- Merge Anatomy: Merge a grafted item, typically a piece of anatomy, with the active mesh.
- Save Local Textures: Save copies of all used textures in a local textures folder, and change all paths to relative.
- Convert To MHX: Convert the active rig to an MHX rig.
- Convert To Rigify: Convert the active rig to Rigify.
Merge Anatomy
A grafted item is a high-density mesh which can replace a low-density region of another mesh. This is typically used to add pieces of anatomy to characters. It is most commonly used for genitalia, but can be used for other types of anatomy as well, such as horns or tails. The idea is to remove the body vertices hidden by the piece of anatomy, and to merge common vertices at the boundary and create a single seamless mesh from the two original meshes.Note that merging anatomy changes vertex numbers. Hence will not be possible to import morphs afterwards, neither to the anatomy mesh nor to the body mesh. It is a good idea to save the blend file before merging anatomy.
We import a new version of Maria equipped with genitalia. There are also two more meshes - the color and effect layers - but they do not contain any vertices and can be deleted.
The genitals is a separate mesh, and this causes problems because it is not seamlessly integrated with the body, and also because the underlying body vertices are still present.
Select the genitalia mesh, then shift-select Maria's mesh to make it active, and press Merge Anatomy.
The body vertices beneath the genitals are deleted, and the common boundaries are glued together, making the body with genitals a seamless mesh.
In Genesis 8, the eyelashes are also implemented as a separate mesh. We can not use Merge Anatomy on these, because the eyelashes are not grafted items, but it is easy to join them to the main body using Blender's standard tools. With the eyelashes selected and the body mesh active, press Ctrl-J to join the meshes without deleting any vertices.
Save Local Textures
If you have not already done so, now is the time to save the Blender file, because it must be saved before the next step.So far all textures are located in their original locations in the DAZ libraries. If you intend to paint on the textures, or move the Blender file to a computer where DAZ Studio is not installed (or all used assets are not installed), you need local copies of the textures. Press Save Local Textures to do so. This command creates a folder called "textures" in the same directory as the blend file, and copies all used textures there. The absolute file links to the textures are also replaced by relative ones, so the textures will be found even if the blend file and the textures folder are moved elsewhere.
Here is the content of the textures subdirectory in the folder where maria.blend was saved.
Once the textures have been saved in a local directory, you need to save the blend file again, because file paths have been changed to local paths. You can now move the blend file and the textures directory to a different location, or even to a new computer where DAZ Studio is not installed, and you will still be able to open the file.
Convert to MHX
The MHX (MakeHuman eXchange) rigs was developed by myself when I was working on the MakeHuman project. Documentation about the MHX rig. Eventually the documentation should be moved here, for an MHX-converted DAZ character behave slightly differently from a MakeHuman one, but for the time being the MakeHuman documentation will have to do.
Three new panels appear when an MHX rig is selected: MHX Layers, MHX FKIK Switch, and MHX Properties. They are described in the MHX documentation.
Convert to Rigify
DAZ characters can also be rerigged with the popular Rigify add-on by Nathan Vegdahl. Links to documentation about Rigify in general:Official Rigify documentation
Blenderartist thread
