I'm wanting to "Bake" fur that's both Parented and Fit to the main object, in this case Baxter the English Bulldog (https://www.daz3d.com/baxter-the-english-bulldog-for-dog-8) that is based on Daz Dog 8. When I unparent the fur item though, it reverts to the zeroed shape. Need to do that as the OBJ export is too large, even with Don't Export Hidden.

One would think that the Bake to Transforms would be the way to go, but not having any luck. Would the Transfer Utility be the correct tool?

I've Pudgy the Corgi too (no longer listed in Daz's catalog it seems, so can't get more info), and it uses the same type of Fur, but unparenting it retains the shape. I can the subsequently export separately to bring back together outside of DS. I don't get morphs but and re-weight map easily & get basic movement which is all I'm after really.

Either way, I'll need help since there are no docs and ancient vids.

Bake to Transforms turns Pose Controls (e.g. the eyes side to side slider on the head or figure node) into rotations on the bones (side to side on each eye).

Transfer Utility is used to project the rigging from a base figure figure (e.g a Genesis) into a model that is to become a fitted item - it can also be used to project morphs. It is a tool to simplify rigging.

Strand-based hair is genrated from the mesh it is attached to, so I am not sure what what you want - to separate the fur and base model - is possible, but I am not clear on what your ultimate goal is since you speak of bringing it back into DS.

No, OUTSIDE of DS.  Not wanting to bring back in.

This is basically what I used to do with the Look at my Hair fur as it saves off the obj items separately before bringing back into DS.

In the first image in case it's not clear, that's the result of un-parenting the fur from the Baxter base and the result is showing the Daz Dog 8 fur not "Conformed" to Baxter. But when I do the same thing with Pudgy, it retains the Pudgy shape, and then I can export it as an .obj, etc.

It sounds than perhaps I need to use the Transfer Utility for this sort of thing, which I'm not that familiar with. I guess exporting to FBX handle a lot of that for you.

What I'm wanting to understand, is why one isn't working yet the other is and how to/where to control that.  So, I don't know if that's a morph, weight mapping, something else entirely,...?

That make sense?

I don't know Pudgy or how it iss et up - a morph from the daz Dog or something else? If you unfit (rather than unparent) a fitted item it will stop following the morphs of the item it was fitted to, and revert to its original shape - though you should be able to export just the "body-cap" mesh and import it as a morph to apply to the unfitted  body-cap which you could then apply though I can see ways in which that might fail.

I'll give that a try, but that was part of my problem in that I couldn't get more info on Pudgy either, but I don't think it's based on Daz Dog. Couldn't even find the Vendor or artist's name.

I had success doing similar thing with G9 hair for a G8F character. The order of performing unfitting & unparenting is important it seems. Unparenting isn't an issue, but trying to fit the G9 hair to a G8 figure, although the script comes up and gives you the desired choices, it crashes. Suspect the new 6.23, so not overly concerned. I just exported out to FBX anyway & could do the rest in Lightwave, which I pretty much have to do anyway. Had to manually place the pivot was all.

Animal figures don't have a cap mesh as such that I've seen comparable with that for most humanoid hair.

even if you can do it, the size of the files are horrendous, you are better off creating fur in your target app if you can

I have exported rigged strandbased head hair with bones but only by itself, weird stuff happens with FBX and fitted to a figure, unlike clothing it doesn't merge skeletons

full body furs are very hit or miss depending how the PA did it
(not that we can tell being PA only but guessing those you can hide bones on are the ones that export as probably rigged fibermesh converted to iray curves)

and SBH editor hairs don't export rigged

but not many apps will load millions of polygons which it ends up being

Oh, I would have made critter fur long ago... if I had any talent in that area and wasn't mildly arthritic. ;)

And of course the Daz to Blender bridge doesn't do critters I'm told.

But over the years, I've developed a good workflow for strand-based head hair with Figures with the rigging & morphs, when exported via FBX. G9 changed a lot of that, but recently had a successful G9 hair to a G8 figure with its rigging.

I almost got this working for Baxter, but there's some aspect that's still alluding me. The default Baxter Actor load brings in the dForce Fur as well. You can un-parent the fur of course, but when you un-fit it, that's when it reverts back to the Dog 8 shaping.

With Pudgy, (I finally found that its by Hypertaf; I can still download the product which I did to get the info, but no artist listed any longer here or Daz it seems). It also has dForce fur, with a LowRes version as well but can't see a difference in Wirefames. I both cases, I'm turning ON the Preview Hairs, and set Line Tesselation to 2 for both Viewport and Render. But when I un-fit this Fur, it retains Pudgy's shape.

That's the knowledge air-gap I have; how do you get the Fur to retain or bake to that of its "fitted" shape.

I realize the resulting OBJ geometry is essentially just guide hairs, but with shorter fur where they are dense enough it works. They're quad poly strands & by setting them to double sided, they work well; most shots aren't close ups.  No morphs are getting exported or weight mapping with OBJ of course, so file size isn't too bad. Morphs would be nice to have for Snarls, etc., but so it goes. Then I re-apply weight to the fur mapping from the FBX exported body mesh. So now the figure and fur can be posed where it's just using bone deformation.

I tried this with just Baxter & no fur, by Zeroing the Pose and exporting as an OBJ then imported that back into DS. The new OBJ is close but no Cohiba. Tried exported the figure and fur where all fit properly out as OBJ. Resulting file was just under 4Gb, so that doesn't work.

So for now, Baxter has to remain nekkid.

Was pudgy a morphed fiogure or was that its default shape? The Daz Dog 3 breeds are morph (and textures) which is why the shape reverts on unfitting from the dog figure - if Pudgy is Pudgy-shaped then there is no morph to revert.

Best I can tell is that he's a stand-alone, so no morphing.

So is there a way to bake the "fit to" in this case with Baxter?

As I said (or intended to) - you would need to  make the morph part of the skin/shell to which the hairs are applied - for which you would need to export it without the hairs at base resolution.

Assuming the shell doesn't already have the  reight morph - it would still switch off when you unfitted the item, but you could then set it manually.

Tried again and seems to match nicely now, so not sure what I did wrong earlier.

Got the fur to export, but after all of that, I don't think the Baxter dForce hair is going to work in this case. There's fur density and such going at render time that generates much of the "geometry", & not just guide hairs, and that's not going to export as a legal OBJ, i.e. under 2Gb.