Strand-Based Hair Material does not copy over

[GeneralProtectionFault]

DAZ Studio 4.22 Unreal 5.3.2

The hair makes it to Unreal, but is all white. The output mentions the hair, but only vis-a-vis posing, so it doesn't seem to be related to the material, so likely the material is not being handled.

Following is the output from Unreal after sending a G8.1F with a few clothing items:

Ignoring mesh SacralVellusHair.Shape because it has no weights. No smoothing group information was found in this FBX scene. Please make sure to enable the 'Export Smoothing Groups' option in the FBX Exporter plug-in before exporting the file. Even for tools that don't support smoothing groups, the FBX Exporter will generate appropriate smoothing data at export-time so that correct vertex normals can be inferred while importing. The following bones are missing from the bind pose: Strand-Based Hair
Strand-Based Hair.Shape
GoldenPalace_Shell
GoldenPalace_Shell.Shape
ik_foot_root
ik_foot_l
ik_foot_r
ik_hand_root
ik_hand_gun
ik_hand_r
ik_hand_l

This can happen for bones that are not vert weighted. If they are not in the correct orientation after importing, please set the "Use T0 as ref pose" option or add them to the bind pose and reimport the skeletal mesh.

[daz-ddb]

Hi @GeneralProtectionFault, very sorry for the delayed response! There are many reasons for the hair material not to be working, but it's difficult to know which one without more detailed information. Please let us know what hair asset you are using with link to the Daz Store, and also provide a screenshot or video of the issue you are seeing if possible. If the affected asset is not using Iray Uber or PBRSkin shader materials, then you can try applying one of these material presets if available.

[Milliethegreat]

I have issues with strand based hair and fur giving me the same issue on all strand based fur and hair I have. Is it the case that strand based hair is incompatible altogether? Someone on the Daz forum (name kept private) said it’s not and there’s a crap load of blender alembic conversion stuff that has to be done to bring it into unreal. Or at least so I was toldSent from Millie S.’s iPhoneOn Jul 30, 2024, at 2:00 PM, Daniel B @.***> wrote: Hi @GeneralProtectionFault, very sorry for the delayed response! There are many reasons for the hair material not to be working, but it's difficult to know which one without more detailed information. Please let us know what hair asset you are using with link to the Daz Store, and also provide a screenshot or video of the issue you are seeing if possible. If the affected asset is not using Iray Uber or PBRSkin shader materials, then you can try applying one of these material presets if available.

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[GeneralProtectionFault]

Hi @daz-ddb . I'm not sure what you're looking for regarding the shader materials. My understanding is it just uses that RSL Strand-Based Hair shader, but I didn't do any material manipulation beyond typical coloring/gradient/etc... that I recall (created this over a year ago).

As mentioned in the issue title, this is strand-based hair, there's no DAZ asset in the store, I simply created it in DAZ studio with the existing tooling. As @Milliethegreat alluded to, my suspicion was that this was a bug with strand-based hair in general, not some specific asset or configuration. Essentially it just shows up white in Unreal, so I'm suspicious that there isn't handling of the material at all.

[Milliethegreat]

The issue I have or had in previous versions of dtu is it wouldn’t import it at all. Like it would completely not import it giving me the error @generalprotectionfault gave me. Sometim it’d just crash unreal. Did something change since the earlier versions of dtu?Sent from Millie S.’s iPhoneOn Jul 30, 2024, at 2:31 PM, GeneralProtectionFault @.***> wrote: Hi @daz-ddb . I'm not sure what you're looking for regarding the shader materials. My understanding is it just uses that RSL Strand-Based Hair shader, but I didn't do any material manipulation beyond typical coloring/gradient/etc... that I recall (created this over a year ago). As mentioned in the issue title, this is strand-based hair, there's no DAZ asset in the store, I simply created it in DAZ studio with the existing tooling. As @Milliethegreat alluded to, my suspicion was that this was a bug with strand-based hair in general, not some specific asset or configuration. Essentially it just shows up white in Unreal, so I'm suspicious that there isn't handling of the material at all.

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[Milliethegreat]

Or is there a setting or settings I have to enable?Sent from Millie S.’s iPhoneOn Jul 30, 2024, at 2:31 PM, GeneralProtectionFault @.***> wrote: Hi @daz-ddb . I'm not sure what you're looking for regarding the shader materials. My understanding is it just uses that RSL Strand-Based Hair shader, but I didn't do any material manipulation beyond typical coloring/gradient/etc... that I recall (created this over a year ago). As mentioned in the issue title, this is strand-based hair, there's no DAZ asset in the store, I simply created it in DAZ studio with the existing tooling. As @Milliethegreat alluded to, my suspicion was that this was a bug with strand-based hair in general, not some specific asset or configuration. Essentially it just shows up white in Unreal, so I'm suspicious that there isn't handling of the material at all.

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[GeneralProtectionFault]

So it's been a while, but I think I just left the settings very vanilla, just selecting the figure and such. Doing that, it imported successfully, but the strand-based hair was white, which is this issue here. The only output I got was what was posted above.

If it helps, I also filed this issue: https://github.com/daz3d/DazToUnreal/issues/68

The reason I put it here is because I was trying to import the same figure, and in that case the strand-based hair problem was merely incidental--but it crashed entirely if I tried to include morphs (even just standard morphs, nothing fancy), which is an even bigger problem. In that issue, I attached the crash log that DAZ provided. Maybe that's the difference between importing w/ white hair and crashing entirely--it was for me, at least.

Either way, it seems strand-based hair does not work correclty with DazToUnreal. So, I'm wondering if creating the most minimal of scenes with some random/fast strand-based hair might replicate the issue.

[Milliethegreat]

Wasn’t there a point where it wouldn’t import at all? If so when did that change? I’m just super curious that’s allSent from Millie S.’s iPhoneOn Jul 30, 2024, at 2:44 PM, GeneralProtectionFault @.***> wrote: So it's been a while, but I think I just left the settings very vanilla, just selecting the figure and such. Doing that, it imported successfully, but the strand-based hair was white, which is this issue here. The only output I got was what was posted above. If it helps, I also filed this issue:

68

The reason I put it here is because I was trying to import the same figure, and in that case the strand-based hair problem was merely incidental--but it crashed entirely if I tried to include morphs (even just standard morphs, nothing fancy), which is an even bigger problem. In that issue, I attached the crash log that DAZ provided. Maybe that's the difference between importing w/ white hair and crashing entirely--it was for me, at least. Either way, it seems strand-based hair does not work correclty with DazToUnreal. So, I'm wondering if creating the most minimal of scenes with some random/fast strand-based hair might replicate the issue.

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[Milliethegreat]

I just tried importing a character with strand based fur and it gave me the same error but the fur didn’t import at all. Nothing. What am I doing wrong?Sent from Millie S.’s iPhoneOn Jul 30, 2024, at 2:44 PM, GeneralProtectionFault @.***> wrote: So it's been a while, but I think I just left the settings very vanilla, just selecting the figure and such. Doing that, it imported successfully, but the strand-based hair was white, which is this issue here. The only output I got was what was posted above. If it helps, I also filed this issue:

68

The reason I put it here is because I was trying to import the same figure, and in that case the strand-based hair problem was merely incidental--but it crashed entirely if I tried to include morphs (even just standard morphs, nothing fancy), which is an even bigger problem. In that issue, I attached the crash log that DAZ provided. Maybe that's the difference between importing w/ white hair and crashing entirely--it was for me, at least. Either way, it seems strand-based hair does not work correclty with DazToUnreal. So, I'm wondering if creating the most minimal of scenes with some random/fast strand-based hair might replicate the issue.

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[danielbui78]

Hi @GeneralProtectionFault and @Milliethegreat,

First, let me clarify the state of strand-based hair support in DazToUnreal. It is not officially supported yet, however, there are a number of work-arounds.

1. The blender alembic conversion work-around is to convert dForce strand-based hair to Unreal groom hair. You can search online for tutorials on how this can be done.
2. Another potential work-around is described in the DazToBlender Issue 210 (https://github.com/daz3d/DazToBlender/issues/210), which bakes strand-based hair to mesh hair. Unfortunately, there is a related issue (https://github.com/daz3d/DazToBlender/issues/207) where the exported hairs are unrigged -- which causes Unreal to delete the asset on import. Currently, if you are experiencing the issue with deleted unrigged mesh assets, you can export to Blender first then manually import to Unreal. In the future, we will try to develop an integrated solution for DazToUnreal.

Regarding RSL shaders, this is the old 3Delight shader material format, which are not fully supported by DazToUnreal. That is why none of your coloring settings are being transferred to Unreal. You can try converting these to MDL (Iray) shader materials, which have better support in DazToUnreal.

[GeneralProtectionFault]

Hmm, ok well that's good to know, but my suggestion would be then, that anytime DazToUnreal encounters an unsupported feature, be it strand-based hair, shaders, etc... that it indicates thus in the message? The error just says missing a bind pose. If it said "The following materials/objects/whatever are not yet fully supported:" then it would save the time of this issue or people going down the garden path trying to get it to work, as it seems Millie did ;-P.

[Milliethegreat]

Huh? I was saying i DIDNT get it to import at all. You got it to do more than I did. You got it to imprort without the material i didn’t get it to import at all. Nothing. Nada. Zippo.Sent from Millie S.’s iPhoneOn Aug 6, 2024, at 2:45 PM, GeneralProtectionFault @.***> wrote: Hmm, ok well that's good to know, but my suggestion would be then, that anytime DazToUnreal encounters an unsupported feature, be it strand-based hair, shaders, etc... that it indicates thus in the message? The error just says missing a bind pose. If it said "The following materials/objects/whatever are not yet fully supported:" then it would save the time of this issue or people going down the garden path trying to get it to work, as it seems Millie did ;-P.

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[Milliethegreat]

What bothers me is it says on various strand based hair products (and other not compatible products) in their listing on Daz marketplace that they work with unreal. If they say that it’s should be a simple process to do so. If it’s something that requires blender gimp etc etc etc just to get it to work in unreal then don’t say it supports unreal or at least mention you’ll need to do extra work to get it to work in unreal in the listing. It’s a little misleading 🤔 Sent from Millie S.’s iPhoneOn Aug 6, 2024, at 3:27 PM, Millie Sutton @.> wrote:Huh? I was saying i DIDNT get it to import at all. You got it to do more than I did. You got it to imprort without the material i didn’t get it to import at all. Nothing. Nada. Zippo.Sent from Millie S.’s iPhoneOn Aug 6, 2024, at 2:45 PM, GeneralProtectionFault @.> wrote: Hmm, ok well that's good to know, but my suggestion would be then, that anytime DazToUnreal encounters an unsupported feature, be it strand-based hair, shaders, etc... that it indicates thus in the message? The error just says missing a bind pose. If it said "The following materials/objects/whatever are not yet fully supported:" then it would save the time of this issue or people going down the garden path trying to get it to work, as it seems Millie did ;-P.

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[Milliethegreat]

Daz marketplace really shouldn’t say something is supported in unreal in the listing if it’s necessary to do extra work in blender or other applications ti get it to work in unreal. Just saying Sent from Millie S.’s iPhoneOn Aug 6, 2024, at 3:27 PM, Millie Sutton @.> wrote:Huh? I was saying i DIDNT get it to import at all. You got it to do more than I did. You got it to imprort without the material i didn’t get it to import at all. Nothing. Nada. Zippo.Sent from Millie S.’s iPhoneOn Aug 6, 2024, at 2:45 PM, GeneralProtectionFault @.> wrote: Hmm, ok well that's good to know, but my suggestion would be then, that anytime DazToUnreal encounters an unsupported feature, be it strand-based hair, shaders, etc... that it indicates thus in the message? The error just says missing a bind pose. If it said "The following materials/objects/whatever are not yet fully supported:" then it would save the time of this issue or people going down the garden path trying to get it to work, as it seems Millie did ;-P.

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