Need Help Fine-Tuning a Custom Genesis 9 Morph

Comments

• Richard Haseltine Posts: 111,078

  July 25

  You may well need to adjusty the rigging to match the shape for the eyes and expression bones, which means moving the joint centres and possibly the end points and changing the alignment to match (DS does have an Adjust Rigging to Shape command, but don't expect it to be a one-click  fix). You may also need additional morphs that will correct the shape when you have your morph applied and some other bone rotation or shape.  Once you have all of those you will need to link them to your morph, and to the other rotation/shape in the case of corrections, which usually invovles using the property Hierarchy pane and putting the Parametrs pane in Edit mode so that you can drag-and-drop to build the basic links.
• frisquet Posts: 9

  July 25

  Richard Haseltine said:

  You may well need to adjusty the rigging to match the shape for the eyes and expression bones, which means moving the joint centres and possibly the end points and changing the alignment to match (DS does have an Adjust Rigging to Shape command, but don't expect it to be a one-click  fix). You may also need additional morphs that will correct the shape when you have your morph applied and some other bone rotation or shape.  Once you have all of those you will need to link them to your morph, and to the other rotation/shape in the case of corrections, which usually invovles using the property Hierarchy pane and putting the Parametrs pane in Edit mode so that you can drag-and-drop to build the basic links.

  Thank you for the reply! Just to clarify, I have already successfully run Adjust Rigging to Shape and completed the ERC Freeze for my custom shape. The bone alignment itself seems correct.

  However, the result is still unsatisfactory. When I apply a base expression like a smile, the geometry completely breaks: the gums clip through the lips, and the mesh tears badly.

  I understand your point about needing "additional morphs" (JCMs/MCMs) to correct the shape when the expression is dialed in. This is exactly where I am stuck due to a lack of specific, step-by-step information. Since standard expressions use complex FACS morphs, how exactly do I approach creating and linking a corrective morph specifically for this torn smile? Are there any specific tutorials or step-by-step workflows you could point me to for fixing mouth/teeth clipping during expressions on a heavily customized shape?
• lilweep Posts: 2,859

  July 25 edited July 25

  frisquet said:

  The first problem is the eyes. I created custom eye morphs as well, but when I make the character look at the camera, the gaze never feels quite right. No matter what I try, I can't get the eyes to look naturally at the camera. The result is still far from acceptable.

  There needs to be a page we can link to with all steps fully written out for cases like this - it would save explaining it every time.

  There are steps you need to do in order.
   

  Fitting the eyes

  Load G9 Devload (i.e., Resting Focus should be off)

  Load your Head morph only 

  Load the Eyes onto the figure

  Export the eyes at base res and position them in your modelling software so they are perfectly aligned

  Bring them back into Daz as an autofollow morph, following standard process for creating autofollow morph (i.e., loading onto the eyes while the head shape is active, loading with reverse deformations set to "Yes", and "Deltas only", and the eyes morph should have the exact same Name as the Head morph)

  Save your eyes autofllow morph to directory

  Now the head morph and the eyes are all in position, you can proceed with rigging.

  Rigging the Head morph and Eyes bones
  If you have already done Adjust Rigging to Shape and ERC - please just delete whatever you already did and start from scratch.  (In theory, you could go to "ERC Bake..." to remove the ERC links for your head morph but if you run into complications doing this im not helping you so it is easier to just start over)

  Run Adjust Rigging to Shape but DO NOT check the boxes for Right Eye, Left Eye, and the four Eyelid bones

  Once you have Adjusted Rigging of evertyhing but the Eye and Eyelids, you can do ERC Freeze. Scan through the list of bone adjustments before committing to ensure you are not ERC freezing anything stupid. It should just be the face bones without the eyes and eyelids

  Run the "Adjust Eye Rigging" Script for G9, under the G9 Starter Essentials Utility 

  If you look at your ERC'd subcomponents, you see you now have the Head bones you manually ERC Freezed plus the eye bones and eyelids that the "Adjust Eye Rigging" script completed.

  You can now save the Head morph to your directory.
   

  The second problem is facial expressions. As soon as I apply expressions, the character starts looking unnatural and ugly.

  Do those expressions look ghastly on G9 default anyway? They might just be awful expressions.  Check each FACS expression individually to troubleshoot and ensure your head morph and ERC'd bone adjustments arent messed up. 

  My goal isn't to create a Frankenstein character—I want the morph to work well with Genesis 9 expressions.

  At this point I'm not even sure what I should be learning next. Is there a proper workflow for fine-tuning custom Genesis 9 morphs so they behave correctly with eye poses and facial expressions?

  When you did Faceform wrap, did you use latest Faceform with the option to wrap with splines? Did you do wrapping/alignment using the splines or old point pairs method?

  Whichever method you used, did you ensure the geometry follows G9 geometry? Did you use the Landmarks texture map that comes with G9 utility to ensure you are following landmarks and preserving topology flow? If you didnt, then topology for expressions could potentially become weird.  You can look at the wireframe for your morph vs default g9 and see if the topology flow looks off.

  There doesn't seem to be much information on this topic, or maybe I'm just searching for the wrong terms since English isn't my native language.  If anyone could point me toward tutorials, documentation, or explain the correct workflow, I'd really appreciate it.

  Many tutorials for setting up G9 characters are just generally bad or they are good until they decide to just completely miss out steps concerning ERC or saving.

  Faceform wrapping concepts about preserving topology etc are universal so those tutorials should apply to all software.

  Post edited by lilweep on July 25
• lilweep Posts: 2,859

  July 25 edited July 25

  frisquet said:

  Richard Haseltine said:

  You may well need to adjusty the rigging to match the shape for the eyes and expression bones, which means moving the joint centres and possibly the end points and changing the alignment to match (DS does have an Adjust Rigging to Shape command, but don't expect it to be a one-click  fix). You may also need additional morphs that will correct the shape when you have your morph applied and some other bone rotation or shape.  Once you have all of those you will need to link them to your morph, and to the other rotation/shape in the case of corrections, which usually invovles using the property Hierarchy pane and putting the Parametrs pane in Edit mode so that you can drag-and-drop to build the basic links.

  Thank you for the reply! Just to clarify, I have already successfully run Adjust Rigging to Shape and completed the ERC Freeze for my custom shape. The bone alignment itself seems correct.

  However, the result is still unsatisfactory. When I apply a base expression like a smile, the geometry completely breaks: the gums clip through the lips, and the mesh tears badly.

  I understand your point about needing "additional morphs" (JCMs/MCMs) to correct the shape when the expression is dialed in. This is exactly where I am stuck due to a lack of specific, step-by-step information. Since standard expressions use complex FACS morphs, how exactly do I approach creating and linking a corrective morph specifically for this torn smile? Are there any specific tutorials or step-by-step workflows you could point me to for fixing mouth/teeth clipping during expressions on a heavily customized shape?

  If you want custom correctives for FACS, you make one per FACS shape.
  
  E.g., if you want a corrective for Blink, you make a corrective for Blink Left and then a separate for Blink Right.

  To manually set up the controllers for your correctives, you do this in Property Heirarchy.  E.g., the original FACs Blink Left would set up as controller for your corrective shape by putting it as 1st Stage Controller (DeltaAdd type). I explained this recently in a seperate thread so just read this.  Unfortunately my diagram is in english... https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/9599431/#Comment_9599431

  Post edited by lilweep on July 25
• crosswind Posts: 10,094

  July 27 edited July 27

  ...

  I'm pretty happy with the result in the neutral pose, but that's where the good news ends.

  Yeah, the figure in default A-Pose also looks fine to me but it merely means that you successfully got the job done in Faceform Wrap, i.e. you got the correct head / body shapes on G9 by having wrapped the source character. Then you need to do follow a key workflow in terms of morphing:
  
  1) Check and fix Auto Follow Head morphs on the anatomical attachments on G9, e.g: Eyes, Mouth, Tears, Eyelashes, Brows...as they're separate wearables. This is the primary step before doing adjust rigging, fix corrective morphs, etc...
      For Eyes and Tears, make sure they well fit in eyesockets, with no obvious distortion on irises, pupils.... For Mouth, make sure they well fit in mouth cavity, with no obvious distortion on gums & teeth. 
      lilweep showed you the key steps above, just a trick: Export OBJ (no matter from DS or Blender) by using the Name of Auto Follow head morph...so that you can more easily updating Deltas by using Morph Loader Pro.
      Do the same check as well as fix on Tears / Eyelashes / Mouth nodes ~      
  2) Adjust Rigging to Shape and ERC Freeze on character's Head / Body morphs
  3) Check and make necessary joint corrective morphs  ( _body_cbs_ ) for the key bones (e.g. spines, head, necks, shoulders, upperarms, thighs and shins ) and set up ERC links
  4) Check and make necessary facial corrective morphs  ( _facs_cbs_ ) for key FACS properties (e.g Jaw, Mouth, Lips, Eyes, Eyelids... related... ) and setup ERC links

  If each key FACS property works well, most of the expressional Pose Control properties should be able to work well.  A trick, when dialing or mixing expressional Pose Control properties, don't dial  the values to 100% ~ Dialing or mixing with high values might make you character looks ugly or weird, or a bit "Frankenstein " lol ~

  If some Pose Controls don't work well, you have to make dedicated corrective morph(s) (i.e. eJCMs / MCMs) to the existing ones.

  As for using Faceform Wrap, I couldn't tell more as you didn't share the graph of nodes that you used but as per my experience of the workflow in Wrap, the below graph that I've been using works pretty well in most of the cases. 

  Besides, personally I don't think the above issues you mentioned came from wrapping process ~~ most likely you just need to adjust rigging and make some corrective morphs.

  Edit: No worry ~ even the officially well-made Victoria 9 cannot 100% well handle all expressional properties lol ~~ Any more issues, just feel free to let us know.

   

   

  

  

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  Post edited by crosswind on July 27