Digital Art Zone

OK… I seem to be having a huge mental block on rigging. I watched the video tutorial on the sash about a dozen times, read more things and bought a couple of tutorials but just can’t seem to get it through my thick skull. Seems this is the last obstacle to producing some product ideas I have. Seems I’m fine as long as I can use the transfer utility but I have not been successful when editing bones and weight maps.

It does seem that some things are repaired in Daz 4.5 and maybe I’m just hitting some broken areas in 4? So, should I upgrade to 4.5 before starting this thread?

Could you give some more specific examples of what you are trying to do, and where you are hitting roadblocks?

I’ve had such poor success with everything, over time, that I’m actually at this point even having difficulty in remembering what I learned. :(

Examples: Hard objects that are a part of a fitted object. Things like a belt buckle. It has to move in and out with the thickness of a person and maybe scale overall to that person, but should not stretch in any direction. A bra buckle, a necklace with a chain and ‘hard’ gem or medallion. The classic sea shell bra. The shells might need to get larger or smaller and might need to move up or down, in or out or outward or inward but shouldn’t distort.

I have worked built a bra that could be used as an example. I have good material divides to identify portions. I think it could be a good tool for answering a lot of this. Pardon the quicky skirt, but I had to ‘cover up’ the area.

In the first image, I have imported my obj which was built over the genesis standard female form. I have used the transfer utility and only added in subd… no smoothing.

In the second image, I have set basic female back to 0 and Vic5 to 100%. Now, lets say that the blue bra cups are metal medallions, which are no longer round. Lets say that the magenta shoulder straps are thick leather straps, but they no longer have consistent width. Or, we could say that the green strap between the cups is metal and should remain flat and the same width top to bottom. You can choose just one of these if you like, whichever might be the best example to use as a starting point.

I"m lost as to if I need to create new bones or if I need to edit weight maps. It seems I never had any success trying to use rigidity maps. But again, I’m not even sure if I have a good understanding of the terminology used in this area of Daz?

In the Daz tutorial with the sash and sword, it seems that the items worked on were just too disjointed from the figure to be much help to me on with this. These items pretty much touch the figure, need to somewhat fit, but be somewhat fixed at the same time.

Hi dumorian…

Well lets see… for ‘Hard objects’ like buckles, you can use Rigidity Maps, however they only work ie: retain their shape, when morphing the figure. They don’t work with translations, moving joints. They would still distort.

As for your examples, you would need to create morphs to keep the shapes of parts of your clothing that have a specific shape, when you change the figures shape.

So for example, a sea-shell bra. As you change Genesis from one female shape to another, the shells will distort to follow Genesis. If you want the shells to keep a set shape, but shrink or grow to match the figure, you would create a morph for the shells for that figure shape and name it FBMfigureshape. If you were to use a Rigidity map for this, then the shells would keep their shape and size. So while the shells may cover a small breasted figure, if you dialed a morph with say, very large breasts, then the shells may only cover the nipples.

So for your second image what you would do is adjust the fit and shape of the bra to V5 in your modeler and import that back in through Morph Loader Pro and name it FBMVictoria5. Now every time you dial Genesis to V5 your custom morph will be applied. You would do the same for any other shapes you want to support.

If Rigidity maps are to difficult to use (and they can be) then just using the FBM morphs will help in keeping there shape.

Hope this helps…

niccipb - 04 September 2012 11:23 PM

Hi dumorian…

Hi niccipb and yes… thanks.

Well lets see… for ‘Hard objects’ like buckles, you can use Rigidity Maps, however they only work ie: retain their shape, when morphing the figure. They don’t work with translations, moving joints. They would still distort.

Hmmmm…. I have oftentimes thought that the creators of software, interfaces and just about all things should have some folks on the team that only had basic skills. What they perceive it should do. ‘Rigidity Maps’ for instance. It seems like if you set something rigid it should remain rigid. A bra hook for example. There is no way a person could create every possible use for a bra so that the hook wouldn’t distort, unless you could set it as a truly rigid item. I would have no idea how many poses might be used or created to begin to create morphs for something like that.

To me, rigidity should allow me to perhaps set it rigid in X and Y and not in Z. So, as a chest gets thicker or thinner, it moves forward or backwards, but not get taller, shorter, wider or more narrow. But apparently my ‘perceived’ idea about how rigidity should work is not actually how it works. Or, weight maps… If I map/color that hook blue, it seems like it should not distort either.

But then I think it should be easy and included… gravity… where you could set a bone to always point down (or to any other fixed angle), yet still avoid collisions. Then you would need pendulum/momentum/swing (harder programming)... But that is a totally different thread.

As for your examples, you would need to create morphs to keep the shapes of parts of your clothing that have a specific shape, when you change the figures shape.

So for example, a sea-shell bra. As you change Genesis from one female shape to another, the shells will distort to follow Genesis. If you want the shells to keep a set shape, but shrink or grow to match the figure, you would create a morph for the shells for that figure shape and name it FBMfigureshape. If you were to use a Rigidity map for this, then the shells would keep their shape and size. So while the shells may cover a small breasted figure, if you dialed a morph with say, very large breasts, then the shells may only cover the nipples.

In my example, the cups being like baby moon hubcaps… slightly domed and round. As the breast shape changes, I’m seeing those cups as needing to follow only the center vertice of the breast so as to avoid poke through, but not deform in other ways. Imagine the issue if they were Madonna-like cones?

So, maybe rigidity maps actually can do what I want, as long as I don’t care about scaling? For instance large breast down to no breast child. Now I need to go look to see if rigidity maps can work in only specific axis. For instance, if the green strap was a metal plate and the cups round metal medallions… can I set the green strap to be rigid in Y and Z but stretch in X? Something has to stretch or break!

So for your second image what you would do is adjust the fit and shape of the bra to V5 in your modeler and import that back in through Morph Loader Pro and name it FBMVictoria5. Now every time you dial Genesis to V5 your custom morph will be applied. You would do the same for any other shapes you want to support.

Darn… If we were talking about a medallion on a chain necklace (chain conforms which medallion remains rigid and only avoids collision), that would mean morphs for every figure. Genesis, V5, M5 and every new figure released. Wouldn’t it?

If Rigidity maps are to difficult to use (and they can be) then just using the FBM morphs will help in keeping there shape.

It seems like I read somewhere that rigidity maps were buggy in Daz 4? Is that correct? If so, is this fixed in 4.5?

And all ideas are welcome! There are normally multiple methods to the same end in CAD… with generally one being most efficient. I’m hoping to land on some good techniques for these types of challenges.

I’ll keep digesting what you have written here. I’m adjusting what ‘I think’ Daz should be able to do, to what it actually can do. Thanks!

Hi dumorian…

Yes your presumptions of ‘Rigidity’ would be the ideal. But this is new territory for DS, so hopefully it will get there. It was abit buggy in 4.0 and I haven’t yet got to the stage of using ‘Rigidity Maps’ on any of my current projects in 4.5, so I’m hoping that they are working better…

Darn… If we were talking about a medallion on a chain necklace (chain conforms which medallion remains rigid and only avoids collision), that would mean morphs for every figure. Genesis, V5, M5 and every new figure released. Wouldn’t it?

Yes and No… it all depends on if it deforms to much. But on something like a necklace, which may have additional bones, weight painting certain parts can take care of that.

It’s parts of an outfit, like the cones of the Madonna bra, that weight painting may or may not correct. Same with the Rigidity maps.

The weight maps have to deal with joint movements, so full weight moves the mesh as if it were solid when the bone moves and scales (if a scale map is applied) with the node.

There are normally multiple methods to the same end in CAD… with generally one being most efficient. I’m hoping to land on some good techniques for these types of challenges.

You are absolutely correct… there are allot of ways you can do this to achieve the same result. You just have to find the one that works best for the given need or for yourself.

Hope this helps…

BTW… have you read the docs on ‘Rigidity’
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/userguide/creating_content/rigging/tutorials/rigidity/start