JSON fitting

It turned out that the FBX fitting method had flaws as well. However, since then I have come up with yet another way to extract the information about mesh and bone locations, and this time it seems to work, at least for all files that I have tried.

The idea is simply to write an export script for Daz Studio, that exports exactly the necessary information to a custom file. There were some initial hurdles, because I have not written scripts for Daz Studio before. The scripting language is not Python but something similar to Java or QT, which is not terribly difficult although something I have little experience with. What was tricky was that the API is poorly documented, but I managed to find some examples on the Internet that were sufficient for my simple script.

The script is located in the folder to_daz_studio and is called  export_basic_data.dsa. Before we can use it, we need to tell Daz Studio about it. This is done as follows.

In Daz Studio, select Window > Workspace > Customize.

In the customize windows that opens, right-click on Custom and select Create New Custom Action.

Change the Menu Text to Export Basic Data (or whatever you want to scripts name to be). Make sure that DAZ Script File is selected and press the ... button to the right.

A file selector opens. Navigate to the .dsa file and Open it.

The file name now appears in File field. Press Accept to close the dialog window.

The script now appears as a subitem under Custom. In the pane to the right, choose the Menus tab, and drag the script to the place you want it to appear. Since it is an export script, I find it natural to group it with the Import and Export menu items. Press Apply to make the changes take place, and then press Accept to close the dialog.

The new export script now appears in the File menu. Select it to export the basic data for the current scene.

Export the scene with the same name as the .duf file, but with the extension .json instead. My scene was unimaginably called test.duf, so the file name must be test.json. The script actually ignores the extension, so if you just call the file test it will still get the right extension automatically.

A dialog informs when the file has been exported. I don't know what happens if the script fails for some reason, because it has actually never happened so far.

Finally in Blender, select Json File for Mesh Fitting. The scene should now be imported, and the meshes and bones should look as they do in Daz Studio.

Here is the same character that we imported with Obj, Collada, and Fbx fitting in the previous post. There are, as far as I can tell, no obvious glitches. In particular, the feet fit correctly into the high-heeled boots, something that always required manual tweaking with the other fitting methods.

With this addition, I think that the Daz Importer is ready for the next stable release. I have not spent much time improving the code recently, but I have actually used the importer quite a bit myself, and to me the tool set feels rather finished.

FBX fitting

During the last few months I felt rather fed up with 3D, but very recently I started to play with the Daz Importer again, and there are a few new things to report.

First, Daz has released a new character base, Genesis 8, which is available if you update Daz Studio to the most recent version. I must have been doing something right, because adding this character to the Daz Importer was surprisingly painless, even if there probably are some glitches left. The main problems had to do with the rest pose; Genesis 3 is in T-pose but Genesis 8 is in A-pose.

The other news is that character fitting can now be done with fbx files. In some cases this works better than obj or Collada (but in other cases it is worse). In particular, there has been a problem with the skeleton when some body parts are scaled. The Daz Importer uses the preview field in the duf file to determine the bone locations, and whereas this field takes most of the transformations into account, some scale transformations are ignored. However, they are included in the skeleton exported to fbx, so the importer can use this information to deduce the correct bone locations.



Here is a character in Daz Studio. The chest, hands and feet have been scaled, transformations that are not stored in the preview field in the duf file. In addition, the leg length and breast size have been increased.












Export the character as an fbx file. It is important that you export it as an ascii fbx file; the importer can not read binary fbx and will generate an error if you try. The fbx format seems to change for every year, but it does not seem to matter which fbx version you select, as long as it is ascii. The other settings do not seem to be important, except that Allow Degraded Skinning and Scaling should be selected, because otherwise the exporter complains.














 Here is the character imported with Mesh Fitting set to Obj File (blue clothes). The mesh contains all morphs, but the skeleton does not fit the mesh: the arms and head  are to low, because chest scaling is ignored, and the hands and the feet are too small.











If we instead import the character with Mesh Fitting set to Dae file (red clothes), the armature fits the character mesh, but this is only because the scale transformations are ignored for the mesh as well. They are weirdly present in the clothes meshes, however.

The red Collada character compared to the blue obj character.







There are also a problem with the boots. This must be a bug in Daz Studio's Collada exporter, because the boots look equally ugly when the dae file is imported directly with the Collada importer.







Finally, here is the character imported with Mesh Fitting set to Fbx File (green clothes).












The mesh is the same as the blue obj mesh, and the skeleton fits the mesh.


















When writing this post, I realize that there still is a problem with the bones. The duf file specifies both the bone head (center_point) and tail (end_point), but the fbx format only contains formation about the bone's head and orientation. For simplicity, I chose to translate the tail the same distance as the head, but for the posed foot this gave the rather strange result show here.

This is probably not such a huge problem, and it goes away if you choose to Merge Toes.



However, there are other where fbx fitting produces worse results than obj or dae. In some cases the solution might be to import several versions of the character, with different types of Mesh Fitting, and only keep the meshes and rigs that are most faithful to the original.