Any way to get custom rig INTO Daz?

I am mainly a programmer and don't have that much experience with many content creation tools. I have been struggling to get purchased assets with custom rigs INTO Daz studio for the last few days and have searched for a solution but have thus far been unsuccessful. A few years back after struggling to learn blender I picked up DAZ studio (free) and some of the budget content creation tools (like the decimator, animate2, etc). For the most part I liked the aniblocks, puppateer etc for animation (animation is all I'm using daz for) I purchase the models I use but for my game I need to make a few custom animations (basketball game). With my budget I need to stick to sub $200 tools so MotionBuilder, Maya, Iclone is not an option. Neither is using the Genesis model/rig as while DAZ is free their content is above my budget (I have been able to export their stuff just fine but as I indicated can't use this for my game). However, I have been unsuccessful getting any custom rig INTO DAZ. I can import everything but the rig just fine but nothing so far has been successful with the rig (tried .DAE and .FBX).

Has anyone been able to do this successfully? (I found nothing on these forums or the DAZ forums).

I would like to exhaust all options before deciding to drop this and turning to blender for animation. If there are any other low budget (sub $200) animation tools also let me know. For the most part those seemed to be the only options and originally as a non artist/animator DAZ seemed easier to learn but it might not be usable for my usecase/budget.

Thanks in advance.

 

You're probably best off using FBX as an interchange medium (DAZ can import / export FBX) and avoidable the CC tools. I've used them to import rig Obj meshes and that's fine but not a rigged model. FBX import is meant for that.

 

Have you had success in an FBX import preserving the rig into DAZ? I've tried numerous flavors of FBX import (ultimate unwrap 3d seems to have many flavors of FBX on export seems like a different FBX schema for each year) and many different models to make sure it wasn't an issue with particular models. I've also tried .DAE import and same problems. Since most of the DAZ world revolves around genesis, michael, and victoria I'm sure there aren't many people caring about getting custom rigs INTO DAZ but so far every combination for me fails to get the rig in correctly (I can get the model in fine in some combinations just never with the rig). Daz's import utilities while available don't seem to work with the rigs.

I tried rigging by hand but I'm pretty bad at most content creation stuff (I'm more of a programmer). I'm sure given enough time I could learn to rig, create face groups and weight map, but my first couple of attempts have been disastrous. Also, even if I did I'm sure the rig I'd create would be worse than the one that the original creators made specifically for the various models I've bought.

Thanks in advance for any guidance anyone can provide. I'm hoping there is a way to get the rig in (once it is in it seems to export fine) and there animation tools animate2 and puppateer seem fairly decent but I can't seem to import purchased models (from 3drt, turbosquid, mixamo).

 

No, not possible to import fbx in DAZ from another resource

 

greg, exactly how custom are the rigs ? Are the humanoid/bipedal - or something completely different?

cheers, gryff

 

Sure it is possible, I've done it. That still doesn't alter trying to buy variable quality FBXes from TurboSquid and then trying to edit them is DAZ is probably not going to go to well.

I'd suggest building a new rig by exporting as an obj with materials and then building the rig in DAZ (CC Tools) or in Blender. Then you can decimate in DAZ or Blender if you need too.

 

@gryff- yes they are rigged humanoid bipedal. I have tried a couple of different ones. So far I've tried a few of the mixamo models, Realpeople males from 3drt.com and a few others. In each case any of the imports (fbx and dae tried both) did not work for the rig thats on them. Note its just the rig that doesn't import correctly (with various level of being screwed up from crashing completely, to not importing the rig at all, to at best attempting to import the rig but it is totally incorrect). I have tried both the files that they have provided (fbx and dae) and also going through ultimate unwrap 3d to create a new fbx and dae since there are options in there to include root transform and other items. None of the attempts have resulted in the correct rig. Please note that unity and ultimate unwrap 3d recognize the rig correctly only daz does not.

@goat- I tried to create my own rig and so far the results have not been good (I am generally pretty bad with any of the art tools I try to use). I will certainly keep trying to practice to hopefully get better. Even if I get it better I don't know being a programmer if it will be as good as the rig that is already on there as a couple animations were provided when I purchased them and they looked ok. My biggest problem right now is the weight map brush in daz. Since these are for games they are low poly <2k poly and painting with the brush seems to be pretty tough. Would you recommend increasing the detail to paint the weight maps to map the weights and then decimate back down? Also, on your succesful import what program did you export from? I can try going through blender as I have not yet done so (import into blender and then export out). When looking at animation tool tutorials I liked the UI of Daz better than blender which is why I started there and not blender (mainly the aniblocks) but if I can't get a rig to import maybe I need to start over and learn blender animation instead.

Ideally, I would like to get the rigs provided into Daz so that I can create custom basketball animations with animate2 and puppateer (which I knew I needed to learn) and they seemed pretty good and simple to use which was good. While learning I was just using genesis playing around for a couple of test animations and they exported just fine so I know that will work. However, the importing is not working for the rigs on the models. Also, I gave a shot to just letting unity retarget the humanoid animations but while it did retarget there are differences on the two rigs. Genesis seems taller and naturally the rigs aren't identical and the height of the arms when lifted seems to translate poorly. If I can get the rig imported correctly into DAZ I would like to use the rig as is to create the animations on its native rig and export that way I won't have to deal with the retargeting issues

If anyone has any recommendations it would surely be appreciated and if so the file format used and the program used to create file I can certainly try the same exact path with my models.

 

greg, that helps (I had visions of maybe the character had 10 legs ;-) )

I understand your like of Puppeteer and Animate (though I only have the very limited lite version). So a few thoughts and ideas - and I have not tried any of them out!

1. Import your figure mesh only then use this:

Transfer Utility Tool

It essentially copies the rig from a Daz Figure to the imported mesh. Delete the original figure then use Puppeteer and Animate on your newly created rigged (hopefully)figure. Export your rigged mesh with any animations as an .fbx file from Daz and load into unity.

2. Rather than worry about bringing your figure into Daz, as it is humanoid/bipedal, why not create your animations with a standard figure then export only the animations as .fbx files. If I remember correctly the fbx export out of Daz allows control over what is actually exported as the fbx.- you don't have to include the mesh.

Then in Unity - use the mecanim system to deal with your animations and/or figure.

As I said above - it is all theoretical - I have not tried any of it.

cheers, gryff

 

FBX import supports DAZ Studio weight mapping and animation, but not other types right now !

That mean Only FBX files generated by DAZ Studio can now be re-imported in FBX format, but not a fbx rigged models from another resource

 

@gryff- I gave the transfer utility a shot tonight and while it tried the best it could the results were not great. I think it is off for the same reason that the mecanim retargeting is not ideal which is the overall dimensions of the characters is not identical (not talking about just scale I adjusted for that). Bascially the height (tallness), width, and skininess of the models as you would expect aren't exactly the same. While before trying this I scaled them to be as close as possible the genesis is generally taller, skinnier and a little less wide. Even when scaling the model to line up with one of these dimensions (which I tried to do with height) they were close but not identical. I still tried to run the utility but while it did transfer the rig over it obviously wasn't ideal. It does give me a little better starting point though so I tried editing the resulting weight map. However, because the purchase model is so low poly I'm still having a hard time getting the results I want. I assume this difference in dimension is also why mecanim retargeting isn't good either. In pulled over animations if I have say a jump shot animation with shooting with hands even with the head mecanim retargets this to arm height of what looks more like a chest pass (with hands even with shoulders). I don't think letting mecanim retarget is going to work with the change in dimensions.

Tomorrow I think I'll try going through blender with the import/export process to see if it works any better but so far it looks like vidi is correct. I'll also try my hand at custom rigging it again in daz but I don't have much faith in my skills on this. Otherwise, I think I'm to the point where I might have to abandon using Daz for animation and learn blender animation tools instead given my budget constraints.

 

I've still imported models from other sources than DAZ with satisfactory results. There's a long laundry list of what is and it not exchangeable. You just need to know what those are and FBXes from Turbo aren't likely to import well in DAZ, let alone Unity.

 

You can believe me
I know the program very well, because I develop with this my content.
Also DAZ says fbx

 

Sorry my ideas did not work out for you gregg.

If you are totally new to rigging and animating in Blender, then you might want to watch these tutorials by Lee Salvemini - very clear tuts - and models I use are set up by his methods (I did not add the IK features). The other nice feature about these tuts is that you can get the starting and end blend files to inspect and browse tthrough settings.

Rigging

and

Animation

cheers, gryff

 

Thanks for all the help guys! I was able to get my Rigged model imported into DAZ today (albeit not in a very straightforward process). Exact steps I had to take is the following.

1. Import model/rig into blender (currently best results were given by the collada importer for my model). Perhaps FBX will work for you but didn't for me.
2. Ensure model/rig and animations on the model play correctly (this is how I determined collada import worked right but FBX did not).
3. Export from blender via collada and with the Second Life preset selected on the export.
4. Import collada file into Daz

I am by no means saying this will work on 100% of the models but did work for 3 different purchased ones that I tried. All 3 did not go completely smoothly but in the end was finally able to import with the rig correct (with the weightmaps correct too). For those that may encounter this thread later using this method on 2 out of 3 models that I used item number 1 was the sticking point. All collada files are not alike and when using purchased assets you really won't know until you try. However, in each case when the provided .dae file crashes blenders import (or imports and incorrect mesh) I was able to import into ultimate unwrap 3d (cheap program but not free) and then save out to a new collada file and then blender was happy. So far that program seems to have the most lenient import (not export) between its supported formats and seems to be able to generate correct results no matter what flavor of .dae/.fbx you throw at it. At least its export seems to make blender happy (but not DAZ). Obviously, with so much conversion I'm sure this workflow is fragile but in the end it worked. I should be able to animate now in Daz and export into unity without issue like I've done with Genesis but if I encounter any more issues I'll certainly append this thread in case anyone else is trying to do the same thing.

 

Well greg, I thought I would give this a try - as I said before I have always liked Daz Puppeteer (Example: Hamlet Soliloquy).

Below is my result with a model and rig of my own (works fine in Unity when exported as an .fbx file)

Image1 - what I see after exporting as .dae from Blender 2.69 and importing into Daz 4.5. As you can see - err - not quite right ;-)

Image 2 - if I select a bone (the head in this case) and then click on rotate and then drag - the mesh assumes its proper form as long as I have the LMB down. Reverts to image 1 whem I let go of the LMB.

I sat infront of my PC and laughed. I just got the feeling I had fallen down the "Rabbit Hole"

Any chance you can post a screenshot of the .blender dae export parameters you used for your export (I did check the OpenSim option)

cheers, gryff

 

Yeah I played further with my imported models today and realized the same as you gryff sorry about the false alarm. I had a different tool selected in DAZ while I was importing so I thought everything was ok (the bones weren't visable and the parameter sliders for rotation worked) but its not correct still. It does bring over the bones and the weight maps which is nice (since that is what I'm struggling with most) but the orientations are all horizontal and it unparents the bones. I found a decent article on what ticking that checkbox in blender actual does below (its written for secondlife but looks like the same applies to daz)

http://www.secondcitizen.net/Forum/showpost.php?p=410101

I think I've now tried every combination I can think of with a no go on 100% export/import on blender with the rig. This got it the closest as all the bones are present and the weight mapping was brought over correctly but it would still need to find a way to reparent/reorient the bones back manually without it actually posing the figure temporarily which I don't think can be done. Either that, or recreating the bones with the parent/child structure and copying over the weight maps which came correct (not sure how easy this would be). If either is possible this is still not seamless it would only eliminate one step (the weight mapping) vs rigging from scratch in Daz.

I did look at the collada files that both generate on export hoping the only difference in the skeleton section of the xml file would be y-up vs z-up but its not. The files are quite different (collada looks like a very loose standard) and unless there is a plugin for blender I don't think it would be easy to manually tweak in the file itself (couldn't find one). FBX is a stricter format but unfortunately Blender and Daz don't play nice at all via this format for the rig in the slightest.

It's very odd that as long as you use the parameter sliders that everything can be posed correctly in Daz with these strange horizontal bones and animations would still look correct. That being said the unparenting loses the IK portion (and no one wants to animate just using the sliders). I think at this point I'll see if I can recreate the rig and copy over the weight maps somehow but if not thanks for the links to learning blender animation. Appreciate everyone's help.

 

Well let us not give up quite yet gregg ;-)

I've attached 3 images below of an experiment I did this morning:

Image 1: A shot from a simple animation of the Vicky4.2 animated in Daz Studio 4.5 using AnimateLite. A simple animation Kneel->Stand using one of the basic blocks that come with AnimateLite.

Image 2: A male character and rig I am currently playing with in Blender 2.69. The rig was created following the methods outlined in the Lee Salvemini link above. - It is Humanoid/bipedal but different in shape from the Vicky 4.2

Image 3: My character in Unity given the Kneel->Stand animation from Daz.

To try and and make sure the that it would be a test of mesh differences, I used a female character in Daz and my male character. Only trouble I encountered was with the feet - easliy fixed with a very simple tweak in Unity.

You say your figure is Humanoid/Bipedal - so it should be possible to animate it - unless the mesh/rig is grossly different in some way.

cheers, gryff

 

I had attempted this originally a few days back and the retargeting from genesis to my rig in unity led to quite noticable discrepancies (mainly in the shoulder regions) arm height was quite a bit lower once retargeted. When you say you tweaked the feet are you talking that the you have to remap the avatar bones, changed the constraints in the muscle definitions, accounted for root motion, or something else? I ask because even on my first rough animation clip the retargeting made noticable discrepancies between the two. So much so that I didn't think I could rely on that to work for when I create the rest of my animations.

In my case though there are rig differences as well so I assumed it was unity doing the best it can but couldn't compensate 100%. Is your blender model's rig the rigify meta-rig? That one seems to more closely match genesis (and I assume vicky as well). I can attempt to just import mesh into blender not the current collada file and re-rig (thank you very much for those links rigify looks great!). Perhaps with the different rig they will retarget better. Or perhaps I can do some tweaking to the unity avatar that I didn't realize I can do to compensate for the shoulders. I'll still have to practice the modifying the weight maps (blender or DAZ). I am naturally pretty bad at any sort of "painting" and the results my weight mapping brush in DAZ weren't good. I'll try his method in blender and see if I can do any better although that part looks pretty similar.

In either case, I'm definately not giving up on coming up with a good pipeline from animation to unity but unless I'm missing something this is still giving up on getting a custom rig imported into DAZ. What your describing is just letting unity try to retarget for using a DAZ rig (genesis, vicky, etc) when creating the animations in DAZ. If I can get mecanim to do that pretty well great (obviously this would only even be a possiblility for humanoid bipedal) but so far I was unable to tweak it to be ok.

As always thanks for the great ideas.

 

Yes gregg.

But those links do not use the blender scripts to do the full "Rigify" of Nathan Vegdahl (which as I understand it will not work in Mecanim). I just follow Lee Salvemini's methods in the first tutorial ( so I don't add IK bones etc.) and just parent my mesh to the rig with Cntrl P and use automatic weight paints. Lee's methods work well.

As for my foot tweak - see the image below:

Red Box labelled A: This shows the "Configure" window (left and a screen shot of the last frame of the animation when it is attached to my figure through its controller. Note the feet in the configure window are not flat on the ground - probably for the addition of hi-heeled shoe objects in Daz. This results in the odd position of my character's feet at the end of the animation.

Green Box labelled B: The same pair of windows, but I have adjusted the foot bone (R L)so that the feet are flat (no hi-heels ;-) ). Then I go to the Inspector Panel, choose the "Pose" button ->Enforce T-Pose and hit "Apply", then "Done". My character's feet no longer point up at the end of the animation.

To actually adjust the bones in the "Configure" view you just click on the appropriate bone, or you can see all the bones in the "Hierarchy" view and select one there if clicking on the bones is awkard. Then set the "manipulator" into the rotate mode and adjust.

If I had used the Michael mesh instead then I would probably not have had to make this adjustment. You should see what you can do by tweaking the shoulder (collar) bones of your mesh

By the way, any chance of a picture of your mesh and its current rig - hard to think about where problems may lie without a pic.

cheers, gryff

 

Thanks for the pics gryff. I'll give this a shot for my shoulder retargeting issues over the weekend and if there are still issues I'll certainly post pics to illustrate what I'm seeing.

Thanks as always for the great help!

 

gregg - and pics of success too!!

cheers, gryff

 

I gave a first attempt at compensating for the original rigging differences between one of my purchased models and genesis and it didn't turn out to well. I'm providing the screens on the differences between the two after some compensation and also a side view of rigs after compensation. Originally, the avatars were even more out of whack but I did make the feet on the floor and also adjusted a little for some lean. Even, after the compensation I would note two main differences between the rigs/models. First, genesis is much taller leaner with an arched back (especially if you look at the side view on the rig) and second the original rig on the purchased 3DRT model the rig when flatfooted on the model has the rig with the tiptoes like posture in the skeleton. While it made it a little better as you can see the animations are still fairly different. In the next couple of days I'll rerig the model with lee's method and then reconfigure the avatars again and see if that helps it further. Without rerigging I was unable to compensate for the vast differences (even if I overcompesated) unless you have further ideas on tweaks I could perform.



I am hopeful that if I rerig with lee's method the "lean forward" problem which is probably caused by the vast feet rig differences can be eliminated. However, I'm not sure on the spine with the way genesis kind of has the hips/thighs fairly forward from the side view but yet the spine is fairly back from the side view. This is obviously more anatomically correct but lee's video looked like he was fairly centered. When, I do the method do you think I should have this in mind when I adjust the rigify meta rig or will this mess up the automatic weighting? I think this difference leads to the retargeting looking like its slouching.

 

Ahh a picture is worth a thousand words ;-)

And now my thougfhts.

1. Your character has a rig that goes straight up and down while the "Genesis" rig/figure as you note has "an arched back". I don't think your problems have anything to do with the feet (apart from the foot placement as previous)

2. As you know I used the Vicky 4 figure,.so I checked her rig as well as my rig - picture below.. The Vicky figure has a sloping back and, purely by coincidence, so does my rig. Now there are some tweaks I could make to my rig (shoulder bones for example - move them back a bit) to get even closer to the Vicky rig.

So what can you do.

1. Try to tweak your figure in Unity to match the Genesis rig. Not easy to do as you can't see both rigs at the same time and you will have to do it for each new figure you bring in if you want to use the same animations

2. Either edit you character' s rig in Blender or create a new rig that matches the Genesis rig. One advantage is you can take screen shots of the Genesis rig either in Daz or Unity, from the front and side view (and possibly the top), then use these images as a backdrop in Blender. They can be scaled and moved in Blender to get you close to the size of your figure to help with the rig editing. Once you have created a closely matching rig in Blender, you can reuse it by parenting the rig to different character - so just one editing session

(In case you have never used background images in Blender hit the N key and a properties bar will pop up - scroll down to background images - enable them then add your front and side views of the Genesis rig. You should split the 3D view window so that you can view the front and side at the same time.)

3. Use Carrara - the not free option - minimum of ~$130 Carrara allows you to load a character from Daz complete with the rig. Unfortunately the rig and mesh are locked. But there is a plugin for Carrara the allows you to unlock the rig which can then be used on other models.

There is a series of 3 tuts, somewhat rambling, on YouTube showing this. This is the second tutorial finally showing the unlinking process at about 13 min mark:

Low Poly People Tutorial

As you will see it requires a plugin for Carrara that unlocks the rig and mesh. The plugin cost about $15.

You can then use the rig as a rig for your own mesh characters. Though the tuts were posted this year, the version of Daz 3D used is v3 and the figures used are not the most recent.

Now, I've not tried any of these three options, but I will be trying option 2 with my rig.

Those are my thoughts for now.

cheers, gryff

 

Realy All what you need is only DAZ studio !!! DAZ is already a great professional Tool for free, not another Tool is necessary !!!!

I can not give a good step by step , because I can not proper english

Also I use google translator I hope it help

In your case, use the Figure setup tool and not the Transfer Utility tool also not Genesis.
That is a wrong route

1.face Grouping your mesh in this Name convertion


2.load grouped mesh in the figure setup tool
3. drag all nodes in a proper hierarchy
4 use this Bonerotation


5. press button create
6. Bone Tool > Option align all nodes
7. weighmap tool >fill weights by selection sets
8. weightmap tool> Option converted in general mapping


That should you give a good automatic weight mapping that will work in DAZ with the Poses, Powerpose and Animate Blocks as well

But maybe you still need tweak the weightmaps a little bit , but DAZ have a very nice smooth weight-brush.

9. use this Animate Block to correct the Foot's
http://www.sharecg.com/v/67223


10. Bone Tool > Option bake joints rotation for backing this foot fix


A quick dirty example, Here you can see I can even rig with DAZ studio a Low Poly Mesh from Google Warehouse without a T Pose , not another 3D program is necessary , exept the Hexagon bridge for creating Blendshapes and fix the mesh, is additional very helpful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLlqRwi8VRs

 

Danke vidi

This looks like an interesting workflow for you to follow gregg.

Try vidi's suggestions first - her video seems to indicate it will work nicely. (Note the date it was created gregg - especially for you ;-) )

cheers, gryff

 

Yes thanks for all the tips guys. I'll be trying a couple of these this evening and will let you know how it goes!

 

I spent a few hours going through Vidi's tutorial and I must say works pretty well. I will try and redo the tutorial again tomorrow since the first time I followed step by step literally since I have a tendency of screwing things up when I don't and at the end realized I should have added facegroups for the fingers as well and not stopped at the depth of the picture. I will say after going through this the figure poses quite well and it gives a great starting point on the weight maps. I think this way of "rigging" obj's gives a nice head start vs. doing it from scratch and certainly gave me much better results than the transfer tool. Essentially the process does seem to get you 95% of the way there with only creating face groups and going through the figure setup tool and the three quick click for step 6,7,8. That plus some smoothing on the generated maps and this should look great!

Thanks Vidi and Gryff for all your advice throughout the process. I'll certainly post pics when successful.

 

Here are Groups for the hands, I have forgotten

http://www.brokeassgames.com/images/imagesRex/BAGPoser_fingerHierarchy.png

The trick of Grouping , at the end you create Bones and weightmaps in one

That is better, becuase the weightpainting is immediately on the correct areas :
maybe a little bit smoothing on the conected Joints areas , that's all

not so in the old fashion way . Bone click in the mesh is faster , but then correct the weightmapping is time consuming.

 

Great gregg. I must try vidi's tut too.

Funny, while posting here, I have been playing with the AnimateLite tool and getting the hang of it. Even the "Lite" version has allowed me to create a couple of nice animations that loop well. - only problem is I cannot save them as aniblocks.

So two of us have been learning ;-)

Looking forward to your success pics.

cheers, gryff

 

Second go around was pretty much a success at rigging in Daz studio including the hands. In general I'm still fairly clumsy in Daz but from start to finish the second time took me about an hour (I'm sure those proficient in it could do this technique in under 20 min). In general this is still essentially rigging an obj. in DAZ but this technique is very similar to lee's videos in blender. The only real main difference is instead of lining up to a visual rig you carve out the face groups at the beginning. Both method's still require some alignment (especially on the hands) but all in all not that many tweaks to the rig need to be made as long as your figure is in tpose. The weight maps auto generated are mostly good and only need to be tweaked a bit (for me mainly under the armpits needed to be tweaked). It probably is slightly more manual and slightly longer than rigging an obj in blender via that method but I certainly prefer Daz's animation suite to what I've played around with in blender. Thanks for all the assistance guys very grateful for all the help and I'm glad I got my character rigged in DAZ so I can use the DAZ -> Unity workflow for my animations now. Also, thanks for teaching me how to repeat this process if I purchase more characters! Attached is the current rigged model in DAZ.