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UPDATE
I did some more tests using Blender 2.78c + DS 4.9.3 and it seems that fbx support is improved. I can export everything from DS using the fbx format and Blender imports it just fine.
Another way is to export via collada then convert dae to fbx with the free Autodesk fbx converter. This works fine as well.
@kitakoredaz Going to do some JCM tests ..
UPDATE
Well in my tests I didn't find any way to export JCMs from DS.
I can't find the corrective shapes for knees and elbows in the fbx or collada export panels, so no way. I did find the corretive shapes for the arms but they seem to be exported as full body morphs. So in Blender I'm not able to use them.
One way to partially fix this would be to export a pre-bended obj and rig it in Blender. The pre-bended character would have JCMs baked for that specific position so it's better than nothing. Pre-bending also helps both ik and deformations to work better anyway. But this is a "better than nothing" partial solution, it's not the same as true DS JCMs.
Of course another way is to sculpt the corrective shapes yourself in Blender.
I also did some more tests with the plugin. You can import custom morphs from the Data folder of the DS Content. GF2 JCMs are included in this folder. Unfortunately the plugin seems to ignore JCMs, it imports fine other custom morphs though.
C:\Users\..\Documents\DAZ 3D\Studio\Content\data\DAZ 3D\Genesis 2\Female\Morphs\DAZ 3D\Control Rig
It is not likely that Daz would ever do such a thing.
Daz owns Carrara and apparrently has Zero interest in Making thier own Genesis 3 Figure fully/natively functional in Carrara
(I seem to remember reading that the Carrara users have recently devised thier own third party hack to get G3 working over there)
The same is the case for G3 in poser
The poser users have had to cobble thier own third party hack for G3 as well as .
Blender is an open source application that literally has nightly builds being made available.
DAZ is a 3D content company,There would be very.. very little business incentive for Daz to pay some third party developer to support
his third party non industry standard hack to get Daz studio content into a third party open source program that could change at any given moment with Zero notice.
Daz does offer "Industry standard" Export formats
that are officially supported other pro application environments.
FBX,Collada, .Obj, MDD,Alembic.
not to mention proper Unity installer packages from their game content site Morph3D.
Blender imports most of these formats.
Those of us who prefer to use Daz content in our external applications
have to accept the burden of doing the extra work to get the Daz content working via one of the Industry standard formats mention above.
I have done it with .obj/MDD to C4D.
Why wouldn't DAZ 3D want to make it easier for 3D artist to make more diverse content and sell it in their store for the pitiance of extra costs of hosting it on their servers and a bit of minor bookkeeping, both of which they already are paying for. The biggest added expense would be more QC.
If you say that DAZ is satisfied with what they and that's enough well that is good enough answer for me but it's the sort of thing that one associates with a mom & pop shop and not a modern business seeking to expend their market eg MCS. Both have their places.
Unity 3D has indeed paid authors of 3rd party hacks that made Unity 3D better for those hacks and integrated it directly into Unity. When one looks at DAZ's business model and Unity's business model they really aren't so different. Free 3D SW to make renders. DAZ wants to sell the art and programmer add-ons to be used to make those renders much as Unity does with it's own asset store. Big difference is Unity also has a support level and cloud servers that one can subscribe to for a fee that DAZ does not. That, and much more investor money from to Unity compared to DAZ.
Speaking of industry formats since I am just a hobbyist I already forget the name but there is a somewhat new bit of research that is implemented in SW already of eliminating these 'JCM' bend problems and such. It is newer and better technique than dual-quaterion or what ever it's called, unfortunately I don't remember the name but you can bet DAZ 3D knows what the name is as industry experts. It is that sort of technical advancement one needs to see in DAZ 3D for Genesis 4 and Unity 3D and UE4 (although I'm willing to bet Unity 3D and UE4 already have that on their road maps given their budgets for new features and improvements).
The plugin ,that is the subject of this thread,has nothing to do with
making it easier to create Daz content and sell it in the store
anyone with a decent polygonal modeling app and skills can become
a DAZ PA.
Daz is seeking to expand their market in ways that they control such as the Morph 3D store & MCS figures.
Unity has done this After those third party add ons were proven to be a useful addition to ***UNITY***
Just as Daz has licensed third party add-ons as included parts of ***Daz studio**( AniMate lite,mimic, IRay)
Unity has not paid any third party hobbiest in advance to create plugin to move unity assets over to Blender as this does not help build unity itself.
Perhaps you refer to "implicit skinning"
There is already funding in place to bring this tech to Blender.
I tend to agree with Wolf here, it's a touchy topic though so not much is posted.
I use Carrara and iClone and increasingly there has been extra work needed to get DAZ content into both.
More and more features only work in DAZ studio and an annoying UV U wrap function nobody can solve is making many new sets unuseable in Clone, it stuffs up on a obj re-import even into D|S.
I can fix it in Carrara and exporting the fixed obj from there my only option.
That and HD morphs certain not all geografts, instancing (hopefully fixed with Totte's script) iray only proceedurals that use masks and lack of ability to bake the resulting texture for export, the list is increasing each new build.
Isaac Newton was a hobbyist too and really how much have the professionals in Hollywood and these places actually come up with that is 'professionally original'? When you answer that question you'll realize hobbyist is not a term to use so dismissively.
And to be fair I do not blame DAZ for any Difficulty or extra work
I have to do after I have chosen to leave the Daz studio Environment with content that was purpose built to function fully in the Daz studio environment.
This often heard notion that Daz "would make a killing etc
if they just made it easier for everyone to use genesis"
is a reductive mindset that indicates a certain lack of understanding how successful businesses work in the technology age.
Like itor not the "Walled garden" model usually prevails if implemented correctly
Look at Apple computer or more accurately Apple technolgies inc.
Remember the official apple clones?
remember how quickly Steve jobs killed them after his return from
forced exile?
The only way to control your IP is to control and innovate the technology platform with little regard for how or if third parties are able to Adapt it to their third party delivery systems.
But for this to work your flagship tech has be innovative and unique and very reliable with strict internal quality controls and the third parties
will adapt THIER deliver systems to accomodate you.
You see this everywhere with third party tech adapted to work with the Iphone
Done incorrectly you get the many Sony Debacles as they introduced one closed music format after another without getting support from the music content producers and they made the same mistake with thier handheld game systems like the PSP.
Say what you want about Apple but it is no Dumb luck that, according to NASDQ, Apple is more valuable than Microsoft and even the mighty Exxon Mobile .
DAZ has made the DSON tech available to anyone willing to do the work to get genesis fully functional in other environments.
and they have given us all of the major export formats at no cost
(except Alembic).
@kitakoredaz
Please can you explain better how do you get to export the JCMs and how do you use them in Blender ? I am really only interested in the knee and elbow corrective shapes. I don't need the whole JCM set. So if I can figure out how to get these two JCMs to work it is enought for me.
I can't see any pJCM entry in the fbx exporter. I can only see a lForearmTwist.YRotate2 that gets baked when I rotate the G3F left forearm. Moreover, if I set it to export I can get it in Blender but I can't figure out how to use it since this morph seems to do nothing. I would expect it to bulge the elbow area so I could use it as a corrective shape for the elbow when the forearm gets bended.
Also I can see the G3F pJCMs in the DAZ Base Correctives folder but when I import them as custom morphs with the plugin they do not show in the plugin Custom Morphs tab and/or in the blender Shape Keys panel. I am using the 1.2 developer beta version of the plugin as you suggested.
DAZ Studio 4.9.3 with default G3F no addons
Blender 2.78c
DAZ Plugin 1.2 developer beta version
And I do not think these setting change morph imported way, but it is my setting currently I used to mport genesis3 FBX.(as I said, I believe this plug-in best enough to import rig, then do not check each option presisely. just need to import morphs for me. but I know some option change node arrangement drastically., and if I set some option, I may no need clear transform, to see zero defromed shape, or I see breaked figure untill I set zero pose for all node.
Then small tips, for user who test this add on but not hope complex things, this plug in offer quick way to import "usuall morphs" from "dsf" without export obj,dae, FBX etc, from ds, and import process.. (annoying, when you concentrate on blender)
this is clear advantage. you can import product morphs for cloth, hair,, actor, or scene props, when you need, from blender UI, with one click. (there is some option, to choose which morph you hope to import)
eg Now I am tweaking scene, then hope to change hair style, I know, this product "yumi Hiar" (one of my favorite pony tail products) have many morphs, but no need to import all. but add some morph, and tweak hair with current pose.
then I select hair mesh. then click, import moprh. (in this case I set controller for shape keys to change shape from add on UI), I locate this product morph data directory, then set ple-fix "tail", to import all tailXXXX morphs only.
now you can see, when I select, mesh, there is already imported all tail morphs as shape keys. (I hope those are simple morphs) but they colored as purple, it means controlled by driver, which auto generated and linked to another property. those controller are shown when I select "amatrue node" only . in categorize which my import settings.
you can choose, import morph without driver, (shape key), or add controller (then controll shape keys) from UI morph category too.
now I can tweak hair style from controller easy. (do not ask me, "pin" mark how work ^^; it is difficult for me, , in this pic, I just set key for contrller, (turn green) then memorize current value as key on timeline)
@kitakoredaz
Thank you so much indeed !!! It worked just fine !
What was fooling me was that the JCM morphs do not appear in the export list of the fbx panel. The export list shows just CTRL morphs instead. So I supposed the JCMs didn't exist. But, if I place their names in the export rules as you show in your example, then they export just fine. This means they are there but somewhat hidden from the list.
I got the JCM names from the Base Corrective folder shown in my previous post.
Once the JCM is imported in Blender I can just activate the morph and it bulges the elbow area as expected, so it can be used as a corrective shape.
Interesting discussion, so let me join in. FBX does export G3 with all joints, uv mapping and textures. You can even select morphs that are exported (baked to the mesh or a alternate mesh). You don't get the dependencies between joints (joint controlled joints / JCJs) and joint controlled morphs (JCM). You can get the values when you look in Daz Studio at the morphs or export these things yourself from Daz Studio with a script.
I need these things to import the missing stuff in Cinema 4D with a script as well. So I can pose G3 in Cinema 4D including JCMs and JCJs. I investigated that topic for several months now and try to automate it. If you need a script for Daz Studio the following information might help.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/164481/investigations-on-genesis-3-joints-in-daz-studio-chapter-1-7-including-pdf-documentation#latest
@Singular3D I believe your work is very valuable information for anyone who want to code an exporter. It would be great if Thomas Larsson could add JCM support to his nice plugin. I see it's open source so may be there's hope. Meanwile at least we have FBX.
@ketakoredaz As for Blender, I found that the imported JCMs produce very different results from DS. I guess this is due to the different weighting algorithms used by Blender and DS. Nonetheless, by tweaking around a little, I found that if we use the "preserve volume" option in the armature panel then we can get very similar results as in DS. Below the three pictures showing the DS original bending, Blender with JCM alone, and Blender with JCM plus the "preserve volume" option.
EDIT: just for completeness, for anyone interested here is a video from Peter Drakulic showing how to setup a corrective shape driver
https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?288388-How-to-realistically-deform-an-arm-using-corrective-shape-keys
Thanks, but you will not get the needed information via FBX. So I'm working on a script to write a companion file for the FBX to get additional settings in, after importing the FBX file. Cinema 4D imports the FBX fine, but not the rotation order and the default joint orientation. Although existing, it is ignored by Cinema 4D. The JCJ and JCM things are missing completely.
I attached a script here that shows how the joints are exported into a file (*.fbc / FBX companion). Just select a bone of the figure in advance.
Going through the morphs in the data subdirectories is another approach. You will find that in the PDF discussed as well.
@kitakoredaz
I can't reproduce your issue here. Everything seems to work fine with head propagating scale.
my steps:
- load g3f and apply head propagating scale
- export as fbx (I used a "bake everything" rule just for testing)
- import fbx into blender (standard fbx addon with default values)
DS 4.9.3
Blender 2.78c
Hi,, I tried new develop version with Genesis8 , it arelady work (not try convert rigs ,,) well. though author discribed,
we need adjust bone roll,, but not show hard problem for me. (just pose some test,,)
about shoes, I need more set up,, (but I think it is almost same,, when I export high heel etc,,) to attach actor rig.
when I load daz offer default pose , some angle seems different what I see in daz studio. (so need,, manualy tweak roll to show same pose,,)
I do not know, eye pose will imported (or this eye pose include controller value it may not work,, I feel,,untill import unit or drivers)
hair seems not keep same rig, but just merge rigs work.
(though if you use really long hair , then if it colored weight for collar bone,, etc,, may show some corruption,,)
Anyway,,, I relieved and thanks, Larson still up-date, and he already consider about genesis8 for this plug in user,, maybe it will become moer stable with Genesis 8 too.
(though I use genesis3 mainly at current to convert IK rigs,,,, then up-date this topic.
And,, I hope it will work, when blender 2.9 released , unfortunately at current,, it not work with current blender test build,,(Eevee and new cycles uber node for PBR)
someone request it please,,,, ^^;)
Great to hear. Geneis 8 isn't that different. It has a similar mesh and the bones at the foot are different (no heels and different setup of toes). So in general it should work or be easily adapted.
Sorry I hope to report once again!!
Rarson finally could remove scale problem (which caused by ds shape controlelr auto adjust scate)
all shape controller may work even though they use node individual x y z scale.
Because now this plug in add FBX option too. (with newest beta version)
there is some small Caution from me.
1. must download recent beta, from linked page.
2. when save scene, (for rest pose Actor), eg,, Test.duf, exprot the actor as FBX ascii,file (I use 2014 Ascii)
name it as Test.fbx then export it, in same directory of Test.duf (same step, as another option, (collada, or obj))
Ascii is important. because, usuall blender importer can only read Binary correctly, I think but this importer need Ascii version FBX.(at least with my test)
if I use binary,, it show erreor for me,, (though if it is not removed already,, I do not know,,)
3 choose FBX option, when you Import daz scene file by new this add on.
It is all, simple enough (though I have not yet test many , but this up-date is real progressive for me, and it almost remove most annoying problem I feel)
I really feel happy, he took care my strange request, and suggestion (FBX better about pivot point),, and thanks, Padone, your suggestion about FBX, cause I test and request, and found collada problem. then Rarson quick adopt it, after some version up. now it work well!!
In this pic, I hardly used shape controller which auto change scale value,, Collada can not manage it. but FBX can do it well about pivot poiont.
and This importer rely much , duf preview section,and scale, but those not discribe, current real scale values,, (those detail may need not talk by me^^;)
anyway,,, now this importer can import , hardly tweaked mesh with many morphs, with clean rig!! thanks much Rarson!!
(So, I may request,, when save FBX,, if it can import jcms too,,^^;) Now,, I need to return my real daily work,,,
I think this is why Genesis 3 and later doesn't work in Poser without third party hacks; Smith Micro had a choice between implementing support for the new weight mapping system or a PBR rendering engine; they chose the latter.
@kitakoredaz
Larsson is progressing very actively that's awesome !!! .. I guess for Blender 2.8 with EEVEE plus this plugin we will have a real alternative to iClone. Going to do some tests thank you very much for keeping us up to date !
So I tested current version, with FBX. it work well for Actor figure mesh and rigs, you may easy find, other "fit to" items rig scale keep wrong one. then those rigs not much current scaled item mesh.
Thomas up-dated his blog and he dscribed how to manage (I think), but I am simple man, then for guys who hope to easy remove ths problem only with FBX option, without keep other format files, I think this simple procedure work about many case. (About high heel wear, I use cusotmize rig about foot with constratin, maybe user find their way for their purpose)
1. select Actor rig (which generated duf and FBX), then with shif + click Clothing rig,, in pose mode. In my pic I select Actor Rig, then next with shift-key select
hair Rig. (Active) . in DAZ importer plug in "set-up" section>correction> click "Copy Bones" . it copy selected Rig positon to Active Rig at once. (when there is node name much I think) now this figure keep rest pose, then it auto change clothing rig rest position to current one.
you see, Hair rigs move then locate on actor rig place.
2 select Actor rig, then select next clothing with ctrl , (or item, anatomy etc), then do same step. you need this step, about all other clothings Rigs one by one. not try multi selection etc,, it never work you expected. it can paste only to "Active one"
3 after you "copy bones " about all items, now you can see, all bones rocate correctly as same as Actor root rig. if clothing rig have additional bones,
(eg hair pony tail, or dress skirt rigs, or, anatomy spetical rigs,, etc,,) maybe those bone keep same location. about those rigs you may need to manually adjust them. but you can do same thing, after you merge all rigs . )
4 You already know how to merge all rigs at once? this time, you select all clothings item rigs first, (multi selection work ), then finally select root Actor node as Active slection. (Genesis3female amature in my case)
then click " merge rigs" . this plug in auto remove, all mutliple rigs, but remain additonal bone, in another layer. and all meshes are set as children of Actor rigs node. with apply amature modifier. then if you hope to adjust ghost rig psotiion, (maybe pony tail bone,,or dress bones, you can do it now. in edit mode)
enjoy render genesis figures in lbender!!