High-resolution Export To Blender

Many DAZ meshes come in high resolution. Such HD (high definition or high density) meshes can be exported with the Export HD to Blender script. The ordinary Export To Blender script ignores the HD information, because it increases the export time and file size by orders of magnitude, and for many purposes the meshes at base resolution suffice. However, for some characters the HD information is useful. The Export HD To Blender is an alternative dbz exporer which includes the HD information. For more about HD export, see the blog posts on

High resolution meshes

HD meshes and geografts

Baking normal maps

HD meshes and geografts revisited

To export the scene with HD meshes, use the Export HD To Blender menu item in the file menu, just below the Export To Blender item.

A file selector appears and suggests the name of the dbz file. Note that if you already have exported a dbz file with the ordinary Blender exporter, that file is overwritten. There can only be one dbz file for each scene.

If you intend to add a multires modifier to the HD mesh in Blender, the HD UV coordinates are not needed, because the UVs are copied from the mesh at base resolution. To save some time and space, there is an option not to export the HD UVs, but note that to render a true HD mesh in Blender the HD UV coordinates must be exported.

A message box informs us when the export script has finished.

HD LIMITS. by Alessandro. Unfortunately the multires modifier in blender has issues, that is, it isn't always capable to unsubdivide the mesh depending on the mesh complexity. Please note that this is a limit in blender, not a bug in the addon. In this case you get an error on import that the importer "can't rebuild subdivisions" for the object. If this happens you have to use the base mesh for the affected object since it can't be imported as multires. Or you can use "true HD", that is, the HD geometry without the multires modifier.

Another limit is that "true HD" doesn't work with geografts since the HD uv map for the geograft can't be exported from daz studio. So geografts only work fine with multires.

Another limit is that geografts may cause creases with HD on the geograft border, this is the same in daz studio so not a bug in the addon. Then the addon tries to add some smoothing to hide the crease, but in some cases the seam is still visible.

https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/issues/382/

https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/issues/223/

note. by Alessandro. Please note that the HD information is baked from the viewport, so in daz studio you need to set the viewport subdivision to the desired level before exporting.

Exporting a HD mesh with geografts

Geografts cause complications with HD export. Before exporting the scene, we must enter the Geometry Editor and select every mesh in the scene outliner, cf HD meshes and geografts revisited.

note. by Alessandro. Please note that setting the geograft subdivision in the geometry editor is only necessary if the geograft is HD, that's rarely the case since most geografts are not. For non-HD geografts the base subdivision is good, and also avoids possible issues since multires can't always unsubdivide correctly.

Faster HD Export Script

Exporting a HD scene to Blender often takes a long time, because a long of data needs to be exported and the script is written in DAZ Studio's scripting language, which is quite slow. As an alternative we can use the C version of the Export HD script written by Donald Dade. It is bundled with the 1.6 release of the DAZ Importer. To install it, copy the diffeo-HD folder to the DAZ Studio plugin folder, as explained in Content of the Zip file.

Select the Diffeomorphic Daz Importer entry at the bottom of the Edit menu, and select the name of the dbz file (you can pick either the duf or the dbz file) in the file selector.

In this case the export time decreased from 103 seconds to 15 seconds, i.e. almost by a factor of 7. However, you should be aware that the C version does not seem able to handle geografts correctly.