This guide will cover how to set up DAZ Studio and Blender for importing outfits for Pharah v5, as quickly and painlessly as possible. In addition to that, the outfits will have proper deformations (for knees, elbows, etc) and work with all the custom body shapekeys (body type, breasts size, etc).
Before we begin, let's address some potential questions:
Why make a new model anyway?
Although the v4 Pharah model is amazing, the moment someone (myself included) wants to add a new outfit they will end up in weight painting and rigging hell (and forget about making them work with the bodymorphs). Rigging outfits is a chore I wanted to get away from and luckily Daz came to the rescue with its new Daz to Blender Bridge addon. The process of exporting outfits to Blender is very quick and simple and it results in almost perfectly rigged outfits.
Why DAZ?
Because it's popular and it has some good content in there and their Daz to Blender Bridge addon made the importing possible. Their models' deformations are top notch and even though I think 95% of the outfits available are over designed crap, that still leaves a 5% of a huge number of outfits available.
Do I need to know how to use DAZ Studio?
Not really.
I can't exactly say I know how to use it either, but I can export outfits from it and this guide will make sure you know how to do that as well.
Are there any limitations?
Some outfits might still not come out perfectly in terms of fitting, but they will usually be around 99% there, and covering the remaining 1% should be fairly trivial.
This guide consists of two main parts: setup and importing. You will only need to do the setup once. The importing process will need to be repeated each time you will want to add a new outfit.
VIDEO DEMO
Here is how the process looks in practice. Once you've done the initial setup, you can have an outfit imported, rigged and fit to the Pharah model body in under 2 minutes.
00:12 Export the outfit from DAZ
00:34 Import the outfit in Blender
00:42 Notice the export was incomplete (see section 4.2) and start the process again
00:53 Export the outfit from DAZ
01:12 Import the outfit in Blender
01:26 The export looks complete
01:37 Copy the outfit to the Pharah scene
01:37 Run the "Process outfit" script
01.
The setup
The setup includes the following steps:
Install Daz Studio
Install the Daz to Blender Bridge for Blender
Set up a custom Library folder in Daz Studio
Add the Pharah body and shapekeys
Do a test import to make sure the integration works
1.1 Install Daz Studio
DAZ Studio is available for free on their website, though you will need to make an account. Next, it will download a standalone application called DazCentral.
When you open DazCentral for the first time, it suggests you install Daz Studio via a welcome popup. The “Daz Studio” box is pre-checked so proceed and install it.
The Daz to Blender Bridge needs to be downloaded through their website, but don’t worry, the price is $0 so add it to the cart. Proceed through the checkout process and it should download via DazCentral.
After that, when opening DazCentral, you should have both Daz Studio and the Daz to Blender Bridge available (you might need to press the Reload button in the top right corner).
1.2. Install the Daz to Blender Bridge for Blender
In the previous step you downloaded the Daz to Blender Bridge, so Daz can talk to Blender, but we need to make Blender talk to Daz as well. Go to their Github releases page, and from the latest version, under Assets, download the ZIP file (for example DazToBlender_2.4.0.zip). As of version 2.4.0 the ZIP file contains a bunch of extra info in addition to the plugin, so the file you will need is called DTB.zip. Extract that one.
Open up Blender and go to Edit → Preferences then under Add-ons choose Install and select the newly downloaded ZIP file. Make sure to enable it as well and click Save preferences in the bottom left corner of the window.
If all went right, in the viewport, on the right side panels you should have a DazToBlender tab.
1.3. Set up a custom Library folder in Daz Studio
My suggestion would be that you keep all your Daz assets in a folder separate from the main Daz installation.
Let’s say you make an empty folder called C:\3D\MyDazLibrary
Open up the Daz Studio and go to the Content Library panel on the left side. Right click DAZ Studio formats at the top and choose Add a base directory and then navigate to your new (and empty) Daz library folder.
1.4. Add the Pharah body and shapekeys
In order to export Daz outfits for the Pharah v5 model, you will need to have the relevant bodymorphs installed.
Download the pharah-daz.zip archive and extract the contents to your Daz Library folder (you should end up with \MyDazLibrary\People, \MyDazLibrary\data, etc).
The archive includes:
a Genesis 8 female body in a basic scene
the relevant shapekeys for the Pharah model
shapekeys presets
Restart the Daz Studio if it’s open and go to File → Open and select the pharah.duf file from the \Scenes folder in your library. From the top right panels, in the Scene tab select Genesis 8 Female. From the bottom right panels, in the Parameters tab select All. Scrolling though that list you should see a lot of shapekeys, such as “Pear figure”, “Emaciated”, etc. Don’t change any values as that could affect the export process.
With the Pharah scene opened go to Scripts → Bridges → Blender → Daz to Blender.
In the Daz to Blender settings modal check
Subdivision Level 0
Include morphs
Next, click Choose Morphs to open the Select Morphs modal.
Now it’s time to set up the shapekeys presets for future exports.
Click Save Preset button and see in what folder the presets are saved.
In my case it is C:\Users\PBG\Documents\DAZ 3D\Bridges\Daz To Blender\Presets
Outside of Daz Studio, navigate to the folder and copy in there the PBG-shapekeys.csv file from the pharah-daz.zip archive.
Now you should have the preset shapekeys installed.
Start the export process again and the next time you get to the Select Morphs modal, in the Choose presets dropdown you should see PBG-shapekeys.csv. Select it and that should populate the Morphs to Export list.
1.5. Do a test import to make sure the integration works
The setup is now done, but we should run a test import to make sure everything went ok. Continuing from the previous step, Click Accept and then Accept again to close the modal and begin the export.
Take a look at the Import Daz content into Blender section and if you can import the rigged body as decribed there in there, that means you’re ready to start importing outfits.
02.
Install new Daz content
Here we will cover adding DAZ content such as outfits.
2.1. Extract the content
When purchasing such items directly from the Daz Shop, they will be installed via DazCentral, however we will cover the other case: acquiring the content from different websites such as Renderosity.
Different items will be bundled in different ways, so the best way to process them is to extract the content in a temp folder, and then copy the relevant folders into your library. The relevant folders vary from package to package, but usually consist of:
Data
People
Runtime
Scenes
Basically navigate into your temp folder until you get these ones, and then simply copy-paste them to your library folder so that you end up with the following structure:
\MyDazLibrary\Data
\MyDazLibrary\People
\MyDazLibrary\Runtime
\MyDazLibrary\Scenes
You might need to restart the Daz Studio for the changes to take effect, or right click your Library folder inside Daz Studio and click Refresh.
The Pharah v5 model is based on the Genesis 8 female body, but outfits for older versions such as Genesis 3 work as well. That being said, the outfits should fit the body inside Daz Studio. If they look broken there (such as when trying some Genesis 2 outfits), then they will be broken in Blender as well, so don’t bother importing them try a different outfit.
Download, extract and copy the content to your library folder like in the previous step.
Open the pharah.duf scene from your library folder. From the Content panel on the left side, navigate to your outfit. This part can be a bit tricky, especially if you end up having many outfits. A good way to find the path of the outfit is by finding the .duf files inside the temp folder where you extracted the content.
For example, in the temp folder where I extracted the yoga outfit I located the .duf files in
Having located the outfit, it’s time to add it to the scene.
Select Genesis 8 Female in the Scene panel on the right side and next double click the outfit items you want to add (in my case Pants and then Top). The outfits will then show up below Genesis 8 Female in the Scene panel (otherwise, move them inside Genesis 8 Female manually, in the Scene panel).
You should end up with something like this.
2.3. Add materials
In the Scene panel in the top right side, select each outfit item to add the materials for it.
With the outfit item selected, in the Content Library panel on the left side navigate to the Materials folder and double click the materials you want. You should have a choice between 3Delight and Iray materials. I suggest you go for 3Delight as it has a simpler shader setup though feel free to experiment yourself. Neither of them will be perfect by default though, and you will probably need to tweak them a bit later on.
03.
Export Daz content
With the outfit added to a scene, it’s time to export it. Go to Scripts → Bridges → Blender → Daz to Blender
In the Daz to Blender modal check:
Subdivision Level 0
Include morphs
Next, click Choose Morphs to open the Select Morphs modal. From the Choose Presets dropdown select PBG-shapekeys.csv which will populate the Morps to export list on the right side.
Click Accept to Close this modal window and Accept again to begin the exporting process.
When the process is complete, you are ready to import the content into Blender.
04.
Import Daz content into Blender
After you’re done exporting from Daz Studio, it’s time to import that into Blender.
4.1 Create a temp .blend file
Start by creating a new blender file. From the DazToBlender panel in the viewport, select Import New Genesis Figure.
This will import the rigged body and whatever other outfits were exported, with their materials and shapekeys.
4.2 Roll the dice
This part is a bit weird. For whatever reason the exporting process is inconsistent and sometimes it will export the meshes with the proper shapekeys, and sometimes it won’t. You can know if it worked correctly by selecting each outfit item and looking at the shapekeys list. It should be a big list with purple values (meaning they have drivers attached). Try to look for the FBMEmaciated shapekey. If you find that and it’s purple, it likely means that the outfit was imported correctly).
If you don’t find that, repeat the exporting process again. It never took more than 3 times for me.
4.3 Copy the outfits into the Pharah .blend file
After the outfits were successfully imported, in the temp file select all the outfits. Hit Ctrl/Cmd + I to reverse the selection and select all the other items. Delete everything else but the outfits. With the body and rig deleted, copy the outfit items into the Pharah .blend file.
4.4 Automatically process each outfit item
In the Pharah file, select each new separate outfit item and from the Pharah v5 panel, choose Import outfit → Process outfit which will:
parent the outfit to the Pharah rig
link all the outfit’s shapekeys to the body’s shapekeys
add a solidify and subfsurface modifier (these will become relevant in the next step)
You should get something that is almost perfect.
4.5 Manually process each outfit item
We’re 99% of the way there. The results can vary from outfit to outfit, some might come out perfect (without any clipping) while others might need a bit of tweaking. Here’s what you should do next:
Copy the subdivision modifier driver
Some outfits might have some minor clipping which would go away when enabling the subdivision surface modifier for both the outfit and the body. Select the Pharah body, go to the Modifiers and for the Subdivision modifier right-click the purple Realtime button, then choose Copy driver. Next, select the outfit, go to the modifiers, right click the Subdivision modifier’s Realtime button and choose Paste driver. Now you can quickly toggle the subdivision modifiers for the body and its outfits by pressing the Subdivison surface button in the Pharah v5 panel.
Tweak the solidify modifier
Select the outfit and play with the Solidify modifier. You might not even need it (in which case you can turn it off) or you should enable the Only rim option if the outfit is transparent (such as stockings). Don’t make it too thick though, or else it would look fake
Tweak the materials
Regardless if you use Iray or 3Delight materials in Daz, they never come out looking perfect in Blender so you might need to tweak them a bit. You can try tweaking the node directly, or simply remove the main node, keep the images nodes and connect them to a Principled BDSF shader.
Add a correction shapekey
If you still get clipping on the outfits even after using the subdivison and solidify modifiers, the simplest way to fix that would be to add a new shapekey to the outfit, edit it and remove the last visible points.
After all is set and done, the result should look something like this:
01: Imported outfit 02: Auto processed outfit 03: Manually processed outfit (shapekey to fix the clipping and tweaked materials) 04: Final result
05.
FAQ
Let’s cover some problems you might run into:
The whole process worked but the outfits still look broken
Make sure the FBMEmaciated shapkey was exported correctly, if not roll the dice again and re-export the outfits from Daz Studio. Bare in mind that if this shapekey is in there
Here is a video recording of an export failing on the first attempt and working on the second.
