Diffeomorphic Add-Ons version 4.2.1 Released

It is time for a new stable release of the DAZ Importer and the other Diffeomorphic add-ons. The main novelty is that the add-ons have been converted to Blender extensions in Blender 4.2, cf the posts on Blender Extensions and GPL and Addon Scripting and Blender Extensions. The add-ons can also be installed in earlier versions of Blender. As usual, several bugs have also been fixed.

The DAZ Studio export script (export_to_blender.dsa) has also been updated and should be copied to the Scripts folder in a DAZ Studio directory. The specialized HD export script (export_highdef_to_blender.dsa) has been merged with the main export script and is now obsolete. Old versions of the script still work in most situations.

DAZ Importer

The DAZ Importer is a Blender add-on for importing native DAZ Studio files (.duf, .dsf) into Blender. It also contains some tools to make the assets more animation friendly.
Download:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/hka5ej1dv65gk04p1pn5x/import_daz-4.2.1.zip?rlkey=9ukju1y5zai4pryp5atblcbe9
Documentation:
https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/wiki/Home

MHX Runtime System

The MHX Runtime System is a Blender add-on for posing the MHX rig, that can be generated by the DAZ Importer.
Download:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ry8nwojh62s3y23w4g5bp/mhx_rts-4.2.1.zip?rlkey=mx0worrq46afetxumvmo8yhg8
Documentation:
https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/mhx_rts/wiki/Home

BVH and FBX Retargeter

The purpose of the BVH and FBX Retargeter is loading animations from BVH or FBX files to a given armature, and editing these animations in various useful ways. It can also import facial animations in FaceCap, LiveLink, VMD and FBX formats.
Download:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/qh6czqobslto9q0ea6kh6/retarget_bvh-4.2.1.zip?rlkey=g9xpumgp6xzh94frzromb8psy
Documentation:
https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/retarget_bvh/wiki/Home


The next two add-ons were recently spawned from the DAZ Importer in order to keep down its size somewhat. They contain rather specialized tools that are probably not of interest to most users. They are also poorly documented and result in warnings about policy errors. The the previous release there was a third add-on for exporting pose presets back to DAZ Studio, but that has been merged with the main DAZ Importer add-on again.

Important: The DAZ Importer must be enabled first, before any of these two add-ons can be used.

DAZ Rigging

Some specialized tools for rigging certain types of figures, link chains and tails.
Download:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/xqgb698891hlwqr3bon7z/rig_daz-4.2.1.zip?rlkey=k5mhdxlwi7civx5uzrozk6svz
Documentation:
https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/rig_daz/wiki/Home

Shell Editor

Contains some tools for manipulating shells imported from DAZ Studio.Download:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/bqh6cu4o33jdpwr4nspct/shell_edit-4.2.1.zip?rlkey=09ls8m6em95dicc4kvk54r000
Documentation:
https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/shell_edit/wiki/Home

Addon Scripting and Blender Extensions

As mentioned in the previous post on Blender Extensions and GPL, the DAZ Importer is now a Blender extension under Blender 4.2. It still works as a legacy addon in earlier Blender versions. This poses some challenges when using the addon in scripts. Here is an example.

import bpy
import import_daz

relpath = "/scenes/aiko-basic-wear.duf"
abspaths = import_daz.get_absolute_paths([relpath])
import_daz.set_selection(abspaths)
bpy.ops.daz.easy_import_daz(
   useExpressions = True,
   useJcms = True,
   clothesColor = (0,0,1,1.000),
   useTransferClothes = True,
   useMakePosable = True,
)
print("Loaded %s" % import_daz.get_selection())

This script loads a scene with Aiko dressed in Basic wear. The scene is located in the scenes directory under one of the DAZ root paths. The corresponding absolute path depends on the root paths specified in the global settings, and we use the import_daz.get_absolute_paths() function to retrieve it. Since a relative path may correspond to multiple absolute paths, this function returns a list.

Easy import is done with the bpy.ops.daz.easy_import_daz() operator, but we have to tell it which files to import first. This is done with the import_daz.set_selection() function, which should be called before any operator that acts on a list of strings.

The script above works fine in Blender 4.1 and earlier versions of Blender (some keyword argument may be different in very old addon versions), but in Blender 4.2 it causes an error:

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'import_daz'

The culprit is the line

import import_daz

which doesn't work because the import_daz module is not in the Python path anymore. To resolve this, we first notice that the entire DAZ Importer API is located in the import_daz.api submodule, which can be imported into the script with the line

from bl_ext.user_default.import_daz import api

Since we have imported the api module rather than the import_daz one, all function calls must change. E.g.,

abspaths = import_daz.get_absolute_paths([relpath])

is replaced by

abspaths = api.get_absolute_paths([relpath])

With these modifications, the full script becomes

import bpy
from bl_ext.user_default.import_daz import api

relpath = "/scenes/aiko-basic-wear.duf"
abspaths = api.get_absolute_paths([relpath])
api.set_selection(abspaths)
bpy.ops.daz.easy_import_daz(
   useExpressions = True,
   useJcms = True,
   clothesColor = (0,0,1,1.000),
   useTransferClothes = True,
   useMakePosable = True,
)
print("Loaded %s" % api.get_selection())

The new script works fine in Blender 4.2, but now we get an error when running the script in Blender 4.1.

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'bl_ext.user_default'; 'bl_ext' is not a package

To make the script work both in Blender 4.2 and earlier Blender versions, we can replace the code at the top with

try:
    from import_daz import api
except ModuleNotFoundError:
    from bl_ext.user_default.import_daz import api

Blender Extensions and GPL

In Blender 4.2 a new feature was introduced: Blender Extensions. The Blender Extensions platform is the online directory of free and Open Source extensions for Blender. The goal of this platform is to make it easy for Blender users to find and share their add-ons and themes, entirely within the Free and Open Source spirit. 

DAZ Importer version 4.1.0 is a legacy add-on, but the next release will be an extension, which I eventually hope to upload to the Blender extensions site. As a first step the Diffeomorphic add-ons have now been converted to extensions in the development version.

Download the development versions of the DAZ Importer and the other Diffeomorphic scripts. We see that Bitbucket adds some extra stuff to the file names. Before installing the new add-ons, make sure that no old add-ons remains, following the instructions in Safely Installing a New Version .

In Blender 4.2, open the Blender preferences window and go to the Get Extensions tab. Press on the arrow at the top right and choose Install from Disk.

Navigate to the place where the downloaded files are saved, and install the import_daz zip file. The default settings work fine.

And the new extension is installed.

We can now repeat the procedure to install the remaining add-ons.

If we switch to the Add-ons tab we see that the extension appear here too.

The add-ons are installed in the Blender/4.2/extensions/user_default directory. This is the location of Blender extensions. Legacy add-ons, like previous versions of the DAZ Importer, would be placed in the Blender/4.2/scripts/addons folder. Make sure that the same add-on does not appear in both locations.

The Diffeomorphic add-ons are backwards compatible and the same files can be installed  on Blender 4.1. The main ones are even compatible all the way back to Blender 2.83, although some features may not work correctly. Let us review how to install the add-ons on Blender 4.1.

Here we go to the Add-ons tab and press the Install button.

Select the import_daz file and install it. It is not enabled by default, so we press the checkbox to the left.

However, when we repeat the same process with one of the dependent add-ons like the Shell Editor, the add-on can not be enabled. Instead there is an error message.

The reason is that this add-ons uses the DAZ Importer, which much be named import_daz. When we look in the addons directory, we see that the add-on is named like the zip file. With extensions this problem doesn't arise.

 

GNU Public License

The Blender Extensions platform only accepts GNU GPL compliant software. Previous versions o fthe Diffeomorphic add-ons were released under a FreeBSD license. Although BSD is GNU GPL compliant, GPL is preferred, and therefore I chose to change the licence of the Diffeomorphic add-ons to GPL, more precisely GNU General Public License v2.0 or later. This change should not affect the end user in any way.

Single DBZ Export Script and the HD Convention

The dedicated HD export script has been removed from the Diffeomorphic scripts in the development version. Instead the ordinary Export To Blender script can handle both plain and HD export. It is in fact more powerful than before because the user can now decide which figures should be exported as HD meshes.

In the Diffeomorphic folder, the Export HD To Blender script is gone (you have to remove it manually, but it is not part of the import_daz repo anymore).

We are going to export the Victoria 9 HD figure with some clothes and hair. As is often the case for HD figures made for DAZ Studio, the name of the main figure ends with "HD". The full figure consists of several subfigures, and we notice that none of them have names that end with "HD".

Now double-click on the Export Blender icon, or select Export Blender from the File menu if you have run the Setup Menus script. After confirming the file path of the dbz file, we are prompted with another popup dialog with three options:

• Export HD. If disabled, no HD data is saved in the dbz file, and the other two options have no effect. This corresponds to the behaviour of the old "Export Blender" script.
• HD Convention. If Export HD is enabled, HD data is only exported for figures whose names end with the letter "HD", otherwise it is exported for all figures.
• Export HD UVs. Export the UV map for HD meshes. This is the same option as in the old dedicated HD exporter.
  

When we now import the file in Blender, all meshes are imported at base resolution. The Victoria 9 HD mesh is renamed to "Victoria 9 Mesh".

Let us now export the DBZ file again, but this time we turn on the Export HD option, while leaving the HD Convention option disabled. Now HD data is exported for all figures. This is what the old "Export HD to Blender" script did.

When we import the file into Blender, two collections are created. The Victoria 9 collection contains all the base meshes, and the Victoria 9 HD collection contains the HD objects. They base and HD objects are different, except for the line meshes that lack faces.

We can see the difference between the base and HD meshes in the modifier tab. The base mesh typically has a subsurf modifier, whereas the HD mesh has a multires modifier.

Finally let us export the file with both Export HD and HD Convention enabled. The HD convention is that HD data is only exported for figures that end with the letters "HD". Many modern DAZ figures that have interesting HD data are already named thus.

The only figure in our scene that ends with "HD" is Victoria 9 HD. When imported into Blender, this is the only mesh which has a multires modifier. All the other meshes are imported at base resolution with subsurf modifiers.

We can use the HD convention to select which meshes that we want to export HD data for, and thus which meshes will have a multires modifier in Blender. Simply add a "HD" to the end of the figure name. Here we added "HD" to the eyes, bikini and bra.

In Blender there are again two collections. The base collection contains the base versions of the bikin, bra and eyes, and the HD collection contains the HD versions of the same meshes.

And if we look in the modifier tab, the HD meshes have a multires modifier instead of a subsurf modifier.

Diffeomorphic Add-Ons version 4.2.0 Released

 DAZ Importer version 4.1.0 did not work at all with Blender 4.2. The reason is that Blender 4.2 has a strong (or less weak) typing system, which causes almost every button in the DAZ Importer to crash. Therefore it is time for a new stable release of the DAZ Importer and the other Diffemorphic add-ons. The add-ons have been tested with Blender 4.1.0 and 4.2.0 and also briefly with Blender 2.83, and there is a good chance that they will work with intermediate Blender versions too.

Apart from making it possible to use the DAZ Importer in Blender 4.2 at all, there are also some other improvements:

• Better handling of rigid followers.
• Improvements to HD Import.
• Simulation and rigging for hair curves. 
• Better performance and memory management.

The DAZ Studio export scripts (export_to_blender.dsa and export_highdef_to_blender.dsa) have also been updated and should be copied to the Scripts folder in a DAZ Studio directory. Old versions of the scripts still work in most situations, but the new versions are needed for the improvements of rigid followers and HD import.

DAZ Importer
The DAZ Importer is a Blender add-on for importing native DAZ Studio files (.duf, .dsf) into Blender. It also contains some tools to make the assets more animation friendly.
Download:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/5xh2xun51kn3c851y85ju/import_daz_v4_2_0.zip?rlkey=uapugueahv4otj7q07aliocyc
Documentation:
https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/wiki/Home


MHX Runtime System
The MHX Runtime System is a Blender add-on for posing the MHX rig, that can be generated by the DAZ Importer.
Download:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/wi5x9m7phck8yxjme42tz/mhx_rts_v4_2_0.zip?rlkey=fy6dkyj04ueloygbvvemjb3ft
Documentation:
https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/mhx_rts/wiki/Home


BVH and FBX Retargeter
The purpose of the BVH and FBX Retargeter is loading animations from BVH or FBX files to a given armature, and editing these animations in various useful ways.
Download:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/5qvty2bnvp3x6bs6ido67/retarget_bvh_v4_2_0.zip?rlkey=lmk28nweryfkdzic0cnn54c82
Documentation:
https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/retarget_bvh/wiki/Home


The next three add-ons were recently spawned from the DAZ Importer in order to keep down its size somewhat. They contain rather specialized tools that are probably not of interest to most users. They are also poorly documented.

Important: The DAZ Importer must be enabled first, before any of these three add-ons can be used.

DAZ Preset Exporter
This add-on contains some tools for creating pose presets and other assets that can be used in DAZ Studio. It has not been updated for Blender 4.2.0.
Download:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/nfqjioymya3sofq71pcv4/export_daz_v4_1_0.zip?rlkey=4nujmfmir99dqf6sm7y0weyzi
Documentation:
https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/export_daz/wiki/Home


DAZ Rigging
Some specialized tools for rigging certain types of figures, link chains and tails.
Download:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/dbrvarajfb7173u7q0hfa/rig_daz_v4_2_0.zip?rlkey=ep0vif4h6pdxktvwm9n6sfras
Documentation:
https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/rig_daz/wiki/Home


Shell Editor
Contains some tools for manipulating shells imported from DAZ Studio.
Download:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/v08r48o9z2nswb57fpv0y/shell_edit_v4_2_0.zip?rlkey=boo9zmie3jei1rztsktefnj65
Documentation:
https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/shell_edit/wiki/Home

Hair Simulation

It is well known that it is not straightforward to simulate hair curves in Blender. Recently Alessandro pointed me to an interesting video where this problem is addressed:

The main idea is to create a proxy mesh which exactly matches the hair curve's vertex order and vertex locations. We can then add a cloth simulation to the proxy mesh, and a geometry node modifier to the hair curve that makes if follow the proxy. This is implemented in the development version 4.2.0.

Hair simulation does not work with the well-known Toulouse hair, because it contains connected sheets with two tips at the end and the root in the middle, and the Make Hair tool does not handle this case well.

Monica hair is better behaved, and only consists of sheets where the root and tip are at the ends. We imported a G8F character with Monica hair.

Monica hair consists of several parts with different materials. First we enter edit mode and separate the mesh by material.

We only keep the hair meshes which make a substantial contribution to the hair. The four meshes that consist of scattered small parts can be deleted. Also, the mesh with the cap material is renamed to "Scalp".

Next we convert each of the four remaining hair meshes to hair curves. With the hair mesh active and the scalp selected, press Make Hair.

The simulation options are found in the new Posing/Simulation box to the right of the Make Hair options. To make the video above I used something like the options above.

After converting all four hair meshes to hair curves, we end up with four hair curves and four proxy meshes, which have a red material in the viewport and are hidden during rendering. I like to put them in separate collections for clarity.

After that it is just a matter of animating the character.

The simulation will probably not be perfect at once. We can tweak the simulation parameters in the physics context as usual.

We can also easily modify the pinning group with Add Pinning Group.

Improvements to HD Import

We can import HD (high-definition) characters if we first export the dbz file with the Export HD To Blender script, instead of using the plain Export To Blender script, cf High resolution meshes, HD meshes and geografts, and HD meshes and geografts revisited. The imported character has usually a very high poly-count which slows down the viewport. We can usually convert a HD mesh into a low-poly mesh with a multires modifier, using the Rebuild Subdivisions tool in the modifier. If the multires mesh has the same topology as the base mesh, which is often the case, the import script can then copy UV layers and vertex groups from the base mesh, so the multires mesh is as responsive as the base mesh in the viewport, while rendering like the full HD mesh.

Unfortunately, there are some situations where this strategy doesn't work.

1. Rebuilding subdivisions may fail. We are then left with the full HD mesh, which can not be posed. It can still be rendered if UV coordinates are included in the exported dbz file.
2. Rebuilding subdivisions may succeed, but the topology of the multires mesh may differ from that of the base mesh. Then we still cannot copy vertex groups and UV layers from the base mesh. An example is the persian top for Genesis 2 females that is bundled with DAZ Studio. In that case the culprit are triangular faces in the beads.
3. The character may have geografts. Then the suggestion in HD meshes and geografts revisited was to enter the geometry editor in DAZ Studio before exporting the dbz file. However, if we do so all shells and shell UV layers are lost, which are often quite significant for geografts.

Recently these problems have been overcome. First, the Export HD To Blender script has to be updated, because information about shell UV layers are now included among the exported data. This means that you must use the Dazscript version rather than the C version by Donald Dade, which is not updated. Second, scenes should be exported from DAZ Studio without going into the geometry editor. This means that all geografts are automatically merged with their base characters already in the dbz file. When the file is imported into Blender, materials from both the base character and base geografts are added to the HD mesh, and UV layers from any shells are added too.

Information about the HD vertex groups is still missing. That could in principle have been added too, but exporting a HD dbz file is already very slow, and making it many times slower by adding 200 vertex groups is not feasible. Instead the plugin uses Blender's data transfer tool to transfer the vertex groups from the nearest base mesh vertex, instead of doing a vertex-by-vertex copy.