Blender Auto Setup

CC/iC Blender Tools 2.1.11

Github:

Online Documentation:

Blender Auto Setup Add-on:

CC/iC Blender Pipeline Plug-in:

Product Page
Documentation
Release Version
CC4 / iC8 Version
CC3 Version

Release Notes

Changelog:

2.1.11

Character Management functions - CCiC Create > Character Management:

Transfer weights supports split body meshes.
Voxel head diffuse skinning (if installed) button for selected character meshes.
Clean Empty Data: Removes empty shape keys and empty vertex groups from the character meshes.
Blend Body Weights: Blends body vertex weights with existing vertex weights on selected objects based on distance from the surface of the body, to correct vertex weighting for clothing items that don't conform correctly to the body, e.g. from Voxel Heat Diffusion weights or from Daz original weights.

New scene presets added:

Scene view transform and world background strength controls added.

2.1.10

Sets up Rigidbody physics when appending a character from another library blend file via the Append button in the import panel.

Note: Rigidbody physics does not work with linked character overrides.

Export non-standard character fix.
Support for split meshes when exporting, rebuilding materials, physics & rigging:

Any mesh separated or duplicated from a source character mesh will be considered part of the character and an extension of that object.
For split body meshes, the mesh with the head will be used as the source for facial expression drivers and wrinkle map drivers.
Note: Split body meshes will not import back into CC4 as standard CC3+ characters.

Added buttons to rebuild and to remove just the expression and bone drivers to the Character Build Settings panel.

2.1.9

Maintain operator context for scene operations.
Align to view distance fix.

2.1.8

Fixes to view 3d shading context in 4.2.
Imported objects, materials, images and actions detection no longer uses tags.
Added more checks to skip null material slots.

2.1.7

Sync lights includes Scene IBL from CC/iC visual settings.
Export to CC3/4 button fixed.
Added extra checks for AccuRig / ActorScan when unknown humanoids detected.

2.1.6

Import supports multiple file selection.

To import multiple objects from a folder, press shift + select the FBX files in the importer file selection window.

Fixes for blender version before 4.0:

Replace mesh OBJ export.
Rigging bone layer assignment.
Property collection clear.
Rigging widget control scale.

2.1.5

Proportion edit should work on all character types (except Rigified)
Sync lights and send pose should work in all modes and keeps the active mode.
Lighting brightness adjust slider.
Some GameBase detection fixes.
GameBase skin roughness tweaks.
Fix for vertex color sampling when json data is missing.

2.1.4

Datalink receive Update / Replace function, to replace whole characters or selected parts.
Fix to character validation and clean-up.

2.1.3

Motion Set UI errors fixed.
Eevee-Next SSR Eyes fixes.
Iris brightness render settings for Eevee & Cycles.
Bake fixes for Blender 4.2 refractive eyes.
Export-Bake warnings when not build for Eevee.
Lighting tweaks.

2.1.2

Blender 4.2 lighting settings fixes and adjustments.

Eevee-Next Raytracing, shadows and shadow jitter enabled on render settings and lights.
Blender 4.0+ lighting presets use AgX.

Eevee & Cycles global material options.

Control of SSS weights, roughnes power and normals for various material types.

2.1.1

Fix UDIM flattening on proportion editing and sculpt base mesh transfer.
Lighting sync area correction.
Datalink plugin version compatibility check.

2.1.0

Motion Sets:

Action name remapping and retargetting overhaul.
Motion set functions: Load/Push/Clear/Select/Rename/Delete
Motion prefix and use fake user option added for all animation retargeting and import.
Motion set filter and motion set info function.

NLA Tools:

NLA Bake functions moved to NLA editor panel.
Motion set panel in rigging and NLA editor and Datalink.
NLA strip alignment and sizing utility functions.

Fixes:

Duplicating character no longer duplicates actions.
Store object state checks objects/materials exist.
Positioning fixes with rigify

2.0.9

Datalink:

Datalink main loop stability improvements.
Live sequence back to CC4/iClone takes facial expression bone rotations into account.
Live Sequence stop button.
Replace mesh function: Quickly send (non topology changing) mesh alterations back to CC4.
Update material & texture function: Send selected material data and textures back to CC4.
Sync lighting recalculations.

Export:

Restores armature and object states after export.
Fix to baking custom Diffuse Map channel.

Fix to Blender 3.4-3.6 Eevee subsurface color.
Material Parameter controls disabled for linked characters (unless library override).

2.0.8

Import/Export:

Fix to Update Unity Project being greyed out after saving as Blend file.
Fix to export non-standard character.
Fix to export non-standard ARP rigged character.
(Blender 4.0+) Fix to reverting object and material name changes on export and other force name changes.
Generic character/prop import expanded to support USD/USDZ.
Rigify export now have choice of naming system:

Metarig names (without Root bone) for exporting animations back into CC/iC.
CC Base names (with Root bone) for exporting to Unity Auto-setup.

Rigified characters/motion exports now generate custom HIK profile which can be used to import/convert Rigified motion exports into CC/iC.
Datalink Rigified characters (optionally) disable tweak bones as they are not compatible with CC/iC animation.

Scene tools:

Scene lighting presets overhauled.
Added function to align any object to view location and orientation (useful for placing lights and cameras).
Added function to add a camera at current view location and orientation.
Added function to setup a main face tracking camera centered on character's head.
Added function to convert current view studio lighting into world lighting node setup.

Rigify:

Fix to GameBase detection.
Fix to AccuRig generation code not being recognized as valid Rigify target.
Fix to support Mixamorigs with suffix numbers in retargeting.
Auto-retarget toggle added to automatically retarget any animation on character when using Quick Rigify.

Shaders:

Skin, eye and hair shaders updated to use Blender 4.0+ Random Walk (Skin) Subsurface Scattering.
Displacement map (if present) will be used on skin materials for bump and mesh displacement.
Cycles subsurface calculations and parameters tweaked.
Separate cycles modifiers for Blender 3.4-3.6 and 4.0+.
Eye Sclera color tint added.
Cycles Tearline shader reworked.

Character Management

Character edit function added.
Character duplicate function added (duplicates character objects and meta-data so can be used and configured independently).
Character tools (select/rigify/convert/delete/duplicate), also sub-panel in Datalink.
Convert to accessory fix.

Datalink:

Added Receiving prop posing and animation live sequence.
Added custom prop rig control bones when sending through datalink.
Added Direct Motion Transfer from CC/iC (automatic motion export->import).
Added "Go iC" button to send (just props for now) back to iClone.

2.0.7

Attempts to restore datalink when reloading linked blend file.
All returning datalink operators will attempt to first reconnect if not connected.
Facial expressions included in datalink send pose and sequence. (But not visemes)

Currently certain expression bone movements are conflicting with existing bone movements.
You may wish to avoid the Head_Turn expressions as a consequence.

Character Proportion editing mode added to CC/iC Create panels.
Spring bone hair binding will add an armature modifier for the hair object if absent, to allow binding for newly created hair mashes.
Scale body weights now acts on the normalized existing hair weights.

2.0.6

Restored Rigify retarget limb correction utilities.
Fix to Blender 4.1 import crash caused by 4.1 removing auto-smoothed normals.

2.0.5

Fix to converting generic objects to props.
Fix to baking value textures back to CC4 when exporting converted props and humanoids.
Datalink data send rate synchronization improvements.
Rigify retarget and NLA bake options to bake to FK/IK/Both.

Rig FK/IK mode set appropriately, unchanged when baking to 'Both'.

Quick FK/IK switch button added to rigify mini-panel.
Send Rigified pose or sequence fix.
Rigify Jaw alignment changed to -Z.

2.0.4

Linking/Appending:

Added linking/append functions to auto-link to characters in blend files with full character data and functionality.
Added connect function to re-build character data for linked/appended characters.
Added custom properties to armatures/meshes and materials to aid re-connection of character data.
Rebuilding materials will add this custom data to existing characters.
Auto-linked/Re-connected characters can use full add-on functionality i.e. rigging, retargeting, exporting, rebuilding materials, etc...

Rigify:

Datalink pose retargeting teeth position fix.
Eye bone and jaw bone alignments corrected.
Face rig jaw constraints adjusted for less lip deformation.

Parallax eye shader AO fix.
Basic materials SSS fixes.
Importing a bad or incompatible mesh should fail more gracefully.

2.0.2

Datalink:

Lighting and Camera sync.
Send Character (Go-CC) back to CC4.
Facial expressions and Visemes transferred in the pose and animation sequencing.
Animation sequence now writes to rig and shape-key action tracks directly using low level fast keyframing, all at once at the end. Which is much faster, for both native rig and Rigify rig.
Sequence rate matching so CC4 doesn't get too far ahead of itself.
Supports Morph editing and mesh updating for sending back morph OBJ for automatic morph slider creation in CC4.

Subsurface Recalculations (you may need to reset the preferences in the add-on prefs)
Export of Hue, Sat, Brightness params to CC4.
Fixed SSS material detection.
Fixed ActorBuild generation detection and export.
HIK and facial profiles copied with character export (if generated by CC4)
OBJ import/export fix for Blender 4.0.
OBJ import now supports full materials.
Fixed T-pose orientation when exporting Rigified animation.

2.0.2

Correction to malformed json texture paths when exporting character from CC4 directly to the root of a drive.
Disabled image search on FBX importer, should import a little faster now.

2.0.1

VRM import fixes.

VRM to CC4 export generates HIK profile for auto characterization.

Rigify fixes:

Face bone roll axis corrections.
Tongue bone meta-rig positioning corrections.
Teeth bone retargeting corrections.

2.0.0

Blender 4.0 support.
WIP Experimental Data Link added:

Currently in alpha stages, more a proof of concept at the moment.

Bake add-on updated and merged into this project.

Original Post
Setting up the materials in Blender was becoming quite time consuming and it's way to easy to make mistakes so a few weeks ago I thought I would try and speed it up with some python scripting as I'd written a few python scripts for Blender years ago and they weren't too terrible.

Over time I got entirely too carried away with it and my little helper script grew into a full blown add-on with a UI and import/export functions and such. As I have a tendency to keep building and building and never really finishing with these types of projects they usually never see the light of day and end up collecting dust in some darkened corner of my hard drive, so I'm releasing it now and if anyone is interested they can try it out and see if it's any use to them.

For the moment this is mostly for setting up materials, but I've made a start at importing / exporting for character morphs and accessories which works(ish), but needs specific export settings from CC3, which are outlined in the readme.

I must stress this is very much an alpha version and still work in progress. It's Blender and it's running my janky code so expect bugs. It works they way I use it, so far, and with the character exports I have tested it with, but any expected conditions could cause it to go wrong.

This is for Blender 2.83+. Tested in 2.83 and 2.92, 3.0, 3.0.1 and 3.1

And I've made a quick demo video of installing and testing the add-on with some cheesy music: