How to apply Mixamo Animations to Genesis 3 and Genesis 8

- by

If you’ve ever tried to upload a G3 or G8 character to Mixamo, you’ll have noticed that it’s a complete and utter nightmare. Seemingly nothing will work in the plethora of export options, and a ton of time has been wasted globally, leading to anger, depression and frustration. In short: the stuff us creatives can’t afford.

I’m here to tell you that there is in fact a workaround, but it requires us to “think differently” about how to accomplish our goal of applying Mixamo animations to Genesis 3 and 8 characters. I’ll show you what works for me at this moment in time – technology is fickle, so by the time you read this, the process might very well have stopped working. Let’s think positive and hope it hasn’t 😉

Export Genesis 1

This may sound counter intuitive, but to avoid any Mixamo shenanigans, let’s not deal with Genesis 3 or 8 at all. Instead, let’s load up good old androgynous Genesis 1 in his T-Pose and export him as FBX. These settings work for me:

Notice that we’re not using textures. We won’t need them, and it keeps things nice and slim. Upload the resulting FBX to Mixamo and rejoice – as this should work without trouble.

Apply an animation of your choice, then hit the big orange Download button. We’ll export another FBX from Mixamo with these settings. Frames per second is a personal preference (higher values will deliver more fluid motion). Skin is not necessary either. What I’m saying is, the defaults will probably work just fine.

as of 2021, you need to pick FBX 6.1 for this to work in DAZ Studio

Import Genesis 1 from Mixamo to DAZ Studio

Now that we have an animated character, let’s bring him into DAZ Studio. Notice that there’s a small import dialogue that appears. Pick mixamo.com from the list.

You can now play the animation back and see Genesis 1 in action. That’s awesome! Celebrate! The hard part is over already. But the question remains of course: how do we apply this motion to Genesis 3 and Genesis 8? That’s much easier than I had ever imagined. We’ll get there in the next step. First, let’s extract the animation from the current character.

With Genesis 1 selected, head over to File – Save As – Pose Preset.

In the following dialogue, make sure to select Animation and use the full range. The default is a static pose (Current Frame Only), and we don’t want that. This will create a DUF file on your hard disk, so save it anywhere memorable. Name it something that resembles the animation.

When done, you can delete Genesis 1 from your scene. He’s served his purpose.

Animating Genesis 3

Load your favourite Genesis 3 character now and select him (or her), then head over to File – Merge and select the pose file you’ve saved in the previous step. Since these are standard pose files, you can save them to your library and bring them in via the Content Library tab too, in which case just double-click them.

Depending on your scene, you may encounter this little dialogue box. Choose YES to avoid cutting off any frames.

And voila – if all went well, you should now see your animation flawlessly applied to your Genesis 3 character. Press play and celebrate!

Animating Genesis 8

You can follow the above steps to the letter and use your favourite G8 character too. However, you’ll likely encounter a pose that resembles the “straight jacket” look, something like this:

Just like with a regular G3 pose applied to G8 characters, we need that sweet tool by none other than Agent Unawares, the one and only Pose Converter:

Once installed, simply crank up the Full Body slider and your Genesis 8 figure will look handsome again.

And that’s it! Genesis 1 saved the day. I always liked him for his versatility, but knowing what he can do for future generations, I like him even better now 🙂

Update May 2020

It appears that Mixamo have changed the FBX format upon export, to something that’s currently not supported in DAZ Studio (4.12.1 at the time of writing). Although the Genesis character is still importable into Mixamo without issues, DAZ Studio no longer shows anything when the FBX file is imported. It was great while it lasted I guess, but all good (free) things must come to and end. Thanks to Chris for bringing this to my attention.

I’ve been experimenting with importing the FBX into Blender, which works, however the bone structure is all wonky and I have no idea how to even it out – nor how to then export the data back so that DAZ Studio can understand it. As soon as I figure it out, or if I get a handy tip from a fellow user, I’ll update this article.

Update March 2021

The thing to pick for exports from Mixamo nowadays is FBX 6.1 with skin. This will work when imported into DAZ Studio, but still only with the Genesis 1 figure.



If you enjoy my content, please consider supporting me on Ko-fi. In return you can browse this whole site without any pesky ads! More details here.

Leave a Reply to A Cancel reply