Is HeadShop9 supposed to do this?
john_antkowiak
Posts: 334
Hi. I'm fairly new to 3D modeling. I started using DAZ Studio 4.8, both free and Pro Beta, about two months ago (on a Windows 8, 64-bit-PC). I took my first stab at using HeadShop today - and I might never attempt it again. It was a decidedly unfriendly experience. But I'm trying to keep an open mind here. These are a few of the problems I encountered:
1) Autodots. Granted, I figured out where to position the dots representing the pupils, the center of the mouth, and the ends of the mouth. I'm fairly confident I can guess at a few others in those areas. But otherwise, the tool would be a lot easier to understand if I knew what the remaining dots were supposed to represent. The upper arc, for example... should it follow the top of the skull, or the hairline? Probably not the outer edge of the hair...? Where do I look up specifically what each point is meant to correspond to? (The tutorial videos didn't mention it.) I assume I should unparent the glasses on the figure's head before Shopping it... but maybe not necessarily?
2) Still on the autodots... the "SmartDot" tool button seems to do nothing except toggle the Autodots, same as the "Autodots" button. Is it supposed to do anything else? Can I add more dots to the photo if I want?
3) "Profile" tab. Again, the videos are silent on this question. I don't get it. On the "Front" tab, at least I have the benefit of using a reference photo to align the points. On the Profile tab... what? I adjust the line according to my imagination? I don't get the point of a side-by-side comparison of identical images.
4) Since the videos said I could export at any time, I saved and exported my work before messing with the Profiles tab. Before the HeadShop window closed, it said I had exported successfully. But then when the program returned focus to Studio, an "unexpected error" message appeared with no other information. What's more, ALL except a handful of finger nodes on BOTH figures in my scene were toggled Invisible. I tried a multiple selection to turn them all back on at once - no luck. I had to click the mouse button 160 times to make both figures completely reappear with clothing and all parented objects. HeadShop did this to me twice today. Is it supposed to?
Thanks for your patience in reading this...
John A
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Comments
? finger nodes?
Um, select "head" "face" "lips" from D/S's plugin of Headshop with G2 figure ... no glasses or anything.
Dots on one side, re-arrange on other.
Sorry in a hurry here ... but no, there is no "profile" thing working yet ...
One of the re-arranging dots is just for the skin texture ... the other re-arranging dots set is for morphing.
Once you've sent it back to D/S, if you like the morph, "save" it.
You will find the "textures" in some folders it makes ... find the best one to use as a starter for making your own using a photo editor or painting program ... whichever.
For technical support he likes people to call him.
Daz3D does have a 30 day money back guarantee.
Truly, Patience, thank you for attempting to answer a few of my questions. Maybe your being in a hurry is at fault for this, but I'm afraid I don't know what specific questions some of your comments were responding to. :(
But I get the sense I didn't explain the glasses issue adequately, so here it is again with pictures. The glasses took a lot of work to morph, so I hope I don't have to delete them from the DS scene, work with HeadShop, and then recreate them from scratch afterward. But here's what happens:
You can see, the glasses are parented to the head. But I don't want to work around them in HeadShop, so I go to the SPEX2 "node" in the left pane (these ARE called "nodes" in DAZ Studio, are they not?) and toggle them off:
Now, with the head selected and the glasses not, I open HeadShop and get the following dialog box:
If the glasses weren't selected before opening HeadShop - and they weren't - they can't be selected at this stage. And I'm just noticing now, HeadShop has shifted the selection in DAZ for me, away from the head and up to the top-level node: the figure. Let me know if you see something wrong with the selections here, but I believe they're exactly as you suggested. And here's how HeadShop opens:
That's why I theorized that maybe I sould at least unparent the glasses before trying to work in HeadShop. Notice that the hair is also visible at the right, when it was invisible in the Studio. At any rate, I can't work with this, so I close HeadShop. And - poof! -
HeadShop has toggled off ALL the nodes for BOTH figures... except, as you can see, a handful of finger nodes. Four handfuls, to be precise. The others are off camera here. As far as I know, I need to toggle each node individually to make the figures visible again. More or less 160 mouse clicks, just because I opened HeadShop. So I'm afraid I must ask again:
Is this how HeadShop is supposed to work? Or, am I doing something wrong?
And if I may ask for some clarification about one comment: "One of the re-arranging dots is just for the skin texture ... the other re-arranging dots set is for morphing."
Which one is for texture? And, what happens when I reposition it?
I do hope the longer explanation is more informative; I should've put pictures in the first post. Please accept my apology for that. Thank you again for your time.
John A
hmmm... I added this comment to clarify a detail in my lengthy reply, then thought better of it and corrected the reply itself. Now I can't figure out how to delete this unneeded post! grrrr....
Hi ... I'm back now ... sorry about answering "in a hurry", I had started the post when somebody came to the door. - and notifications I don't get 'cause ...
No, it doesn't matter how one does what, the figure should not have gone "poof" in D/S.
I have to set up D/S and run the plugin to get the screenshots to explain the dots. My plugin doesn't exactly work the way I thought it would either but anyhow,
I'll see what I can put together for you when some photos finish uploading.
Yes, the "root" of the figure "must be" chosen for making "any" morphs on these types of figures.
............................
First things first though. Because "anything" can happen to a scene and so let's do something about those glasses. If I'm reading that picture correctly, that's a triax pair of glasses [right?] and you say you have them "morphed". So over on the Parameters Tab, with the specs selected, do you have some morph dials showing for these morphs you created? If so, "0" them, "File > Save As > support assets > morphs > the options presented are for your own folder names, the path is preselected for the product as it should be, select ONLY the new morphs you made and "save" them. I never suggest encrypting [compressing] files.
If they were not all your morphs or whatever, and if you have Hexagon, you can "unparent them", select them, shoot them over the bridge to Hexagon, then in D/S "zero" them, then back from Hexagon, shoot them over the bridge to D/S and make the morph [which would be yours ONLY] and save it.
Also one can empty a scene of all but whichever "essentials" are wanted and "save a subscene" ... later merging subscenes together back into a main scene.
Okay ... hopefully this works ...
Wow, thank you for that! I'll be studying your reply for a while, but I can respond to the glasses question. They're a product from a vendor called Slosh, in two versions: "SPEX," which comes with an impressive array of presets, and SPEX2, which you can morph to your heart's desire. (Or to the glasses you have - whichever comes first! lol) So all the morphs are mine. And I'm glad you brought up this point:
"If so, "0" them, "File > Save As > support assets > morphs > the options presented are for your own folder names, the path is preselected for the product as it should be, select ONLY the new morphs you made and "save" them. I never suggest encrypting [compressing] files."
Because I've received that advice before about saving morphs of other things I want to reuse. But I'm too new at this to understand what the advice means. It's very counter-intuitive. If I zero everything first, how am I not just totally erasing everything I've just done? What exactly am I saving? Here's how I receive the message:
After I create this "custom morph file" (what kind of file extension am I going to end up with after all of it?) that has only zeroed presets in it, THEN I open it, make the changes I want... then select only the properties I changed - should I include coordinate values too, or just the shape and (I assume) surface values? - and hit CTRL-S for a simple save. Is that right? I can't think of any other software I've used, with this kind of procedure...
I suppose, but I don't really know, if I want to use the custom glasses later in a new project, I would first load and select the baseline "SPEX2" object, then apply my presets by going to File>Import> ...something. Is that correct? What's the "something?"
Thanks again, Patience. I'll do my best to let you out of the conversation as quickly as possible. : ) It's a bit embarrassing, being so clueless. Have a good night!
JohnA
...Still having a hard time with this. It's made worse by the fact that every time I try it costs me another 500 mouse clicks (because, it's worse than I thought when I wrote it before. Every item of clothing has its own node structure - for reasons I don't understand - and HeadShop very thoughtfully toggles every single one of THEM Invisible for me also. Each garment has its top-level Invisible toggle, but the item remains invisible until I drill down and toggle the corrseponding node: left foot for left shoe, for example).
So I have two questions before I chuck it all.
1) Please forgive my ignorance, Patience, but I have to remind you that I don't understand the shorthand you and all the tutorial-makers use: "If you want to keep this morph, ZERO the morph and save it."
...ummmm... "ZERO" means "reset to zero," yes? I've just written a 1,000-page Word document, and you're telling me to select all, delete, and then save my work as a .doc file. With all due respect... the instruction makes NO SENSE. Please help me understand your meaning...
2) What do I do about HeadShop making everything invisible? Can anyone offer a solution?
Zeroing the morph doesn't remove the morph channel, it just sets the default value of the morph to zero. If you don't do this, then the morph will be active whenever you load a new figure.
You are not deleting it, you are setting it back to the 'start' value. Like Mike said, saving it without 'zeroing' it means that is the value that is used as the default load value. If that value happens to be 1, then the morph is saved as fully on. The only thing to do, would be to dial it off, instead of dialing it in.
Gentlemen, thank you for your responses. I hate the fact that I'm none the wiser for them; "DAZspeak" is still a foreign language to me. I guess my attempt at a Word analogy failed. "You are not deleting it, you are setting it back to the 'start' value."
But... if the start value of any given morph was zero, I'd be undoing my work and then saving... what, exactly? I don't quite understand. How does it help me to return all my morph values to their default zeros before I save all my changes to the default values?
"Like Mike said, saving it without 'zeroing' it means that is the value that is used as the default load value. If that value happens to be 1, then the morph is saved as fully on. The only thing to do, would be to dial it off, instead of dialing it in. "
I'm not sure I understand the premise of this statement... the reason I want to save the morphs in the first place is, I don't want to have to dial them all in every time I want to put my figure in a scene. I want to be able to load him, fully on. I'm afraid one of us is missing something here. It's probably me...
"If you don't do this, then the morph will be active whenever you load a new figure." Mike, something about the way you worded your reply makes me think I'm starting to grasp your meaning... but only just barely starting. First, I thought the whole point of saving my morphs was to be able to load a figure with the pre-set morphs. If not, I'm going about this all wrong. Which is very possible.
But, second: when you say "whenever [I] load a new figure..." Do you mean ANY new figure? How does that work? If I've saved an object file based on the G2F figure, and then I open a new G2F figure, surely Studio won't apply the morphs from an object file I haven't even imported into the scene? Is that what you meant?
I have Headshop but haven't used it much but I think I understand what you are wanting to do
This is how I save things in Daz.
To load your character without having to do it again you can click
File - Save As - Character Preset
At this point You also get the option to include the materials in the preset so if you are using the headshop materials then you will want to check off both shape & material settings.
Before you make the preset its easiest to save the Headshop morph you have created as a slider so you won't need to keep opening headshop or importing it as an object just to use it.
To do that change the Headshop morph slider from 70% to Zero - Your character is then looking like the basic GM2
Click on File - Save As - Support Asset - Morph Asset
A box appears check off the top box (G2m) & check off the morph you created in Head Shop which I think is in the Morphs section - Hit accept
This saves the new settings as a slider for the head shape you created which you can access at any time from parameters in Daz.
Once its saved then go to the slider you reduced to zero & put it back to 70% or where you had it before so that the GM2 will again look like your character
Save him as a character preset & you have him whenever you want him plus you have the slider so you can use it to mix in with other characters you create if you want to
Hope that helps :)
It might help the nerves if you practiced morphing just for the sake of morphing rather than trying to make that perfect character right off the bat.
It isn't short hand, it is really just that simple [I know, hard to believe anything is simply with this program lol ...] ... once the morph was "made", zeroing it does not delete it, any more than changing the value to 40 or 30 etc. As others have said, one is simply zeroing the morph to SAVE "just that morph". Then you can dial it back in and carry on.
I do not recommend saving characters or subscenes or scene files with any "work in progress" morphs, clothing, etc. Why is because all kinds of things get saved all over the place and in the event of wanting to delete something, it can be "fun [not]" to locate all the pieces for deletion. Once morphs are "saved", clothing items being created are "saved" [I don't think this one applies to your situation but other people read these posts too], then saved scenes AFAIK just save references to the created files.
IF a morph is dialed in 100%, and saved that way, yes ... ALL figures based on the same model [i.e. G2M] would load with that morph 100% dialed in. This is not usually a desired thing to do.
.........................
In using Headshop, or any of the other creation tools, the workflow is very basically 2 steps. One is to create and save just those creations. The second step is to take those finished creations and apply them to the character being created. Then yes, save as Character Preset, or Scene Sub-set [I prefer this one, "merge" into existing scenes] etc.
................
btw - figures being morphed are normally 'without clothing' ... it is possible that Headshop is confusing 'the bones' if you have clothing fitted to the figure ... try morphing with no clothes.
Making morphs for clothing items; here is a picture of one set I did. As you can see, one can dial in various percentages to achieve the desired look. For now though, if you have it saved to whatever Hexagon is choosing [probably Morphs/Morph Loader], that is fine.
All these morphs were "zeroed" to "save them". Everytime I load this clothing item, all the morphs are there too but not dialed in.
It is also possible to save "pose presets" so one could quickly achieve a desired look for a clothing piece [or figure] not dependent upon loading an entire character.