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. 
• Disable Drivers: Temporarily disable all drivers to improve performance
• Enable Drivers: Enable all drivers again.
  
• Prune Action: Remove F-curves which only contain trivial transformations (0 or 1) from the active action.
• Impose Locks And Limits: Modify the current pose so all bone lock and limit constraints are respected.
  
• Save Pose Preset: Save the active pose or action to a pose preset file, which can be opened in DAZ Studio.
  
• Location Locks: Toggle location locks off/on.
• Rotation Locks: Toggle rotation locks off/on.
• Location Limits: Toggle location limits off/on. 
• Rotation Limits: 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.
• Affect Scale: Include bone scale in animation. Can sometimes lead to problems.
  
• Selected Bones Only: Only import animations to selected bones.
  
• Affect Driven Bones: Animate bones that are children of driven bones, added with 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.
• Clear Morphs: Clear all morph properties before loading new ones. Disable before loading partial morphs.
  
• 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.
  
• Convert Poses: Use this if you import a pose made for different Genesis generation.
• Source Character: The Genesis character the pose was made for.
• Auto Keying: Automatically insert keyframes for all loaded channels.
  

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.

Disable Drivers

dsaf

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.

 

Impose Locks And Limits

In the DAZ rigs there are limits to bone rotations, to avoid unrealistic poses which break the mesh. However, if we use some advanced rig such as MHX or Rigify and pose the character with IK, and then snap the FK bones, it is easy to exceed those limits. This tool is intended to ensure that all FK bone rotations stay withing limits.

Here Aiko is posed with IK in a quite unconfortable pose. After snapping the FK arms and FK legs the pose remains as unconfortable, but the pose is more relaxed after locks and limits are imposed.

 

Save Pose Preset

The purpose of the DAZ Importer is to import duf/dsf files from DAZ Studio into Blender. Exporting Blender data back into DAZ Studio is quite complicated and beyond the scope of this plugin. However, pose preset files are quite simple and to depend on other files. The Save Pose Preset tool saves the current pose or action as a pose preset file, which can be opened in DAZ Studio or loaded to another character in Blender.

A file selector opens where we specify the file name. To make the file visible in DAZ Studio, choose a subdirectory of one of the DAZ root directories. Options:

• Author: Metadata specifying the author of the pose preset.
• Website: Metadata specifying the web address
• Use Bones: Include bones in the pose preset.
  
• Include Locked Channels: Include locked channels in the pose preset.
• Use Scale: Include bone scale transforms in the pose preset.
  
• Use Face Bones: Include facial bones in the pose preset.
  
• Use Morphs: Include morphs in the pose preset.
  
• Use Action: Save an action instead of a single pose.
  
• Start: First frame to save.
  
• End: Last frame to save
  
• FPS: Frames per second.

In DAZ Studio, navigate to the save file in the Content Library tab.

 

Location Locks
Rotation Locks
Location Limits
Rotation Limits

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

The picture below illustrates 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.