I want to try out a method for controlling an object's rotation using a series of morphs driven by a single ERC dial. The problem is I have no idea how to implement it. I know this isn't the most practical thing, I'm just curious if it can be done.

What I though of was to export a bunch of incremental rotations and import them as morphs, then have them instantly "switch off" once a certain percentage on the master ERC dial is reached and go to the next. For example, if I had a 10 degree morph, it would be set at 100% when the ERC dial hits 2.77%; when the ERC dial starts going above 2.77%, it instantly sets the 10 degree morph to 0 and begins driving the 20% morph, and so on.

How would I go about this?

Can sagan do geographs and geoshells yet, or no?

 

I think so, but you may have to play around with ignoring certain surfaces, or delete them in Blender until I figure out that facet flag business. And of course, there is no documentation for it. So you may end up with geometry that you don't want. Just try it.

What's the status of Sagan at the moment? The geograft question is critical for me because all of my characters include them. Just to explain: the first thing I do when I buy a figure or character is to morph it to my own preference, add the geografts, run it through Scene Optimizer to reduce the texture sizes and save as a scene or Scene Subset. 

I haven't been able to play with Blender for a while because I have a non-graphics related project which is taking almost all of my computer time. Actually not a bad time to be somewhat removed from DAZ Studio considering the debacle happening with the store right now.

@marble I haven't figured this out yet, it's undocumented, but I was able to get what I wanted with a geograft by simply ignoring the extraneous surfaces and saving that configuration. Does this workaround not work for the time being?

 

Dunno, it might if I knew what you mean by the extraneous surfaces. You overly-clever guys tend to assume that we mere mortals have the same level of knowledge that you have. Just to be clear - I know what the word "extraneous" means and I guess you mean I need to select and ignore them in the Surfaces tab within Sagan? If so, which surfaces are considered extraneous?

extraneous surface = the one that is duplicated.  I.e., the one that appears twice in the list.

Ignoring duplicate surfaces works for anatomical elements.  Im not so sure it works very well with other geografts - like the metal arm example i posted a while ago (it was either in this thread or some other related thread).

 

I'm looking at the surfaces list now but I don't see any duplicated surfaces.

Ah, wait a minute ... I see surfaces under the main figure and also surfaces on the geograft objects. OK, right - so which of those do I ignore? Either?

dont remember.  i assume the one by itself - i.e., not the one that's with the figure surfaces.

If they do bring out a G9, I hope the spine has more bones. You ever try to do a properly looking belly roll (bellydance style) on any version of Genesis. Of course if not bones, then definitely muscle movement, without having to buy a specialized morph pack to be able to do it, should be included with the standard body morphs you buy.

Can sagan do geographs and geoshells yet, or no?

 

I think so, but you may have to play around with ignoring certain surfaces, or delete them in Blender until I figure out that facet flag business. And of course, there is no documentation for it. So you may end up with geometry that you don't want. Just try it.

What's the status of Sagan at the moment? The geograft question is critical for me because all of my characters include them. Just to explain: the first thing I do when I buy a figure or character is to morph it to my own preference, add the geografts, run it through Scene Optimizer to reduce the texture sizes and save as a scene or Scene Subset. 

I haven't been able to play with Blender for a while because I have a non-graphics related project which is taking almost all of my computer time. Actually not a bad time to be somewhat removed from DAZ Studio considering the debacle happening with the store right now.

@marble I haven't figured this out yet, it's undocumented, but I was able to get what I wanted with a geograft by simply ignoring the extraneous surfaces and saving that configuration. Does this workaround not work for the time being?

 

Dunno, it might if I knew what you mean by the extraneous surfaces. You overly-clever guys tend to assume that we mere mortals have the same level of knowledge that you have. Just to be clear - I know what the word "extraneous" means and I guess you mean I need to select and ignore them in the Surfaces tab within Sagan? If so, which surfaces are considered extraneous?

extraneous surface = the one that is duplicated.  I.e., the one that appears twice in the list.

Ignoring duplicate surfaces works for anatomical elements.  Im not so sure it works very well with other geografts - like the metal arm example i posted a while ago (it was either in this thread or some other related thread).

 

I'm looking at the surfaces list now but I don't see any duplicated surfaces.

Ah, wait a minute ... I see surfaces under the main figure and also surfaces on the geograft objects. OK, right - so which of those do I ignore? Either?

Can sagan do geographs and geoshells yet, or no?

 

I think so, but you may have to play around with ignoring certain surfaces, or delete them in Blender until I figure out that facet flag business. And of course, there is no documentation for it. So you may end up with geometry that you don't want. Just try it.

What's the status of Sagan at the moment? The geograft question is critical for me because all of my characters include them. Just to explain: the first thing I do when I buy a figure or character is to morph it to my own preference, add the geografts, run it through Scene Optimizer to reduce the texture sizes and save as a scene or Scene Subset. 

I haven't been able to play with Blender for a while because I have a non-graphics related project which is taking almost all of my computer time. Actually not a bad time to be somewhat removed from DAZ Studio considering the debacle happening with the store right now.

@marble I haven't figured this out yet, it's undocumented, but I was able to get what I wanted with a geograft by simply ignoring the extraneous surfaces and saving that configuration. Does this workaround not work for the time being?

 

Dunno, it might if I knew what you mean by the extraneous surfaces. You overly-clever guys tend to assume that we mere mortals have the same level of knowledge that you have. Just to be clear - I know what the word "extraneous" means and I guess you mean I need to select and ignore them in the Surfaces tab within Sagan? If so, which surfaces are considered extraneous?

extraneous surface = the one that is duplicated.  I.e., the one that appears twice in the list.

Ignoring duplicate surfaces works for anatomical elements.  Im not so sure it works very well with other geografts - like the metal arm example i posted a while ago (it was either in this thread or some other related thread).

Can sagan do geographs and geoshells yet, or no?

 

I think so, but you may have to play around with ignoring certain surfaces, or delete them in Blender until I figure out that facet flag business. And of course, there is no documentation for it. So you may end up with geometry that you don't want. Just try it.

What's the status of Sagan at the moment? The geograft question is critical for me because all of my characters include them. Just to explain: the first thing I do when I buy a figure or character is to morph it to my own preference, add the geografts, run it through Scene Optimizer to reduce the texture sizes and save as a scene or Scene Subset. 

I haven't been able to play with Blender for a while because I have a non-graphics related project which is taking almost all of my computer time. Actually not a bad time to be somewhat removed from DAZ Studio considering the debacle happening with the store right now.

@marble I haven't figured this out yet, it's undocumented, but I was able to get what I wanted with a geograft by simply ignoring the extraneous surfaces and saving that configuration. Does this workaround not work for the time being?

 

Dunno, it might if I knew what you mean by the extraneous surfaces. You overly-clever guys tend to assume that we mere mortals have the same level of knowledge that you have. Just to be clear - I know what the word "extraneous" means and I guess you mean I need to select and ignore them in the Surfaces tab within Sagan? If so, which surfaces are considered extraneous?

Can sagan do geographs and geoshells yet, or no?

 

I think so, but you may have to play around with ignoring certain surfaces, or delete them in Blender until I figure out that facet flag business. And of course, there is no documentation for it. So you may end up with geometry that you don't want. Just try it.

What's the status of Sagan at the moment? The geograft question is critical for me because all of my characters include them. Just to explain: the first thing I do when I buy a figure or character is to morph it to my own preference, add the geografts, run it through Scene Optimizer to reduce the texture sizes and save as a scene or Scene Subset. 

I haven't been able to play with Blender for a while because I have a non-graphics related project which is taking almost all of my computer time. Actually not a bad time to be somewhat removed from DAZ Studio considering the debacle happening with the store right now.

@marble I haven't figured this out yet, it's undocumented, but I was able to get what I wanted with a geograft by simply ignoring the extraneous surfaces and saving that configuration. Does this workaround not work for the time being?

Can sagan do geographs and geoshells yet, or no?

 

I think so, but you may have to play around with ignoring certain surfaces, or delete them in Blender until I figure out that facet flag business. And of course, there is no documentation for it. So you may end up with geometry that you don't want. Just try it.

What's the status of Sagan at the moment? The geograft question is critical for me because all of my characters include them. Just to explain: the first thing I do when I buy a figure or character is to morph it to my own preference, add the geografts, run it through Scene Optimizer to reduce the texture sizes and save as a scene or Scene Subset. 

I haven't been able to play with Blender for a while because I have a non-graphics related project which is taking almost all of my computer time. Actually not a bad time to be somewhat removed from DAZ Studio considering the debacle happening with the store right now.

It has been done. The secret is the Genesis 1 character which acts as a go-between. Load the animation on a Genesis 1 character then save-as a 'pose preset'. Next load in Genesis 8 and apply that pose preset. It has been awhile since I messed with that type of transfer, but I think that is all there was to it.

I've read through this thread and not seen any mention of the fact that the interactive licenses didn't transfer over. If I missed that, I apologize. If not, then I hope this will  be addressed at some point (low priority I know).

I made a shirt and am now trying to make some JCMs for it, so I fit it to G8M dev load, raise the right arm, and export. In DS, the shirt has 25,995 vertices, but when I import it into C4D (I also tried Blender to make sure it wasn't just a C4D thing), one vertex is lost, leaving me with 25,994. This means that I can't import the changed OBJ as a morph. Clearly it's not a case of accidentally exporting at high resolution or with SubD applied, so can anyone think of a reason why just one vertex would go missing? The number of faces is unchanged, it's just one ghost vertex, and the same thing happens even if I just export the shirt by itself. The base OBJ of the shirt has the higher vertex count, so DS isn't somehow adding a vertex, either. Whahappen?

Check out the diffeomorphic plug-in, you can import animated sequences in as a pose preset. Just have to go to poses and then import action, have your animation saved as a pose preset and it'll be brought in. And there's sliders for viseme and expressions in diffeomorphic as well. Right now facial expressions do not transfer over, but in another thread it was mentioned Thomas is working on that right now, so hopefully soon. The materials have some differences between Daz to Blender Bridge and Diffeomorphic, if you prefer the DTB Bridge, just save the character as it's own file, bring it in with diffeomorphic and then append the materials from the other file and just switch the materials out. That's still way faster than importing pose by pose. For me it's really hit or miss, some characters look fantastic in diffeo and meh in DTB and vice versa, so it's just a matter of playing around with it. 

Thank you greatly for your reply. I watched your YouTube tutorial on it as well and got some good tips. Diffeomorphic plug-in does seem to be the most full featured, I wish there were a complete tutorial series on using it. I am concerned about loosing time on the learning curve as it seem like it can do everything I'll need for a complete animation workflow between Daz and Blender. I would pay for a complete Udemy type course in all its features. It seem like mostly there are just a bunch of random tutorials out there from people showing what they have managed to get it to do for their own work flows. The face rig and papagyu lip synch features seem especially underrepresented. 

As the front page banner has gone and all prices are now at full price the guess is that they have taken everything away to 'start again' as some fixes were breaking other things.

"They" probably noticed that the shop had a phase in which it was offering very generous prices for stuff that had been in the PFAD last couple days - like $ 0.90 to $ 1.39 - which even survived the transfer into the shopping cart (don't know if one could even get it for that price, because I didn't try it out... had decided to be a "nice person" for once.. as it wasn't DAZ Originals but pure PA items)

Thank you Richard. I normally do not have any problems, maybe that's because I use the above ruler for reference.

Edit - As a quick test I imported the ruler it into DS, added the texture (which was a bit fuzzy) and created a 1 meter cube and it looks pretty good.

Not sure about the bridge, I only use that for simple morphs.

Don't bother with the bridge. It runs at a completely different scale to everything else and is really only good for morphs.

If the Bridge didn't use the correct scale it would be useless for morphs, they'd either inflate or deflate the model.

The bridge scales correctly as long as you bring the item in via the bridge and take it back to Studio the same way. But doing something like saving it as an OBJ to then go via morph loader (because you may want to create a whole batch of morphs) or modeling around the imported figure totally buggers up the scale in my experience.

So Studio-to-Hex via Bridge, morph, take back to studio the same way works okay. Every other endeavour doesnt.

I'd think the crashes would have to be due to a certain combination of morphs rather than the number of morphs---if even the former is the cause---as I own every G8F morph pack/kit in this store and many from Renderosity as well as having at least 650 G8F characters installed.

Contradicting statements. I don't think it's a combination of morph kits, but sheer number as my content library 'character' section exceeds that 650 by more than double, and that's not including the "HD" versions.

I counted characters as morphs (which they are); hence, no contradiction. But over 1,300 G8F's was not a number I considered. It's a wonder you can even load G8F.

Yep, apparently a lot of us had an unspecified number of ownership records get lost in the transfer, so even though the data is apparently still there somewhere, the site doesn't recognize that we've bought things. I have everything from yesterday missing, plus stuff from before then as well.

And the "cart and store should match up" statement is a complete crock. Right now I wouldn't trust Daz if they told me that rain was wet.

Apropos of nothing, but some Vampi fans may remember Playboy centerfold model Barbara Leigh posed in costume for a few covers of the original Warren Magazine run of the comics.  She was the person finally selected to star in a Hammer Films adaptation of the comic, acting alongside Hammer veteran Peter Cushing as Pendragon, a powerful wizard pretending to be a mere stage magician.  Alas, Hammer went bankrupt and closed its doors just before they finalized the script and started shooting.  Rather than waste the cotume, Leigh was photographed in a variety of poses and a few of those images became comic covers.

However, Ms. Leigh was not Hammer;s initial choice.  The studio originally wanted Caroline Munro for the title role, but she declined when she learned nudity would be involved.  Munro is probably best known to genre fans as Ariana the slave girl Sinbad freed in "The Golden Yoyage of Sinbad" (which resulted in the movie's villain, Tom Baker landing the role of "Doctor Who") and "Dia" in "At the Earth's Core" where she did perform alongside Peter Cushing.

Really, anysultry faced morph and texture set is viable as so many artists have drawn Vampi, but I'd suggest a likeness of either Munro or Leigh if you want to go with an "almost made" movie likeness.

As for Cushing, he did accept the offer.  there's a site that discusses the movie and the article contains a photoscan of the synopsis Peter was given, revealing a drawing he made of his character.  Cushing was a talented illustrator and sculptor of miniature figurines and dioramas on top of everything else.  He made a hobby of recreating pivotal scenes in the various stage productions he acted.  I've wondered if he did something similar for his movie roles.  Imagine, a shelftop diorama of his "victor Frankenstein" animating his "Monster", his "van Helsing" staking Christopher lee's Dracula, or, his Moff Tarkin threatening Princess leia as vader stand by, ready to intercede!  I have read no accounts Cushing modeled movie scenes, but if he did, collectors would pay kings' ransoms for them!

Update:  I forgot to note the cover for the comic's and character's debute featured a painting but the late lamented fantasy artist Frank Frazetta.  He gave the "Last Daughter of Drakulon" several of his characteristic elements, such as a curvatious frame we'd probably describe as "thicc" nowadays.  Her face was rather "moon shaped' (read: "round" features) with East Asian epicanthic eyelids.  Rather different from the more sharply defined "triangular" face later artists would give her.

So it kinda' boils down to "almost anything goes".  I stress "almost" because I doubt many people want to see the Vampi equivalent of "Sailor 'Bubba'".  (Google at your own risk!)

OK, thank you so much for answering, barbult. But, at present, Does Mesh Grabber have any morphs? I don't think so. If I do the morphs on a particular G8 male figure, will the morphs be saved along with that figure? I would want the morphs to be available to all the G8 male figures. I realize that this could be the case -- available to all -- even if the morphs were saved along with morphs for a particular G8 male. Is that what you're saying? The morphs would then be saved along with a particular G8 male figure, and they would also be available to all the G8 male figures? Or, are you saying something different from that?

Yes, the morphs you make on a specific G8 male will be available on all G8 males. BUT, they might not look "right", just like if you load Monique 8 and dial in Edie 8 Nose Small, it looks very strange. The morph is there and is usable, but not necessarily useful. It all depends on the morph. You can mix your own saved morphs along with any other morphs.

@inquire, In the dialog for saving the morph, you can select which library to save the morphs in. By default, I believe it will choose My Library, which is your library, where things like Scenes are saved to.

Each library has it's own data folder. If you stick with the My Library for your Morph Assets, and use your name as the Artist, (for demonstration purposes, I'll use inquire here,) your morphs will be saved in a location like this one:

• [path]\Studio\My Library\data\Ravenhair\Everyday 1930 for V4\Everyday 1930 Dress G2F\Morphs\inquire\LA Everyday 1930 Style

where [path] is the location of your Daz libraries. This is the actual path for morphs I created for the Everyday 1930 Dress to support it on G2F, with the exception of placing your username in the full path instead of my own. Daz Studio will create the correct path for the morphs within the library you choose, with a bit of help from you by filling in information as necessary.

I hope this helps.

HI: OK, did the search. Found the pdf easily. Have read it. Some questions still remain with me. Basically, about saving as a morph asset and where that folder will be. The pdf says "will be saved into the /data directory that is normally hidden in the Content Library." (screen shot)

OK, will I be able to find that folder just in case I want to trash it, or to delete some of the morphs I made? 

So, is this folder the /data folder that I can see if I look on my HD? (screen shot)

Going on with this: under that data folder I can find a Morphs folder. Is this the folder that the morph assets will be saved into? (screen shot)

Also, in the pdf info, it says "using the 'Vendor Name' and 'Product Name' you have provided." So, for example, if I use the Vendor Name Vertuous, and the Product Name Glorious Morphs, will the folder structure then be the following: /data/ . . . /Morphs/Vertuous/Glorious Morphs?

To summarize: I'd like to save out some morph assets. The pdf info on Mesh Grabber leaves me a little puzzeled about just where they will  be saved. I want to know that in case I later wish to delete the folder or to delete some of those morphs.

 

Thank goodness! Something to discuss other than the broken store! 
Yes, the morphs you save will be in the /data directory in the Asset Directory (content library) that you select on the first line of the Morph Asset(s) Save Options dialog. Yes, they will be saved in a Vertuous/Glorious Morphs folder BUT that folder will be nested along with the other morphs that already exist for that product. They are not always easy to find in the data folder, but once you find them, you can just delete the Vertuous/Glorious Morphs folder or a single morph in the folder. If you save morphs for various products, the saved morphs will be nested along with those various products' existing morphs, not all in one single data/Vertuous/Glorious Morphs folder. This is Daz's doing and has nothing specific to do with Mesh Grabber.

For example, I loaded Boys in the Sun Shorts into my scene and used Mesh Grabber to shorten them and then save a morph named "Shorten". I went to the Parameters pane and dialed the saved morph to 0%, as instructed in the Mesh Grabber PDF. Note that at this point, the "save" only means "make the Mesh Grabber changed into a morph". To save it for later use, the Daz Save As/Support Asset/Morph Asset needs to be used. So I ran that and selected my content library for the Asset Directory and entered barbult as the vendor and Boys in the Sun as the product (doesn't have to match the "real" product name). I saved it. In the content library data directory it is in \data\Fisty and Darc\BoysSun\Boys in the Sun Shorts\Morphs\barbult\Boys in the Sun and is named Shorten.dsf.