Daz Blender Daz3D to Blender - strange skin/hair color?

[RHQuinn]

Edit: I've created

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over on Diffeomorphic's bitbucket.

Long story short I want to use Daz3D to source models - I am not an artist - and probably pose. I want to use Blender to finish a scene, with lighting and camera framing, and finally rendering. Thank you Daz3D for ignoring my Radeon VII. Although there are a few scripts floating out there - e.g.

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- the most user friendly for a newbie (to Daz3D, Blender, and 3D models in general) seems to be

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.

So I did a few tests, one with basic Daz models (img: Test1) and another with some meat to it (img: Test2), and everything looked good. Everything aside from proper lighting but that one's on me. Between several Blender tutorials, Youtube, and an actual Blender class I should learn the proper way to light both the character and the scene well.

However when I tried exporting and rendering some prototypes this week, the colors are way off (imgs: 3 and 4, Test 3 iray + Test 3 exported). Two of the models have a greenish(?) tint where they look diseased or dead, while the other 3 look like they've got 2nd degree sunburns. The hair color looks off as well, the clothes could be normal color - the white underwear looks white to me. In all 5 blender renders the light is only the default white light.
Also, two of the girls are showing through their bras. I suppose I could fix this - using Material Designer? - but it kind of sucks to need an extra step of work.

 

[Yustu]

You forgot most important. How did You exported / imported it to blender.
Anyway post issue on git page if that was

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or maybe contact author for teleblender.
This issue seams to be familiar to me and IIRC if from diffeomorphic and I did see that they fixed it so grab latest version from gitbucket.

 

[RHQuinn]

Yep. I don't know why it seemed clear in my mind I was using Diffeomorphic. I also don't know why I didn't update the version before posting for help - no excuse that my previous version was only a few weeks old - but that didn't make any difference. I'll make an

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, just wanted a sanity check first.

 

[Saki_Sliz]

There is a mistake in the latest version of Diffeomorphic,
if you go into the material shader nodes (any of them) you should see a bunch of texture imports, find the one that connects to the diffuse shader, that is the texture with the problem. In the texture node, find the data type option, and set it from "Non-Color" data to "sRGB" that will fix that (and as far as I have found, it fixes this for all the material groups ate once, which makes no sense to me).
But that doesn't fix skin completely, for some reason Diffeomorphic has a pretty default shader set up, you may want to use a custom or better skin shader. I have a pretty nice shader I have shared online, but I haven't updated it for 2.8 yet and it doesn't like to play nice with other shaders yet.

 

[RHQuinn]

Okay, I'm new to Blender and haven't played much with nodes yet, so forgive me if I misunderstand...

I went looking in the Shader Editor of the main body, but there is no 'diffuse' shader only the Principled BSDF shader which used to be the "diffuse + glossy -> mixer" shaders. However if I change the - superfluous? - bump shader's color (sometimes green, sometimes red) to white, it seems to (partially) fix it.

Ignoring a better solution like a custom Blender skin shader, is this where you were pointing me to or did you mean something else?

Also, yes your custom Blender skin shader was already on my radar even if I'm Blender 2.8+ only - and I'm eagerly awaiting your improved version you mentioned But I'll wait a bit longer to really dig into it until I'm a bit more experienced.

 

[Saki_Sliz]

Strange, it looks like your importer tries to mimic the daz set up, my old fbx import use to do that.
what it is trying to do is what daz does, using that color you changed to modify the texture color to a different skin color, one of the most fundamental tricks in digital painting. but it looks like the texture is just one solid color (export import issue?) so nothing interesting shows up, setting that color as you did to white should make it show the default skin texture with all its details, but it looks pretty bland so the image may be blank.

Also, the topmost slider is set to zero, what I would suggest is slide that up closer to 1, and then if you click the thing under it, the radius, change the values to 0.04, 0.0 and 0.0 this makes it simulate human skin by making a bit red when light goes through things like the ears and nose. If it is really red after that, thene there is a scale issue, add a 2 more zeros before the 4.

Actually, I have just about custom shaders for every part of the body because the default stuff is so ass ugly. The only work I have left of my skin shader is make a new procedural texture gerenator, and then make a nice file and it will be ready. If you want I can send you a clean file with all my shaders for things like the eyes, body, etc.

 

[RHQuinn]

If you feel up to it, I urge you to join the discussion of

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over on bitbucket because most of what you say I understand so little I feel uncomfortable just passing it on. He's fixed something with SSS but while the green ones start looking sort of okay, the red ones make it clear the issue's not solved.

As for your custom shaders, I'd absolutely love to have a look or at worst have them in the bank to look at once my skill with Blender improves.

 

[Synx]

Could you share the blender file? Easier trouble shouting the problem then from some screen shots.

You can package the blend file with all the external stuff used by going into file (Left top) - External data - Pack all into .blend. (Or i think it works like that)

My first instinct would be removing the multiply node, link the color of the diffuse map (the bottom map) to subsurface radius, and set the subsurface color to some red/pinkish color. No idea if that would do anything.

 

[RHQuinn]

Sure thing. Of course each time Diffeomorphic is patched, the .blend file may change - so I included the duf and the json. The json file is generated by diffeomorphic - the part for Daz Studio - and has to do with easily ex-/importing the mesh.

No need to package the blend file, everything's imported from the get-go. Thanks for the instructions though

You can remove the multiply node - or keep the factor at 1 and change color to white - but that would be (part of) a manual solve. That color comes from a SSS (subsurface scattering) setting in DS and Thomas (the diffeomorphic dev) is trying to work out - without fully understanding this stuff himself - how to convert that into blender nodes the right way.

 

[Synx]

it could be a mistake with the way you saved the blender file, but to me the images are empty. There is nothing there. Looking though your renders, it might just be the issue your having, as the skin is super mat in every one of them. Like the first lady has a bit of redish nose in the DAZ render, but its the same color as the rest in the blender render.

I tried importing the DUF file using Diffeomorphic, but that one didnt work at all. Got the same node set-up as you, but with RBG node instead of the image nodes.

 

[Shadow Fiend]

it could be a mistake with the way you saved the blender file, but to me the images are empty. There is nothing there. Looking though your renders, it might just be the issue your having, as the skin is super mat in every one of them. Like the first lady has a bit of redish nose in the DAZ render, but its the same color as the rest in the blender render.

I tried importing the DUF file using Diffeomorphic, but that one didnt work at all. Got the same node set-up as you, but with RBG node instead of the image nodes.

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[Saki_Sliz]

but to me the images are empty. There is nothing there.

That's what I thought it looked like too.

 

[RHQuinn]

it could be a mistake with the way you saved the blender file, but to me the images are empty. There is nothing there.

Ah, that's because I ignored your instructions because while I did download and test my upload, everything works fine if it's in the same folder I saved the original to. Mea culpa.

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because nopy's not public and I don't have any file sharing accounts... anywhere. And 175MB just won't attach

I tried importing the DUF file using Diffeomorphic, but that one didnt work at all. Got the same node set-up as you, but with RBG node instead of the image nodes.

Are you using the

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? The stable version download link on blogspot is behind, especially for this issue.

<edit> almost forgot. It seems with the latest commit, if you divide the SSS value by 4 or 5, and multiply the SSS radius values by 100, you get some pretty sane values. Not same as Daz, but looking pretty okay.

 

[Synx]

Are you using the

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? The stable version download link on blogspot is behind, especially for this issue.

I never used the addon before was just hoping it would work quickly.

Anyway one thing I noticed now, and i'm surprised nobody has said this yet, your specular value is 0. For skin this should be around 0.4.

For the rest I think you just got to tweak the SSS a bit. What you said above is fine, SSS value of skin is around 0.2. I would personnaly change the radius ratio between the 3 (they are all the same now) to something like 5 : 2 : 1 (as in the first value is 5 times larger than the last one)

Secondly try some different lightning set-ups, and colors. Lightning has massive effect on the result, and pure white light isnt realistic. Try some very very light tints of red or blue.

 

[RHQuinn]

I never used the addon before was just hoping it would work quickly.

It's quite easy actually. Just install the addon from zip in Blender (Edit -> Preferences). If Daz Studio's not installed in the default directory, you'll need to adjust the Daz paths in Diffeomorphic settings (mouse over Blender viewport -> Properties (N) -> Daz Runtime -> Settings -> Paths to Daz library). Finally you need to install the Daz JSON export script from "%USER%\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.80\addons\import-daz\to_daz_studio" (or similar folder from the zip file), and follow

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of the guide. It's not one-click run, but it's not rocket science either.

Anyway one thing I noticed now, and i'm surprised nobody has said this yet, your specular value is 0. For skin this should be around 0.4.

For the rest I think you just got to tweak the SSS a bit. What you said above is fine, SSS value of skin is around 0.2. I would personnaly change the radius ratio between the 3 (they are all the same now) to something like 5 : 2 : 1 (as in the first value is 5 times larger than the last one)

Secondly try some different lightning set-ups, and colors. Lightning has massive effect on the result, and pure white light isnt realistic. Try some very very light tints of red or blue.

I'll have to get back to you on the specular thing. The import's been doing weird things since the past few days, where there's no principled BSDF shader but what looks like something... older.

Your SSS comment confuses me. I would assume you'd either use a SSS color, and same radii values - a grayscale radius ratio - or a grayscale/white SSS color and a weighted radius ratio, but not both?

Your lighting advice is spot-on. The point of these blender files/renders is to make diffeomorphic convert a DS model into something similar in blender, with minimal human intervention - up to that point. Then I start thinking about posing, props, environments & HDRs, proper lighting, framing, etc.

 

[Synx]

Your SSS comment confuses me. I would assume you'd either use a SSS color, and same radii values - a grayscale radius ratio - or a grayscale/white SSS color and a weighted radius ratio, but not both?

Ow could be. I normally just use a redish basic color with 1 : 0.4 : 0.2 as radius (aka ratio of 5:2:1), and don't link a map to it But honestly SSS should be barely noticeable anyway, unless you got a very large/strong light right behind your character. Just look at yourself in the mirror; your shouldn't even see any of the redish SSS going on with your ears, unless you put a flashlight right behind your ear.

 

[RHQuinn]

It's quite easy actually

Oh, and apparently you get a vastly different shader node setup depending on whether you were set to Eevee or Cycles on import. Frankly the Eevee one looks much better.

Ow could be. I normally just use a redish basic color with 1 : 0.4 : 0.2 as radius (aka ratio of 5:2:1), and don't link a map to it But honestly SSS should be barely noticeable anyway, unless you got a very large/strong light right behind your character. Just look at yourself in the mirror; your shouldn't even see any of the redish SSS going on with your ears, unless you put a flashlight right behind your ear.

In the end it doesn't matter as it's multiplicative. As long as you get the values you desire, you're golden. I was just trying to explain it seemed logical to me to have either value as grayscale to simplify the logic of it and have a single point of failure. Color balance wrong? Only one place to look. Color brightness off? One easy place to look.

 

[Saki_Sliz]

Oh, and apparently you get a vastly different shader node setup depending on whether you were set to Eevee or Cycles on import. Frankly the Eevee one looks much better.

Wait, really?!

 

[Saki_Sliz]

Ok so I loaded up my own model, testing out the different shader, and I was able to replicate your results.

I too had the extreme ugly colors, and when I disabled the multiplying node, I too had no texture. I double-checked and my texture is not blank. If I have a texture but no image in shader, then i should double-check the mixing node again, and sure enough, the issue is that the image is being imported into the second input node rather than the first, which screw up a few things. I have to go to class, so I probably will not be able to make a proper post with images until tomorrow.