Official Daz 3D To Blender Plug-In – Part 1 Review

OHHHH boy! Talk about a pleasant surprise! Today Daz released a series of plug-ins to make it easier to send Daz content into programs like Maya, and Blender. I make use of Blender and love it, and have been moving my models from Daz to blender and back using an unofficial program, and export as .obj for a while now. However, THIS is an official bridge between Daz 3D Studio and Blender!

First, you can get the Daz To Blender plug-In for FREE here (it was free when I got it from the official store): https://www.daz3d.com/daz-to-blender-bridge

In fact, the forums have even been updated for discussions about 3rd party software now!

Install view the Install Manager is a breeze, and once you open your program let’s explore our options. How I use to move models between Daz and blender was often by exporting items as .obj files. This was not always ideal for rigged figures, but it was great for props.

For this review I am diving into this head first to see if I can figure out how to use this new feature without needing to heavily fall back onto a tutorial or read me. It’s mostly to see how intuitive this has been designed.

You will find the plug-in under your scripts. For these scripts to work, you will of course need the program that the bridge is built for. Blender is free to download and use, and has a massive supporting fanbase. You can get it here for free: https://www.blender.org/

So….

Looks easy enough, hopefully I can just sling over this great prop…

WAit, what? ARRRGGGGHHHHAHHHHHHHHH!!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOO! I guess this plug-in is specifically for the gen3/8 figures and does not include props? But….wHY?! I mean, I understand I can just export this as a .obj but my workflow would be so much more smooth if I could just take the props I want to work on and send them directly to Blender.

Let me try something else. What if I attach the prop I want to work on to a figure…..

Oh, well this seems to be doing better. Oh, fuck…which do I want? No idea yet, I’ll have to experiment longterm and decide what works best per project.

once I started this script, it sent my Illithid to a 0 pose, and to the global 0 on its own, which is ideal for exporting and moving models between programs. While I appreciate that, I often like leaving a figure posed and working with it that way to customize clothing and content around the particular pose. Still when moving between programs, you do want objects at true 0.

Oh well…that’s as far as it got on this model. The script crashed on my illithid. Apparently the elder brain was not having my Blender shenanigans today. So, since the illithid doesnt want to transfer, nor does the shield prop, lets try just a base g8m figure with 1 prop, the shield.

All good, no crash this time. All the same…..once the script was done, what now?

Blender is open, and a current version. So I check in Blender, and its just a sad barren landscape. Is there something I should import, does the bridge just drop stuff into Blender? Was there something I needed to add to Blender?

Shit. Well on the official Daz product page, there is a link for the products ‘Read Me’. Let me go click on the ‘Read Me’ file.

You son of a bitch.

Okay, so there seems to be no active documentation at the time of this on the site at the time. So, let’s keep digging around to figure out this workflow. Head over to part 2 to see the rest of this saga.

End Part 1 – Daz To Blender Plug-In Review

Read Part 2 – Daz To Blender Plug-In Review