Rigging Doors Inside DAZ Studio?
gibrril_fa945a6cee
Posts: 550
Hi,
I found a good model from a house online, but it appears to be solid... Windows and doors have seperate hinge-geometry, but that's eye-candy only...
I was wondering, is there any way of adding a seperate controller to each of these hinges (they're basically cilinders) so they can rotate in place along the long axis (Y) so the windows and doors attached to them an open and close? (since these are solid objects, they only need to rotate, no weightmapping or other complex distortion is required)
Thanks a lot,
Me
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Comments
Go into Tools Settings>Joint Editor.
The center point is the one colored in green and the end point is the one colored in red. I am assuming that the hinges are part of the door and window. If so just play with the center points of the door or window to make then close and open. If the hinges are separate you can parent them to the door.
This is how I do it.
Update: OK, I misunderstood. I understood that the doors and windows were separate geometry, looks like it is the hinges only. You can do what Richard explained or take the model into a modeler and separate the doors and windows. I have done this with Hexagon and Silo. Then use the Joint Editor to move the center point to the side of the door or window the hinges are on.
Ideally, use the Geometry Edit tool to seelct the parts that should move in each case - the actual door or window, plus half of the hinge - and assign to a new group (one group per moving item). The Edit>Object>Rigging>Convert prop to Figure. Now with the Joint Editor tool active and the onbly bone in your new figure selected right-click and choose Create>Create Child Bone, name it, set the order to give the axis running through the door from hinge edge to handle edge first, and click Accept, then in the Tool Settings pane use the Selection Group drop-down to assign the group you created for that window or door; use the tool to drag the start point to the hing and the end point to the handle side. Repeat for the other doors and windows. Switch to the Node Weight Brush tool, select each bone in turn, in tool Settings make the map for the hing axis (probably y) active), right-click, Geometry Selection>Select By>Face Groups>group for the bone, right-click, Weight Editing>Fill Seelcted, set a value of 1. Edit>Figure>Memorise>Memorise Figure Rigging. File>Save as>Support Assets>Figure Prop Asset.
Yes, it's possible...but depending on how complex the model and how it is made, it may not be very easy to do.
And no, you don't want the hinge cylinders, at least by themselves...it's the door polygons that matter.
Hi,
Thanks for the replies, I can't select a group to assign to my newly created bone... There are none... I have created the group, but the Selection group option is greyed out... Now what? What did I miss?
Even if your model was created with those parts as separate pieces, if it was saved/exported as all one peice, then you lose the separate groups in DS or Poser.
When I learned how to bring my models into Poser, you had to import each part separately and then parent as needed... The same used to apply to DAZ Studio, though it may no longer... Probably depending on format.
My guess is this model you have is being read as one big group/part...
You could open it in a modeling program like Blender, Wings3D or Hexagon as mentioned above and try and see if it's grouped at all... More often than not you'll find it isn't... The parts may have be made separately by the person who made the model for their convenience, but they may have accidentally or deliberatly ungrouped the parts.
If you can manage to separate the parts in a modeling program, here is a little trick I use to make hinging doors easier... It mostly depends on the accuracy of the model, I make my hinges like real ones... One half is attached to the door frame, the other to the door... If your model is like that, what you can do after importing each part into DAZ , is to create a small primitive cylinder and insert it where a hinge pin would go in real life... Then parent the door to the cylinder and make the cylinder invisible... The door should now use the invisible cylinder as its pivot point... I find this easier than going and finding a center pivot point in each hinge... if you chose this method, you will have to open the door by rotating the cylinder... I usually re-name that cylinder as "OPEN-CLOSE DOOR", so I don't forget, or if it's a free model so as not to confuse anyone.
I just recently rigged my first door and the handle!
But I do have a question, what exactly in the manual do they mean by "selection groups"?
Selection groups are groups that are used to tell DS which bone to select when you click on an area of mesh (there are also selection sets which are not used for anything by helping you to save and recover selections).
gibrril_fa945a6cee: you will need to use the geometry Edit tool to create the groups before you can assign them to bones.
Why do people always talk about rigging things that are more like props, as characters? What is the advantage of that?
When I learned how to do this (a video tutorial from one of the 3D magazines a few years back) the idea was, if you had something simple like a door or a box with a hinged lid, you just imported the box, imported the lid and created a new pivot point for the lid... Same with a door... If there was room, or wall section, you imported that, then the door and changed the pivot point (joint center or center of rotation) to the door hinge center... You then parent the lid to the box or the door to the room (or wall, or door frame)... Save as a prop... Boom, simple prop with moving parts.
The tutorial did a whole helicopter that way.
I get doing it if it's a robotic arm, or a steering gear for a wheel assembly... Landing gear... Folding ladder... Stuff like that... But I constantly see people talking about everything having bones... Isn't that just adding steps or making stuff unnecessarily complicated?
Not a criticism, just a question I've been wondering about forever.
Personally, I rather have items be separate objects so I can pull them out and reuse them in different ways.
I don't know if people rig it with bones because it's easier for them, or because they don't want me to take out the bits like that. I've encountered a few large scenes of 'stuff' all rigged together and it's... frustrating. 'I'd really like to use that window, but it's baked into all this stuff. Meh.'
Thanks for reply Richard, but I was wondering what is it that defines them in your modeler? Is it the material groups? Is it vertex groups? When I import the obj via the figure setup window, DS has already decided which part of the object gets its bone and I wonder how that was defined.
You don't even have to do that in DAZ Studio. They will have a pivot point as I made aware, just move the center point (green) to the side of the door or window where the hinges are at, and that's that. Simple.
The advantage of making an item a figure is that a single preset, pose or material, will affect the whole thing (of course with hierarchical presets in DS that isn't necessary). I'm not sure, if the item is already a single file, that splitting it into props will be much less work than turning it into a figure.
Groups in an OBJ file are collectioins of polygons, like but distinct from surfaces. How you create them in a modeller will depend on the modeller - in modo I assign a set of polygons to a "part", in Hexagon as I recall a group is a separate mesh item (so it can't be welded to another group).
Thanks for the tutorial! That worked like a charm!