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how to import daz content

This guide will cover how to set up DAZ Studio and Blender for importing outfits, poses and 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:

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.

01.  The setup

How to install the DAZ Studio and the Diffeomorphic add-on.

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).

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.

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.

Open Blender and go to Edit → Preferences… → Add-ons then click Install… and select the zip file downloaded in the previous step (such as 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.

02.  Install Daz content

Here we will cover adding content (such as outfits) to DAZ Studio so it can then me imported to Blender.

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.

03.  Import outfits into blender

How to import outfits from DAZ Studio into Blender and add it to the Pharah model.

  • 00:00 Add DAZ character and outfit
  • 00:34 Export the DAZ scene
  • 00:50 Create a temp blender file and import the DAZ scene
  • 01:05 Merge the rigs and convert it to MHX rig
  • 01:23 Delete everything except the outfit and copy to clipboard
  • 01:32 In the Pharah .blend file reset the rig and bodymorph
  • 01:48 Paste the outfit and transfer shapekeys
  • 02:26 Adjust the rig, solidify and subsurface modifiers
  • 03:14 Add shapekey to fix the clipping (the end result is not perfect but it illustrates the point)
  • 04:27 Preview of the final result


In DAZ Studio go to File → New. Go to the Smart Content tab and from Figures add a Genesis 8 Female figure such as one of these to the scene.

For the sake of the demo I will use the Yoga Clothing for Genesis 8 Female outfit.

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 it looks broken there (such as when trying some Genesis 2 outfits), then it will be broken in Blender as well, so don’t bother importing it and try a different outfit.

Download, extract and copy the content to your library folder like in step 2.1

In Daz Studio, 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
\temp\People\Genesis 8 Female\Clothing\RainbowLight\Yoga(G8F)

Knowing that, I can find the outfit inside DazStudio’s Content panel following the path
MyDazLibrary\People\Genesis 8 Female\ClothingRainbowLight\Yoga(G8F)

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.

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.
Once you’re happy with the outfits you have, it’s time to export them. Go to File → Save to save the scene and leave the Scene Save Options as they are. You should remember the folder path where the file was saved.

Go to File → Export to Blender to save the additional file needed (make sure to leave the file name unchanged).
Create a new file in blender, go to the Daz importer panel and press the Import DAZ button. Navigate to where you saved the DAZ files in the previous step and select the .duf file you saved.

You should end up with something like this.
In the Outliner open the Filter dropdown menu and disable “Object contents”, “Object children”, “Meshes” and everything else below apart from Armatures. This will display only the Armatures in the Outliner.

Next up, select all the armatures so that the Genesis 8 Female armature is both selected and active.

Next, merge the selected armatures by going to DAZ Importer panel → Setup → Corrections → Merge rigs. Disable the Create duplicate bones checkbox in the next step and click OK. You should end up with only one armature visible in the Outliner: Genesis 8 Female.

With that selected, go to DAZ Importer panel → Setup → Rigging → Convert to MHX and check Finger IK in the next step.
In the Outliner, open the Filter dropdown menu again and enable the meshes as well.

In the viewport select the outfits, hit Ctrl/Cmd + I to invert the selection and press Del to delete everything else so that you end up only with the outfit items in the scene.

Lastly, select the outfit items again and hit Ctrl/Cmd + C to copy the outfits to the clipboard.
In a separate Blender window open the Pharah v5 .blend file.

Select the PHARAH.rig and from the Properties panel set the skeleton in the Rest position. From the Pharah v5 panel go to Bodymorph subpanel and click the None button to set all the bodymorphs to zero. The result should look like this.
Hit Ctrl/Cmd + V to Paste the outfits. It should fit over the Pharah body almost perfectly.
Deselect everything. Select one outfit item and then Shift select the Pharah body. To transfer the shapekeys from Pharah body to the outfits to go DAZ Importer panel → Setup → Morphs → Transfer shapekeys. In the following step leave the settings as they are and click OK.
Select the outfit item and go to Modifiers and set PHARAH.rig as the armature.
Repeat steps #10 and #11 for each cloething item, transferring the shapekeys and setting the rig for each of them.

For each clothing item repeat the following steps:

  • Add a Solidify modifier with the values:
    • Offset: 1.0
    • Thickness: 0.001m
  • Below that add a Subdivision Surface modifier and leave it with the default values.
  • Select the Pharah body and from the Modifiers tab right-click the Realtime button of the Subsurface modifier and press Copy driver
  • Select the outfit item and right-click the Realtime button of the Subsurface modifier and press Paste driver

Now you will be able to toggle the Subdivision modifiers of the Pharah model with one click, from Pharah v5 panel → Settings and help → Subdivision surface
Reset the bodymorphs of the Pharah model by clicking Pharah v5 panel → Bodymorph → Reset defaults.
You might have some minor clipping still remaining and the simplest way to address it is to add a new shapekey for each item and edit it so you can fix the clipping.



A visual summary of the importing and fitting process will look like this:



Daz Blender import process
01: Imported outfit    02: With solidify modifier    03: Transfered shapekeys    04: Corrective shapekey    05: Final result


04.  Import poses into blender

How to import and apply poses from DAZ Studio.

  • 00:00 Export G8F model from DAZ Studio
  • 00:25 Import G8F model to Blender
  • 00:30 Convert rig to MHX
  • 00:37 Locate the poses folder
  • 01:03 Import pose
  • 01:13 Convert rig from FK → IK
  • 01:23 Show rig extra layers
  • 01:28 Copy pose
  • 01:32 Paste pose


Follow the steps in section 01 and 02 to install DAZ poses.
NB: Make sure to install Genesis 8 poses as Genesis 3 ones will not work properly during importing to Blender.

Open up the DAZ 3D Studio and in the Content library tab on the left side locate the poses folder:

  1. You could search for pose and from the search results, right click one and choose Show assets in → Mapped folder
  2. Alternatively, you should be able to find it directly from MyDazLibrary\People\Genesis 8 Female\Poses where MyDazLibrary is the folder you created during step 1.2

Once you found the Poses folder inside DAZ Studio right click it and choose Browse to folder location… to find the full path on your hard drive.
It should be something like C:\...\People\Genesis 8 Female\Poses

Save that path for later use.

We will use this file to import the poses, process them and then copy-paste them further to the Pharah model.
Follow the steps 3.1 — 3.5 to import a Genesis 8 Female model into this new Blender scene.
Follow the steps from the 3.6 section to convert the rig to MHX.

By this point you s should have a file with a G8F model and an MHX rig. You should save the file for future use.
From the DAZ Importer panel choose Posing → Import pose and navigate to the Poses folder from step 4.2 above, then select a post to import.

From the MHX tab go to the FK/IK Switch

Under Snap Arm Bones press:

  • IK Arm: Snap Left
  • IK Arm: Snap right

Under Snap Leg Bones press:

  • IK Leg: Snap Left
  • IK Leg: Snap right

First off we will need to make visible some of the extra buttons. From the MHX tab go the Layers section and enable the following options:

  • Head
  • Face
  • Fingers (left)
  • Fingers (right)
  • Toes (left)
  • Toes (right)

Next up, select the rig and go into Pose Mode, press Ctrl + A to select all the bones and then Ctrl + C to copy the pose.



Open up a separate instance of Blender with the Pharah model, go into **Pose Mode** and press `Ctrl + V` to paste the pose.
By now you’re done, but as a bonus you can save this pose to the Pose Library.

Select the rig, go into Pose Mode, press Ctrl + A to select all the bones.

From the Object Data Properties tab go to the Pose Library section and press the Add Pose button.

To apply a saved pose follow the same procedure to select all the bones and then press the Apply Pose Library Pose button.



A visual summary of the importing will look like this:



Daz Blender import pose process
01: Model with MHX rig in rested pose    02: Imported pose    03: FK → IK switch    04: Copy-pasted pose