Head + Body Slider Control Wonky.
pfunkyfize
Posts: 475
Hi all,
I built a new G3F character and intend to sell her. I built the head and body morph slide controllers and they work fine. I made the character controller slider that controls both the head and body morphs which seems to work fine.
Then, I create a character preset of the character when the head, body and character sliders are set to 100%.
When I clear the scene and use the character preset to load her in, I get the base G3F character loaded but the sliders are all at 0% and I have to slide them over to 100% get the character to morph into shape. I 'fixed' this behavior by sliding the main head+body slider down to 0% but kept the separate head and body slider set at 100%. When I save the resulting character in a character preset, I can load the expected character to the scene in its new shape but I lose the main head+body controller slider functionality until I slide the separate head and body sliders down to 0% and then I can use the full Head+Body main slider to affect the separate head and body shapes as expected.
Other characters I have purchased don't seem to have this behavior. Can someone point me in the right direction to fix this please? This is my first character I've ever made from scratch and don't quite know what I'm doing yet....
Thanks!
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
224 S 200 W, Suite #250
Salt Lake City, UT 84101
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
You should need to set only yhe master slider - you don't need both the master and the sub-components set manually if the links are correct.
Would that be an error when I was ERC freezing the main controller to both the separate and head morphs?
Possibly - for that you would have wanted the three properties, head, body, and master, set and would have right-clicked on the master to ERC Freeze. Did you set the master to control the component morphs that are also linked to the head and body controls instead?
I followed this tutorial to the letter but I used a G3F and not G8F like Ion is doing. I started the process over and redid the morphs I was using to alter my character.
Anyway, tell me what you think after watching this from where I cued it up... Maybe you'll see a gap in the process that you can identify better than I can.
*NOTE nudity in video of G8F character*
Link removed
The cool side effect was I sorted out a weird eye problem/pupil correction thing going on when I started over but the results of the unconnected master slider were the same this second go around.The character preset doesn't load the expected character to the scene modified to its morphed shape. I get the vanilla G3F instead.
What I think I will do now is try this process in the video and make my intended G3F character for G8F instead and see if I run into the same problem...
Sorry, the nudity meant the link had to go. At which point was the ERC section? The video justs tarted from the beginning for me.
Argh sorry, let me check...
8:48 in the video to about 11:15
It seemed very accurate and comprehensive but that unlinked main Head+body controller is such a nuisance. I could release the character as is without the main controller but it seems that all characters for sale have a full head+body controller...
Yes, I did as instructed by the video. Unless the video is incorrect in the way it links it but I did what the video showed me.
The main controller works when I slide it to zero, then move the separate head and body morphs down to 0. The main controller functions correctly after that. But that initial load of the character preset doesn't even load the morphed character. it loads the G3F. The separate head and body controllers work though and I can dial the character in and out but the initial state after loaded from the character preset is not the full character being dialedi in the moment you load the character as one would expect.
On a sidenote, I just transferred my new character creation's Head and Body morphs to G8F using RiverSoft's morph converter successfully. I made the main controller to slide both head and body to 100% successfully and saw that it worked. I saved the character preset again and tried loading the new G8F to the scene and the same behavior repeated itself, the G8F vanilla charcter was loaded on to the screen and I had to slide the head and body to 100% to dial her in. Interestingly, the main controller i made to affect both head and body did not get saved with the character preset....
*QUASI SUCCESS*
I repaired the G8F version by making sure I saved the morphed assets before making the character preset and it fixed all the problems withthe new G8F
Made same repairs to G3F but it did not solve problem. Though I have to admit the G3F I am using has had her parameters added and dropped and added and so forth that I think I corrupted her in some way and will start fresh on a fresh G3F
The video looked OK. Adjust rigging to shape on the actual morphs (so if this is a mix of sculpting and Daz morphs you want to do it on the sculpted morph, not the controler that sets that and the Daz morphs), then ERC Freeze to link the chnages. Don't do the adjusting for controller morphs, just ERC Freeze to link them to the actual morphs they are driving.
Thanks RH, I got a figure on G3F that is working. The video even leaves out the step of adjusting the main controller morph so I followed that instruction previously. I think the troubles arose when I was looking through the video to where i left off in the tutorial and must have gone ahead and saved the character preset before I even saved the morph assets doing things out of order.
Do you have any idea why cards do not stay on the morph? I keep browsing and adding them to the morphs in the parameter tab in edit mode and save the character preset. the cards stay there until i load the character over as if the changes were never made. That's the next problem i'm trying to knock out
Sorry, no idea on the cards - it's not something I've ever tried to do.
Does th controller morph have an alias? I recently had that issue with expression morphs I bought, the only way I can make them permanently stick is by adding the card to the alias.
By alias do you mean a label identifier that is different than the actual variable identifier name in the parameter tab? If so yes, my Label variable is different than the variable name.
If it's totally not that, what is an 'alias' and where can I find it? I imagine an alias is some kind of different variable that equates to another... Thanks!
Thanks for the assist regardless RH!
As far as I know the controller morph that links the head and body morph together is the only controller there . I created the property solely to control my new character's head and body morph together. Does that main controller spawn another hidden parameter that I would not know about? Would that be an Alias?
Go to the data folder where the morphs are. In the case of expressions, in that folder I found a "Sweet but Dangerous - Angry 01 Aiko 8" file, and also a "alias_head_Sweet but Dangerous - Angry 01 Aiko 8" file. It only stayed if I added the icon to the alias variant. Had to decompress it, can be done with window > pane > batch convert, then add the parameter with a text editor. Or you can decompress, edit and recompress with DSF toolbox if you have it. Only helpful if you have that alias file, but I figured I would mention it just in case. I am not sure if those are autocreated by DS, or something that the vendors did.
Oh I think I get it-
Since the data folder is for a new character I created, the morphs in that data directory I can say for certain are not aliaes with any alias variables in the names, they are simply the head, body and main controller morphs listed. So I would think just using the parameter tab for the 3 morphs I created would be sufficient. What would make cards stick to aliases and not to the actual parameter they're attached to?
Strange...
Yeah I found it super weird too. There were a few expression sets that didn't have alias at all, some had ones named ctrl_ instead of alias_ , but the same principle applied, and a few only had one file. The cards just seemed to have stuck to the ones that only had the one file.
In your case, KD, you were trying to add the cards to pose/expression sliders which DAZ Studio does not support, thus the need to go the alias route. In pfunkyfize's case he is trying to attach the cards to a morph slider, which DAZ Studio does support (I do it all the time). So the reason why they are not "sticking" in his case may be different than what you were dealing with. The alias solution may work, but something else must be wrong if they aren't working for him without going that route. As I say, I have never had a card fail to be retained once the morph asset was properly saved and I've done it hundreds of times. Pfunkyfize: when you add the cards to the morph sliders properties, are you resaving the morph asset? You mention resaving the character preset - that won't save the new morph slider properties because until that is complete, the character preset will use the unaltered version of the slider. Just as you originally did, you must save the morph asset first. If the morph asset save completes without any warning messages or errors appearing, but the card still isn't appearing in your slider when you reload, I suspect that it is being saved, but in the wrong location, thus preserving and not replacing the original. Check in explorer by doing a search for the .dsf file and see if you get more than one result. If two show up in different locations, one with the original time stamp and one with a more recent time stamp, you need to copy the more recent one to the proper location to overwrite the original, then delete the misplaced file.
Yeah, my problems with the character preset saving stemmed from not saving the morph support asset first when I was following the tutorial, I think I jumped ahead by accident to the save character preset part and then saving the morph asset after that part. It would make sense that the card would stick after saving the morph asset. I have tried it multiple times now thinking to myself I'm sure I saved the morph asset, then saved the preset and it still drops the card. I will give it another shot.
Already my new character is showing things that I didn't think of when creating her so I may go back to square one fix those items (Bad teeth and way too deep of a navel - have to subtract out the Mouth and Navel HD morphs) and pay close attention to where the cards are being set and what directory they are in...
Thanks!
At the point where I left off, I have 2 out of the 3 cards that stick, head and body separate, it's just the main controller that doesn't want to stay but i will attempt this again and see where it goes.
Interesting realization,
The video tutorial I am using 'How To Create a Custom Genesis 8 Female Character in Daz Studio' by renderhub 3d on youtube assigns cards AFTER the save morph asset step. 15:41 in the video. This may be the cause to why cards don't stick...
I can't post the link here because the model being worked on is nude.
EUREKA!
I restarted from the beginning, finally deleted all the bad morphs and followed the video tutorial. This time, I made sure to do the card assignment BEFORE saving morph assets contrary to what the video tutorial showed and that seemed to do the trick. My cards stuck and I have a G3F that shows up on the stage loaded from its preset in the expected morphed shape.
HOWEVER, a new problem has arisen - the shape presets don't work as expected. They only work when the main controller of the head and body subcomponents is set to 0 and I have no idea what is going on with that. Any ideas?
I may have to start a new thread for that topic...
What happens when the head and body aren't zero? Nothing, or something bad? If the latter, have you set limits and told the property to respect limits?
So when the Main controller is set to 90% and I use the head remove preset, the head only goes to 90 % and not 0% as expected. It goes to the level that the Main Controller is setting.
When i made the head and body remove presets, I followed the video and set my main controller down to 0 and the separate head and body sliders down to ) and saved a separate shaping preset for each item while they awere all set to 0. likewise, i set all 3 controls to 100% and saved the head and body apply presets when the three sliders were all set to 0
It seems the presets only go to the level were the main control is set because I ERC froze them together at 0% and 100%
How do the pros do this in the store?
You can't expect head remove to zero the effect of the master slider, unless it also sets the master slider to 0 (but then it won't know what the body slider should be).
So would I have to delete the Main Controller property leaving the 2 separate head and body morphs, then create the shaping presets from them separately and then create the Main controller property again and refreeze it to the head and body morphs?