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.
After that, when opening DazCentral, you should have Daz Studio available (you might need to press the Reload button in the top right corner).
01. The setup
How to install the DAZ Studio and the Diffeomorphic add-on.
+ - 1. Install DAZ Studio
+ - 2. Set up a custom Library folder in Daz Studio
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.
+ - 3. Install and set up the Diffeomorphic DAZ importer
Go to the diffeomorphic
website and download the stable version of the DAZ Importer bundle (the file should be called something like import_daz_mhx_rts_v1_6_1.zip
).
Download the zip which includes the DAZ importer, the MHX addon and some other things which you don’t need. Extract the zip file, open the to_daz_studio
folder and copy the contents to your DAZ library folder.
You should end up with something like this: C:\3D\MyDazLibrary\Scripts\Diffeomorphic
Next, open up DAZ Studio and in the Content Library navigate to the Scripts folder and under Diffeomorphic double click the Setup Menus option. You should get a confirmation and a new entry in the File menu: File → Export to Blender (no need to click it now).
In addition to the Setup Menus option you will always have the Save paths one. Double click it and save the output .JSON file (it doesn’t matter where). This will be needed in the following step.
+ - 4. Install and set up the MHX rig add-on
import_daz_mhx_rts_v1_6_1.zip
).
Then, search for
mhx
and enable the Rigging: MHX Runtime system add-on and then search for daz
and enable the Import-Export: DAZ importer add-on as displayed here.
You should get a DAZ Importer and MHX panel. From the Daz Importer panel click Global settings and then click Load Root Paths and select the .JSON file from the previous step. Finally, click OK to close the Global settings window.