I'm a big noob when it comes to Daz, especially the Daz <-> Blender workflow, so just to make sure I understand properly. You export an .obj from Daz, import .obj in Blender, sculpt it to get a different shape, export to a new .obj, and then import that into Daz as a morph of the G8? I'm not sure if there's anything special needed in Daz to make this work, I can import the .obj but I can't find a way to add it to the G8.1 shapes.
3 things:
- make sure the scale in consistant (daz scale is 100x blender's scale)
- 'keep vertex order' by default, blender will 'split into vertex groups' on importing. In blender you can set import and export 'types' to try and help keep things consistant. What I'll also do is I always import a default G8F body. Nothing sucks like importing the mesh, scultping for hours, exporting, only for it to explode in daz. All because blender didn't import correctly aka I forgot to check 'keep vertex order', and I have tried, I really have, from custom code to plug ins to save a sclupt (re order the vertexes) but nothing works. So what I do (often because I'm combining several characters and features together to make a sculpt since daz couldn't combine them) is I'll load the morphs into blender, as obj's. I'll also import the default G8F obj. I'll then use 'join as shapes' in blender. I'll basically change all the morphs into shape keys on the default body. This way, if anythem explode now, better they explode here than after I start sculpting. so I'll re import the mesh (make sure in daz to delete everything, including the eyelashes, and remove the subdivision (or just set it to use the base mesh quality). anything other than the low res model can not be imported back into daz, and vertex order MUST match) ). So I have the default body obj. with lots of shape keys, I do my sculpting in shape keys. and when I export, I make sure it only exports 'selection only.' I could throw up some images or make a PDF if you are serious about using this kind of work flow, since it took me a few tutorials and videos and walk through to piece together everything that could cause the process to fail.
- I don't deal with Genesis 8.1 because I made all my original sculpts using G8F. From what I understand, 8.1 has this thing called micro tiles, idk. All I know is, the way they are handling 8.1 sounds like they made a small change to the 'topology' and as a result the two meshes may not be compatible, so I don't know if a G8F morph works with G8.1F or not, I never cared to look since i had committed myself to G8F.
you could somehow turn the second mesh into a shape key of the first mesh, and then just use shape keys?
Yep, I work mostly in shapekeys (also helps that you can use weight maps to fade sections of shape keys on and off, and can use modifiers based on weight maps, and control weight maps to then control shape keys, also I like adding code and math to try out shape key combinations, like a gender slider, or a femininity slider). This is just default blender, no special resources or plug ins other than the morphs I import (or if I want to steal the shape of another sculpt, I'll use shrink-wrap (save as shape key) and some editing (another shape key) to get the topology clean (this is one trick used for retopology of a custom sculpt).
Maybe even dumber question, but "morphs in blender" are shape keys, and "morphs in Daz" is the "Shaping" tab, right? I've been trying to get some overview from Daz docs, but I feel like Daz tutorials are written as "do step 1 2 3 4 5 ... 1093 exactly", rather than "this is how the program fundamentally works".
Yeah, daz has 2 tabs, shapes and parameter. Parameter has everything, from X Y Z location, to smoothing modifiers. Depending on what assets you buy, they may not show up in the 'shaping' tab, so they can only be found here, and this is where any custom morphs will be hidden (unless you decide to export your morphs to make a fully realized product you could sell... never tried this). Shapes is ment to be the user friendly, look at the preview image, collection of shapes and morphs, with a tree organizing it by body areas. Not all assets will show up here, only products that properly register within the code.
like wise, lots of assets not installed the way 'daz' wants them installed will now show up in the smart content center, and you have to manually browse your file try to find some assets, including some shape assets that can be impossible to find. Your basically fighting daz because while it tries to be cleane and simple to new users, its over engineered and gets in the way if you don't do everything 'exactly' right, such as if an asset you bought wasn't configured for your version of daz and fails to show up in the smart content center.
Regarding 2D
do you just do it with grease pencil right in Blender?
The above isn't the complet final product, as you mention, polish work still needs to be done with 2D, and I am fighting weather I really want to put all the time and effort, when 3D looks so good (oddly enough, it is easier to make realistic images simply because there are so many available assets for realism, stylized is very hard to find anything consistent unless you do everything yourself). Here's what I do. while still learning 2D, while modeling, I'll actually look at WIREFRAME to get an idea of how the silhouette looks like, without getting caught in the details of the strange feeling 3D models look when you try to make them fit a good 2D shape.
For example:
there is also hidden wire which looks cleaner, but I like wireframe because I want the 'filling' to look messy, sloppy, and so my brain can't really read it and I can just focus on the shape (the lines are thicker than the actual 3D shape, fwi). The above is not an image from daz, its 2 screen shots, that I then combine in Gimp. If I'm still experimenting with shapes and lines, what I'll do is, I'll upload to google drive, because I'll actually use my Ipad and the program 'procreate' to draw things by hand since its much quicker to experment with that way.
sometimes for 2D you can't tell if the shape looks right untill you see their design in 'line' form, such as this example where the breast seem to have 2 different styles when comparing front view to side view
(though drawing this was still tedious)
However, I've given up on my skill to draw good lines, mainly because I like something closer to older 2000's cartoons and vector art than anything looking hand drawn, so what I do when I want clean lines is I'll actually use inscape, which allows me to make vector art. It is good for clean lines and solid fill, plus with the image with the 4 body types, since the lines are just mathematical curves aka vectors, I can just copy them over to the next character, and reshape the lines to fit their body, which meant it is much quicker to make massive edits. (also, blender grease pencil I don't think makes clean lines, or at least not the style of lines I like)
Inkscape does not handle shading very well, especially when you want to overlap some effects without it bleeding outside the lines. So instead, I'll actually do shading in GIMP, aka photoshop's main competitor that also happens to be 100% free (and if you are more used to photoshop, there is gimp shop which behaves like photoshop, but uses gimp's free code)
Now, that's still not the final product. That's great to get a final image, but I want to animate my art. With Blender I can actually import the vector file representing the lines and fill into blender. However, I don't like how blender handles the import. So what I'll actually do is render a high res image. I'll slice the images into parts and layers, different parts for hands and layers for fills and shading effects. I'll then make a custom mesh in blender (mostly 2D) based on the working principle of how programs like Live2D and Spine work to make animated 2D drawings (but I have to do it by hand, no code automates this, but that means I get more control over the effect). I can then animate it in blender, or, what I am currently hoping to do for my next project, is export the model as an FBX so that I can just load it in unity, animate it in unity, have the animations react to game conditions, and it saves a ton of memory and bandwidth.
heres just an example of me testing the technique in blender.
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It seems Blender can render line-art though, but it's probably not going to get "good enough" :\
there are two main techniques to automate line creation in 3D, the inverse hull technique (lots of videos for this), and can look pretty great. I like to pass a render's normal map through a Sobel operation (one of the composite/filter settings) and have it add lines as a post process, but the line quality is not that good and not really controllable, I just use it to test a 3D character's shape and look to see if I like the 2D feel or not. This is just another case where, its neat, but for what I want, I gave up and decided to do it manually using inkscape.
I even thought about exporting regular renders and painting over them to get a more painterly look (like in
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) but that may be too much work I guess, and could be in theory replaced with a "painterly shader I guess"?
if you want something quick and dirty, render an image, use blender to make the lines (not shaded, keep the character and scene pure white), and throw the shaded render into gimp. get the G'MIC plug in, which adds a ton of more filters, and use the 'Brushify' filter that turns the 'shaded' render to looking like it was 'painted' (I'll also set the color mode to 'light' so that it looks like the highlights were the last thing painted, as if it was made by hand irl). I've played with this, and it works great for backgrounds, and if you play around with the quality, you can keep the details of clothing, while simplifying the body to make it look more stylized and toony and less obvious that it was a 3D render, (wasn't able to find a good example of this in my collection).
Do you end up drawing clothing because the workflow of creating them in Blender is too tedious, or because making them fit in Daz later is too annoying? Or just because you can get it done a lot faster by hand? I definitely agree that the clothing in Daz aren't usable, they look to me like someone pasted a low res photo on a generic shape.
It more has to deal with the type of style I'm going for. early 2000's, think bruce timm style comic, to kim possible/totally spies/teen titans original. Where the bodies have enough detail that they are still erotically shaped, but the cantoony and simple enough that clothes and line work follow only 3 behaviors. Either they are skin tight and fit the shape of the body, or they overlap the body but keep the shape (but maybe simple, like with the stylized breast of kim possible), or they are loose but the shapes are still kept simple (bruce timm's shirts and any clothes not 'skin tight'). Basiacally, the shape of clothes are kept simple and are based on the body underneath, but 3D clothes would have too many nuance details that they wouldn't fit the style. The exception being, making body tight suits (underwear, bras also work). While I do sometimes uses a braw and shirt from daz, that's just to 'map' areas of the body, such as panties and bikini top, but otherwise I would model them in blender to make sure the shapes are simple and clean. since I am keeping the line work clean and simple, It's just not usually worth my time to model them and I can play around with how clothes look when prototyping lines in inkscape.
Is morph loader pro something that's required for Daz to even do this?
It should be in your daz by default, it's just hidden under edit/object, but yes, this is the tool that allows thi importing of obj which can act as morphs. but you still have to save the morph asset after you calibrate it's behavior.
If you could give me a few steps or even tutorials what to look at or read I'd really appreciate it. Like I said I don't want to steal your work
I'd just want
something that works so I can try out the workflow and reproduce it with my own modifications.
I'll see what I can conjure up, but I have to head to town for a bit so it may take a while to get something put together to show you.
