Once you change the topology, you will only be able to return character as Humanoid type and loose all the benefits of Standard character. Plus, recent CC update messed up the routine I usually follow to import Standard characters back as Humanoids in terms of preserving critical textures and messed up armature where shoulders would appear slouchy ( Character Creator 4.52 and 4.53 Official Issues Thread - #82 by 4u2ges ).
But basically those are steps for Blender:
- Export Standard CC character to FBX (NOT with pipeline) with Blender profile and with “Mesh and Expression Sequence” option.
- Import FBX right back to CC as Humanoid and execute “Save All Object Textures” in Materials. This step is only necessary to save all textures and restore it when customized character is imported back (but as I mentioned, CC no longer imports back textures other than Base Color, Opacity and Bump).
- Import originally exported FBX into Blender and customize character. For your case I’d suggest, deleting ears and nose mesh and do Grid Fill to replace topology in those areas.
- Once done, export character out of Blender (uncheck “Add Leaf bones” in Armature section) and import into CC as Humanoid (CC_G3Character profile). Restore textures with “Load All Object Textures”. Again you will be missing a lot of textures and need to recover those manually if necessary.
- Fire up Edit Expressions and convert Standard profile to Extended (that is if your original character had an Extended type face profile). Then in Batch Import select “FBX with Frame Sequence” and point to the same FBX file you imported customized character into CC.
- The only thing left, is to tweak head textures by flattening nose/ears areas as per your preferences.
But again missing textures and messed up armature is a showstopper for this method… at least at the moment!