[TIP] Golden Palace misplaced, script for material inactive when opening scene in PublicBuild

ocarinem

Hey everyone,

After a lot of trial and error, I found the cause of a frustrating issue when working between DAZ 4.24 and the Public Build.

My workflow: I use 4.24 as the public build does not support tools like Mesh Grabber or Golden Palace and its script for material.
Saving a morph thanks to mesh grabber allows to export a scene with the morph to the build, same for the Golden palace script for material.

The problem I had: The Golden Palace was always slightly misplaced when opened in the Public Build, making any material correction impossible — the geograft was visually off and wouldn't weld properly.

The cause: Saving the scene while Mesh Grabber was the active tool. It appears DAZ serializes the active tool state into the .duf file, and Mesh Grabber leaves a pending transformation on the mesh at save time. This shifts the geograft slightly.

The fix: Before adding the golden palace in 4.24, simply switch Mesh Grabber to any other tool (Selection Tool, Node Selection, anything neutral). With a clean active tool, the Golden Palace is fitted exactly — correct placement and materials intact — when opened in the Public Build.

Hope this saves someone a few hours of head-scratching!

Ocarinem

Padone

That's the same if you save the scene within the geometry editor. Never do that, always save with the selection tool active.

crosswind

That is not true ~

Scene files (DUFs) never save the status of Tools ... no matter what Tool is currently active. Tool status is always saved within layout.dsx. If you exit DS with MG or GE tool activated... etc., it'll be still activated when you load DS next time. This behavior has nothing to do with DUF files. 

Padone

Crosswind, we are not discussing the status of tools here. We are rather stating that saving a duf file within MG or GE may alter the geometry information saved in the duf, thus creating issues when importing or opening it in another application. In diffeomorphic we get some displacement in geografts if we save the duf within GE.

If you open the duf in daz studio this doesn't happen as it is dealt with, but it happens if you open or import the duf with another application.

crosswind

Padone said:

Crosswind, we are not discussing the status of tools here. We are rather stating that saving a duf file within MG or GE may alter the geometry information saved in the duf, thus creating issues when importing or opening it in another application. In diffeomorphic we get some displacement in geografts if we save the duf within GE.

If you open the duf in daz studio this doesn't happen as it is dealt with, but it happens if you open or import the duf with another application.

I'm confused ~~ I know that modified data of geometry with MG / GE are stored within DUFs but in the above OP, they didn't mention anything about opening DUFs (saved in DS 4.24) in other applicaitons other than DS PublicBuild, did they ? 

So, it looks as if they saved a Scene with GP in DS 4.24 GeneralRelease when MG is activated, then found an issue of geometry misplaced after opening the Scene in DS 4.24 PublicBuild, doesn't it ?

Besides, they said "It appears DAZ serializes the active tool state into the .duf file, and Mesh Grabber leaves a pending transformation on the mesh at save time." i.e., they didn't alter any geometry with MG but just loaded GP with MG tool activated~

However, Mesh Grabber saves nothing new to Scene file if there's no delta change with it in terms of geometry manipulation... it's the same with the tools like Geometry Editor / Node Weight Brush that just unweld conformers ~~

Edit: I personally never experienced such an issue mentiond in OP ~~ I just tested the case a couple of times, with DS 4.2x / DS 6.2x GR + PB, I couldn't reproduce the issues ~~ So, the issue shouldn't happen as long as MG or GE or NWB tool is not activated when opening DUF file no matter with DS GeneralRelease or PublicBuild ~~

jbowler

crosswind said:

I'm confused ~~ I know that modified data of geometry with MG / GE are stored within DUFs but in the above OP, they didn't mention anything about opening DUFs (saved in DS 4.24) in other applicaitons other than DS PublicBuild, did they ? 

So, it looks as if they saved a Scene with GP in DS 4.24 GeneralRelease when MG is activated, then found an issue of geometry misplaced after opening the Scene in DS 4.24 PublicBuild, doesn't it ?

There are two "public builds" ATM; DS4 and DS6.  I assumed, when I read the OP, that the "public build" is DS6 because, IRC, that does not currently run Mesh Grabber (et al).  I think it is reasonable to say that DS6 is a very different application to DS4.

Perhaps the OP might clarify?

crosswind

jbowler said:

crosswind said:

I'm confused ~~ I know that modified data of geometry with MG / GE are stored within DUFs but in the above OP, they didn't mention anything about opening DUFs (saved in DS 4.24) in other applicaitons other than DS PublicBuild, did they ? 

So, it looks as if they saved a Scene with GP in DS 4.24 GeneralRelease when MG is activated, then found an issue of geometry misplaced after opening the Scene in DS 4.24 PublicBuild, doesn't it ?

There are two "public builds" ATM; DS4 and DS6.  I assumed, when I read the OP, that the "public build" is DS6 because, IRC, that does not currently run Mesh Grabber (et al).  I think it is reasonable to say that DS6 is a very different application to DS4.

Perhaps the OP might clarify?

If the OP meant DS 6.2x PublicBuild, the issue shouldn't happen at all 'cause there's no Mesh Grabber plugin in DS 6.2x but the upgraded Geometry Sculptor... let alone they didn't make any delta change but just activated MG tool.

No geometry data of MeshGrabber modifier can be read in DS 6.2x unless one modifies the DUF file to change MG modifier to GS modifier.....

Besides, I'm sorry that I have to say I don't agree at all on the point of "...it is reasonable to say that DS6 is a very different application to DS4" ~~