DAZ Studio to Unreal Engine
Purpose is demonstrating the methods of bringing Characters from DAZ into Unreal Engine completed with rigging, materials, morph targets, animations & clothing.
Introduction
Basically I wanted a realistic character to explore animation and AI in Unreal Engine and, as I'm not good at character modelling, rigging or skinning I decided I would utilise the characters from Daz Studio. This led me down a path of much trial and error to work out the most suitable methods for bring characters form Daz to Unreal. Hopefully this will save other people some of the time and headaches.
These methods aren't meant for creating highly optimised characters though we will explore some optimisation methods along the way such as creating an LOD for the character.
I'm not suggesting that these are the best methods, but it's what has worked well for me so far.
Some of the processes (such as morphs for the characters head) are quite repetitive and tedious to do.
Software
-
Daz Studio 4.8
Earlier versions should still work but haven't been tested
-
Photoshop
Or similar such as Gimp
-
3d Max 2016
Earlier versions should still work but haven't been tested
-
Unreal Engine 4.11 Preview 6
Newer versions could work
Before you start
Your going to end up with quite a few working files for use in the different applications so it's a good idea to create a working folder to keep all the files organised.
What I generally do is create a working folder for each character and then use the following directory structure:
Character Name
-Daz
--Morphs
--Animations
-Max
--Morphs
--Animations
-UE
--Meshes
--Textures
--Animations
but you can organise things however you'd like.
Part 1 - Transferring the base character from Daz Studio to Unreal Engine
In part 1 of this tutorial series we'll export our base character from Daz to UE4. At the end of the process we'll have our base character inside UE4 with one LOD and some basic materials applied.
Part 2 - Creating a simple modular character blueprint
In part 2 of this tutorial series we'll create a simple modular character blueprint, where the characters head is separate from the body.
Part 3 - Transferring animations from Daz Studio to Unreal Engine
In part 3 of this tutorial series we'll transfer a simple test animation from Daz Studio to UE4 and apply the animation to our modular character.