Have you already be confronted to the situation of importing a Daz3d figure into 3DXchange that has "Geometry Shells" (a Daz3d feature allowing to use a live clone of an original surface offset by a certain distance and used for things like body suits, or armors or etc..)
Those shells have no skinning once exported to FBX.. So I believe I'll have to extract each one of those in Daz3d, export/re-import probably, transfer weights, etc..

But before I do that I wanted to know, perhaps you guys have found an efficient and more direct method in order to successfully import those "Shells" into 3DXchange (skinned I mean) ?

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guy rabiller | GOETZIWOOD STUDIOS
"N.O.E." (Nations Of Earth) Sci-Fi TV Show, Showrunner.

For instance I'm trying to find a option that would allow us to "extract" as a separated mesh those shells, while keeping weights and possibly morphs but so far no luck. Perhaps I've missed something.

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guy rabiller | GOETZIWOOD STUDIOS
"N.O.E." (Nations Of Earth) Sci-Fi TV Show, Showrunner.

I did encounter this once and I *believe* (but I'm old so I may not be remembering properly) that I solved it inside of Daz during the export, by somehow checking some boxes that attached the shell permanently to the figure (but perhaps that's not what you want).

Can you give me an example or two?  Just the names, ad I most likely have them (I'm SUCH a Daz whore I have most everything they've ever released).  Perhaps if I load them up I'll remember what I did.

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Alienware Aurora R16, Win 11, i9-149000KF, 3.20GHz CPU, 64GB RAM, RTX 4090 (24GB), Samsung 870 Pro 8TB, Gen3 MVNe M-2 SSD, 4TBx2, 39" Alienware Widescreen Monitor
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

https://www.daz3d.com/system-50-for-genesis-3-female-s

I've tried almost every export options but so far.. no luck : /

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guy rabiller | GOETZIWOOD STUDIOS
"N.O.E." (Nations Of Earth) Sci-Fi TV Show, Showrunner.

Guy,

I don't have that particular version (too creepy for me) but I do have System 46, same software dev, and same basic design.

To do this you'll need to use Blender.  If you are familiar with doing clothing for CC through Blender it will be a piece of cake -- but it's not too hard otherwise.  Just bring the exported FBX into Blender and, with the shell mesh selected, unparent but keep transformations.  Then delete that shell armature.  With the shell mesh selected, shift and select the main armature (click on any bone) and then press Ctrl-P and choose "with empty groups"..  Finally, select the main mesh, and then holding down the shift key, select that shell mesh.  Go to weight paint and then choose Transfer weights and go down to the source and change to "By Name".  Voila!  You are finished -- export as FBX from Blender (but turn off "Add Leaf Bones" in the armature tab -- sigh -- there should be some way to get this off by default) and import into XChange and convert.

It sounds like a lot (and perhaps it is, but I've done so much clothing conversion my fingers can do it in their sleep :>).  Indeed, I'm thinking of writing a Python script to do this since the same steps are done over and over and over... but I digress.  This ought to work for you but let me know if you have any problems.

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Alienware Aurora R16, Win 11, i9-149000KF, 3.20GHz CPU, 64GB RAM, RTX 4090 (24GB), Samsung 870 Pro 8TB, Gen3 MVNe M-2 SSD, 4TBx2, 39" Alienware Widescreen Monitor
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

Thanks Mike.
In fact that's what I was about to do, but directly in Daz3D. Doing this in Blender I'll loose the Morphs on the "Helmet" while I should be able to transfer those directly in Daz3d. Well I hope.. Lets see..

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guy rabiller | GOETZIWOOD STUDIOS
"N.O.E." (Nations Of Earth) Sci-Fi TV Show, Showrunner.

You should be able to keep the morphs.  Let me know and I can test it here as well.

(I'm SO lazy this morning -- I have a ton of things to do and no energy to do them.  Sigh).

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Alienware Aurora R16, Win 11, i9-149000KF, 3.20GHz CPU, 64GB RAM, RTX 4090 (24GB), Samsung 870 Pro 8TB, Gen3 MVNe M-2 SSD, 4TBx2, 39" Alienware Widescreen Monitor
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

Well it worked from within Daz3D, except for a few issues with the morphs due to the method used by the Transfer Utility (vertex proximity).
There is a UV Space option which worked wonderfully well for the "Suit" and "Rivets" shell, but made Daz3D crashes when tried with the "Helmet" shell, probably because it does not contains the entire mesh of the Genesis 3 Female figure.
So, for now, I have to use the proximity method which introduce some artifacts for some morphs. I'll have to manually clean those I guess because I see no other option.

Aside from that, once imported into 3DXchange, everything works as expected, and beside the Genesis3 figure auto-detection, this time I get correct skinning on the "shells", and the animations and morphs and I just have to re-assign the Eyes and set the expressions for those.

The entire process is then successful except that I'll have to find a better way to properly get those morphs out of the base mesh.

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guy rabiller | GOETZIWOOD STUDIOS
"N.O.E." (Nations Of Earth) Sci-Fi TV Show, Showrunner.

So you didn't use Blender?  Care to outline your workflow?

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Alienware Aurora R16, Win 11, i9-149000KF, 3.20GHz CPU, 64GB RAM, RTX 4090 (24GB), Samsung 870 Pro 8TB, Gen3 MVNe M-2 SSD, 4TBx2, 39" Alienware Widescreen Monitor
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

\o/ Now I got the UV Space Morphs transfer working! I just had to unhide the hidden part of the shell to get back the entire Genesis 3 Female geometry. No more crash! I'll then delete later the mesh parts I don't need.


Nope, I did it entirely from within Daz3d but it is basically what you suggested in Blender.
1) I exported as obj the 3 shells.
2) Re-imported those 3 obj.
3) Used the Transfer Utility tool to transfer the Skin Weights from the base Genesis 3 Female figure to each obj (with the UV Space method).
4) For the "Helmet" shell, before I exported it to obj then I've unhidden all the parts. Then used Weight + Morphs transfer (UV Space) in the Transfer Utility tool.

So I now have proper skin weights and morphs on the three "shell" meshes. I still have some cleanup to do though because these shells also uses Cut Out maps (Opacity Maps in iClone). This I don't like because in fact the hidden geometry is still here. So I'll delete as much geometry as possible. But aside from that I get correct working import in 3DXchange, with animation Face Keys and Morph (still have to remap the Eyes though).

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guy rabiller | GOETZIWOOD STUDIOS
"N.O.E." (Nations Of Earth) Sci-Fi TV Show, Showrunner.