Help needed with Dformers....

Erwin0265

 

Hi all,

I am currently trying to create a centaur figure using G3F and HW Horse and have had some success but am now coming across a very strange behaviour...........

 

Using Dformers, I have shaped G3F's hip region to better match the HW Horse's neck/chest.

I have done the same with the HW Horse to suit G3F's hips.

After using the Dformers, I have spawned morphs and then saved the morphs to the library via; File > Save as > Support Asset > Morph Asset(s).

Next, using the Geometry Editor, I deleted all of the polygons in G3F's legs and the same was done with the HW Horse's head/neck.

Everything was fine.

Today I started refining the hip shape of G3F in Zbrush, via the GoZ plugin (still very much learning here and majorly stuffing up but that's all part of the process).

DS has been on and off several times throughout this centaur-creating process and files have opened up fine without issue.

Now I am finding the morphed figures' (G3F & HW Horse that have been morphed via the use of Dformers and had their unnecessary polygons removed) scene files are somehow changed; the morphs no longer have any effect.

G3F still has her "Centaur Hip Morph" set to 100% but there is no evidence of it in the figure - and when I play around with the morph slider, nothing happens to the figure; as if all parts are locked (but they are not).

I can load a "fresh" G3F and apply the Centaur hip morph and it works fine.

It's the same story with the HW Horse that had been morphed with Dformers/Morphs spawned and saved to the library, etc, etc.

What am I doing wrong?

Why is all my work disappearing despite the fact that I have been saving my scene files every time.

I just checked some of my earlier attempts that I had saved in another folder and they are fine; BUT I have not gone through the process of removing the unnecessary polygons in the Geometry Editor - could this be the reason? If so; why?

Just to clarify; I wanted to remove the unnecessary polygons rather than just hiding them because even the hidden polygons showed up again when brought into Zbrush which made further tweaking to the figures impossible..........

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Erwin

djigneo

I'm betting that the reason why the morphs aren't working is because morphs are based on having two meshes of near-identical geometry where one (the morph mesh) has several deformations (not altering the vertex count), and the application of the morph essentially converts the original mesh to be more and more like the altered mesh.

So, swapping out the geometry means the geometry the morph relies on (the original mesh) is no longer consistent with the existing mesh (which has a now-different vertex count).

Due to this constraint, I would probably attack this problem by leaving the two figures intact and parented one to the other and use (in)visibility of parts of the horse and parts of G3F in order to create a centaur. This way you retain the functionality of the morphs from both figures with minimal extra effort.

Erwin0265

I hear ya...............

BUT [yeah, there's always a but] even when parenting G3F to the chest of HW Horse and locking both the shape and the pose of G3F's abdomen lower, hips and pelvis as well as locking HW Horse's neck & chest2, there is still gaps to be seen and, well I suppose you could still call it, poke through of G3F with some of the more extreme poses I am trying.

I'm also trying to find a way to allow for changes in body morphs in both G3F and HW Horse to be possible without having to do a hell of a lot of "damage control" in the process.

I know it's possible with G2F and Daz Horse 2 as it has been achieved by http://kuriosdrachen.deviantart.com/ but he still needs time to "package" the morphs before he can share and I'd like to be able to do it myself.............

The other peculiar thing I noriced was the fact that all of the deleted polygons still remained in the "parts list" in the scene pane - even though they had been deleted.................

Erwin0265

With a bit more research and experimentation, I have discovered a solution. This solution comes from another thread, started by SnowSultan; "Question about removing parts of surfaces using Geometry Editor" - http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/47542/question-about-removing-parts-of-surfaces-using-geometry-editor mentions a similar problem

thoreandan mentions a similar problem (well, the exact same problem, but phrased better than I did...);

"Anyway, one issue I recently discovered is that deleting the hidden facets can have undesirable side-effects on props or figures that have morphs. I found that after reloading a scene where I had previously deleted hidden facets, most of the morphs are broken. Strangely, the applied morphs didn't break right away, only after reloading the scene. I filed a bug report, but was told this is expected behavior because deleting polygons changes the polygon order that the morphs depend on to work properly.

So now, rather than deleting those hidden polygons for hiding things or fixing poke-through, I assign them to a new surface and call it something like "invisible" so I don't forget its purpose, and just turn off the opacity (or null that surface in Reality). It'd be great if Daz Studio would just identify in the scene file which polygons are hidden, rather than having to actually delete them, but it doesn't."

Although this provides a solution , Richard Haseltine provided a better (IMHO) solution; "To preserve existing morphs (but not new ones added later) save the modified item as a new figure or prop asset (make sure you don't overwrite the original, give it a new author or product name in the option dialogue)".

So I followed Richard's suggestion and it worked! So now I have a clean mesh to take into Zbrush and mangle it there (yeah, just staring the learning process with that one)......

Anyone wanting to add more knowledge here is very much welcome to do so; you can never have too much information to work with.

I'd still love to know why all the deleted polygons are still listed in the scene pane - every part of each leg, down to the little toes, is still listed but there are no polygons to show for these, now, ghost parts................

Furthermore, I'd love to learn how to at least remove those parts listed in the scene pane as it makes for a cleaner asset..............

 

 

djigneo

To delete the extra bones, it would be on the Figure Setup pane. More or less, Figure Setup menu > Copy from selected figure, delete out the desired bones, Create (the button at the bottom of the pane) a figure (now without the bones). 

Erwin0265

OK, I had a play with that but can't for the life of me find,  "Copy from selected figure" [yes, the figure was selected]; in fact, there is no figure to be seen in any of the lists in the Figure Setup pane.

So I'm obviously doing something wrong.

But what?

Richard Haseltine

The Joint Editor can be used to add or remove bones, in the right-click menu.

Erwin0265

Thank you, Richard; that made it quite easy; another tool I have never used...............

Now I have a linked question; I know that the HD plugin for DS is only available to Daz PA's - is this why, when I try to morph my Zbrush edited G3F into a character that just happens to be in HD, DS crashes?

I can understand Daz not wanting to release this software to the masses (don't agree - but that's another thing and unrelated), but it seems kind of silly preventing users from actually using their purchased HD assets................

Erwin0265

Bugger!

Looks like removing any bones prevents saving a pose (G3F went back to the T-pose) and changing morphs makes geometry fly all over the place during manipulation but settles down to the morph once slider movement has completed..............

Richard Haseltine

vanderminne_59d9f6ed04 said:

Thank you, Richard; that made it quite easy; another tool I have never used...............

Now I have a linked question; I know that the HD plugin for DS is only available to Daz PA's - is this why, when I try to morph my Zbrush edited G3F into a character that just happens to be in HD, DS crashes?

I can understand Daz not wanting to release this software to the masses (don't agree - but that's another thing and unrelated), but it seems kind of silly preventing users from actually using their purchased HD assets................

I'm not sure what that would happen - it sounds like a bug.

djigneo

vanderminne_59d9f6ed04 said:

Bugger!

Looks like removing any bones prevents saving a pose (G3F went back to the T-pose) and changing morphs makes geometry fly all over the place during manipulation but settles down to the morph once slider movement has completed..............

Based on the description, it sounds like the weight maps or skeleton got messed up somewhere along the way. Can you verify the bones are in the correct place? If they are, then it's likely some weight maps got unassigned.

Erwin0265

"Based on the description, it sounds like the weight maps or skeleton got messed up somewhere along the way. Can you verify the bones are in the correct place? If they are, then it's likely some weight maps got unassigned."

To be honest, I put the figure through so much experimentation, I may need to start again from scratch using what I have learnt thus far and see what happens then.

It may also be why HD morphs are causing DS to crash; when someone with Richard's knowledge thinks it may be a bug and didn't expect it to happen, I may indeed have done something that is causing this.

I may just do a very basic ZB morph and see what happens then; the HD morphs causing crashes is a major issue for this process as not every character is labelled as "HD" in the program, so DS has been crashing fairly often - so I think that is what I will attack first................

Thanks for the help guys - I will report back once I know more................

Erwin0265

OK - update:

Starting back from the G3F where I had Dformed in DS and removed the unnecessary surfaces; I can apply HD morphs to this figure and DS does not crash.

I then removed the unused bones from the figure and resaved to the asset library (with another name) and there is no strange geometry flying around whilst applying any morphs.

So far, so good.

To and back from Zbrush, 1st "refinement morph" saved - everything still works!

Closed Zbrush, closed DS and reopened - opened saved G3F Centaur figure - all still works!

Looks like I'm good to go.

Now I need to learn some Zbrush so I can shape G3F's hip region properly..............