Padone said:

prompt: dear AI, please write a converter from daz studio to blender for windows, having a duf file as input and a blend file as output, of course all the daz features have to be converted as best as possible, or approximated otherwise, then please write a detailed description of the limitations if any, thank you.

reply (very smart AI): dear Sir, you better use diffeomorphic

I love it! I couldn't resist asking ChatGPT "What is the Diffeomorphic DAZ Importer, and who is this wise-cracking Italian guy, Padone?" It knows you, bro. :)

The Diffeomorphic DAZ Importer is a powerful and widely respected add-on for Blender, developed to import characters, props, and animations from DAZ Studio into Blender while preserving as much detail and functionality as possible. It enables Blender users to take full advantage of DAZ Studio’s high-quality Genesis figure models—especially the Genesis 3, 8, and now 9 series—within Blender's more sophisticated rendering and simulation environments, like Cycles, Eevee, cloth physics, and rigging workflows.

Who Is Padone?

Padone (a pseudonym, clearly meant to sound like "padrone"—Italian for "boss") is a key contributor to the Diffeomorphic project. He’s known in the Blender and DAZ user communities for:

• Maintaining and developing the add-on.

• Writing extensive documentation on https://diffeomorphic.blogspot.com.

• Providing support on forums like DAZ3D, Blender Artists, and GitHub.

• Having a dry, occasionally sarcastic sense of humor that people either enjoy or find bewildering—hence the “wise-cracking” vibe.

He is a technically adept coder with a deep understanding of both DAZ Studio's and Blender’s internal structures. His posts often reflect a strong opinion about good design practices, clean rigs, and avoiding the “DAZification” of Blender (i.e., not dragging in DAZ’s clunky setup just for the sake of it).

In essence, Padone is part tech-wizard, part community curmudgeon, and fully committed to making DAZ-to-Blender workflows viable for serious artists and animators.

bshugs1525871 said:

I had moved my library to a NAS.  The drives are HDD, but the RAID array makes up for most of that lag. Currenlty using 1GB ethernet, but hope to increase it to 10GB soon. 

Tomhip said:

I am in middle of migrating my DAZ installation to a new 4TB SSD drive on a new PC :D

Decided to do the crazy thing and instead of copying the old 2TB Library to install everything from scratch and curate things that go in this time. 

Originally when I have started with DAZ I went thorough a phase of installing every single freebie I would find, be it form DAZ or other sites. Cleaning this up now would be next to impossible.

Decided on strategy of first instaling all things that I own on third party sites and clean folder structure up as these can be prety random. Then install things required for models i frequently use. Next will be slow installation of props/envs that I know are good and will use again.

The improvement in loading times is crazy. Will see how long it lasts.

Hey there!  I recently reinstalled my OS and Daz and am thinking about doing this.  Can you give any hints or tools you used to do this?  I'd really love to streamline my hard drive but I have thousands of Daz store products and thousands more third-party/free products.  Did you do everything manually?  What folder structure did you insist on?  Do you use metadata or just the Content Library?
Any help would be appreciated!  I still have my original, bloated library but would love to reduce search time and clear out crappy props and Akio3 dresses I'll never use.

It all was manual work really.

I tend to use Smart Content for all the DAZ Store items but for third party they most often do not have any metadata so I moved them all to folders whwre I could easily find them. The only thing that has to be installed in fixed place is Runtime and Data folders. Everything else like poses, clothes etc can be freely moved around.

In my old system I could never find these items as they were burrined in sea of DAZ Store items. Also many products come with typos or some non standard structure making them hard to find.

Hello
This is a great tool and the instruction are very clear, But dont knnow why i am able to install the add on but not able to convert the obj into hair.
I have tried to install the add on in differnt version of blender 2.8, 2.9. 3.2. 3.6. 4.2, 4.4 and so. In all on them I am getting the same error "conversion failed". The only diffence I do is I created a hair cap out of the head geometry of teh model.
I first exported the hair and other assets as obj from daz3d and imported into blender.
then I create a head cap from the Head geo itself and them I select the hair and the head cap Geo and when I press on convet hair I get conversion failed message.
Can u kindly help me like what i could be doing wrong. 
Should I import another hair cap from another files and try them, 
or is there anything that I am missing. 

I had moved my library to a NAS.  The drives are HDD, but the RAID array makes up for most of that lag. Currenlty using 1GB ethernet, but hope to increase it to 10GB soon. 

Tomhip said:

I am in middle of migrating my DAZ installation to a new 4TB SSD drive on a new PC :D

Decided to do the crazy thing and instead of copying the old 2TB Library to install everything from scratch and curate things that go in this time. 

Originally when I have started with DAZ I went thorough a phase of installing every single freebie I would find, be it form DAZ or other sites. Cleaning this up now would be next to impossible.

Decided on strategy of first instaling all things that I own on third party sites and clean folder structure up as these can be prety random. Then install things required for models i frequently use. Next will be slow installation of props/envs that I know are good and will use again.

The improvement in loading times is crazy. Will see how long it lasts.

Hey there!  I recently reinstalled my OS and Daz and am thinking about doing this.  Can you give any hints or tools you used to do this?  I'd really love to streamline my hard drive but I have thousands of Daz store products and thousands more third-party/free products.  Did you do everything manually?  What folder structure did you insist on?  Do you use metadata or just the Content Library?
Any help would be appreciated!  I still have my original, bloated library but would love to reduce search time and clear out crappy props and Akio3 dresses I'll never use.

LoL. Makes that building look small. Where's King Kong? Right now I seem to be torture testing Carrara. We will see how it goes! Looking a bit scary. Seriously, taking Carrara forever to import this lamh obj, OMG!

Hi all,
I read an interesting post on how to get a single morph from a Genesis 8 figure to work on a Genesis 9 figure by using a Genesis 9 clone on a Genesis 8 figure: This is what the post said:
"The way of using Clone is simple. Main steps: Dial G9 Clone on G8, import G9 Base OBJ and rig it on G8 with Transfer Utility, dial an HFS Hand Morph on G8, export rigged G9 to OBJ and import it to G9 Base figure as a Morph."
So where do I find this Genesis 9 clone for Genesis 8? And is there also a Genesis 9 clone for Genesis 3? The morph I want to carry was originally made for Genesis 3, and I transferred it to Genesis 8, but I think it would be better to transfer the original one straight from Genesis 3 to Genesis 9 if possible.
Thanks a lot,
Kind regards,
Me

michalstangel said:

Hello,

When I send character into Blender via Bridge morphs are unfortunately added only to main mesh, but missing on Eyelashes, Hair and Clothing meshes (as you can see on attached file). It seems that sometimes small percentage of morphs go through and I have FBMBodybuilderSize on Eyelashes (which seems to be irrelevant) and EyeClosed. But no expressions like Wink HD, Weight or anything else. Clothing is completely blank. Tested with Genesis 8-1 and 8 figures.

My target platform is Unity and till now I've been using classic workflow. Export FBX from DAZ (loading desired morphs through csv there), Import FBX to Blender. Run my Python script to get rid of same materials. And save as FBX and import to Unity. It works fine and all morphs/blendshapes on all meshes are preserved. However this workflow has one flaw. It messes bone rotations a bit. So Bridge looks like a nice alternative if I would be able to preserve all morphs.

Not sure how it works but maybe add some option to Import settings to not interfere with morphs on meshes and leave it as it is, if Blender might be just your transit station where you don't need to set them through sliders?

wolf359 said:

dont' know the whole story, but for whatever reason they split up and went their own ways.

 

Here is the story.
 

Daz Decided it was better to base their business model on a figure format that Daz owned (Genesis ,DSON)  made for a platform they owned (Daz studio)
Rather than allow an external platform(Poser) to be the single point of failure for their business.
Posers owners failed to create their own native figures ,of a quality that vendors wanted to support, choosing instead to crowd source new poser figures from various third parties.
 
Reallusion figured out a way to import Genesis figures into their eco system .
A single developer figured out a way to import genesis figures into Blender ,with JCMs, via diffeomorphic.

The owners of Poser have adopted Laffemme & Lahomme as the included Defualt figures for poser.

Daz Studio base software and figures are free so everyone has access.

Interestings.  So you're saying technically its up to the content creators and they could still upload with a Poser format option if thye wanted to?  Its not "banned" from the DAZ store like I thought?
Ive been told its not going to change because of the people in charge, not content creators.  So now im a bit confused on what the whole story might be.   Also not trying to add any drama here if its a sore spot topic.
For me personally the environment are the most useful to me (love Stonemason stuff).  I would think that is much less of a problem to use in Poser.  Even if obj format was an optional download I could still use in Poser too.
I was disappointed after purchasing a newer Stonemason releases to find that the only format is DAZ Studio.  So now if I were to use it i have to go through painstaking exports/conversions.  Most of his stuff has been in multiple formats.
But in general, overall, I just wanted to see more unity between the two like it used to be since they're so similar. I wouldn't expect it to be a requirement that everyone create compatible formates for both.  Just an option.  Like if creators wanted to add Poser format its not hurting anyone to do so. 
As an animator, Poser is the tool of legend.  Animating in DAZ...seems like they did not design it for that and sounds like the devs won't be improving it.  I want to be able to get things in Poser format. Just sad to see things not supporting it here.  (old assets still do)   Anyway...i can dream, and hope.

wolf359 said:

dont' know the whole story, but for whatever reason they split up and went their own ways.

 

Here is the story.
 

Daz Decided it was better to base their business model on a figure format that Daz owned (Genesis ,DSON)  made for a platform they owned (Daz studio)

Genesis came in Poser 4, befoe that we had three major versions of DS using paramteric rigging.

Rather than allow an external platform(Poser) to be the single point of failure for their business.
Posers owners failed to create their own native figures ,of a quality that vendors wanted to support, choosing instead to crowd source new poser figures from various third parties.
 
Reallusion figured out a way to import Genesis figures into their eco system .
A single developer figured out a way to import genesis figures into Blender ,with JCMs, via diffeomorphic.

The owners of Poser have adopted Laffemme & Lahomme as the included Defualt figures for poser.

Daz Studio base software and figures are free so everyone has access.

windli3356 said:

Question on Jill and Daz prime exclusive characters, so I know you will need to join daz prime to get them, but once you unsubscribe, do you still own this character or it just disabled itself rom metadata base? 

Once you're no longer a Premier member you don't have access to premier-exclusive characters anymore.

Question on Jill and Daz prime exclusive characters, so I know you will need to join daz prime to get them, but once you unsubscribe, do you still own this character or it just disabled itself rom metadata base? 

dont' know the whole story, but for whatever reason they split up and went their own ways.

Here is the story.
 

Daz Decided it was better to base their business model on a figure format that Daz owned (Genesis ,DSON)  made for a platform they owned (Daz studio)
Rather than allow an external platform(Poser) to be the single point of failure for their business.
Posers owners failed to create their own native figures ,of a quality that vendors wanted to support, choosing instead to crowd source new poser figures from various third parties.
 
Reallusion figured out a way to import Genesis figures into their eco system .
A single developer figured out a way to import genesis figures into Blender ,with JCMs, via diffeomorphic.

The owners of Poser have adopted Laffemme & Lahomme as the included Defualt figures for poser.

Daz Studio base software and figures are free so everyone has access.

I didn't want tp start a new thread but all their sets are almost impossible to export to other software

obj or FBX

(iClone only exception I have had work)

because they explode if exported, cannot unparent parts with or without parenting in place

scripts like Instances to objects and Evrironment splitter result in a mess of scattered props

they actually load from the duf file in Carrara but cannot be saved

 https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/518936/aurelio-ny-city-buildings-sets-looks-fine-but-any-issues-in-carrara

I am just baffled

and now yet another issue...

I was actually content to use Mexico city in DAZ studio but all the parts are instanced and are no complete buildings I can save to use separately

(hence trying the environment splitter)

and just checked, same can load not save issue in Carrara which is a shame as I have a duplicate track instance placeholders trick I use there on instanced stuff which only has the master object as mesh

I can however import it albeit without instances, into Twinmotion

felis said:

Can you give an example of a product you have installed?

All those products in the greyed out examples have been installed when I had Windows 7.   Now they appear greyed out in both Smart Content AND the Content Library.

EDIT:

Okay, I did some playing around with the directory path and found out I needed to go further in, although I don't recall having to do that with the prior verision.  At any rate, take a look at the revised path on the attached file...With that, I did a database reset and reimported the metadata again.  This time it worked!  However, all is still not well in paradise.   While entire scenes are loading, I have noticed that quite a bit of the character morphs are not applied.  So, I am not sure what else is wrong.

Geo

BigMac said:

Dear Mr. Haseltine, 

thank you very much for your letter. I tried to do everything as you described, but unfortunately I couldn't find the menu (Content Library Options Menu > Content DB Maintenance). Perhaps it's because I'm using a Mac, and there's a different name for it. I don't know what the problem is. Could you please be so kind and show me where the menu is (Content Library Options Menu > Content DB Maintenance), I would be very grateful. 

Thank you, and I wish you all the best. 

BigMac

Richard means go to the Content Library pane and click the "hamburger" menu button (that little square with horizontal lines and a triangle arrow in the upper left corner). Then the "Options Menu" will open. In that popup menu, you will find Content DB Maintenance. When you select Content DB Maintenance, a dialog will open with many options. Be careful in there!. Follow the rest of Richard's instructions to import your previously exported User Data. Don't import all product data, because you said that is already working for you.

felis said:

You get the grey icons because of Daz Connect (installing from inside of Daz Studio). It is 2 different installation methods, there will place files in 2 different locations. I will not recommend to installing with both methods, as it will frequently give problems.

But back to your content. If the database wasn't running when you installed it doesn't have the metadata for your content to show. You should be able to find it in the Content Library, as it uses the physical location to navigate.
 

Actually, it is the same thing with the content library, it shows greyed out selections and when I click on one, it says "Install....(whatever the item is)."

In order to get your content into Smart Content, you should re-import metadata. When you are in Smart Content click the 4 bars in a corner (the burger menu) and select Content DB Maintenance. And in there select Re-Import Metadata. You will then get a list of all that it can see installed, and you can let it all be ticked and click Accept. It will take a while, but as I assume you have rather few products, it should be quick (for someone with thousands of products it might take over an hour).

I had already done a database reset and a reimport of the metadata when nothing showed up.  Now, there is something there, but, as I said, it is greyed out and asking to install the items.   The issue is that even though I am directing Daz Studio to where the content is, for some reason, it isn't linking up to it and showing it in the Smart Content or Content Library.  It is showing everything greyed out and asking to install each item.

Thanks,

Geo

Gordig said:

RexRed said:

A Daz V2025 to Omniverse bridge would be of interest to me. One that would also export Ultra Scenery, VDBs all manner of hair, transparencies and figures (with no baking of shaders) etc... 

As far as I'm aware of, DS has no ability to generate VDBs outside of Mesh to Volume, so you should just be able to import your Daz VDB products directly into Omniverse.

The gist is, a bridge that would export the whole scene, like Diffeomorphic. I am almost done paying for the FXJanga suite (Embergen etc...). Even Diffeomorphic does not know what to do with VDBs (Blender), some metal textures/marble (shaders), dual lobe hair, fire/transparencies, glass, and the figure materials often do not export well (while Ultra Scenry is completely out of the question)... etc.

Even manual exports as FBX do not really work. 

Perhaps the new Nvidia rendering engine (standard) will make importing/exporting across programs/platforms more doable.

RexRed said:

A Daz V2025 to Omniverse bridge would be of interest to me. One that would also export Ultra Scenery, VDBs all manner of hair, transparencies and figures (with no baking of shaders) etc... 

As far as I'm aware of, DS has no ability to generate VDBs outside of Mesh to Volume, so you should just be able to import your Daz VDB products directly into Omniverse.

You don't generally need metadata to sell, though you may choose to include it for non-Daz stores (Daz makes its own regardless). If you do want to inlude it you would really want to save as a single product anyway, rather than lumping it in with local user as it probably is now - but moving  it using the tools in DS should preserve the metadata.

Afternoon folks,

I had never intended to sell my content, but I'm considering it lately.  Problem is I organized my hundreds of morphs, characters, outfits, props etc in a way that makes sense for me to putz around with hobby-wise but is absolutely not conducive to Daz's library structure lol.

For instance, in my Wearables Presets folder, I have a Brows subfolder with say "Able Brows, Baker Brows, Charlie Brows" etc and an Eyelashes folder with "Able Eyelashes---".  Not great, when a product catalog would be organized by all of Able's things together, all of Baker's etc.

Now I know presets are different than assets, but the concept of my question is pretty much the same -- since cutting/pasting assets, even with the content library's built-in command, destroys their metadata, what would be the best way to transfer such things from their current, type-grouped folders to new, product-grouped folders?