In DAZ Studio, add a character and give her hair and some clothes. Also shape the character to the desired shape.
Save the scene as a DSON User File (*.duf), which is DAZ Studio's internal format.
We will call her Aiko, so we choose the file name aiko.duf. Also rename
the character in DAZ Studio. This is important because this name will
appear in Blender, and we don't want all our characters to be called
Genesis 8 Female.
Export To Blender
The .duf file contains information about the character shape in the form
of morphs, but I have not fully understood how this is implemented, and
in particular not how clothes are fitted to morphed characters. Instead
of trying to reproduce the final vertex and bone locations inside
Blender, these basic data are exported by a custom script to a .dbz
file, which is then used in Blender to recreate the final meshes.
First make sure that the DAZ Studio plug-in is installed, following the instructions
here. From the File menu, select Export To Blender.
Export a .dbz file with the same name as the .duf file, and located in
the same directory. Since Aiko lives in the file aiko.duf, the file name
becomes aiko.dbz. If you just save the .duf file, the right file name
should be suggested automatically.
After a little while we receive a message that the file has been saved.
High-resolution Export To Blender
Many DAZ meshes come in high resolution. Such HD (high definition or
high density) meshes can be exported with the Export HD to Blender
script. The ordinary Export To Blender script ignores the HD information, because it increases the export time and file size by orders of magnitude, and for many purposes the meshes at base resolution suffice. However, for some characters the HD information is useful. The Export HD To Blender is an alternative dbz exporer which includes the HD information.
For more about HD export, see the blog posts on
High resolution meshes
HD meshes and geografts
Baking normal maps
HD meshes and geografts revisited
To export the scene with HD meshes, use the Export HD To Blender menu item in the file menu, just below the Export To Blender item.
A file selector appears and suggests the name of the dbz file. Note that if you already have exported a dbz file with the ordinary Blender exporter, that file is overwritten. There can only be one dbz file for each scene.
If you intend to add a multires modifier to the HD mesh in Blender, the HD UV coordinates are not needed, because the UVs are copied from the mesh at base resolution. To save some time and space, there is an option not to export the HD UVs, but note that to render a true HD mesh in Blender the HD UV coordinates must be exported.
A message box informs us when the export script has finished.
Exporting a HD mesh with geografts is somewhat tricky. Before exporting the scene, we must enter the Geometry Editor and select every mesh in the scene outliner.
Exporting a HD scene to Blender often takes a long time, because a long of data needs to be exported and the script is written in DAZ Studio's scripting language, which is quite slow. As an alternative we can use the C version of the Export HD script written by Donald Dade. It is bundled with the 1.6 release of the DAZ Importer. To install it, copy the diffeo-HD folder to the DAZ Studio plugin folder, as explained in Content of the Zip file.
Select the Diffeomorphic Daz Importer entry at the bottom of the Edit menu, and select the name of the dbz file (you can pick either the duf or the dbz file) in the file selector.
In this case the export time decreased from 103 seconds to 15 seconds, i.e. almost by a factor of 7. However, you should be aware that the C version does not seem able to handle geografts correctly.
Special considerations for Poser, Genesis and Genesis 2 figures
The
DAZ Importer can not import Poser files directly, but we can load a
Poser file into DAZ Studio and save it as a duf file, which the DAZ
Importer can import. However, Poser figures use a different weighting
method, which does not work well in Blender. The first two generations
of Genesis characters have similar problems, since they use TriAx
weighting rather than standard vertex weighting. We should therefore
convert all Poser, Genesis and Genesis 2 figures to general weights
before saving the scene.
Select
all figures in the scene and select Edit > Figure > Rigging >
Convert TriAx Weight to General Weight. Then save the scene as usual and
Export To Blender to create a dbz file.
If
the character was saved with TriAx weights the DAZ Importer still
attempts to convert the weights to vertex groups, but the conversion
only works well if all bones are closely aligned with the main
coordinate axes. This is the case for the rest pose, but it may be
different if the character is posed. The picture above shows the lShldr
and lForeArm vertex groups with the original TriAx weights, and after
conversion to general weights in DAZ Studio.
Posing the character with TriAx weights does not work well.
