So i created a custom character morph in zbrush a while ago for the genesis 2 female. The morph works wonderfully in daz on the genesis 2 base. Since genesis 3 has come out I have been trying to figure out how to transfer this morph to the genesis 3 base. I purchased genx2 and the genesis 2 and 3 addons but I seem to be having trouble. I have read several tutorials and I'm still having trouble. WHen I drag the character file from the content window to the genx transfer window I get a pop-up saying it's loading but then nothing happens and their is nothing to select. I could really use help. The morph is a likeness of a friend and took several days in zbrush to get right. I would hate to have to scrap it and start over. Any help would be appreciated.

 

Sincerely,

-Dan

It sounds like a problem that the business that develops genX2 needs to address. They'll ask you for support logs from their app & such things and give you a solution or fix their code.

So i created a custom character morph in zbrush a while ago for the genesis 2 female. The morph works wonderfully in daz on the genesis 2 base. Since genesis 3 has come out I have been trying to figure out how to transfer this morph to the genesis 3 base. I purchased genx2 and the genesis 2 and 3 addons but I seem to be having trouble. I have read several tutorials and I'm still having trouble. WHen I drag the character file from the content window to the genx transfer window I get a pop-up saying it's loading but then nothing happens and their is nothing to select. I could really use help. The morph is a likeness of a friend and took several days in zbrush to get right. I would hate to have to scrap it and start over. Any help would be appreciated.

 

Sincerely,

-Dan

Gotta figure out a good workflow, but I think this may (FINALLY) be the solution I've needed for importing morph targets for standard figures that were sculpted in my Mesh-editor of choice (Mesh Mixer) which has the one tiny fatal flaw of scrambling vertex labels and blanking out group identifiers on export.  This seems like it can do the "Hey Daz, trust me, I know the metadata is wrong, but look, those ARE all the right verticies and faces you're looking for" intervention I need. 

Loving it the more I play with it.

Good to know the parenting issue isn't that relevant. Regarding morphs and animation, while I'm obviously thrilled about the tool working perfectly for a straight punch, I was envisioning more of a "sliding grasp" situation, something like a praying mantis joint-lock in which the hand of the attacker makes soft contact along the forearm till it slides into position for the move. The way I think the script works, I would have to generate a morph for every frame in the sequence, which is doable but extremely tedious. Of course, I'd be glad to be corrected and I am buying this just for the other possibilities it offers (really, I had pictured a hand coming out of a screen so many times...).

Hi, thanks for your interest on my product!  This is a render with Aiko 7 head morph set to 0.  The skin is painted on Genesis 3 Base Female UV's so it can be used on any character.

 

 

So, one quick clarification, morphs are no problem, you can project onto a morph shaped.  What usually needs to be zeroed is "sub-root" rotations, and even then, usually only "hip" rotations.  In the promo image where Genesis 3 Male is getting his lights punched out, he was already posed before having the face indentation applied and it worked great.  For reasons I have not been able to sort out, when I apply a morph programmatically, it's treated differently than a morph loaded via .duf.  The result is, a morph will look fine when you first create it, but when you reload the scene, it will be skewed.  I ran into the same issue with Zone Smoother, so that script actually zeroes world space transformations before it runs and then restores them after.  I didn't want to do that with this script because I wanted people to have absolute control over the finished product.

Long story short, it's typically just first level/hip level rotations that need to be zeroed. 

As for combining multiple morphs to get more extreme or exaggerated results, absolutely you can!  There are a few ways to do it.  What you described actually works great and I've done it myself a bunch.  I'll create one set of very smooth, subtle morphs, and then another more extreme, less smoothed morph, then dial them, together.  Alternatively, you can use the "fixed distance" projection methods to create m,ore extreme morphs.  You can also edit the morphs to allow them to be dialed above 100% and exaggerate that way.

Also worth trying, dial up a really high "Before" smoothing value with Quads 2 or Tris 2, run the projection with Separate Smooth Morphs enabled, then dial back the Smooth Before morph to zero or less than zero.  It can actually add back original shape details, pretty cool effect :-).

 

Oh that is INCREDIBLY helpful advice and clarification.   Thanks so much, gonna play some more!

Gave G2M a morph so he can sport an exposed M4 Brain.   Other than swapping the "project inward/outward" settings, this was just a few seconds on the default settings.  Great result for quick fiddling.

OK, I do have one technical question, and get as complicated with the answer as you need.  The documentation indicates that there are "some cases" where you can/should start with the receiver object in a non-zeroed state.

What specifically happens if you attempt to project an object onto a receiver in a morphed state?

I'm wondering if it's possible to achieve some more extreme morphs by projecting a more moderate source onto a default-shape-receiver and then running the process again using a futher-aggressively-shaped source projected onto the receiver with the "partial" shape from the previous projection already dialed in.

Setting aside the liklihood of ending up with a stack of morphs that would all be needed to achieve the final target...is this theoretically a viable approach?   If not, reiterating the initial question, what DOES it do when you project a source-shape onto a morphed-receiver? 

So, one quick clarification, morphs are no problem, you can project onto a morph shaped.  What usually needs to be zeroed is "sub-root" rotations, and even then, usually only "hip" rotations.  In the promo image where Genesis 3 Male is getting his lights punched out, he was already posed before having the face indentation applied and it worked great.  For reasons I have not been able to sort out, when I apply a morph programmatically, it's treated differently than a morph loaded via .duf.  The result is, a morph will look fine when you first create it, but when you reload the scene, it will be skewed.  I ran into the same issue with Zone Smoother, so that script actually zeroes world space transformations before it runs and then restores them after.  I didn't want to do that with this script because I wanted people to have absolute control over the finished product.

Long story short, it's typically just first level/hip level rotations that need to be zeroed. 

As for combining multiple morphs to get more extreme or exaggerated results, absolutely you can!  There are a few ways to do it.  What you described actually works great and I've done it myself a bunch.  I'll create one set of very smooth, subtle morphs, and then another more extreme, less smoothed morph, then dial them, together.  Alternatively, you can use the "fixed distance" projection methods to create m,ore extreme morphs.  You can also edit the morphs to allow them to be dialed above 100% and exaggerate that way.

Also worth trying, dial up a really high "Before" smoothing value with Quads 2 or Tris 2, run the projection with Separate Smooth Morphs enabled, then dial back the Smooth Before morph to zero or less than zero.  It can actually add back original shape details, pretty cool effect :-).

Hi all!  I just spun up a commercial thread here:

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/101056/simtenero-shape-reprojector-commercial

I'll try and answer some quesitons for you, let me know if I'm missing anything .

 

Sigh... This product LOOKs like it could be incredibly useful, but the description on the catalog page is so brief and vague as to be almost useless, there's no documentation page and nor is there a thread that I can find in any of the forums.  Would it REALLY have been so hard to publish at least a link to the manual, guys?

That said, what I SEE is something that looks like it could be incredibly useful for creating realistic indentations in beds, sofas and other "soft" items of furniture and for creating realistic indentations of things like a hand on part of a figures body... not to mention creating the bases for some really interesting props.  However, the info presented doesn't even say if these morphs can be saved permanently, let alone what kind of restrictions there are... can, for example, this used to be create two different morphs on the same object on the same time, or can they be saved off an layered one on top of each other?     

Once a morph is created, it can be saved as a morph preset or exported as an obj, it also saves along with your scene file.  You can definitely create multiple morphs, in fact, I recommend it! :-)  The biggest limitation is the available geometry.  For example, if the surface of the bed you'd like to show an indentation in only has 4 faces, it doesn't really have enough polygons to reflect the indentation.  Shape Reprojector doesn't create new geometry, it modifies what's there, so that'll be one of the biggest limitations to keep in mind.

I am also wondering if morphs can be saved as support assets and used in Carrara 8.5 which reads duf files.

I don't have Carrara to test this in, but the morphs can be saved as .duf morph presets.  Hopefully someone with Carrara will be able to chime in and let us know if it works :-)

Looks like the tutorial is considered part of the product .. and some PAs actually sleep so expecting a thread as soon as something is released is not always logical.

Thank you Khory :-D

When I saw this I wondered how easy it would be to use it to create Genesis 1/2/3 clones for some of the lesser supported original figures.

Making clones is definitely doable, but it may require multiple morphs and a little patience :-).  A lot will depend on how closely the two figures match starting out. If, for example, one figure has very different eye or nose sizes, it'll take some work to get them aligned.  I guess that's a roundabout way of saying "Yep, it's possible, but may not be easy for some figures" :-P

 

A little testing could have helped to get a working application. Unfortunately every shifting of the bounding box results in a studio crash. Bad job! I will remember the authors name :(

I'm very sorry to hear that!  Please feel free to PM me and I will do my best to get things working for you!

 

 

SimTenero is an AMAZING vendor, his utilties have always worked extremely well for me...and he attempts the kinds of wild stuff that makes me love this hobby.  If you're having crash issues you should definitely put in a ticket, he wouldn't release a "broken" product, and I doubt anything fundamentally wrong would have gotten past the Daz QAing either.

These kinds of utilities CAN be "fussy" they may not work the way you think they should, the trick with these kinds of utiltities is you need to work within the limitations.  Sometimes your specific project can make it feel like you're using a pair of pliers to turn a screw, but in a world where no one has invented a screwdriver yet....these pliers are still amazingly better than trying to do the work bare handed.

I'm dying to get home and fire this up!

Thank you stagwolf!!!!!

 

I am going to guess that they only work on base meshes since creating morphs on SubD is reserved for the PA only HD tool.  That's why GenX can't transfer HD morphs so I would think it's a similar story here.

That's exactly right :-)

 

Before anything else: wow! This functionality was sorely missing and this is going straight into the cart.

Now, for the inevitable caveats: The readme states it won't work with parented objects, is there any way to overcome this limitation? As the promo shows, punches are one of the main uses I can see for this, and boxers tend to... well, punch. With their gloves. Which are usually parented and/or fit to their hands.

Secondly, is there any way to automate the process for animations? I can only imagine how tedious this would be if we had to dial each and every morph for any given frame and it is a pity, because this is the kind of thing that could make an action sequence really stand out (and for the more adult artists that use Studio... well, that's one less uncanny valley to cross--"valley"... oh God, the puns).

I need to phrase that section better, it should work just fine with the boxing gloves.  In some circumstances, you may need to drag the gloves off the figure in the hierarchy to the scene's root (they will stay conformed to the figure).  I need to maybe rethink that if it ends up being an issue :-P

The process can't be automated, however the resulting morphs can be keyframe animated, so you can hopefully get some interesting effects by creating 2 or 3 morphs and them keying them in and out.  Hopefully that'll do the trick :-)

 

 

It sounds like you are given new morph dials to use which should be straight forward to key frame for animation?

Yep, exactly!

Please someone make these animals. What there is is either hopelessly outdated, non-existant or cartoon characters. One exception: Silverkey's monkey which is very nice but still could use some freshening. We do have gorillas but they hardly transfer as the others.

Before anything else: wow! This functionality was sorely missing and this is going straight into the cart.

Now, for the inevitable caveats: The readme states it won't work with parented objects, is there any way to overcome this limitation? As the promo shows, punches are one of the main uses I can see for this, and boxers tend to... well, punch. With their gloves. Which are usually parented and/or fit to their hands.

Secondly, is there any way to automate the process for animations? I can only imagine how tedious this would be if we had to dial each and every morph for any given frame and it is a pity, because this is the kind of thing that could make an action sequence really stand out (and for the more adult artists that use Studio... well, that's one less uncanny valley to cross--"valley"... oh God, the puns).

It sounds like you are given new morph dials to use which should be straight forward to key frame for animation?

Before anything else: wow! This functionality was sorely missing and this is going straight into the cart.

Now, for the inevitable caveats: The readme states it won't work with parented objects, is there any way to overcome this limitation? As the promo shows, punches are one of the main uses I can see for this, and boxers tend to... well, punch. With their gloves. Which are usually parented and/or fit to their hands.

Secondly, is there any way to automate the process for animations? I can only imagine how tedious this would be if we had to dial each and every morph for any given frame and it is a pity, because this is the kind of thing that could make an action sequence really stand out (and for the more adult artists that use Studio... well, that's one less uncanny valley to cross--"valley"... oh God, the puns).

i wonder what limitations there are....like geometry wise etc. As in the promo images, i can see this would be useful for simulating collisions - but it begs the question is that morph that you create embedded into the base mesh, or into the level of subdivision that you have active.

I'd love to be able to simulate clothing constrictions on the skin, or skin deformation when you have a hand with a tight grip on an arm for example

I am going to guess that they only work on base meshes since creating morphs on SubD is reserved for the PA only HD tool.  That's why GenX can't transfer HD morphs so I would think it's a similar story here.

Besides "Create single morph" mode, there is also the "Selected morphs" transfer mode. This should work best for morphs like Bethany. All you need to do is to select the Bethany morph in the morph list and transfer it with the "Selected morphs" mode. No need to set values at all.

i wonder what limitations there are....like geometry wise etc. As in the promo images, i can see this would be useful for simulating collisions - but it begs the question is that morph that you create embedded into the base mesh, or into the level of subdivision that you have active.

I'd love to be able to simulate clothing constrictions on the skin, or skin deformation when you have a hand with a tight grip on an arm for example

Mouse for Genesis

Downloaded this and had some fun with the morph sliders. I used a frog, zombie, ogre and savage teeth :)

 I used the LAMH one but as I only have CPU I posed and rendered them in 3Delight against a blank background, saved them individually as a .png, loaded a Plane for each one, used each .png on the Plane and used LIE to use the Alpha channel and pasted the images into the Base Colour and Cutout channels and turned glossiness to zero that made each image a Billboard (I Think that is what they are called) with the background invisible. I loaded up an environment and changed the renderer to Iray then posed the Planes.

It came out not too bad and allows the use of the LAMH mouse preset without having to change the hair to Fibre Hair or .obj file, save and reload it.

     

The fact is Iray is still extremely difficult on hardware, even high end hardware. And that is the problem. It needs to be better optimized so badly. It needs to be able to split duty with standard RAM and delegate tasks between GPU and CPU. It needs to understand when pixels are not visible do not need to be rendered! Like a car with an engine in it, even though the hood is closed, that engine is still taking up memory. So to render the car faster, you need to delete or hide that engine. What nonsense is that? With VR taking off, look at how Nvidia worked to build a better VR experience. The 1000 series cards are so much faster at VR, way faster than their actual specs suggest they should be. Why? Because of better software. When the 1000 series runs a VR app, it takes into account which pixels are not visible, and it dumps these pixels. It does this for every single frame, which is over 90 frames per second. Now I know gaming tech does not transfer directly to Iray, but my point here is if Nvidia can figure out VR like this, they need to apply a technique like this to Iray. When pushed, Nvidia is capable of delivering an answer.

 

One problem with not "rendering" things that the camera can't "see" is that you loose the effects that those objects might have on the scene (i.e. shadows, reflections, and bounced light). This type of scene optimization is usually best left for the end user ..... though I guess maybe a some sort of quick and easy toggle switch could be implemented to intentionally "turn off" everything not scene by the camera. This would definitely affect bounced light though, for example I often use a refector for passive fill lighting (just like a photographer would).

So if Nvidia ever gets off their sorry butts to fix Iray, then we'll see dramatic improvements in render times for everybody. Iray is more than just spec, it is software. My hope is that somebody will come along and do it better than Nvidia. Until then, I really wish Daz could work on their own rendering engine. That way they would have full control over it and not need to depend on Nvidia. I just think its a bad idea for Daz to depend on Iray so much.

IMHO someone already has done it better than Nvidia/Iray, but it's supported by a plugin and not fully integrated into DS like Iray. Octane Render already has a whole host of features that Iray doesn't, and there is a plugin to use it in DS. DAZ writting their own render engine would be a huge undertaking. Version 1 of Octane Render was released on Novemeber 28, 2012, and was in beta for quite a while before that (2-3 years???), and that is all they were working on. Disney wrote their own ray trace rendering software, and IIRC it took them anout 2 years to get it fully production ready (not Pixar - the Disney animation studios), and Ray Trace rendering is the "easiest" to implement. I doubt that DAZ could even come close to the resources ($$$$$$$$$$$) Disney had for writing their new renderer. However, I really don't know how much Disney invested - so maybe it could be affordable for DAZ, but I doubt it. I think that SM implementing Cycles is extremely telling in that they didn't chose to incorporate PBR into FireFly, but integrate a totally different render engine. It also shows just how popular PBR rendering is right now, or SM wouldn't have felt the need to implement a PBR render engine in Poser.

Keep in mind that it isn't DAZ "depending on Iray so much", it's the user base and the resulting response from the PA's. DAZ just implemented it in DS, and it immediately became the favorite render engine for the majority of the user base, and the PA's have followed that trend because that is what sells.

Not really loving the GenX plugin for Gen3. While I have been getting lovely results converting my V4 characters to G2, my results for converting G3 to G2 have been hit and miss at best.  Most figures come over with no changes or odd changes like just the navel in one case. Even using the "get value from scene" is useless.  I directly transfer  Priya and despite her body and head morphs listed in the source figure section, no value was checked after transfer all non zero values was applied.  I have been able to transfer G2 to G3 and V4 to G3 though.

i'm having the same...I'm continuing trying to transfer Bethany 7, and only the hight changes, nothing else :(

I find that I need to set the parameter value for (e.g.) the Bethany shape to 1 in the morphs list in GenX2 before it will transfer correctly - many of these shapes seem to come into GenX2 with the parameter value set to 0.

( I think this may be the same "problem" that you see when you use the Currently Used tab in the DS parameters pane and some parameters don't show up there at all.)

+1 for a 'pull it out of her butt crack' morph.

Thongs are different. They are made to sit nice and comfortably in there. Unless you come from some parts of the world, in which case you wonder why anyone would want a thong anywhere near their butt crack when they are so good for wearing on your feet. But hey, each to their own. :)

Thanks, that makes sense to me. Seems that I slowly begin to understand the technical details of Genesis 3 and Daz Studio.

So in the example above the morph will be zero at 0 then rise linear to 1 at a value of 70. Stay at 1 up to 110 and then fall linear to 0 again till 155.5