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If I don't check the box I get extra vertices? I would think if you checked it you would get the vertices. So if I do that I would be able to use the Inflate brush?
If you check the box you get the current resolution - which will usually be the SubD mesh. If you don't check the box you get the base resolution, regardless of any SubD currently applied. Yes, the inflate brush will then work.
mostly all Zbrush brushes will work to do morph. It's quite powerful.
You just have to send the mesh to Zbrush in BASE Resolution (subd 0) or just uncheck "Current resolution" checkbox when sending to ZBrush.
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for now, DAZ is not releasing whatever tools allowing to create HD morphs in DAZ.
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it could be a good reason to learn to create your own props/hairs/stuff and rigged them or even geografting.
mostly all Zbrush brushes will work to do morph. It's quite powerful.
You just have to send the mesh to Zbrush in BASE Resolution (subd 0) or just uncheck "Current resolution" checkbox when sending to ZBrush.
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for now, DAZ is not releasing whatever tools allowing to create HD morphs in DAZ.
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it could be a good reason to learn to create your own props/hairs/stuff and rigged them or even geografting.
All brushes will work for morphs, but any brushes (like clay build up for example) that add to the mesh cancel the ability to bring the sculpt from ZBrush back into Studio as a morph. You can only use brushes that manipulate the mesh but not add to it.
If you subdivide the figure in ZBrush for fine sculpting and then downgrade to base resolution to use the GoZ Bridge, you lose a lot of the detail you could retain if we could export the morph in HD out of ZBrush. This is definitely possible as one of the older versions of Studio allowed it (probably not on purpose, but it was possible). I remember I could export to ZBrush, subdivide my mesh to higher rez, sculp and then export back to Studio with the figure still subdivided and get a morph dial. The latest version of GoZ nixed that as it automatically downgrades the figure to the base resolution when you hit the GoZ button.
Don't know what the big deal is in not allowing HD morphs made in another program (like ZBRush) to be brought back into Studio (it's not like we're stealing anything).
I mostly lurk but damn guys, this thread and all those who've contributed are bad ass. Thank you!
thank you for this tutorial..it will help me out a lot :)
Hi, Your tutorial are very helful, Thanks.
I have a Character for Genesis 3 Female, But not sure how split Head from Body to save both files, Could you please help me?
Best,
Betty
Hi, I just found this thread, and I think it is fabulous!
I want to create a morph for G2M for a 6th finger, but I see in your tutorial that I can't add extra vertices. I also want to adjust the original ring finger and pinky so that the finger lengths are more natural. After that I need to create a custom texture for the extra digit. So how do I accomplish this without adding extra vertices? Do I have to create an attachment with its own separate texture and load it like the gens? I want this to be a fully articulating finger.
What you want to do sounds like you need to create a geografted G2M fitted item. First you have to choose the polygons that you want to replace / attach the new geometry to on the genesis mesh with a loop of polygons around as a reference to connect the new geografted geometry to the original figure body. Then you can add and model the geografted geometry within the loop of referece polygons but keep the outer edges in position. For the textures you will need to create a new UV-map. Back in DS simply load the new geometry and use the tranfer-utility to create a fitted figure. Next steps would be adding new finger bones with the joint-editor - paint the weight-map - geometry-editor for defining a surface and also to define the loop of referece polygons as geografted faces and hide all geografted golygons.
Thanks, Syrus83227_202e840f4e. Now I have an idea how to approach this. I'll need to learn more about geographed items - if you or anyone knows a thread to reference, I appreciate it.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/24555/tutorial-starting-out-with-geo-grafting-repost/p1
Thank you so much!
Ok I will try this and hope I can follow it, sounds like you may have covered all the area's I know nothing about, and with images...lol
Thank you for this! I was following a tutorial I managed to randomly google by Thorne which was very helpful but didn't include the joint editor / ERC freeze step which was giving me issues with weird bulging eyes and alien hand pose controls, but this fixed them.
Of course I still have no idea what an ERC freeze is or how it knew where to move the joints or anything. I hate not knowing why I fixed a problem >.> It'd be nice if the Daz User Guide was extended to actually cover all of the program so that I could properly learn things like rigging, because hunting down these tutorials that users have kindly written is a very random affair and you sort of have to luck out that they covered the exact program option you needed.
I allready starded a thread called ERC-Freeze / Property Hierarchy / merge property Sub-Components
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/60987/erc-freeze-property-hierarchy-merge-property-sub-components
I also was realy confused about all the ERC-freeze and the opposite ERC-bake concept and the Property Hirarchy at the beginning.
Some time ago I managed to work with the dependencies editor in poser and I realized the great potential of this concept of linking some parameters together that wasnt created by the publisher / artist.
Since I changed to use DazStudio I tryed to figure out how to actualy use this ERC-freeze function and good information about this is hard to find - at least the old DazStudio 3 maybe it was 4 tech demos / tutorials on youtube gets me an idea of how it works but they dont cover everything or they are outdated eg. see https://www.youtube.com/user/rbtwhiz
I once stumbled across this thread and bookmarked it so I can come back and get informations - even this started August 2012 - 41.7K views 134 comments - people seems to come back and ask questions (maybe because the title starts with TUTORIAL
).
The first (re)post is more about all the morph creation technics with exporting - editing - importing and working with ZBrush.
I allready talked about a way to create morphs for DS with ZBrush at section:
My workflow without GoZ http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/59212/g3f-textures-in-zbrush
I had some problems and technical issues with GoZ (DS - ZBrush - Bridge) and I didnt like it right from the start (too many houres of hard work lost due to DazStudio crashes after GoZ back import to DS).
So now I want to give everyone a "as short as I can" explanation of how I managed to work with the ERC-Freeze function - since this should be the next step in the process of creating your own custom character - by binding all the morphs / shapes / correction morphs / ect. together and create new figure properties for that.
Lets see if I can cover everything I know about in simple words to make this a bit like a tutorial - but be warned maybe its more like me talking about what I have discovered so far - this doesnt mean it is meant to to do it this way - maybe I'm completly wrong - I dont give any warranty that it will work for you - and sorry no pictures (who needs them? Also the forum dosnt show jpg attachments in highres if placed somwhere inbetween the text - at least I dont know how to - I dont care its less work for me).
ERC-Freeze in Parameters tab edit-mode
You can access the ERC-Freeze command in the "Parameters" tab if you change to "Edit Mode" in the right-click menu. Then if you right-click on any property in "Parameters" tab the menu shows many other useful commands and you can see the "ERC-Freeze" in there.
ERC-Bake in Property Hierarchy tab
ERC-Bake is the opposite of ERC-Freeze I do know now thanks to "Richard". This means if some values of some properties once ERC-Freeze'd as "sub-components" to a new property this process can be reversed by using ERC-Bake that can be found in the right-click menu of that new property in the Property Hierarchy tab - so the "sub-components" gets deleted from that new property and become "currently used" property values again.
create a new property for ERC-Freeze
To store the property values you have recently changed with ERC-Freeze command you can right-click somewhere in "Parameters Tab" and in the "Edit Mode" menu choose "create new property" for your figure/object in the scene to store the current state of your figure/object to this new property slider with ERC-Freeze - or you can use it on an existing property to add a list of changed values to that property.
Choose the right property-data-type ("float" in most cases), a meaningfull name/label and the right place/path in properties group for your new property so its easier to find later and - if made public - others can guess what it does. Also set the property to some special type (other than "none") in "Persentation Attributes" of the "Create New Property" dialoge can help later for example if you set the property type to "Modifier/Pose" this property value gets set back to default value everytime you use "Restore Figure Pose" / "Restore Item Pose" (this is for poses (rotating bones) / translations/position cahnges of figures/objects AND face expressions - man I would love to have a seperated property type for expressions.
But dont worry you can change everything about the new property later somewhere else. It is enouth to fill in the name (label gets the same emediately) and click "Create" at first.
The parameter tab in edit-mode offers many functions to edit the properties (also mass-editing with more than one property selected is possible). I recently foud out how well drag and drop on properties works (if drag&drop fails just select it a second time;) to - for example easily change their property group or even darg&drop properties from "Parameters" tab to "Property Hirarchy" tab. (I explain this workflow later in Property Hirarchy section)
But until now the new property slider recently created does nothing - you first have to define what it should do. (see how I use ERC-Freeze section below)
how I save new properties to a figure/object
While I am working on new or existing properties for a figure or object - (with figures I also mean clothes and with objects I mean every other geometry prop in the scene like also leights cameras primitives or imported geometry - for DazStudio it is either a figure with a bone-rig or an object) - I am usualy start with a new lets call it "erc setup scene" and save the changes I made to the figure/object properties along with the scene-files (with couting up version numbers to get back the previous state if somethig goes terrilby wrong with ERC-Freeze at the last save-point).
Then if I decide the properties are finaly setup as they should - I use the "save modified assets" command in "main-menu>file>save as>support assets" - at this point the new properties or changes made to existing properties from the current scene-file will be stored into the original figure/object data structure.
I have created some morphs/properties for genesis 2 female with "save modified assets" and they have been saved in this folder-path on my harddrive "...\DAZStudio4_Library\data\DAZ 3D\Genesis 2\Female\Morphs\Syrus83227".
Also the original figure file "Genesis 2 Base Female.duf" gets saved over to write informations so the new property / properties can be loaded with the figure.
The next time I load a new "genesis 2 female" figure fom the content library into the DazStudio scene my new morphs and properties will be showing up in the "Parameters" tab. Before that they only show up with the figure in my "erc setup scene".
how I save Figure/Prop Assets
While creating my own character morphs and properties for genesis 2 and also try-out painting on some weight-maps and do some changes to the riging in Joint-Editor - I got worryed that I can do harm to my genesis 2 female if I use "save modified assets" because all changes gets saved to the original figure.
So I decided to create a new figure (a copy of genesis 2 female) and used "Figure/Prop Assets" save command instead of "save modified assets" from the "file>save as>support asset" menu. In the "Figure/Prop Assets Save Options" you see next I changed the "Asset Directory" to "MyLibrary" instead of default DazContent library and as an option you can change vendor / product but at least I would change the item name so you can see which figure it is. This will store a new copy of my genesis 2 female figure under my own content library "MyLibrary/People" and the morphs/properties gets stored here "...\DAZStudio4_MyLibrary\data\Syrus83227\Genesis 2\Female\Morphs\Syrus83227" also copys of the original propeties you currently have loaded into your genesis figure get saved there. So once you have used "Figure/Prop Assets" to save a copy of your figure - at this time - you split the original figure to a new version stored in your own content library. Remember to delete the currently saved figure form the scene after you have used the "Figure/Prop Assets" save command and load in the new one from your conten library - otherwise you still have the old figure version on sceen.
Then I decided to interchange some properties from one version of the genesis figure to the other. So I loaded both versions of the figure into the scene - selected the properties that I want to transfer - set them to be "Favorites" - then I used "Transfer-Utility" (Source and Target Figures should be set the right way for transfer) and with a click on the button "show options >>" I selected only to transfer "Morph Targets" and choosed "Favorites and Sub-Components" under "Extended Options: From Source:". With this method I was able to copy my new properties to the original genesis figure version and I also transfered new purchased character morphs to my copied genesis figure version. But instead of using "save modified assets" on my genesis copy and overwrite my own created figure I often save out new versions with "Figure/Prop Assets" just to keep save - I allready did mess up my figure sometime and lost some hard work in the past - good to have a previous state/scene-file in this situation.
What buged me every now and then was all the "dublicate formulars foud" messages when I load my "erc setup scene" with the figure I am working on, it didnt bother me that much - I thought maybe its something with the content-database that cant handle my new figure - until I foud out how to prevent the messages.
I think this was caused by the fact that once I used "Figure/Prop Assets" to save a new version of the figure - the figure that I still had currently in my scene was the old version - and I continued to work on this and still saved my changes on the old figure version to the scene-file. But then I realized that I first should have deleted the current figure from the scene after using save "Figure/Prop Assets" and load in the recently saved new figure version from the content library to continue to work on the new state of the figure.
how I use ERC-Freeze
As you may noticed if you change some property values of some scene objects in "Parameters Tab" the color of the numbers change to bright white. This will show you that the value is not at default state anymore. If you want to get an overview of the properties that are changed to something else than the default value go to "Parameters" tab and click on the special "Currently Used" propertiers group to get the properties listed for the selected figure/object.
Also every bone value change of the figure rig you do in "Joint-Editor" will show up bright white an can be stored with ERC-Freeze (or memorized to default state - see "memorize figure rigging" in Joint-Editor).
I found out that "ERC-Freeze" is looking for almost every property of every figure/object that is loaded in the scene and is listing all properties with the changed values in the "Freeze Properties" section of the "ERC Freeze Options" dialogue.
The first time I decided to try out ERC-freeze the erc-freeze options showed up with a almost endless list of properties I had changed in my scene on diffrent figures and things - while I was at some some frame on the the timeline - I instantly closed it and decided to try it another day.
So to control what the "Freeze Properties" list will show up next time I have found out you have some options.
If you want to keep it simple you can create a new scene and load in only the figure(s) / object(s) you want to ERC-freeze properties for - in zero pose and shape. Almost everything you change now will be shown by ERC-freeze next time.
Or you can select every figure/object in the scene that you dont want to ERC-freeze and use "memorize selected item" for objects and/or "memorize figure" from the main "Edit" menu - or the shorter way "Parameters" tab sub-menu (left-click on the little icon with the triangle and three lines in the left corner).
The "memorize / restore / zero" functions on figures and objects or only on selected nodes/bodyparts are realy useful while working with erc-freeze because it sets or resets all curently changed property values at the current frame in timeline to default state. So you can store the current values of the properties for your selected figure/object/node with memorize to default state (see "Parameter Settings" min/max/default - value on properties) or reset them back to the default (or currently memorized) state with restore. I also use the timeline keyfames to store snapshots of diffrent property values for my figure/objects in the scene before I use ERC-Freeze on them.
I usualy dial/load in my character morph on frame one and "memorize figure" there. Then I go to frame two and change the values how I want them to be and store only these settings with erc-freeze to my new property.
ERC-Freeze Options
So once I right-click on my new property and choosed "ERC-Freeze " fom the menu I get the "ERC-Freeze Options" dialoge. I cant say much about the upper half of the "ERC-Freeze Options" - wait there is the checkbox "Keyed (Extract from Play Range)" for to ERC-Freeze I would say "non linear" changes over the min/max range of the slider for some property values. With "Keyed (Extract from Play Range)" you can do what it says first set the "Timeline" tab "Range:" to a few frames in between - animate the property changes with a few key-frames and use ERC-Freeze with "Keyed" option to store the value changes as an animation to one property slider but carfull to many "Keyed"-frames will make the preview of property changes lagging - at least by my experience.
With the "memorize" figure/object method descriped I get only the properties that I want to "freeze" to the new property listed under "Freeze Properties" in the "ERC-Freeze Options" dialoge. Before hiting apply there are just the three check-boxes that I would usualy leave checked.
And this is it - the next time I change the value of my new property - it hopefully does what it should - and the new shape will fade in. To quickly see what other "sub-component" properties gets changed with some property. I first memorize the figure in zero state and then I set the property value to 1 or 100% or what ever is the maximum and switch the property group to "Currently Used" in "Parameters" tab. If your figure allready has a charcter shape applyed the "Currently Used" list is properbly allready filled with properties with values in white - even if you memorize the figure shape property the "sub-component"s get listed there but not the figure shape "controller" property itself - this is simply because the controller-property gets saved as default value but the affected "sub-component"s default values dont get changed - so keep this in minde while working with ERC-freeze.
With this method you can easily use erc-freeze in a scene with more than one object/figure with diffrent morph/shapes/poses applyed or even on posed figures "memorize figure pose" or select just some bodyparts and "memorize selected items" on that to store just that bodypart pose at some keyframe on the timeline as default state - so you can decide which current pose / shape to become a part of the new property dial (realy handy for creating your own pose-controlls).
Property Hirarchy
If you click on the gear symbol of a property in prameters tab and choose "Parameter Settings" you should see all this name / label / path and values stuff you should allready know about. Beneath that there are the tabs "sub-components" - "controllers" - "keys" for showing any dependencies this property may have. After ERC-freeze'ing something to a new property you will see a list of the "sub-components" in there.
But if you want to go into detail and realy want to see of what "sub-components" the property is made of - and get a better undersatnding of what the dependencies between some properties are - you should use the Property Hirarchie tab. I recently found out that I just have to customize my DazStudio Workspace Layout and now I have my parameters tab and my property hirarchy tab side by side and can drag&drop some properties around to easily create new ERC dependencies between them. I dont want to explain all this - ERC Add/Substract / Multiply/Divide on Sub-Components and Controllers - stuff here maybe someone else with more knowledge about that could do it in detail here - I think many people including me would appreciate it.
I am currently just experimenting with this by linking pose-controlls for head-neck and eyes-up-down together and use it side by side with the eyes "point at" null-target funktion.
see Precise Eye - Point At Null-Target / LookAt-PoseControl with EyeTarget... (have a look its a freebie - with many pictures for description - also with details about ERC dependencies)
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/63797/precise-eye-point-at-null-target-lookat-posecontrol-with-eyetarget-fieldofview-direction-obj
I hope this will reveal some of the mystery of the whole concept behinde ERC-Freeze - that I start enjoy to work with lately. Thanks Daz for this nice and free program.
One thing I've had troouble with with several different morphs I've done is this: the morph appears to be created properly, but when applied to the base it's designed for (Genesis or Gensis 3 Female in the two specific cases I'm thinking of) when applied to the character, it causes poses and such to end up out of position, meaning that the resulting morphed character moves when the pose is applied. How do I fix that?
For starters, make sure the model you export is in a zero position. You can try adjust rigging to shape. That covers a multitude of sins.
I think I figured it out, actually. Never test it in the same scene file that you developed the initial morph in; it tends to goof things up if you do, from the looks of things.
Sounds like a scaling issue of some sort. An example of this is if I export a model at C4D scale and then forget and send it back via goZ. Often this will move the pose lower when the morph is applied.
Also if your morph is extreme and changes the size of the figure dramatically it can muck up posing...if this was the case unless you have realigned the rigging you would get spaghetti arms. However poses often will be at the wrong level due to the hip being in a different level. When creating my Diva morph I had to adjust poses for this reason.
What was happening, and it seems to have only been in the files that I had saved with the morph design in them, is that the character position relative to the base plane would actually end up below that plane with the pose applied. I'm not seeing that with a new G3F figure with the morph applied and posed; I do see a few instances where the scale difference seems to cause problems, even though I wouldn't think it would since I did realign the rigging.
The initial problem could just have been applying a new pose on top of an old pose then...this can happen. I normally zero the figure between applying poses.
All realigning the rigging does is to align the rigging to the new shape. From what I can understand this is to be expected. When it happened with my Diva morph which takes Dawn from full size to child size it was happening that some poses for Dawn when applied would end up above or below where they were meant to be. I actually emailed someone to see if they could help they explained that it was to be expected if the size of the figure had changed. Generally it's only an issue with the y axis, this has led me to believe it's due to the changes in where the hip is sitting. If you look at my diva figure her hip is a lot lower than Dawn's. Poses that didn't move the hip up or down like this one...didn't have any issues. But poses like the kneeling one I had to adjust as she would end up lower down.
So I've noticed myself, though it seems extremely odd to me that simply changing the scale of the character will cause that, whether the rigging is changed or not. Must be one of those quirks of software where it can't perfectly emulate real life, since poses do scale properly here in the real world.
It happens in both Poser and DS so it's not just in one program...I've done my morph for both programs. My understanding is that normally poses are based from the hip not the body...so it makes sense to me that if the hip has moved down due to scaling that when you apply a pose made for the original that moves the hip down, then it's still going to move it the same amount and as it starts lower that the the hip is going to end up lower then the original. Sorry if this is confused started back at work today after a week off being sick and my brain is dead...
Put that way, it does make sense. Thanks for clearing that up.
No problem...I've been reading some tutorials on making and saving poses recently so it made sense when it happened. Mind you I'm not an expert that's just how it seems to work to me...lol I just experiment most of the time.
I am doing things pretty much as you have said (DAZStudio 4.9 & ZBrush 4R7) but when I bring the model (I work mostly on the heads, in fairly simple ways: No aliens, etc.) back to DAZ, I choose apply to Model. (To this, I can apply "expressions" and they work fine.) I then save the file with another name.
But when I open the file later, all my ZBrush changes are gone, and I'm back to the Genesis 2 model I started with. Do I have to save as Morphs when I go back to DAZ? I wanted to have the flexibility to use multiple canned expressions on just one, ZBrush-modified head. Then repeat as necessary to create new characters. (I am just looking for reference to manually draw over.)
Thanks!
Really REALLY proud of this thread and its contributors. Sorry I have been away. :)
Added a few helpful links to the third post with helpful links and updated the main Tutorial with info regarding G3M and G3F and important notes when exporting the figure.
@kevphil_925adf6ece
Sorry, I have been away. Did you ever find the solution to your issue?
Oh wow "Using a Mask when Importing Morphs" nice nifty little triks you never know exist in DazStudio. I ever wondered what this attenuate means or does.
I always used ZBrushs Morph-Brush for that. Import - export objs - replacing parameters - now we can precisely select the vertices and clean up morphs in DS. I'm caught by surprise and I thought I had seen almost everything DS can do. It will save us from ugly teeth also, if I followed it right.