Get the Latest Version of the Sagan Alembic Exporter

Earlier versions

Note: Currently, after installing, you must manually configure Sagan to appear in DAZ Studio's menu. Go to Windows | Workspace | Customize... and see the attached image. Basically, find Sagan on the left-side pane under Miscellaneous, and drag it to the desired location on the Menus tab of the right-side pane. Under Main Menu Bar | File, for example.

You may also want to right-click on Sagan on the left-side pane and select "Change Keyboard Shortcut" and choose something like Alt-S.

Torkuda's tutorials

Installing Diffeomorphic

Installing Sagan Alembic

The actual process of exporting including how to properly link materials

Bug/TODO list (not necessarily in order):

• Export only selected node, and presumably its children.
• Derive from DzExporterAction? DzActionMgr?
• Look in SDK docs FAQ section for info on how to save settings, i.e. DzSettings class
• Implement applet to extract hair cap geometry.

------------------------------------------------------

Version 4.5.0 of the DAZ Importer, MHX Runtime System and BVH and FBX Retargeter have been released. They can be downloaded from

DAZ Importer: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/hp422s4cibjtofs0w41v0/import_daz-4.5.0.zip?rlkey=48iudwd2yea9y1vw51hixzxpw

MHX Runtime System: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/y4foq3hjg8i23qozdcuyo/mhx_rts-4.5.0.zip?rlkey=n15uyij9ouoclmaqqmpe5tq92

BVH and FBX Retargeter: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/z140z8ai58zw89zv1cl2e/retarget_bvh-4.5.0.zip?rlkey=1cs5th0jau8tm12dc1a6ofhb3

The add-ons have been tested on Blender 4.5 and 3.0, and should run on intermediate Blender versions as well.

This is mainly a bugfix release in order to keep in sync with Blender versions. However, there are some new features:

• Better support for UTF-16 (Chinese and Japanese characters)
• The Retarger editing functions have been replaced by animation layers.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Version 4.4.0 of the DAZ Importer, MHX Runtime System, and FBX and BVH Retargeter have been released. They can be downloaded from

• DAZ Importer: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ikl7ewt2vyry4yokmexee/import_daz-4.4.0.zip?rlkey=6icungsgz5e2jf1xrfp4tu6a1
• MHX Runtime System: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/wr5pe0azugvoqwx071uy1/mhx_rts-4.4.0.zip?rlkey=yj839xajudf5rzeuln9l4u1vi
• BVH and FBX Retargeter: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/jp7t4j6q9r00y0b7ufhxx/retarget_bvh-4.4.0.zip?rlkey=aecabc76pafykzqh54m9d6y1v&st=ap5ywyda

The previous stable version 4.3.0 does not work with Blender 4.4 due to an API change.

Apart from working with Blender 4.4, there are also many bugfixes and some other changes.

• Internal data used by the DAZ Importer have been moved to a single complex property, to avoid unnecessary cluttering of the custom properties (http://diffeomorphic.blogspot.com/2025/01/custom-properties-cleanup.html).
• Improvements to Rigify, both for animals (https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/issues/2350/implement-rigify-conversion-for-daz-dog) and adding extra Rigify bones (http://diffeomorphic.blogspot.com/2025/02/adding-extra-bones-to-rigify.html)
• Scripting improvements (http://diffeomorphic.blogspot.com/2025/03/scripting-improvements.html)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Version 4.3.0 of the DAZ Importer and MHX Runtime System have been released. They can be downloaded from

• DAZ Importer: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/uraafocct3c6384yc17rw/import_daz-4.3.0.zip?rlkey=juujj59alt459xumopzn3xmz2
• MHX Runtime System: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/law40jz2q8qvr8okruhdx/mhx_rts-4.3.0.zip?rlkey=sk6t6zafaoqdoxdwwz956yljp

The previous stable version 4.2.1 does not work with Blender 4.3 due to an API change. The new version has also been tested with Blender 4.4 alpha, so there is a reasonable chance that it will work with the future Blender 4.4.

The previous release contained two more add-ons, DAZ Rigging and Shell Editor, which depended on the DAZ Importer. Because dependencies between add-ons lead to lots of complications, they have been reintegrated into the main add-on. Instead the DAZ Importer has been modularized. Many tools are not loaded by default, to keep down the complexity of the add-on for the casual user, cf the posts on Modularization and Modularization Complete.

Support has been added for Filatoon, a new shader in DAZ Studio 4.23 to draw toon style figures.

Import of morphed characters without first exporting a dbz file has been improved, even if it does not work quite as well as the dbz pipeline. I will write something about that later.

------------------------------------------------

Diffeomorphic Add-ons Version 4.2.1 Released

It is time for a new stable release of the DAZ Importer and the other Diffeomorphic add-ons. The main novelty is that the add-ons have been converted to Blender extensions in Blender 4.2, cf the posts on Blender Extensions and GPL and Addon Scripting and Blender Extensions. The add-ons can also be installed in earlier versions of Blender. As usual, several bugs have also been fixed.

The DAZ Studio export script (export_to_blender.dsa) has also been updated and should be copied to the Scripts folder in a DAZ Studio directory. The specialized HD export script (export_highdef_to_blender.dsa) has been merged with the main export script and is now obsolete. Old versions of the script still work in most situations.

DAZ Importer

The DAZ Importer is a Blender add-on for importing native DAZ Studio files (.duf, .dsf) into Blender. It also contains some tools to make the assets more animation friendly.
Download:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/hka5ej1dv65gk04p1pn5x/import_daz-4.2.1.zip?rlkey=9ukju1y5zai4pryp5atblcbe9
Documentation:
https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/wiki/Home
 

MHX Runtime System

The MHX Runtime System is a Blender add-on for posing the MHX rig, that can be generated by the DAZ Importer.
Download:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ry8nwojh62s3y23w4g5bp/mhx_rts-4.2.1.zip?rlkey=mx0worrq46afetxumvmo8yhg8
Documentation:
https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/mhx_rts/wiki/Home
 

BVH and FBX Retargeter

The purpose of the BVH and FBX Retargeter is loading animations from BVH or FBX files to a given armature, and editing these animations in various useful ways. It can also import facial animations in FaceCap, LiveLink, VMD and FBX formats.
Download:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/qh6czqobslto9q0ea6kh6/retarget_bvh-4.2.1.zip?rlkey=g9xpumgp6xzh94frzromb8psy
Documentation:
https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/retarget_bvh/wiki/Home


The next two add-ons were recently spawned from the DAZ Importer in order to keep down its size somewhat. They contain rather specialized tools that are probably not of interest to most users. They are also poorly documented and result in warnings about policy errors. The the previous release there was a third add-on for exporting pose presets back to DAZ Studio, but that has been merged with the main DAZ Importer add-on again.

Important: The DAZ Importer must be enabled first, before any of these two add-ons can be used.
 

DAZ Rigging

Some specialized tools for rigging certain types of figures, link chains and tails.
Download:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/xqgb698891hlwqr3bon7z/rig_daz-4.2.1.zip?rlkey=k5mhdxlwi7civx5uzrozk6svz
Documentation:
https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/rig_daz/wiki/Home
 

Shell Editor

Contains some tools for manipulating shells imported from DAZ Studio.Download:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/bqh6cu4o33jdpwr4nspct/shell_edit-4.2.1.zip?rlkey=09ls8m6em95dicc4kvk54r000
Documentation:
https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/shell_edit/wiki/Home

Getting to each order page and download individually.

The same can be said for c4d, max and fbx.

Are the busy DAZ3D coders working on implementing a DIM function for acces to the blender files and other file formats?

.....rather than redownloading or manually downloading blend files I'd like Blender to be added to DIM application path, and a DIM Blender download path, and a Blender Content Library Path and Blender specific Install ZIPs for our existing products that have .Blend files available. That'd be totally awesome.

Thanks.

Anyway, a few months ago I actually gave the hair some volume (I don't remember exactly how as this was months ago, something to do with converting the hair to curves and then hair curves maybe?), but the best result I got was this:

As you can see, it's blue everywhere instead of being black on the sides, and blue on the top.
Here's how the shader editor looks like:

So if anybody has any ideas, they're very welcome.

I had been successful creating roads on hills, and even curved roads with raised terrain.  But I do have one problem, and it is that I am having a hard time creating intersections and parking lots using such Blender add-on.  Is there any tutorial that I can rely on for creating intersections and parking lots successfully?

1. I've created a beard with strand based hair system within Daz and imported the figure into Blender with Diffeomorphic including the FACS Expressions morphs.
2. After import I used the "Make hair" tool with following settings:
   1. Create = Tube, Output = Hair Curves. Whatever I try under the "deform" section - the beard does not adjust to any mesh movement. When I use a proxy the beard adjusts but the hair curves are stretched - it's not only that the beard moves with the mesh but also the curves themselves get adjusted.
   2. Create = tube, output = Particles, under "deform" is "Parent to Head" checked -> here the beard moves accordingly to morph and rig changes
   3. Create = tube, output = Curves, under "deform" is "Parent to Head" checked -> here the beard DOES NOT move accordingly to morph and rig changes

Attached you can see what I mean - when the mouth is open the hairs remain their position. I'm a little bit confused by all the possibilities how to create hair in Daz and Blender and might miss something very basic - sorry for that in advance.

Can someone tell me what I'm doing wrong? Maybe I'll stick with Blender's particle system as this seems to work best with daz strand based hair but at least I'd like to understand what's going on here.

Scene 1

1. I move a Daz character 100 on the X axis.
2. I save that scene and export it via Diffeo.
3. The character shows up in Blender with a zero value on the X axis but visually the transform is applied.

Okay, I can follow that.

Scene 2

1. I move a Daz character 100 on the X axis.
2. I save that as a pose preset.
3. I zero the character's pose, undoing the translation.
4. I save that zeroed scene and export it via Diffeo.
5. The character shows up in Blender zeroed and without any visual transform
6. I use Diffeo to import the saved pose preset and I make sure to check "affect object" (and "affect bones", although I don't think that matters).
7. Nothing happens.  There is no change in the character's object data and visually there is no change.

This confuses me.  The Daz save pose preset option does save the transforms of the base character, and clearly Diffeo can read that data since it does so when importing an already posed character.  So why aren't those base transforms imported via the pose import tool?

However, when I import the expressions from the "CJ Raine" facial model, but with the eyebrow, eyelash, eye, mouth, and face models unmerged, the facial expressions and others work fine when separated

I don't know if it's something related to the model or if I'm doing something wrong

I've uploaded a screen record here.

Is there a way to get a working "Strength" morph into Blender?

I don't know the exact terminology - by "Strength morph" I mean ones like the Base Anime Eye Blink Crescent Strength pose control morph that relies on the Base Anime Eye Blink Crescent (Left/Right) morphs for its actual effect, which is to shape the curve of the already closed eyelids. The Strength morph does get brought into Blender over the Bridge, but it simply does nothing, while all the other presumably "normal" morphs that I've tried work as expected. I am exporting the entire Pose Controls category of morphs with the figure, no others.

I remember seeing a warning message that was related to this at some point previously when doing preliminary pipeline tests with other models months ago, something about making possibly destructive changes to apply these types of morphs before exporting, but that message no longer even shows up when using the Bridge exporter (I'm pretty sure I also answered yes to the changes every time it did show up?).

It seems this type of morph functions in some special way that maybe isn't compatible with Blender (or the Bridge?), but is there something that could be done to get it to work in Blender?

P.S. Also, just to have something that could maybe achieve the same effect, I tried creating a separate custom morph (dev load generic Genesis 9 figure, apply the anime crescent blink with the Strength morph at 100%, save .obj, load as a morph), but some information ends up missing in that process as well. The custom baked morph works identically to the original morphs on the generic figure, but when applied to an actual anime-proportioned figure, it no longer matches up (the eye only closes half-way). Trying to create the custom morph based on an anime figure instead of the generic one includes all the other shape changes (even if loading the morph .obj into the same figure it was created from), effectively doubling up all the sliders to create a horrific mess.

Tips on the custom morph baking front would be appreciated as well, if there's no way to bring the original morph functionality into Blender as-is ...

How do I fix this?

I want to import a model into Blender so I can use it with its expressions. However, since all the skeletons are separate. I decide to join all the model skeletons and merge the separate models. 

But because I did that, when I try to import the facial expressions/morphs (FACS) from Daz Studio to my model in Blender, for some reason they break. 


Edit: I forgot to mention that I use the Diffeomorphic add-on to import models from DAZ to Blender.

-------------------------

Version 1.7.2 of the DAZ Importer and MHX Runtime system has been released. It can be downloaded from https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/avm8al0hvr9hcr3lr78xd/import_daz_mhx_rts_v1_7_2.zip?rlkey=ytanxu07xotsozcuhhv1pa7tb.

The main improvements in this release are:

• Support for Blender 4 (bone collections, principled shader version 2, hair curves).
• Major performance boost for morph loading.
• Improved support for older rigs with triax weights.
• Bugfixes. 

This release has been tested with Blender 2.83, 3.6 and 4.0, but should  run on intermediate Blender versions too.

----------------

Version 1.7.1 of the DAZ Importer and MHX Runtime system has been released. It can be downloaded from https://www.dropbox.com/s/7mj32wh3bnn4rwe/import_daz_mhx_rts_v1_7_1.zip.

This is primarily a bugfix release. A number of serious bugs were discovered right after the 1.7.0 release. Those have now been eliminated, so I recommend everybody to update to the new version. Safely Installing a New Version.

There are also a few new features. The most obvious one is that the user interface has been rearranged. The DAZ Importer now takes up two tabs in the User Interface (N-panel), DAZ Setup and DAZ Runtime. One or both of these tabs can be hidden.
Support for making pose presets has been improved.
The internal working of the MHX rig has been changed. However, there is a conversion tool for old MHX rigs, so they can still be used with the latest release.

Original post:

Finally, version 1.7.0 of the DAZ Importer and MHX Runtime system has been released. It can be downloaded from https://www.dropbox.com/s/vpku2n8dhqmua37/import_daz_mhx_rts_v1_7_0.zip.

The plugins have been tested with Blender 2.83 and Blender 3.5 under Windows 7 and Windows 10, but should work with intermediate versions as well.

The most signicant new features in this release are:

• Support for Genesis 9 characters.
• Support for Blender 3.5, in particular the new mixing nodes.

There are also some other improvements and many bugfixes.

The documentation has moved to the Bitbucket wiki. It is not quite up-to-date, but I didn't want to postpone the release further. Here are links to the wikis:

DAZ Importer
MHX Runtime System

VERSIONS IN USE:

- Blender 4.3.2
- Daz Studio 4.24.0.3
- Diffeomorphic (Whatever the latest version is as of two weeks ago)

The problem I'm having is that after sculpting the Anatomical Elements and bringing it back into Daz Studio as a morph, dialling-in the morph causes the female genitals to drop to the floor, and the male genitals to distort in a sort of arc shape.  Ideally, I need to know which settings to use at each stage of export and import between Blender and Daz Studio.

Can't figure out what I'm doing wrong, so any help on this would be much appreciated!

I tried to use Favorite morphs. 
I selected some morphs as fav.
But then what get's imported is nothing I've selected. 

It just import the same standard FACS morphs. 

****
After reading other thread, it turns out pose control is not a morph.
But it can still be imported to blender by using custom morph. 
I just need to get the path 
And select all the files using import custom morph in blender. 
Not sure if clicking as favorite is needed though.