VaM2 Daz to VAM Please!

[YoshioMaster]

I would really like to learn how to export my characters from Daz to VAM. I already have some knowledge. My goal is to export G9 characters, but I know it's quite complicated, so if I can export G8 characters, I'll be happy. I know I have to transfer the Morphs from G8 to a G2 that is compatible with VAM, but I can't get Morph Loader Pro or Transfer Utility to work. I would be very grateful to anyone who can help me. Thank you.

 

[SlimerJSpud]

You have to follow the published process exactly, step by step. Forget G9 for now. There are major differences. Be glad G8 to G2 works as well as it does. It's not perfect, but it can be done. You transfer the morph, then use a skin already available in Vam. That's the easiest way. If necessary, install an older version of Daz. I have 4.15, which works well for this.

Import genesis 8 character(only morph) to vam(with pictures) - Guides -

Same Guide without pictures *Any deviations from the instructions are at your own risk or if you know better than me. If so, let me know. This manual is saved in PDF, you can download it together with the ZIP file 1) Download T-Pose-Gen2.zip...

hub.virtamate.com

 

[YoshioMaster]

Você precisa seguir o processo publicado exatamente, passo a passo. Esqueça o G9 por enquanto. Há grandes diferenças. Considere que a conversão de G8 para G2 funciona tão bem quanto funciona. Não é perfeito, mas é possível. Você transfere o morph e depois usa uma pele já disponível no Vam. Essa é a maneira mais fácil. Se necessário, instale uma versão mais antiga do Daz. Eu uso a versão 4.15, que funciona bem para isso.

Import genesis 8 character(only morph) to vam(with pictures) - Guides -

Same Guide without pictures *Any deviations from the instructions are at your own risk or if you know better than me. If so, let me know. This manual is saved in PDF, you can download it together with the ZIP file 1) Download T-Pose-Gen2.zip...

hub.virtamate.com

 

[YoshioMaster]

Thank you so much for sharing. I'll try to do that.

 

[aMoose]

I would really like to learn how to export my characters from Daz to VAM. I already have some knowledge. My goal is to export G9 characters, but I know it's quite complicated, so if I can export G8 characters, I'll be happy. I know I have to transfer the Morphs from G8 to a G2 that is compatible with VAM, but I can't get Morph Loader Pro or Transfer Utility to work. I would be very grateful to anyone who can help me. Thank you.

If you're serious, I'm a DAZ specialist and spent the last few years as part of my bigger projects making plenty of setups for this and have many ready to go. I'm very busy though so if you want one of my basic DAZ to VAM (any gen) adapter scene as well as my any VAM directly to any DAZ fig let me know by either sending a message or finding my discord. I likely won't log in here again for months I'm that busy but anyone interested in this kind of thing I just want some feedback.

 

[YoshioMaster]

You have to follow the published process exactly, step by step. Forget G9 for now. There are major differences. Be glad G8 to G2 works as well as it does. It's not perfect, but it can be done. You transfer the morph, then use a skin already available in Vam. That's the easiest way. If necessary, install an older version of Daz. I have 4.15, which works well for this.

Import genesis 8 character(only morph) to vam(with pictures) - Guides -

Same Guide without pictures *Any deviations from the instructions are at your own risk or if you know better than me. If so, let me know. This manual is saved in PDF, you can download it together with the ZIP file 1) Download T-Pose-Gen2.zip...

hub.virtamate.com

You have to follow the published process exactly, step by step. Forget G9 for now. There are major differences. Be glad G8 to G2 works as well as it does. It's not perfect, but it can be done. You transfer the morph, then use a skin already available in Vam. That's the easiest way. If necessary, install an older version of Daz. I have 4.15, which works well for this.

Import genesis 8 character(only morph) to vam(with pictures) - Guides -

Same Guide without pictures *Any deviations from the instructions are at your own risk or if you know better than me. If so, let me know. This manual is saved in PDF, you can download it together with the ZIP file 1) Download T-Pose-Gen2.zip...

hub.virtamate.com

Thank you very much for the suggestion, I learned a lot here. I just couldn't save the file to use in VAM. I did everything correctly up to item 22, but then I don't know how to save it because the tool says it's obsolete, no longer used in version 4.24 of Daz. But there are several possibilities there, I just don't know which one to use.

 

[SlimerJSpud]

I believe the option is "deprecated" but not eliminated. That means they're not going to support it anymore, but it still works. Like I said, you can also roll back to a previous version.

 

[YoshioMaster]

I believe the option is "deprecated" but not eliminated. That means they're not going to support it anymore, but it still works. Like I said, you can also roll back to a previous version.

The save option is there, but it's grayed out. But there must be another function to replace it, right? As for reverting to a previous version of Daz, I can't do that, my friend, because all the characters I intend to bring to VAM were created with products and morphs that are only compatible with the version I use. If I change the version, I'll have to redo several things to fix the characters.

 

[YoshioMaster]

The save option is there, but it's grayed out. But there must be another function to replace it, right? As for reverting to a previous version of Daz, I can't do that, my friend, because all the characters I intend to bring to VAM were created with products and morphs that are only compatible with the version I use. If I change the version, I'll have to redo several things to fix the characters.

 

[aMoose]

Thank you very much for the suggestion, I learned a lot here. I just couldn't save the file to use in VAM. I did everything correctly up to item 22, but then I don't know how to save it because the tool says it's obsolete, no longer used in version 4.24 of Daz. But there are several possibilities there, I just don't know which one to use.

I believe the option is "deprecated" but not eliminated. That means they're not going to support it anymore, but it still works. Like I said, you can also roll back to a previous version.

No,

It was just renamed to modifier assets for legitimate technical reasons. Simple explanation is technically morphs can hold much more than morphs and always could/did. Just use modifier assets.

 

[aMoose]

No,

It was just renamed to modifier assets for legitimate technical reasons. Simple explanation is technically morphs can hold much more than morphs and always could/did. Just use modifier assets.

View attachment 550573

I would not use the method in this tutorial personally. Much simpler to export a lot of OBJ objects with the name of the morphs you want and load them all in to morph loader at once but don't rig them. if you feel you need to rig them, use Mike3D's character splitter to which will also normalize the figure scale first and then rig it, otherwise following this step of adjusting the rigging to fit the shape is hoping you get lucky but the farther from base shape your figure is the less likely that will give you a good result without then having to learn to fix it.


Mike 3D's splitter/scale normalizer/rigger: https://github.com/Mike3D/Character-Splitter-for-DAZ-Studio
It works with any DAZ figure.

If your character is an odd shape, normalizing makes any really tall, short character the same size as the base character making it 9x more likely that you don't need to rig/freeze at all, and if you do, it will be again many more times likely to succeed rigging correctly with a normalized character. Then, if your character is short or tall, you adjust the scale in VAM back to their original size.

It's a pain to un-rig a character, so simpler to make two, one rigged and one unrigged every time (Delta and Rigged versions). And it gives whoever is using your morph options.

 

[SlimerJSpud]

@aMoose could you publish this flow here as a tutorial? New Vam users really like having a step by step guide to follow.

 

[aMoose]

then use a skin already available in Vam. That's the easiest way. If necessary, install an older version of Daz. I have 4.15, which works well for this.

It's much easier than people think transferring textures from any fig to any fig in DAZ. Especially using a saved surface set. These four images are the only steps. It does a great job, especially since it isn't really baking but restretching it mathematically.

In Windows it's in the equivelant spot.

And that's it. Takes max 15 minutes even on a 15 year old computer. The only reason you might get bad maps is if your UV's aren't right.


If you are missing normal maps coming from an old figure or one of the G2 variants that doesn't have them on purpose the easiest way is to dive in to the daz-blender bridge and it does a good baking job there and you can pull the maps out.

 

[aMoose]

@aMoose could you publish this flow here as a tutorial? New Vam users really like having a step by step guide to follow.

I might - or I may just save everyone lots of time and upload a pre-setup daz scene made with bare install . Rigging in reality is more than I would recommend for beginners at all.

I save them uncompressed so you could also copy paste the data of it instead of downloading it I suppose.

I have a DAZ scene that takes VAM OBJ files and adapts them on to base G2's for seemless cross-checking but I'm curious how our OP does as most the people I've seen over the years use or make their own clones with these tutorials inevitably quit because there's so many special cases that everyone will run in to whether it is clothes or rigging misbehaving the most common rig misbehave from auto adjust is eyes and fingers.

Using a preset scene like my own is a different approach and I made an auto-adaptive rig as well that can give you any pose to any shape instead which is what people don't realize what they really want 9/10 times insteaf of custom bone lengths, sizes, positions.

But DAZ is database heavy-so if I do offer these kind of tutorials I need to make sure they are understandable enough or someone may wind up in a worse position with a setup they didn't make they don't know they broke and can't do the job any other way

Also all this is part of a much bigger project I've been doing for almost three years so I have to be careful not to publish something bad and I'm the type of person that can't help myself when someone needs help which is why I tend to stay away from here as I'd have re-written the entire DAZ manual and have hundreds of video tutorials which I had actually started doing a year back

 

[YoshioMaster]

I might - or I may just save everyone lots of time and upload a pre-setup daz scene made with bare install . Rigging in reality is more than I would recommend for beginners at all.

I save them uncompressed so you could also copy paste the data of it instead of downloading it I suppose.

I have a DAZ scene that takes VAM OBJ files and adapts them on to base G2's for seemless cross-checking but I'm curious how our OP does as most the people I've seen over the years use or make their own clones with these tutorials inevitably quit because there's so many special cases that everyone will run in to whether it is clothes or rigging misbehaving the most common rig misbehave from auto adjust is eyes and fingers.

Using a preset scene like my own is a different approach and I made an auto-adaptive rig as well that can give you any pose to any shape instead which is what people don't realize what they really want 9/10 times insteaf of custom bone lengths, sizes, positions.

But DAZ is database heavy-so if I do offer these kind of tutorials I need to make sure they are understandable enough or someone may wind up in a worse position with a setup they didn't make they don't know they broke and can't do the job any other way

Also all this is part of a much bigger project I've been doing for almost three years so I have to be careful not to publish something bad and I'm the type of person that can't help myself when someone needs help which is why I tend to stay away from here as I'd have re-written the entire DAZ manual and have hundreds of video tutorials which I had actually started doing a year back

I already do a lot of things in Daz, it's not the first time I've used VAM, and I found it quite interesting. But I don't have such an advanced goal. All of this is very cool, but it seems very difficult. I just wanted to bring my characters into VAM, make some scenes with them. Take advantage of the program's physics to test animations, because in Daz, I can't visualize an animation in real time, and I always waste time rendering. And animating in Daz is very difficult because it doesn't have a decent IK system. But I like the quality. I eagerly await a tutorial from you, but one that addresses this in an easy-to-understand way. Thank you very much for the explanations.

 

[SlimerJSpud]

My workflow is to create a face morph in Daz using a plugin called HeadShop Pro. This makes a face OBJ from a photo I then tweak in Daz for G8 or G3. Although I can spin dials with the best of them in Daz, the G8 to G2 flow works best with a default body. Once transferred to Vam, I make the rest of the adjustments there. I really don't want to get into Blender or Unity if I can avoid it.

Daz has no soft body physics, their clothing sim implementation is a huge waste of time, and rendering animations is downright painful. Vam is much better in those aspects, but Vam1 is stuck on G2. Vam2 isn't production yet, and it's likely nothing from Vam1 will port to 2 easily.

I know about Map Transfer. There are some things it doesn't work for. I have used it to bring some V4 skins into Vam for G2 just for my own use. There are so many good skins in Vam, that's not really needed, IMO. The problem with exotic creatures in Daz is that they use geografts. Can your flow handle that? I ported a G2 creature that used only morphs, but others didn't work.