Daz to Unreal Bridge [Materials - Plugin FIX - Morph Exporting - Smooth Meshes FIX]

moreffector_3290526

Hello everyone.

As you know, Bridge plugins are very cool for us. I am using maya - unreal and daz. But sometimes i got problems about morphs, plugins or textures and materials. Let we fix them. I am sharing my experiences.

Enable with Github (Follow those Steps)

1) Click this link and download this file. Extract it : https://github.com/David-Vodhanel/DazToRuntime/archive/master.zip

2) Open extraxted folder and go to DazToRuntime-master\Unreal\UnrealPlugin and copy the DazToUnreal folder and paste here : C:\Program Files\Epic Games\UE_4.26\Engine\Plugins

3) Open your main project folder and and create a new folder. Rename it "Plugins" . Paste the same DazToUnreal folder here.

4) Open UE 4.26 and click Yes for " Do you want to rebuild ? " window.

 

UE - From Maya Smooth Mesh FIX

If you working with Daz > Maya > Unreal , your character will not have smooth mesh. For fixing that, Open IrayUberShader into Unreal Material Editor (Search it first) and Enable Tesellation > Choose PN Tesellation. All shapes will be smooth.

 

Why Daz To Unreal Bridge ? Is it really good ?

Daz studio using Iray render engine and materials. And daz characters ready to render always. UE5 Bridge plugin converting Iray materials to Unreal Engine shader system. Its a big function. Sending materials to Iray to Unreal Engine function and you see the result. This is very useful and necessary thing.

Yes. It is really good. Because its creating all texture maps and materials automatically for you.

 

Daz to Maya => Maya to Unreal Engine ( With All materials and textures like Iray. Possible ? Yes :) )

This is a little bit hard thing. But i must do that. Because i am Maya animator and daz characters very good. What can we do ?

- I am using Daz To Maya bridge. After importing to maya, i am animating.. After i exported it as FBX. Thats okay. This was Maya side.

- Open daz again. Same character. But export it with Daz To Unreal Engine plugin. Dont select morphs or animations. Just Sketal Mesh. And export it a folder.You will see the .dtu file on there. (dtu => Daz To Unreal)

- Import that .dtu file into your Unreal Engine project. When it finished, import your FBX file from Maya ( Choose morph targets if you want.. )  

- Your Maya FBX file looking weird :) No materials correctly and eyes, textures and others... Don't worry. We will change those materials to .DTU file materials. Did you understood this ? Cool.

- Open your Maya fbx MESH file with Unreal Engine and find Face material. Change this material to Daz To Unreal converted material. Just searh face and you will see like " v7_face (Material Instance) " 

- Do them for all materials. Be careful ! The new materials must be Material Instance . Not normal material.

Morph Problem

For Daz to Maya with morphs, i explained fixing way Daz to Maya Bridge morph problem here : https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/452246/daz-to-maya-bridge-morph-exporting-problem-reason-and-fix#latest 

IMPORTANT NOTE : If you make manual blendshapes for unreal, don't forget to rename blendshape names like "Genesis8Male1 , Genesis8Male2 etc..." If you don't do that, maya makes automatic same name every manual morphs. So unreal accepting only one because they are all same name ;) 

jimmyke

UE5? Isn't it a bit to early for that? 

moreffector_3290526

I mean Unreal 4.25. Also i prefer focusing the real issue ;)

jimmyke

moreffector said:

I mean Unreal 4.25. Also i prefer focusing the real issue ;)

its all fine. was about how use UE5 allready  real great explanation tho

email_3837771

It's doing this for UE 4.25 to which is strange because it wasn't doing this before I reinstalled Windows 10. Now Suddenly I have to turn tricks just to get it to work.....Hope they plan on fixing this soon.

mirrorimagepictures

@moreffector - thanks for the breakdown. Can you clarify more of this, a bit confused on the plugin setup:

- You're using the official Daz to Maya Bridge for setting up HumanIK and Control Rig for animation as well as exporting proper morphs? 
- You then import this into Unreal via FBX from the Maya export for the mesh?
- Textures and Materials come over via official Daz to Unreal plugin? Which version is this?
- Can you use David's plugin (the one you posted at the top) with the official Daz Studio Unreal Plugin? That Git depot has both the UE4 plugin and the Daz Studio plugin for compiling
- Does this require the Daz SDK?

Thanks for digging into this.

moreffector_3290526

mirrorimagepictures said:

@moreffector - thanks for the breakdown. Can you clarify more of this, a bit confused on the plugin setup:

- You're using the official Daz to Maya Bridge for setting up HumanIK and Control Rig for animation as well as exporting proper morphs? 
- You then import this into Unreal via FBX from the Maya export for the mesh?
- Textures and Materials come over via official Daz to Unreal plugin? Which version is this?
- Can you use David's plugin (the one you posted at the top) with the official Daz Studio Unreal Plugin? That Git depot has both the UE4 plugin and the Daz Studio plugin for compiling
- Does this require the Daz SDK?

Thanks for digging into this.

 

Hi. Let me answer those questions.

- I am using Official DazToMaya 1.5 Plugin for exporting to Maya. Only models, hairs, clothes. Not animations. I am exporting animations from daz manually. (i am mostly using old DazToMaya version because its working well. Especially for morphs.)
- Yes i am exporting FBX from Maya and import to Unreal.
- Yes absolutely. First of all you have to design, decide and export Daz character with DazToUnreal plugin (For Daz 4.14 / Unreal 4.26.0 i am using). Enter port 0 , choose a directory and export it. You will see a " .dtu " file there. You have to import this .dtu file with unreal engine. This step for daz materials and unreal materials converting Iray Shaders. So this step is only for material creating actually. I explained it above.
- I just downloaded and used this plugin from David's github page. But Daz Central automatically updating or installing also. Just follow those steps that i explained.

ryan.peter.madden_28bf05c29f

I can't get it working for 4.26.1. I've tried downloading and installing David's version, but I get the "modules can't be built through runtime - just through the IDE" message

weichinger

Thank you. I managed to get the Plug-In running. The items which show up in Daz Central as "My Compatible Assets" work better, but in the case of environments, they still have a lot of issues.
Anyways, since it was not an easy task to get the Plug-In working in UE 4.26 and transfer an Environment and the fact that there are still many things to fix afterwards, i wonder if the marketing is not a bit too euphoric for this Workflow / Solution.

victortan7128

I solved the problem of DaztoUnreal Bridge by installing the latest version of Daz3d and Unreal 4.26. It didn't work previously on Unreal 4.25. Now it works very well. 

Bindass Dev

If i tried this way then i get this a new issue and unreal didn't open the error message atttach here

Preirin

Hmmm... no matter how many times I rey this I keep getting an error when attempting to load UE 4.27.

<i>"Plugin 'DazToUnreal' failed to load because module 'DazToUnreal' could not be found. Please ensure the plugin is properly installed, otherise consider disabling the plugin for this project.'</i>

I have followed the steps exactly three times.  Could it be because I keep my project diles on an external harddrive as to save up space on my computer?