Possible to initiate import from unreal, from the intermediate folder?

mostlyhuman

I do a lot of customizations in Maya and want to bring these into Unreal through the bridge plugin to take advantage of the automatic "Fix Bone Rotations on Import" and "Zero Root Rotation on Import" features of the bridge plugin.  Is this possible or can the import only be initiated from Daz Studio?  Im hoping I can just drop my FBX file in the intermediate folder and have the bridge plugin import it into Unreal somehow. Thanks for any help!

catmaster

I don't think Daz to Unreal can initiate from Unreal intermediate folder, the dzunrealbridge.dll collects resources from Daz scenes and send the data to the receiving Daz to Unreal plugin, there are .dtu files along with the .fbx files in the DazToUnreal cache folder, and the Unreal FBX importer can't read .dtu files either.

If it needs 3D software to edit content before importing into Unreal, then DazToUnreal and its convenient auto process can't be used. "Fix Bone Rotations on Import" and "Zero Root Rotation on Import" can be done in Blender with Autorig Pro for exporting to Unreal.

danielbui78

mostlyhuman said:

I do a lot of customizations in Maya and want to bring these into Unreal through the bridge plugin to take advantage of the automatic "Fix Bone Rotations on Import" and "Zero Root Rotation on Import" features of the bridge plugin.  Is this possible or can the import only be initiated from Daz Studio?  Im hoping I can just drop my FBX file in the intermediate folder and have the bridge plugin import it into Unreal somehow. Thanks for any help!

Actually, this is 100% possible.  The easiest method is to follow these steps:

1. Make sure Unreal Engine is NOT running. 
2. Then set up your Daz Studio character, and click File -> Send To Unreal.  Make any desired changes and Click Accept.
3. Once export is finished, click File -> Send To Unreal, enable Advanced Settings, and click "Open Intermediate Folder".  This is where the FBX is exported.
4. You can modify the FBX file from here, but PLEASE NOTE: the DazToUnreal bridge does several post-processing operations on the FBX file including inserting missing bone weights for subdivided vertices, rotating bones and adding IK controls.  Any modifications you make does risk de-stabilizing the assumed FBX file structure and causing data corruption during the DazToUnreal post-process step of the Import into Unreal.
5. Once you've made your very careful modifications to the FBX file, just over-write the FBX in the Intermediate folder.
6. Then open your Unreal Project, find the Content Browser and click the "Import" button located in the toolbar.  Instead of selecting the FBX file, SELECT THE DTU file.
7. DazToUnreal bridge should initiate the import process and recreate materials and do fbx post-processing just like if you had left Unreal Engine running in the background.

For further information, you can refer to this article on how to Manually Import DazToUnreal files from David Vodhanel: https://davidvodhanel.com/daz-to-unreal-starting-an-import-manually/

 

mostlyhuman

Perfect, thank you so much Daniel!  I will do some experimenting to figure out a way to get it working using this technique.