PhD thesis in nodes. How do i go on about trying to make rendering in Blender look good?

Is there anyway to simplify the material process in blender? Or do i need watch long youtube videos to try understanding shader/material/geometry nodes in blender (which i already have tried and i dont get it) ?

[Midnight Arrow]

All the texture maps were designed for Iray, which is a different rendering engine than Cycles. That’s why we need a convoluted node setup to work them right.

This is 100% Daz’s fault for promoting a program that doesn’t do simple industry stuff like IK, leaving it to us to figure out how to get their nice-looking assets into a program that isn’t a total joke.

And trust me the skin shader looks much better than it used to.

As for your geoshell problem you can always just create a geoshell yourself as a last resort. It’s easy if you only need to replace one material region.

Create a cube, parent it to your armature. Add the material you want to give it to the cube. Then create this geonode setup on the cube:

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The Material Input on the left takes the legs material, runs it through a Material Selection node, inverts it with a Boolean Math node, then is used as the selection to delete all the geometry except the legs. Then the geo goes into a Replace Material node that swaps the Genesis’s legs material for the one we assigned to the cube. Finally we use Set Position to move it outward.

It works fine:

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[Alessandro Padovani]

@Balkazzaar Yes the skin shader is not perfect, especially top coat can be improved, I just need some time to do tests and work around things. But overall resembles iray well enough. As for the geograft materials they should work fine, I’m looking a similar issue #995 will report there if I find something.

[Balkazzaar]

I removed the lingerie suspender/stocking shell outfit and applied a proper lingerie outfit which is not a shell. I would like to know when i import it to Blender, how do i make the outfit fit the character without clipping? Is this ==> https://diffeomorphic.blogspot.com/2021/07/changing-outfits.html method the only way? or is their an easier method?

Please and thank you.

[Midnight Arrow]

#923

Create a push modifier.

If that doesn’t work there’s advanced options like using geometry proximity nodes I can tell you.

There’s also the shrinkwrap modifier but geonodes are replacing modifiers since they’re more flexible, so you should get ahead of the curve.

[Alessandro Padovani]

If you export the dbz you’ll get what’s in the viewport in daz studio. If the outfit uses a smooth modifier be sure it is set to “interactive“ to be exported.

[Balkazzaar]

Midnight what are geonodes? something new in blender? are they replacing node editor?

@Alessandro Padovani

Thank you for that suggestion. Will try that out and let you know.

[Midnight Arrow]

Geometry nodes were added in 2.92 I think. They’re new but not that new.

They are nodes so they’re not replacing the node editor. They’re replacing the modifier stack with a nonlinear node workflow.

Modifiers have major issues right now, like how using a mask modifier will delete geometry and ruin shrinkwrapped clothing. But geometry nodes are nonlinear so you can simply take the mesh and run it through a delete geometry node while also cache its vertices and sent those to the clothing as attributes. The clothing doesn’t need the mesh to be intact, it just operates on a copy of its vertices defined by the user.

[Balkazzaar]

@Alessandro Padovani

thank you so much for the interactive setting step. It did wonders in blender. all clipping is gone.

Cannot thank you enough for that.

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but i do have some other questions

1. I added the futalicious to the model and as you can see, the skin rendering is all wrong. It has applied the same rendering as the rest of the body. how do i fix the penis skin color?

2) when i apply motion or a pose to the model, the whole clipping comes back. Do i have to apply some sort of modifier or something else so that it does not clip when the model moves?

3) If i need to apply soft body physics or other motion physics to other parts of the body so that it reacts to the body movement, what do i do?

[Alessandro Padovani]

1. The geograft material is on a shell, so if you can’t import shells it won’t work. In #995 the shell issue was a bad installation of the plugin, specifically it was used a old exporter with the new importer. Don’t know why you can’t import shells here your test scene works fine.
2. You need to transfer jcms to the outfit, see the docs. Or you can try with shrinkwrap #226. Or use the method by Midnight.
3. There’s support for softbody but it doesn’t work with geografts, only with morphs. If you want to add softbody to a geograft it is possible, but you will have to understand the setup and make the maps and shapes yourself. See #828.

https://diffeomorphic.blogspot.com/2022/01/softbody-simulations.html

note. Since this is a technical forum with no age restriction, please don’t post “erotic“ pictures unless necessary. I don’t care for myself but there may be children around.

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[Balkazzaar]

@Padone

Removed erotica pics.