3D Archives

My notes on 3D apps I use: ZBrush, Hexagon, DAZ Studio, Poser, Carrara and many others.

Using Synty Characters with Mixamo and Blender

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I’ve just worked out how to import Synty characters into Blender via Mixamo. It’s a somewhat complex process with a few pitfalls, and while it’s all fresh in my mind, I thought I’d best write it down somewhere. The workflow is similar for both the SimplePeople and the Polygon City characters, and I would imagine other Synty characters will probably work with these instructions just as well.

Note that I’m only using Blender and Mixamo, no other plugins or game engines. I’ll also explain how to add textures while we’re in the process, because that’s not exactly intuitive. Here’s the step-by-step outline:

  • import Synty character into Blender (as FBX)
  • correct pose and apply texture
  • export as FBX (see settings below)
  • import into Mixamo
  • apply desired animation and export (as FBX)
  • import into Blender and see the animation

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Octane for DAZ Studio – render tests

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In a recent stream I got accustomed with some of the options of the Octane Plugin for DAZ Studio. It’s easy to get brain overload with so many sliders! After some fiddling though, I discovered how to render the final image. However, there appear to be four different types of options on how to achieve that. These are:

  • Direct Lighting
  • Path Tracing
  • PMC
  • Info Channel

Rather than read the manual, which I’m sure would explain what the difference between each option, I did a few test renders of the scene we built. Let’s see if we can visually detect any differences.

The renders below were done at 2000×1500 with the built-in denoiser, which kicks in at the end of the image. Until that point, minor grain is visible. These were saved as 16 bit PNG files (click to enlarge).

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Adding an old GPU increased my render speed by 24%

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I’ve made an interesting discovery the other day about one of my render nodes: with identical GPUs, one appears to render faster than the other. I didn’t get it at first. But with a possible explanation in my head, I got the thinking and applied the same principle to my other node, and was able to increase its render speed by 24%!

How exciting is that?

It’s all about retro hardware, and how to make the most out of what you already have. Let me tell you what I discovered, and how I made use of an old AMD/ATI GPU in my setup that I never thought would work.

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How to D-NOISE an image sequence in Blender

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I had an image sequence rendered on one of my nodes, and sadly my D-NOISE add-on did not kick in as expected. This was entirely my fault, and I thought I could perhaps just denoise the sequence rather than re-render it. Turns out it works, even though it does not match the results of a regular denoised render.

Be that as it may, let me show you how to use Blender’s mysterious Compositor to denoise a sequence of images automatically.

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DAZ Studio 117 – Global Illumination, Environment Lighting, IBL and HDRI explained

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In this episode I’ll tell you much of what I know about the Environment Lighting in DAZ Studio. This technique is also known as Global Illumination. I’ll explain the meanings of such cryptic abbreviations as IBL and HDRI, and how all these pieces fall together to make your scenes look handsome. This is a continuation …

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How to make wheels turn in Blender 2.8

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I’ve recently built a little animation during a live stream, and Rod’s suggestion was to add NASA’s Curiosity Rover into the scene. It’s a freely available blend file, and I thought it was a great idea. It added a lovely character to the otherwise deserted alien landscape, and I quickly animated it into position.

Trouble was, the little guy was essentially an afterthought, and when I was watching the animation back, it became obvious that its wheels needed to be turning as it was driving around. While I was keen to do this, I had no idea what mechanism I should use for such an Endeavor (har har), or what Blender had to offer in this regard.

My first thought was to simply animate the wheels with keyframes, but this would be a lot of work, and if the rover’s speed were to change I’d have to probably animate those wheels again. There being six and all, I discovered a better way to make the wheels turn, using something called a Driver.

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How to replace an object with another mesh in Blender

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I’ve been wondering if there was a way to replace dummy objects I’ve placed in Blender with other meshes. Say we do a particle simulation, and during rehearsal it’s all about speed – but for the real render, we need higher resolution meshes that might take a while to render in the viewport. Thankfully it’s …

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Building JAY PLAYS – a Title Sequence Animation in Blender

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In this series I’m building an animated title sequence using a set made for DAZ Studio in Blender. This requires lighting and material tweaks, and messing with textures. It’s not a tutorial, just some dude trying his best at Blender (without knowing much about it, but learning a lot in the process).

The end result is an intro for my my game streams, as well as these new seasons of 3D Shenanigans. Once the set is built, I’ll replace a couple of key textures so that the cinema and screen show something different. It’s a lot of work!

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How to orbit around selections in Blender

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While I was deep engrossed looking for a feature in the Blender Settings, I found something else I didn’t know about. It’s a way to always orbit around a selected object, rather than do that awkward thing where the viewport just goes off into oblivion when you least expected it. I frequently use the NUMPAD …

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How to enable thicker outlines in Blender

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With any software demo (or with failing eyesight as we get older), it’s important to have some visual aides so that your audience knows what you’re talking about. I’ve been streaming some Blender sessions recently, and I usually have my excellent little cursor highlighter tool called PointerFocus active. That’s good for viewers to follow the …

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How to enable the 3D Manipulator Gizmo in Blender

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The other day I’ve been happily using the 3D Manipulator Gizmo in Blender and the world was at peace. The next day, I guess a new version must have come along or some other bit in the matrix was dropped, causing my Blender scene to no longer show that manipulator. Where had it gone? Was I imagining things again?

A quick internet search suggested to enable this option at the top of the screen. However mine was already enabled, and my gizmo buddy still wasn’t showing up. What was going on?

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How to scale image textures in Blender

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When I import regular OBJ files into Blender, they come in with a basic diffuse shader applied, with the texture file in the right place. Sadly, that texture is often scaled incorrectly. While it is possible to edit the UVs to make it all look handsome, there is an easier way for us to scale …

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How to render a movie file as texture in Blender

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I’ve been playing with a new title sequence for shiny new gaming channel, and I thought it would be fun to have a movie file playing on a plane object that’s seen as a screen in a cinema. I knew this was possible in Blender, but I didn’t quite know how to achieve it. After some tinkering I found out. Let me share my findings with you.

It’s very simple actually: setup a material, including a Texture Node, but instead of an image file, we pick a movie file (or image sequence). That’s really all there’s to it. The difficult part is understanding the settings in the Texture File though.

In the fourth drop-down, Movie was selected automatically when I added my movie file. This can be changed to Image or Image Sequence though, just in case yours is not set correctly. For the record, I’m using an MP4 file with H264 encoding, at 60 frames per second. The three following options are interesting (and important).

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How to use the Blender Cloud Add-On

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I’ve been a member of the Blender Cloud since 2016, and one of the benefits you get is that your local copy of Blender can interact with… well the Blender Cloud. You can access texture files, HDRIs, save your files, upload your renders and work in progress – all without leaving Blender. That’s cool! What …

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Distributing Props for DAZ Studio

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Making props for DAZ Studio can be fun and easy. Typically you’ve modelled something in your favourite 3D app, UV unwrapped it appropriately, then you import the object into DAZ Studio and setup your surface properties. You can save your work as part of the whole scene, or you can save your selected item on its own.

Bringing our prop back into other scenes on your own computer will probably work just fine, but if you intend to share your work with others, things get a little more complicated. Let’s take a look how we can do it in this article.

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My first 24 Hours with the Unreal Engine

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In my quest to take a look behind the scenes of how game engines work, I’ve decided to take a closer look at the Unreal Engine, more specifically UE 4.22.3. I had installed it a few weeks ago but other than launch a template or two, I didn’t do anything else with it. After my recent deep dive into Unity, I thought this would make for a nice comparison writeup.

Here’s how I experienced the first 24 hours with Unreal. I’ve even added a video at the end to show you a level that I’ve built. For this review I’ve been following this tutorial series by Paul Kind. He’s a wonderful teacher!

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DAZ Studio Render Speeds – The Results are in!

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A while ago I’ve asked you all to download a test scene and see how fast it renders. Everyone’s got a different graphics card/RAM/CPU setup, and I was interested to see how DAZ Studio would perform with those varying configurations. After all, most “review” websites only put hardware under scrutiny using video games, and for many of us, that’s just not how we use our systems.

I must admit that I’ve been trying to write out a nice looking and well formatted table many a time, but it just never got done. It had always been my intention to share the results with everyone, so rather than keep you waiting and go through all the graphical pain of making a lovely looking spreadsheet, I’ll just share the raw data with you. I’ll also let you know how I interpret it in simple words, with the intention of finding the most cost effective configuration for working with DAZ Studio. Here it is – the Google Sheet we’ve all been waiting for:

This is a view-only link (I think), and additional submissions will be added from the form on my other article at the bottom.

What does this data mean?

From the looks of it, using DAZ Studio 4.11 in 2019, the fastest render results for the lowest amount of money can be achieved using any variation of the NVIDIA RTX 2080 card.

The only one faster is the RTX 2080 Ti, which aside from more RAM (11GB vs 8GB for the 2080) is also clocked slightly faster, resulting in faster render speeds. However, the price jump is remarkable for the Ti (almost double when compared to the non-Ti version), and in my opinion for DAZ Studio it’s just not worth it.

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How to update Unreal Engine

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Sometimes I can’t work out the simplest things. Either I’m too stupid, or something that’s super obvious to developers is not necessarily obvious to the humans using it. One such thing is the question, “how do we update the Unreal Engine”. I’ve just found out, and thought I’d share this nugget of information with you. …

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My first 24 hours with Unity3D

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I’ve heard so much about the Unity Game Engine, I’ve seen what people can build with it. Some of my favourite games use it, and it has long been on my list of things to “check out” if ever I have a few spare hours.

Turns out that time has come this Friday afternoon, and I thought I’d best take some notes on how it all went. In case you’re in the same boat, i.e. a total N00B at Unity, perhaps I can save you some time. I’ve previously installed and very briefly tested the Unreal Engine, and I’m usually good at figuring out how to make something work on a computer, so let’s see how it’s going with Unity.

For posterity, I’m using Unity 2019.2 in September 2019 here.

Let me tell you, it wasn’t easy. It wasn’t smooth. I’m not sure how much time I’d like to invest, no matter how awesome it might be after that long dark tunnel of awkwardness. In the end I did make a small project (linked below) and got the hang of the basics, but getting there wasn’t pleasant. Here’s how it all went for me.

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Converting aniBlocks into regular keyframes (and back)

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In this quick tip I’ll show you how to convert an aniBlock into regular keyframes to make a change to the animation, then turn it back into an aniBlock for use with aniMate. The process is simple, yet not exactly obvious. Enjoy! https://www.versluis.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Aniblocks-to-Keyframes.mp3 Podcast: Download (Duration: 4:54 — 4.5MB)

Working with a Full Screen Viewport in Blender

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In this quick tip I’ll show you how to go full screen AND immersive with Blenders viewport. I’ll explain how to remove the grey bar at the top and remove all tool shelves temporarily with a single click (or two). Enjoy! https://www.versluis.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Blender-Immersive-Viewport.mp3 Podcast: Download (Duration: 2:07 — 1.9MB)

DAZ Studio 4.12 Beta – a Sneak Peek – 3D Shenanigans #25

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On today’s stream I’ll take sneak-peek at the new features in the brand new beta version of DAZ Studio 4.12. It was released earlier this week, and it’s all about better animation tools: integrated features from GraphMate and KeyMate, and IK Chains inside a scene hierarchy. The highlights in this version are: overhaul of the …

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Trying out Chocofur Asset Management for Blender 2.8 – 3D Shenanigans #24

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In this episode I’ll try to install the Chocofur Asset Management add-on for Blender. It’s recently been updated to Blender 2.8, but right now not so easy to find on their website. Chocofur have lots of free assets to try out, perhaps we can work out how this works together. I was unable to get …

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DAZ Studio 115: Parametric Light Objects in Iray

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In this episode I’ll give you an introduction to the various parametric light objects we can create from the menu, how to use them and how to tweak their respective parameters as they apply to the Iray render engine. Here’s the link about Colour Temperature I’ve mentioned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_temperature Here’s the one about Luminous Flux: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminous_flux …

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Using Blender on a Laptop with a Trackpad

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After futzing CentOS 7 on my old Samsung Q330 laptop, I thought it would be fun to see if the old hardware from 2010 would be capable of running Blender. After all, the team have recently added CentOS as a new pre-built package to the list of downloadable options, and for me that was the perfect opportunity to try it out.

Turns out my Q330 only runs OpenGL Version 2.1, which means it can’t run Blender 2.8+. However it’s still capable of running 2.79, and it made me smile to see it full screen.

Of course trying to move anything on the screen proved to be difficult, because I had never done that before with a standard trackpad. My Mac has one, and it behaves beautifully with gestures out of the box, but I guess Windows and Linux users don’t have that luxury, even if a trackpad is present.

How do we navigate 3D space in Blender then, if there’s no mouse nearby? Well I’ve just found out, and I’d love to share it with you. I’ve only been able to test this in Blender 2.79, but I’m assuming

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