Getting started with Daz3d morph loader pro and how to make morph controls for Daz character models
After playing around with Daz3d characters for some time I began to wonder how are the morph controls actually made? You must have been wondering the same thing, so let’s discover the process together. This article is the summary of all the research I did including a chat with ChatGPT and reading through the docs […]
After playing around with Daz3d characters for some time I began to wonder how are the morph controls actually made? You must have been wondering the same thing, so let’s discover the process together. This article is the summary of all the research I did including a chat with ChatGPT and reading through the docs for a range of products as well as experiments inside Daz3d studio itself.
When we buy character models from Daz3d we often get a range of custom morphs used to control the shape of the character mesh. This add on top of the dials already provided by Daz for the base character. Let’s say it’s Genesis 8 that’s the base, some of the morphs for this character have changed since G3. Often times we want more control over the character mesh than what Daz offers in it’s selection of base morphs. This is where custom morphs come into play, enabling a wider range of morph dials.
One possible frustration however is maybe you buy a few different Daz characters that you like, and they all have the base morphs from Daz, but the options for custom morphs can vary a lot. There are universal morph kits offered by a variety of vendors, and sometimes sold as addons by Daz itself. Most common include a face morph kit, body morph kit, and breast and glute morph kits for female characters. Here is an example of a 3rd party face shapes morph kit for Daz Genesis 8 characters: Face Shapes for Genesis 8 Female | Daz 3D
The official plugin CCT (Content Creator Toolkit) used to be available as a separate plugin that you needed to install. Now if you have Daz 4.x+ version installed as the “Pro Edition” it will be automatically available to use. Both free and pro editions of Daz are actually free, but the difference is you have to activate Daz with a license key that you get from your Daz account. Check under help > about Daz inside of Daz to see the status and version of your Daz Studio installation. If it’s not already showing “Professional Edition” then go to the Daz website, and find the key under your account details. This will get you started using CCT and being able to use the Morph Loader Pro that is contained within it.
Importing morphs you’ve created in external tools like Blender is great, but a little too advanced for many beginning creators. For them Daz3d has built-in tools that are relatively simple and easy to use. There is a tool called D-Former which is amazing and makes creation custom morphs simple and easy.
