Daz Studio and MakeHuman: The Mother Of All Work Arounds

[Ghastly]

Okee Dokee gang, I'm digging the whole MakeHuman vibe, but for those of us who use Daz Studio the MakeHuman figures are not very user friendly. Genesis is the standard barer of the Daz World with a large library of wardrobe, animations, poses, props and accessories and it's only natural for Daz users looking for an alternate model might want to have a figure that works with their library of Genesis goodies.

Here is a solution to the incompatibility problems of the MakeHuman figure. It's a lot of work but in the end you've got something That will work pretty good for most settings.

There are two things you will need to download in order to get the MakeHuman figure to work in Genesis.

The first is a MakeHuman base figure .obj in the Genesis pose. You can download it free here: http://www.sharecg.com/v/65913/browse/5/3D-Model/MakeHuman-Base-Figure-In-Genesis-Pose

The second is the Collada Rigid Rigged base figure in DAZ format. You can download it free here: http://www.sharecg.com/v/65999/browse/21/DAZ-Studio/MakeHuman-Rigid-Rigged-for-DAZ-Studio

The base figure I've used for these two files is the default figure the loads into MakeHuman with the breasts in the Gender tag set to zero and exported in the Collada format with eyebrows and eyelashes. You will need to keep this in mind when you make morphs for your Daz Genesis posed character.

Your first step is to get yourself a Genesis rigged figure. The easiest way to do this is to simply fit the Genesis posed .obj to a Genesis figure. To do this you use the Transfer Utility. If you are unfamiliar with how to do this then this tutorial video will show you how.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7abESLvn0yg. You're basically fitting the Genesis posed figure to the Genesis figure just like it was a clothing item. Once you've done that delete the Genesis figure and save your Genesis posed figure as an Actor (save as figure/prop asset). This is an imperfect Genesis rigging because the MakeHuman figure isn't perfectly proportioned to a Genesis figure, but the rigging should work for most purposes. You will not however be able to use the jaw or eye positioning because the weight maps aren't properly transferred. If you really want you can go in and edit them yourself to fix that problem. The figure should work well with most Genesis poses and animations although there might be a slight distortion in the hands. Do not apply a smoothing modifier when you fit the GenPosed MakeHuman figure to the Genesis figure.

Now comes the morphs. The first thing you can do is transfer you Genesis morphs to the MakeHuman figure. If you fit the MakeHuman figure to the Genesis figure, then morph the Genesis figure it will shape the MakeHuman figure in an approximation of the Genesis morph. Send the MakeHuman figure to Hexagon and then back to Daz as a Morph and you will have a morph for the MakeHuman figure. Some precise morphs will not transfer properly or may need some further tweaking in Hexagon to make them look proper on the MakeHuman figure.

For making morphs from figures you create in MakeHuman the process is a little more complicated.

You will need the Daz Rigid Rigged base figure for this. Create your morph source in MakeHuman and export it as a Collada figure with eyebrows and eyelashes and the scale in centimetres. Now import the Collada figure in Daz and then export it as an .obj file. Load your Daz Rigid Rigged base figure and use Morph Loader Pro to load the .obj file as a morph.

Here is a video on Morph Loader Pro: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfA803Pqc08

Now pose your Daz Rigid Rigged base figure in an approximation of a Genesis figure. To do this you will need to set the scale to 107% (Genesis is just a bit bigger than MakeHuman) and set the Y-Translate to 88.5 (Light Jazz on the FM dial). If you load the Genesis Posed MakeHuman .obj you can use it as a reference to get your Genesis pose right. You won't be able to get it to perfectly match because the GenPosed MakeHuman . obj has had some deformations corrected on it. The weight map on the Collada export is pretty brutal so you'll need to do a little clean up. It doesn't need to be 100% accurate but the closest you can get the better the morph results. When you've got it in the same pose be sure to save your pose as a pose preset so you don't have to pose it each time. Now apply the morph to the Daz Rigid Rigged base figure and then send that figure to Hexagon. You will need to clean up some deformations caused by the Collada weight maps. The palm side crease at the pinky and index fingers will need to be smoothed as well as the inside crease of the elbow. Now you can send that back to Daz as a morph for your GenPosed MakeHuman figure. Tah-Dah, MakeHuman morphs on a Genesis compatible figure.

When fitting clothing to your GenPosed MakeHuman figure you'll likely need to apply a smoothing modifier to the clothing. For posing the GenPosed MakeHuman figure it's usually easier to just pose a Genesis figure the way you want and then save that pose as a pose preset which you can then apply the the MakeHuman figure.

Lots of work, I know, but hey, at least you've got a new figure to play with in Genesis! How fun is that?

Hopefully future versions of MakeHuman will include a native Daz Genesis compatible export option but until it does this work around will get you by.

Enjoy!

[brkurt]

I've done this with the free version of DAZ studio and the latest .obj model of Makehuman.
In order to come to a satisfactory conclusion, you need to run Angela Guedette's edge-loop test on both models, remember to subdivide the Makehuman mesh until the two have approximately the same number of quads and vertices.

Then you will being to notice that there are some profound differences in the choice of quads.

[DCAMOD]

Is there any way one of you who have went through this long process can upload a base male and female version for the community to use while we wait for this feature to be implemented?

[artmage13@yahoo.com]

Ghastly uploaded what I think was a Make Human Robot figure (Ghastly's Ghastly Robot) to ShareCG several months ago. In the description on that page, Ghastly included clear and easy to follow instructions on how to transfer the Genesis rigging to the Robot. I can tell everyone here that it works perfectly if you follow the instructions exactly. I now have this figure in my content for DAZ Studio, and it is fully rigged and posable!

Sorry I do not have the link to that product but it should not be hard to find if you do a search within ShareCG for "Ghastly's Ghastly Robot".

Enjoy, and as always be sure to have fun!
Stay Awesome!