DAZ Studio 4.10 PRO to Blender 3.79 character export with SHAPE Keys using Collada

Hi Guys,

I have been using the following method to model with characters from DAZ STUDIO.,
Ive only been using daz and blender for a week and love this stuff… wild imagination going crazy with the idea of creating ANYTHING YOU WANT!

Using this method, I have got it so I can have cycles textures working without a crazy deal of material editing! (Basically swapping materials), eyelashes are transparent as they should be. Best of all facial expressions can be ported and usable in BLENDER!
Using DAZ STUDIO creating an animation with each frame in the animation having all facial expressions for creating SHAPE Keys

Required Tools and Addons etc,

  1. MCJTELEBLEND
    https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts4/mcjteleblender3
    the download at at the bottom, gotta extract the teleblender3.zip to your daz scripts folder, and blendbot files got extracted to blenders script/modules folder…
    mcjBlendBot.zip
    mcjTeleBlender3.zip

Full install instructions are on the plug-in authour website.

  1. DAZ Studio 4.10? I use 4.10
  2. Blender 3.79? I use 3.79

I am writing this to see if there is a better way or better streamline my method.

  1. Open your DAZ Studio, create your character / bring in the character of your choice. Add eye colours, and skin textures makeup etc. (gotta be careful as some daz materials dont work well in blender, such as iray materials and a few others… so you may find yourself exporting using MCJ several times before moving on!)
    I am a noob so the materials not working could be that I know JACKSHHHH about generating materials

  2. using the shaping tab, I create a key-frame for every slider I change… so Open mouth (hit key-frame), goto next frame reset slider and alter another slider (hit Key-frame)

its important to keep slider as is until you move to next frame then reset the slider!!!

than keep going until done… I create approx 40 frames of different things like eyes looking left, right, up, down, winking, smiling, mouth open, speaking sounds, eyes closing, I alter breasts size and a few other things.
I believe this step help speed up trying to make the KEY-SHAPES and allows quick and easy posing for your char in Blender

I need to also state that not all sliders change the mesh in blender, I have noticed that below the breasts the sliders are pretty much pointless Tried to make the ass area work cannot get it to!!.. at this stage I didn’t fiddle with feet or toes…

3. export using MCJTeleBlend which opens blender, choose cycles renderer and the right textures on the character should look fine. I have posted my screenshot of settings used. (you export via the content library, navigate to scripts\mcasual



  1. In Daz Studio I export as a COLLADA DAE file with animation which allows me to import the character with the animation with the facial expressions etc…


  1. in Blender its a good idea to rename your objects so you can easily see which was imported via MCJ and which was imported via DAE COLLADA

okay, so now you have two models…

  1. run cycles mode, the model with the animation embedded has white face/body texture look
    This step requires changing the materials to the materials that we imported earlier MCJ impored one which has correct look/materials

Simply open materials button, change to the co-responding material… example: when I did this MJC creates materials with a naming system of Fig0_xxx so we need to use these.
so with the Legs material I changed it to Fig0_Legs (now the fig0 materials are the correct materials with the nodes etc… these will show in cycles fine) simply change the linking material for all your materials. I hope that made sense.

  1. so we have correct materials!! woohoo, this step is a mayor pain, and I have not seen ill effects of using this method yet,
    We need to use the animation’s frames to create a shape key,
    To do so, goto the frame you want. such as my setup has frame 5 with open mouth, frame 6 is wide open mouth, frame 7 is eyes closed

so goto modifiers and add an armature modifier, change object to your armature, rename it to the frame’s pose (such as eyes closed)
click APPLY AS SHAPE KEY.
it will create a shape key based on your current frame/pose…

repeat and all good to go!!!

maybe safe to delete the old object and were keeping the DAE Imported one! as the shapekeys are linked to that.
plug having the vertex groups helps too :slight_smile:

I am very new at blender and have seen countless posts which have covered several aspects but I hope this post showing start to complete how to do it helps…

Like I said, I started using blender a week ago and cannot really say if my method will destroy the earth, kill your cat, make you run out of fuel… But heres the thing… it worked for me :slight_smile:

Notes:
It maybe important to have the characters scale of 1.0 otherwise you might face issues with each frame in the animation including scale which will screw with the shape keys creation method I use.
Also, it might be advisable to test a few frames before going full set of poses

Cheers

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