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Hmmm. First, thanks to the heavy lifters who made this thread possible. I finally took a close look at G3, and I found it better than both G1 and G2 (never liked G2).
Of course, with all my characters on Genesis, G3 doesn't support the morphs I need.
So, having made it work, rather well (IMO) I have to say to Havos, it's the nature of the beast. Genesis 3's eyes are a fundamentally different animal than Genesis. I expect it's the same for G2. The economy of vertices is impressive. The end result, as has been noted elsewhere, is iffy.
I've gotten what I consider to be acceptable results with eyes, as I hope to show below. How? Blender.
Once I fit the transfer shape to the source figure, the first thing I do is export both to Blender, and laboriously correct the position of errant vertices with the application of shrink wrap modifiers and lots of patience. I then import the corrected mesh to the transfer figure as a morph.
When I export the morphed figure, I also take the time to correct the wild vertex that may remain before bringing the shape to G3. FINALLY, I create JCMs to help the eyes close. I'm also careful to keep the morph I create for G3 as close to the default pose as possible (though I'm currently trying to transfer Anubis's legs) because rig adjustment with anything more than center points results in upside down eyes. This would be no issue if the eyelid controls flipped as well, but when morphed G3 looks down, her eyelids go up. Again, center points only results in a good rig that doesn't have that issue,
Having been all up inside G3F's eyes, I can say with certainty that there is no 100% solution that's going to result in a morph transfer with good fidelity. I do toons, and as was also noted elsewhere, toons have an issue around the eyes. Best I can figure, having fixed it, it has to do with projection. When the transfer figure takes weight mapping from the source, some bits of G3's face get assigned to the eye. When you apply a morph, that bit moves with the eye, resulting in distortion. Because all Genesis figures have face bits that cross inside the eye, this will always happen. This may not be obvious, because eye is a face group and face is a surface. But the face bits should part of the Head face group
The only fix is to go into the geometry editor and manually assign the bits that should be head to the head. This is as tedious as it sounds.
Anywho, here's a render of Genesis and G3F using the same shape. This is custom, being a mix of Stephanie something, 3DU's Kimberly, Genesis Face morphs and other stuff. Not that, despite being well matched on vertex by vertex basis, G3's iris looks quite a bit larger.
Thanks for the information. I had been hoping for an easier way to transfer the morphs over than needing to take each one into a modeller to fix it up. Lets hope when/if Generation X 3 arrives, it can do a better job of the transfer.
Unfortunately, I have a feeling that is what is slowing it down...
If there's anything that I'd bet on vexing Gen-X3, I'd say it's probably the eye flipping thing, but I don't really know how any of the Gen-X products actually work. I'm fairly technical, and most of the inner working of Studio are beyond me. I was able to fix my transfer figure well enough by reading the tuts and thinking about how the same thing Daz does would work in Blender. Then deciding it must be weight mapping/geometry assignment purely on the basis of that was something I knew how to edit
I made a corrected Genesis Morph for G3F to build a G3F Morph for Genesis. I did a normal bone adjust and ERC freeze, just so I could be sure the weight mapping was projected correctly to the Genesis transfer figure.
Eyes flipped.
I should have questioned whether that was going to be a problem for the Genesis figure. The whole point was to make a G3F shape on Genesis, and the eyes unflip as you dial back to default shape. But it seems it's not been an issue for me. Of course, I haven't bone adjusted the G3F shape on Genesis, because I don't need it for any poses. Hopefully, that doesn't come back to bite my butt. (Did I mention that I don't actually know why this works?)
My guess is that, while my corrected shape morphs help, the big thing that makes my transfer figure work pretty well is the corrected geometry assignment/weighting. If I could figure out how to save that as a kind of morph, I'd share it, but my guess is that there's no container in Daz for that as a separate file. I can't imagine there would be a need for weight map deltas, (or how you'd define that). The only use for it that I see is this edge case here, and that breaks the Daz business model just a bit.
I don't mean to make it sound like Daz being greedy. I don't think that's it. It's just that every other feature used in this kind of morph transfer is important to actually make a figure work normally in Daz. Perfect projection of weights between figures isn't. In fact, it's important for projection to be imperfect so that it can do a good job of transferring out to clothing that may not follow the figure shape closely. In that case, you really don't want the projection from the eyes. When I point out that business model, I just mean to say that Daz has no incentive to build a fix into Studio that supports one edge case. Again, admitting I have no idea how Gen-X actually works, my guess is that Gen-X has been exactly that. A fix for one particular edge case. The fact that it lives in the Daz store says that they haven't been following up on their minor incentive to suppress that edge case, either.
At least, that's my guess.
The ERC issue that causes the flipped eyes seems to be a fairly easy problem to generate and not one everyone would notice. (That is where the eye flipping happens, with the auto-aligning of bones and ERC freeze.) I've got a couple of Most Digital Creations' G3F characters and their eyes are flipped. I went back and forth with the vendor to figure out the problem and I believe he's working on fixes and updates for his characters.
The eyes actually end up worse when these morphs are dialed at 50%. Looking sideways causes one eye to go up and the other to go down. (Attached below.) Add to that looking up or down and the eyes go full chameleon. As technical problems go, it's at least somewhat amusing. ;)
I haven't had time to dig deep into it, but I think we might be able to re-rotate the eye bones (Z axis) before ERC freeze to fix this. The problem with vertices getting scrambled is unrelated and you're right that it's caused by all those tiny polys crossing and being too close to each other. Even the eye mesh gets confused with the tear mesh.
That's funny as hell. It's interesting to see it on a fairly normal figure. I'd thought it was more related to taking extreme departures from the base shape.
I wouldn't have seen it if my very first transfer hadn't been 3DU's Kim. I expected that would need JCM correction for the eyes, so I was very interested in what the eyes would do. And even then, I was half way through making the JCM correction before I noticed.
If you dial Kimberly in a 50% her eyes would be visibly off. First time through, I followed SickleYield's advice about using orientation adjust as well. This made the eyes flip and wobble during the flip, so you could clearly see it happen.
I thought about z-rotating the bone, but I've got 6 major and 5 minor character conversions that needs doing, and the main thing is "Does it work right" not, "Is this a fully professional product." The whole thing with the Anubis legs was a proof of concept that got out of hand. And I just thought of what might be an easier way to do it, which is a whole other digression.
I have considered how to take what I'm learning to full on content creation mode, but my skills aren't there yet.
Iwas gonna skip this until I tried it, but what the heck.
Caveat: I haven't even tested this. in fact, I haven't foggiest idea if it's at all possible. But , assuming you aren't too afraid of using an external modeler to correct morphs, this may help with eye transfer issues.
In Edit Mode, the context menu on individual morphs has a "Select Morph verticies" entry. My thought is, maybe you can import a morph, then use the option to remove the eyes from verts that are affected by said morph. Dial in the edited morph, and export that to your modeler. Scale and move the eyes to where they should be.
Delete the edited morph from the figure in Daz, and import the version you just fixed in the external editor. Adjust and ERC freeze that. While it isn't as zippy has having full product that does all the lifting for you, it does have the advantages of short cutting around the distortion caused by morphing the eyes, and might avoid the bone flip (Might not) because the fundamental shape of the eye doesn't change. Just scale and location.
I'll probably test it out on my Anubis leg transfer project, and maybe something like Aiko 5, and report my findings.
Edit: It occurs to me that this shouldn't even need an external editor. You can use the eye node and scale and move the eyes right in Studio. You just have to remember to zero the figure before you import the corrected morph. Probably better, even, to use the SickleYeild method of "delete the figure from the scene and load a fresh version."
Edit 2: Whelp, definitely doesn't work. No way to edit the selection.
I did figure out something that does work, but it will take me a while to figure out a clear workflow. It also explains why the surface group stuff I did works. It has to do something I did messing with rigidity that I forgot I'd done, because I thought it wasn't working.
Anyway, more when I have a handle on how to explain it.
This is the downside of letting algorithms make abstract decisions. The program's doing what makes sense mathematically, but even digital sculptures need an artist's touch. This eye issue may be related to the very common 3D problem of gimbal lock, where you rotate one axis 90 degrees and from that point two of the axes start acting the same and you can't get full rotational control from your object.
There could be something to removing the eyes from the morph. Might be worth trying to hide the eyes on the export so they aren't included, clean up or adjust whatever needs it in the modeler, load the cleaned-up morph to the target figure, auto-adjust bones, then move/resize the eyes into place before ERC freeze. I hope the auto-adjust wouldn't rotate the eyes if the eyes hadn't been changed at all by the morph.
Keep pecking away at it as you're able. We're all learning here. :)
I've got most of a workflow worked out, but it's freaking epic. I've never been one for writing tuts, so I'm not sure I'm even up to the task.
I will try, but it will take a few days. And there's no helping this: Blender required. Nothing special about blender, but it's the only modeler I know, so it's the only way I'll be able to clearly explain what has to be done. From my POV, the blender bit is so easy, a caveman could do it. But I've been using blender for something like 9 years, now. Three years with feeling. I recognize that I have a particular set of skills.
That said, it really isn't that hard, and I think I can whip up a clear set of directions, with pictures. The pictures are going to be important, otherwise the Blender interface is gonna be discouraging. That said, I remember the first time I booted up Daz Studio. 30 seconds later, I closed it. Because of the interface.
Anyone here has to have survived one interface of madness. What's one more?
Hi all... In order to solve the flipped eye problem, you do the Adjust Rig to Shape in 2 passes after importing your morph:
Pass 1, select all but the eye related stuff (eyelids and squint) and all the 3 options at the bottom;
Pass 2, select only the eyes and related stuff and deselect Adjust Orientation.
Then ERC freeze etc etc.
Try it. Not the most accurate solution but for sure better than default.
I was wondering if that would work, properly. Thanks!
Is Daz Studio 4.9 the end of this?
I think that this was possible is the main reason they encrypt certain resources now... :-(
I haven't tested, but ti should only be functions that require editing encrypted files that are problematic. Reember that to date the only encrypted items are the promotional free-with-other-purchases items from Thursday and yesterday so there's only one character affected.
So far I haven't run into any issues using content creation tools in 4.9, but I haven't gotten any of the suspect content either.
I'm rather enjoying the update, as it starts faster, and is bit more peppy. I'd not say that it is over all superior to 4.8. Figure loading isn't hugely faster, and you'd quickly not notice the difference. tdlmake still eats all the system resources. But the tools haven't shown any limitations
Still, I can't imagine an encrypted morph would be an issue, unless studio is specifically designed to prevent those morphs from being applied to exported OBJs. The whole method of this thread is using studio to apply a morph to the geometry, and then exporting said geometry. So long as that works, encryption just makes mass editing more tedious, which is not unlike compressed morphs.
Which is lightly related to why I came back to comment.
I'd said I'd do a tutorial, and I do mean to, but it won't be what I was originally planning. The method I came up with works, some times. Other times it doesn't I don't know why, so that means the theory I'd had as to what was happening is WRONG WRONG WRONG. I don't have a better theory. Until I know what's really going on, I can't really recommend any one else do it. Things could get broked.
I do have a fast and dirty method to getting better eye results, but it's super dirty. Results should be better, but not perfect. That's what I hope to have tut on soon. I just want to get one image done that I've been putting off doing for 2 weeks. And I've been putting off because mass editing resource files. (See? Lightly related.) I've always been bugged that you get these expression options that are particular to only one side of the face. Like a Coy smirk that only curls up on the left, and no right side mirror.
With Genesis 3 expressions being poses, it turns out you can basically mass edit the pose definition files to make Mirrored versions of stuff like that.
Rabbithole. I haz fallen down one. (It's a rabbit hole because... Well, if you ever had a reason to create a bone in studio, you know bones have names they display and then they have real names. The definitons for a pose reference the bone's real name, and the there are typos and inconsistencies in the real names of the face rig bones. e.g rCorner vs lCorver. So just flipping right to left with a mass edit find/replace doesn't quite do it. Also, once you've fixed all that, you have to flip the sign [- to + and + to -] on any X translations and Y rotations, and I can't think of a mass edit method to do that safely. In the end, I did it manually in the Property Hierarchy. Still, I was able to mirror 30 face poses in a day. The rest of the time was figuring if it could be done, while living the rest of my life.)
All of this is, itself, just me trying to get ready to create custom expressions for my custom characters. (Example, G3F Eyes up-down makes in really subtle movements of the eyelids on toon shapes, resulting in really wide eyed looks. I wanted to make custom eyelid controls without resorting to Joint controlled morphs) I don't want expression pose presets. I want expression sliders, so I can mix and match their own expressions. Suffice it to say, over the last several days, I have been poking the content creation in 4.9 pretty often, and it's not been an issue for any current content I have. The biggest problem I had was that the face rig bones were mysteriously missing from the scene tab, but that was just "Show Hidden Nodes" being unchecked. For most of what I want to do, the basic expression sliders provide plenty of control.
I might have a thing to post here! I think. I havn't read through the whole thread, but transferring skirts ang getting crotch divots is still a problem yes? Because if yes, I have figured out a way to make myself a clone for skirts and dresses that gets no crotch divots
That would be great to learn. Please post!
Its actually pretty simple. What I create is a clone where the top half is the clone of the figure I'm converting from, but the bottom half is the default figure. That way the clone basically tells the skirt okay now, do nothing.
What I do is export a G3f at base res with no morphs and a version with the clone I want to modify dialed in.
I load both these objects in blender (file > import > obj and make sure keep vertex order is checked)
I select the clone and shift-select the base object to select both
In the object data panel (the upside down triangle on the right) I go to shape keys > join as shapes. This makes the clone work like a morph would in studio. Dial in your clone shape key. You can now delete the clone itself (fig1)
In edit mode I select the top half of the figure. To do so quickly hit 'z' (oops not x) to make the figure see through and c for circle select (left click to select stuff scroll wheel to make the circle bigger or smaller right click when you're done selecting) (fig2)
I make a vertex group in the object data panel and hit assign to assign my selected vertices.
I go to weight painting and turn on x symmetry under option on the left panel. Select the blur brush (tools on the left panel) and smooth out my vertex group, making sure things like the buttcrack stay fully blue. (fig3)
In the object data panel under shape keys there's a blank box labled blend. Click it to add your vertex group. This will blend the shape key so it only applies to vertices in the group i.e. looking in the weight painting mode the red area the morph will apply fully the blue areas it wont apply at all and the in between areas it will apply a bit. (fig4)
You now have a mermaid, your clone on top and the default figure on the bottom. export this object (file > export > obj and generally I check selection only so only the what I want is selected)
Go back to DS and whip out morph loader pro select your morph file name the morph something non-hideous like 'V4 Clone Skirt'. Set the property group to hidden/clones and import it It should load fine.
Go to hidden/clones select your new clone click the gear > parameter settings and in the options check hidden and the type as modifier/clone
YAY!
And for a comparison
the Marie Louise 18th Century Gown with the non skirt optimized clone I transferred over from gen 2 vs using my modified skirts clone.
No hideous distortions!
Thank you for the instructions. I'm no blender expert, but it looks like your instructions are detailed enough for me to give it a try. I'll post back with questions/results.
I made it through the tutorial, although it was kind of hard for me, because I know little about Blender. Pressing the x key kept bringing up a delete dialog instead of making the model see through. I didn't see how you selected the upper half with the circular selection with the c key. I did it with selecting several small areas, because one big area made a convex selection at the bottom where yours was concave. I never would have made it without your detailed steps and diagrams, so thanks for all the detail. I also didn't see instructions for saving the clone morph, but I used Save As>Support Asset>Morph Asset to save it. It is necessary to save it isn't it?
The results so far are astounding! I've only tried one dress, the V4 MFD, because I don't have much V4 stuff installed right now. I even dialed a few morphs in the G3F and posed her as a little extra stress test. Look what a difference your clone made!
Woo! And yeah saving is important... But whats a tutorial by me without a few forgotten steps (I'm just proud half the steps weren't 'now use this dohickey to do this thing'
and 'x' didnt work because its 'z'... not even a typo, I honestly thought it was 'x'. In my defense the few blender hotkeys I know I do mostly by muscle memory. I can find it without looking, I just don't know what it actually is. (I'm worse in the real world, I do a disturbing amount of communication by pointing and grunting)
Another success! You need to package this and sell it in the Daz store before some other PA steals your idea. This should be a gold mine.
More examples of using the V4 Skirt Clone I built following these instructions from j cade.
I didn't bother to render a comparison with the normal autofit for these.
Edit: Added another image where my G3F characters also used Growing Up morphs. I still got pleasing results, even with these extra morphs.
Alrighty, trying this, must be missing something in one of the steps because the figures are loading into blender flat to the ground rather than standing up...
When importing into blender in operator presets make sure its set to -Z forward and Y Up
You could also rotate it in scene, but if you're going to be using blender mor than once its good to have it setup that way.
Thanks to much help from Nadino, I managed to follow the tutorial... Only to be stymied by my lack of painting ability when the weight map painting portion came up. Still everything worked as it should, I just need to paint a better map. :) (Distortions at loading were gone, but somehow I botched the hip so there were some pokethrough issues.)
I had some pokethrough on the front thighs. A little bit of smoothing after I added a Smoothing Modifier cleared it right up. I'm not sure if it was caused by my lack of skill in creating the clone or just a side effect of this method of making a clone. It didn't prevent me from getting results that I was very very happy with, though.
Well, one of the things that keeps me from making anything is my lack of paint skills. I was fine when I could just put in numbers for what I was doing, but trying to 'paint' on weight maps is just extremely difficult for me.
Rotating in Blender can sometimes lead to problems later on.
I find exporting from DS at DAZ Scale does just fine in Blender with these import settings:
I agree. Those are the settings I used to create my clone.