Transfer a morph from Poser to DS ... fails

IsaacNewton

I am trying to get the Ranaki Bra (designed for V4) figure to fit closely to a morphed V4 figure in DS4.9.

My workflow was:

1) Load V4 into DS.

2) Create required figure shape using a combination of existing V4 body morphs and Zbrush morphs.

3) Since DS autofit completely fails to fit the Ranaki bra figure to the V4 figure, I export the V4 figure as an object.

4) I import the V4 object into Poser. I then load the Ranaki bra figure into poser.

5) As the DAZ V4 object is thousands of times bigger than a normal V4 figure loaded into Poser, I scale the Ranaki bra up and adjust Y-trans until the bra figure is approximately in the right position on the V4 object.

6) Now I can use the wonderful mesh brushes which are present in Poser but sadly lacking in DS, to adjust the Ranaki bra to fit to the shape of the V4 object.

7) I then export the morphed Ranaki Bra figure from Poser as an object (I have tried having the "As morph target" checked and unchecked; so as a morph and as a normal object including tranlations, the latter appears best, but still doesn't work).

8) I then try to load the morphed Ranaki Bra object as a morph onto the Ranaki Bra figure in DS using Morph Loader Pro.

9) This gives a message saying "No deltas for morph, skipping node. Created morph successfully." 

Glossing over the fact that DS says the morph was created despite the fact that the node was skipped (Who writes these error messages?). There clearly are deltas between the Ranaki Bra object and the Ranaki Bra figure... because I just morphed it in Poser!!! I imported the Ranaki Bra object as an object in DS to see if the object really was morphed. Unsurprisingly, it was morphed and fit my V4 figure perfectly as intended.

So, I know the bra object is morphed, Poser knows that the bra object is morphed, even DS knows that the bra object is morphed (as an object) so why can't Morph Loader Pro apply the morphed bra object as a morph to the bra figure?

Note I also tried exporting the Ranaki bra object back out from DS and then using that file to load it onto the Ranaki Bra figure using Morph loader Pro, however this gave exactly the same error message.

The attached image shows the V4 figure (white, for those afraid of skin colour... Dermaphobia?) with the Ranaki bra figure which clearly doesn't fit the V4 figure, and the Ranaki Bra object, which was morphed in Poser is shown in green.

Any help on this would be welcome.

SpottedKitty

That all sounds a bit complicated. Have you tried the Transfer Active Morphs feature built in to D|S? I use it often for Aiko3-based morphed figures. Doesn't always quite work right, but when it does, it looks good.

Load the morphed V4 and the clothes into D|S, and make sure the clothes are fitted-to V4 and selected.

In the Scene tab, click on the Options button (top right) and go down the menu to Assets, then select Transfer Active Morphs.

In the next dialog for Joint Controlled Morphs, it depends on exactly what sort of clothes you're trying to fit; some do use JCMs, some don't. For this bra, you should probably click Yes.

Cross your fingers. With a bit of luck, the morphs should transfer from the figure to the clothes and automatically apply. I have found, though, that sometimes they only transfer and I have to adjust the new morph dials manually.

Note that, if the fit doesn't look quite right, you can dial the new clothes morphs back a bit, then add a Smoothing Modifier to fix the inevitable pokethrough.

mjc1016

#5  Change the export option in Studio to Poser.  That will take care of the size issue.

As to what is going on after bringing it back in..."No deltas...Created..." basically means it's made a 'blank' morph. 

Have you tried loading a fresh copy of the bra, not fit/parented or with anything else in the scene and using that to load the morph to?

Richard Haseltine

Morph Loader Advanced sometimes seems to work better for Legacy rigged figures - though I'm not sure why you are going through Poser at all if you have ZBrush.

IsaacNewton

Hi SpottedKitty, Tried your suggestion unfortunately, with or without fingers crossed it didn't work properly. The morph dials were transfered but the Ranaki bra figure did not conform to V4, it just scrunched up the verts around the nipples area.

Hi mjc1016, thanks for the tip on scale. I tried loading the Ranaki bra object on to the Ranaki bra figure in a new empty scene, it gave exactly the same error message.

Hi Richard, I tried Morph Loader Advanced. I got the message: "One or more of the files loaded had no effect." It seems clear that the morph loaders are not recognising the difference between the Ranaki bra object and the Ranaki bra figure. However, when the object itself is imported into DS it is clearly different from the figure and fits to the V4 figure. (the green object in the image I sent earlier).

As to using Zbrush, if I transfer the Ranaki bra figure alone, then I cannot see when I have morphed the bra figure to fit the V4 figure. I would have to do very many back and forth switches between DS and Zbrush to get any where near a good fit. If I transfer both the V4 figure and the bra figure to Zbrush (with GoZ) then how do I morph the bra without affecting the V4 figure? Is there a shrink to target brush in Zbrush as there is in Poser?

 

Richard Haseltine

If the bra is fitted and parented to V4 you should get both as Sub-tools in Zbrush, allowing you to work on the bra and then - with the bra selected in DS and the bra sub-tool active in ZBrush - sned it back.

Using Morph Loader, whata re your settings, and what do you have selected in the scene - the bra I assume?

IsaacNewton

Yes, that works. Thanks. Now I can work on the bra figure whilst seeing the target character figure.

Now I can push and pull until the bra is in the right position and fits to the figure. However, is there a simpler method than "push and pull"? What I would like is a brush that shrinks the bra onto the underlying character figure.

I don't see any obvious brushes to do that (but Zbrush has it's own "unique" naming system!), I do see a brush called CurveSnapSurface. Is that the brush I need to snap the bra to the figure surface? If so, how do I use that brush? It is far from intuitive.

Richard Haseltine

No, I'm pretty sure that is for drawing a curve on an existing surface.

IsaacNewton

Pity, still at least I can now see the underlying figure whilst push/pull/smooth -ing and so know if I have gon too far in real time.