Diffeomorphic: locking bones in place MHX and Rigify

Ook

I just recently got into diffeomorphic for animations so I'm a total novice, including blender.

My plan: For gen 8.1, finish basic posing in DAZ > transfer model and said pose to blender > make an animation > transfer the animation back to daz > tweak facial expressions > render animation from DAZ.

My animations will at most be 4 seconds long and looped (you probably have an idea of what I'm trying to do)

 

I have several questions regarding Mhx and Rigify.

I read rigify is not so much compatible with daz animation so it could mess up the animation when importing it back to DAZ from blender. (Correct me if I'm wrong. I do prefer using rigify over MHX, or if there is a way to make it work with rigify.)

1. (MHX) I'd like to keep the feet in place when I move the hip but I'm not sure how to do it. How can I lock certain bones in place? (Like pinning translation/rotation of body parts in DAZ)

2. (Rigify) seems to keep other bones in place EXCEPT when I import a pose, moving hips starts moving the whole lower body unlike before I set a preset pose. Why or how can I fix this?

3.I'd like to know if my plan (from above) is actually doable and not inefficient. If there is a better way of doing this, I'd like to know that as well. I searched everywhere but I couldn't find a clear answer to how people actually do them.

Thanks!

Ook

I managed to figure out my first question by messing with MHX. There were options to snap legs or arms as FK or IK. I'm not sure if this is possible for say, a finger, or like your head.

Padone

1. There are already ik goals for the feet.

2. You can use fk or ik for the limbs, please watch some rigify tutorial.

3. Your plan is a mess if you ask me, I'd rather animate and render in blender.

Ook

Padone said:

1. There are already ik goals for the feet.

2. You can use fk or ik for the limbs, please watch some rigify tutorial.

3. Your plan is a mess if you ask me, I'd rather animate and render in blender.

So I've been doing hours of research ever since this post and decided to use MHX instead of rigify since there's actually no way to get the feet perfectly in place with it.

For my first question I found out you have to bake them to FK.

For the third question, you call it a mess but I feel like it's much simpler for a newb like me.  I don't think I have the brain power to import daz assets not to mention lightings in working order to create a proper scene for rendering everytime I make a short animation loop, which I have to come by often. I saw up to half way 4 hour tutorial video of using diffeomorphic but oh my God, it seems so complicated. Perhaps because I'm new with blender.

Padone

Yes you need to bake to FK to export to daz because daz uses FK rigs.

Ook

Padone said:

Yes you need to bake to FK to export to daz because daz uses FK rigs.

Decided to stick with blender and learn how to move all the assets over. I'm losing brain cells over trying to get an animation to daz from blender unscathed. Baking IK to FK still screws up big time regardless of the feet. I tried retargetting method of copying IK rig to a default FK rig, which failed. Simple IK rig in diffeomorphic sucks for meticulous animations and i don't know... it's jittery sometimes. Overall, the finished animation with MHX on blender, It just looks so much better!

Moving all the assets over actually worked quite nicely except the lights. I'll just have to learn to do those and make it look similar to renders in daz. Render preview in Cycles also looked pretty nice. I'm just hoping rendering animations on blender doesn't take too much more than it did on daz...

Padone

Most lights should transfer fine, emission too. If you use old assets with ghost lights be sure to have the option checked in the global settings. Of course also be sure to import the HDRI always in the global settings.

James

When using RIgify which method to use to bake?

Using blender bake, object > animation > bake action?
Using bake pose to FK rig?

None seem to work for me .