MAYA, DAZ, FBX, HumanIK and More... continued discussion

LumenVox

I know that there are many users here who are bringing their DAZ characters into Maya. If you could help, I'd appreciate any advice.

Currently I have found the pipeline between DAZ and Maya to be less then stellar for getting all the nifty character configurations across. I'd like to know is there any way to get the following across to Maya.

Is there a way, via .FBX or .DAE or even through a "middle-ware" tool to get a DAZ Character over to Maya with skinning data attached or is the issue with this data the simple fact that it is an internal "blend shape" and not a "deformer" that can be carried over?

Does anyone have any good examples of this data that has been translated over.

Additionally, is there a default pose that can be loaded into DAZ that can give me an HIK ready bind-pose that will allow you to set the exported bind-pose from DAZ to an HIK friendly T-Pose. This, in-turn will allow you to take the character and "characterize" the skeleton with HIK for Maya or Motion-Builder without having to go back and repose by hand.

I am aware there are a slew of people touching on these topics in some degree but please understand, with new versions of both software, iterations of FBX carrying new data, Autodesk supporting additional features often it would really help me to ask the community at large and see if there can be any light shed on these questions.

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated!