Posing Panel

• Import Pose: Import a pose from a DAZ pose preset file.
• Import Pose Library: Import poses from DAZ pose preset files and save as a pose library.
• Import Action: Import poses from DAZ pose preset files and save as an action.
• Import Pose From Scene: Import a pose from a DAZ scene file.
• Clear Pose: Reset all poses and morphs, including bones on hidden layers.
• Clear Morphs: Reset all morphs of all types.
  
• Prune Action: Remove F-curves which only contain trivial transformations (0 or 1) from the active action.
• Rotate Bones: Rotate all selected bones the same angle. Mainly for debugging.
• Location Locks Are ON/OFF: Toggle location locks off/on.
• Rotation Locks Are ON/OFF: Toggle rotation s off/on.
• Location Limits Are ON/OFF: Toggle location limits off/on. 
• Rotation Limits Are ON/OFF: Toggle rotation limits off/on.

 

Import Pose

This tool imports a pose (or a set of poses) to the active armature. In the file selector, select the poses you want to load. You can either select duf/dsf files, or image files with the same name, or tip files.

Import options:

• Affect Bones: Import bone animations from the duf file.
  
• Selected Bones Only: Only import animations to selected bones.
  
• Affect Driven Bones: Animate bones that are children of driven bones, added with the Add Extra Face Bones and the Make All Bones Posable tools
  
• Object Transformations Affect:
• Object: Import object animations as object transformations.
  
• Master Bone: Import object animations as master bones transformations. Only for the MHX and Rigify rigs which have a master bone.
  
• None: Don't import object animations.
  
• Affect Morphs: Import morph animations from the duf file.
  
• Report Missing Morphs: Morph animations can only be imported if the relevant morphs have already been loaded in the Morphs section. If this option is enabled, a list of missing morphs are printed in the terminal window.
  
• Ignore Limits: Location and rotation limits can prevent extreme poses from loading correctly. Enable this option of ignore limits.
  
• Ignore Locks: Location and rotation locks can prevent extreme poses from loading correctly. Enable this option of ignore locks.
• Convert Poses: Use this if you import a pose made for different Genesis generation.
• Source Character: The Genesis character the pose was made for.
  

We select the Base Pose Kneeling B and press Import Pose. Aiko is now kneeling in the same way.

Let us now import an expression to Aiko's face. In the file selector options, we turn off Affect Bones and set Object Transformations Affect to None, so the expression will not ruin the kneeling pose of the body. We have also imported all Face Units, Expressions and Visemes as explained in the Morphs section. Turn on Affect Morphs, and check Report Missing Morphs to see if

We do get a warning message about missing morphs. However, it is not a very important one, which we can see by inspecting the terminal window, where we have the warning:

Missing morphs:
  ['eCTRLSmileOpenFullFace_HD']

A single morph is missing for some reason.

And now Aiko has a beautiful smile on her face, but she remains in the same kneeling position as before. The imported morph has moved some of the face units sliders, as the picture above shows.

Aiko is a Genesis 8 character and only poses created for Genesis 8 will be imported correctly. If we want to import a pose made for a different Genesis character, we need to enable Convert Poses.

Here we want to import a roundkick pose originally made for Genesis 3 female. Enable the Convert Poses option, and select Genesis 3 female as the Source Character, and then import the pose.

Here is a comparison of the poses imported with and without conversion from Genesis 3. Note that Aiko's left arm is horizontal in the converted pose, just as the thumbnail suggests, but the arm points slightly downwards in the unconverted pose.

Import PoseLib

This file selector has some additional options:

• New Pose Library: Create a new pose library for the selected poses. Otherwise they are added to the active pose library.
• Pose Library: The name of the new pose library.

A pose library is created with the three selected poses. To apply a pose to the armature, use the button with a magnifying glass.

Pose libraries only contain bone poses. Morphs values, which are implemented as object properties, can not be saved in a pose library.

Import Action

This tool can either be used to import multiple poses to an action, or to import an animation with several keyframe. We first import three single-frame poses.

New options:

• New Action: Create a new action for the imported poses. Otherwise add poses to the active action.
• Action Name: The name of the new action.

The remaining options are only relevant when you import an animation from DAZ Studio.

We imported the three base laying poses as an action. The action now contains keyframes at frame 1, 2 and 3 with the three poses.

The other use of the Import Action tool is to import a multi-frame animation from DAZ Studio. Some vendors sell such assets, but we can also create them ourselves.

Back in DAZ Studio, we have added a dance animation to Aiko in the form of aniblocks.

Aniblocks are stored in an undocumented binary format, and can therefore not be directly imported into Blender with the Daz Importer. But we can convert them to keyframes, which can be imported. Select all aniblocks in the timeline so they turn yellow, and right-click in the grey area below the aniblocks. In the pop-up menu that appears, select Bake To Studio Keyframes.

Once the keyframes have been baked (it can take a while), save the file as a Pose Preset.

In the save options, select Animated Range and the Start and End Frames, then Accept. The pose preset file is now saved.

Back in Blender, press Import Action. We can now go over the new options.

• New Action: Create a new action for the imported poses. Otherwise add poses to the active action.
• Action Name: The name of the new action.
• Frame Rate: The FPS (Frames Per Second) value in DAZ Studio, normally 30.
  
• Integer Frames: Round all keyframes to integers.
• Start At Frame 1: If enabled, the imported animation starts at frame 1, otherwise it starts at the current frame.
• First Frame: Start import from this frame.
• Last Frame: Finish import with this frame.
  

 

And now Aiko is dancing in Blender

 

 

Import Pose From Scene

The three buttons above all import animations from pose preset files. This type of file is the most common way to store poses and animations, and the duf file in the various directions are usually of this type. However, we can also store poses in scene files. The Import Pose From Scene tool loads poses from scene files rather than pose presets.

In DAZ Studio, save the dance animation as a scene file instead.

In Blender, import the pose from this scene file. The options are the same as for the Import Pose tool.

And here is the pose imported from the scene file. Note that a scene file can only contains a single pose.

Because the scene file contains the entire scene, we can import it with the main Import DAZ File button. If Mesh Fitting is set to DBZ, the saved pose becomes the armature's rest pose.

Clear Pose

This tool clears all transforms of the active armature, including bones on hidden bone layers. It is quicker than selecting all layers and all bones in pose mode and clearing rotations and locations.

 

Clear Morphs

 

This tool clears all morphs of all types. To the left Aiko has a face unit (EyesClosed), an expression (Rage), a viseme (F), a body morph (lHandFist), and a custom morph (FBMPearFigure). The Clear Morphs button zeroes all of these in one strike. The pose is not affected.

Prune Action

A pose preset file often contain trivial animations, i.e. animations with a single keyframe at the default value (0 for location and rotation, 1 for scale). This tool removes such trivial f-curves from the active action.

Here are the f-curves for the Nose bone after we imported the dance animation. There are nine f-curves, but all of them consist of a single keypoint at frame 1 at the default values.

Here are the f-curves for the face bones after we pruned animations. All face bones are selected, but we see that only the head and neckLower bones have f-curves, and only for the rotation channels. All the face f-curves were trivial and were removed, which make the animation much more light-weight.

 

Rotate Bones

This tool sets the local rotation of all selected bones to the same angle. It is mainly useful for debugging.

Select all bones in the hand an press Rotate Bones. In the popup, set the X rotation to 30 degrees and the Y and Z rotations to 0.

And now all the bones are rotated 30 degrees. Note that you can not easily achieve the same with Blender's standard tools, which do not add rotations to both the parent and child bones.

 

Location Locks Are ON/OFF
Rotation Locks Are ON/OFF
Location Limits Are ON/OFF
Rotation Limits Are ON/OFF

The last four buttons in this panel toggle location and rotation locks and limits on and off. The buttons change names (ON/OFF) to indicate the current status. Turning off rotation limits in particular may be necessary to load some poses.

This picture illustrate how the tools work. When limits are on, all Limit rotation constraints are unmuted, but when limits are off, they are muted, which is indicated by the eye icon.