DAZ To Unreal - Characters importing into Unreal 5.1 rotated 90 degrees off
Cordella
Posts: 9
I have tried multple versions @ https://github.com/David-Vodhanel/DazToUnreal/releases
For whatever the reason, with 5.1 all of my character imports come in rotated 90 degrees, which ruins all the animations imported and animations created by retargeting Unreal Animations.
Any suggestions is appreciated. Thanks!
Example 1.jpg
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The Daz UE5 bridge thinks the Unreal forward axis is X, but it doesn't know that Unreal uses different orientations for asset editor, in the asset editor the forward axis is Y, and all the bone managing tools and retargeting tools inside asset editor were coded based on using Y axis as the forward axis.
Diffeomorphic is still the king for exporting Daz characters to Unreal via Blender, just need basic Blender knowledge to use it.
Checked the last Daz bridge update still can't support geografts, so Diffeomorphic is needed if you need geografts.
The best approach as I've tested is to use Diffeomorphic to import them into Blender, then use Auto Rig Pro to rig them with Epic skeletons and then export them into UE5, this method doesn't generate better skin weights than original Daz skin weights though, so there is reason to keep Daz skeletons for better weights and the JCMs. Use the materials conversion for Daz available on Unreal market place to rebuild the materials after importing Daz characters from Blender, it has better results compared to characters imported by the official bridge. There are some even better material methods but they need more knowledge to use.
If you're retargetting in UE5.1 using my retargetting assets, it should work even though the character faces to the right.
Daz To Unreal – Retargeting in UE5 – David Vodhanel
There used to be a Control Rig for daz with UE 4.27, but I can't make it work anymore. I wish it would be part of the exporter (the one that's automatically created doesn't do it)
If you turn on the show fbx import window option, you can set z rot to 90. You also need to set the skeleton in that window or it wil create a new one (which you may or may not want).
Hello, indeed the retargetting works, however any animations exported from Daz are also facing the wrong direction. For animations where the root doesn't move, this can be fixed by rotating 90 degrees in the Z-axis. But for animations with root motion, this can't be fixed.
In the Daz to Unreal settings in Unreal Editor you can turn off Zero Root Rotation. This will make the character face forward.
https://github.com/daz3d/DazToUnreal/releases
I tried the recent updated bridge and found it has been improved and able to import geograft with the character, the doubled geograft mesh has been fixed, the official G8 genitals can be imported with correct materials, golden palace materials and geoshells were imported but not merged and some of the material slots need to be parented to the base skin material. Geograft morphs are still not supported and Diffeomorphic1.7 with Blender is needed for them. Hair materials were not fixed but I use converted groom hair mostly so that doesn't matter. The high heel poses were able to be imported correctly. Tested DazToUnreal 2023 v1.2 with UE4.27, animation importing not tested yet as I'm still using the Blender workflow to modify the animations
The recent version of DazToUnreal has become useful to import most NPCs directly into Unreal without the need for 3rd party apps, would be much better if it also imports the geograft morphs
Animation import is still broken, but the fix twist bones option for G8 is great
Custom FBX importers are still needed to get the Daz animations correctly
The G8 skeleton generated by DazToUnreal 2023 v1.2 is still not usable, the abdomen lower should be parented to pelvis and then delete the hip bone.
Also the naming of the bones should be changed to match Epic skeletons.
.
I've made some updates recently. If you get the latest from my Github it should default to importing facing forward. I've also fixed a bunch of bugs and made some new tutorial videos:
Daz To Unreal - Setup, Character, and Animation Transfer in Unreal 5.3 (youtube.com)
How to Retarget Animations to Daz Studio Characters in Unreal 5.3 (youtube.com)
About that, where is the Skeleton for Genesis 8 in either UE4 or 5? All I see is a skeletal mesh. Whenever I would import M4 and V4 into unreal they always had a skeletal plus their skeletal mesh.
I just watched David's video and using the zip file from Gethub and placing the DaztToUnreal (for version 5.2) into the 5.2.1 plugins folder and it is generating a skeleton now.
Do you have any links with tutorials of this method? Thanks.
Okay, I have tried everything.
I have done every test with 5.4.
The bones are always twisted even with Fix Twist Bones in DAZ and Fix Twist Bones in Unreal, and trying a combination of those settings on and off doesn't fix it either and I've even had some characters come in with their arms all wavy and broken (All genesis 8 nothing that unique).
I just made a new project and tried following the tutorial with Fix Twist Bones checked in Daz with a default project and it came in twisted. So I unchecked it, came in twisted. I then checked the setting in the daz to unreal project settings, and it also came in twisted on or off and if I checked or did not check fix twist bones. So 4 different imports with a combination of fix twist bones did not function, has anyone else got it to work? (4 in a row on this project, I've tried 30+ times at this point)
Ok I have found out how to make it work.
In Unreal 5.4 you absolutely must 100% uncheck "Zero root rotation in import" in the daz to unreal bridge settings, leave the fix twist bones in Unreal on.
In Daz check fix twist bones.
Hello,
Just wanted to share some information which might be helpful. I was using the newest vesion of DAZToUnreal from here: https://github.com/David-Vodhanel/DazToUnreal/releases
I am using UE5.4 version. To transfer the DAZ Genesis 9 model to Unreal I am unchecking "Zero root rotation in import" in Unreal engine project settings->DazToUnreal plugin settings, keeping the Fix Twist Bones and Rotation checked. In DAZ application while using DAZ to Unreal plugin to export the character I unchek "Import facing right" and leave the "Fix Twist Bones" checked. In this way i get my DAZ character transferred in Unreal facing the correct way to front (facing the camera).
By doing this I was getting the problem to retarget the animations to may DAZ character. The provided IK and retarget assets by the plugin were not aligning the charracter correctly. The character was skewed and almost laying on the ground by side. Automatic retargeting (new feature in UE5.4 - checkbox in retargeting window) was not working corrctly as well: left hand pulled to left side and all body leaned a bit to the left side. I do not know why byt started to think it was because I transferred the character facing to the camera and not to side as by default (also be default the plugin rigs are facing to the side and not to the front).
Then I copied the original G9IKRig and G9Retargeter from plugin folder to my new created character folder to make experimenting. First I opened G9Retargeter and made the target character (DAZ) auto aligning to source (Quin character) by entering to edit mode and selecting root and pressing the button AutoAlign->Align All Bones. This made my character aligned correctly and seems was very happy to see all animations working correctly. Meaning "almost correctly) untill I spoted some weird head movements on some animations. I spend 3 days to find out what was wrong still. Did not find any information neither in Google nor in Youtube. I started to check everything from the skeletons - all the chain to the retargeter. And I hope I found a problem (at least for now). What I found thet the G9IKRig provided by plugin uses retarget chain for neck1->neck2->head as Head but Quin/Manny has 2 chains for neck and head. So I made correction (splitted) G9IKRig neck chain into 2 correct chains: neck1-neck2 into chain Neck and head to chain head.
This made my day very happy. As all problems dissapeared. I hope this will help someone having same issues like me because nobody before reported these problems and how to solve them.
I love you bro, you are a life saver. i was giving up when found your comment. The same daz model i was converting it to actor core, and I was about to give up on the Daz model and use the converted model. Thanks bro, you are the best for sharing this information.
After a crazy journey of more thant 3 days i found out a possible reason (at least for me?): Wrong plugin version... There are actually 3 sources to get "DazToUnreal":
1. The official one you can "purchase" here in the store and download trough Daz Install Manager. Unfortunately, the current version of this is only supporting up to UE5.3
2. The official git repo of the plugin, hosted by daz itself. This one is almost latest: It is based on the original plugin by David Vodhanel but added the mac version (the mac version is something daz itself is responsible for as David has no time for that). https://github.com/daz3d/DazToUnreal
3. The official git repo of David Vodhanel - this is the _absolutely_ latest version. https://github.com/David-Vodhanel/DazToUnreal
After i found out that UE5 is also available for mac OS, i've gone trough the entire setup again on my mac and to my big surprise - there the retargeting just works out of the box (as it should). But all i've tried on my windows machine always resultet in this wrong positioning. Manually trying to fix it led to super strange deformations in the animations. Another crazy thing is that the current version has a bug on windows as it is unable to activate the "ML Deformer Framework" (do it manually and the plugin suddenly can load). After all i had to entirely delete my DazStudio installation (!!!), also delete the entire engine installation again and start from scratch. It seems to me that unreal engine is somehow storing/caching the retarget assets on the very first attempt you use/activate the plugin with the engine. Because whenever i have the wrong positioning, i'm stuck forever - even if i re-install the correct plugin over it.
Sooo.... make a clean install of daz studio and unreal engine and truly try to pick the correct plugin version on the very first try - and it just works :)
Yep! Unchecking "Zero root rotation in import" is the solution. Almost like "if it was a snake it would've bit me!" Thanks for the Fix Kaincypher!
THANK YOU !
For me the key discovery to make it work egardless of import options was to generate my own IK Retargeter asset in 5.4, rather than using the one that comes with the bridge.