Genesis 2 with 3 additional bones for fat?

johann.hesters_2e9dd0ece9

Hello!

 

I would like to ask if anybody has a G2F model with additional bones for body fat animations and would be willing to share it.

Specifically, I would need a model with an additional bone for belly fat and 2 additional bones for the upper legs, I think that's where the most part of the fat exists.

I would like to animate the fat in a nice way, and having at least 3 additional bones for that would be necessary. I don't have any experience with adding bones and painting weights for it, so I thought I might just ask.

Here is a video of the animation that I would like to do with G2 and additional bones:

video removed

 

nonesuch00

I thought you had to use Genesis 3 for that type of 'boning' of fat and muscle. I'll be interested to hear the answer.

johann.hesters_2e9dd0ece9

nonesuch00 said:

I thought you had to use Genesis 3 for that type of 'boning' of fat and muscle. I'll be interested to hear the answer.

My pipeline is with G2. Unfortunately I can't use G3 which may already have everything I'd need.

Daywalker Designs

nonesuch00 said:

I thought you had to use Genesis 3 for that type of 'boning' of fat and muscle. I'll be interested to hear the answer.

You can add bones for it manually; the additional bones in Genesis 3 don't get used for that purpose.

Syrus_Dante

@ johann.hesters_2e9dd0ece9

You could try to do the fat wobble - that I think you want to add - with D-Formers. After that go to DForm pane and click "spawn morph" to create a morph dial in your parameters pane. For the legs do create a morph fore one side - export an OBJ file with zero pose and base resolution - load it with morph loader pro and use the "mirror: swap x" import option on that.

 

Create Bones

To create bones go to "Joint Editor" if you - for example want to add an additional bone for the belly - maybe select the abdomen bone of the figure, right click the viewport and choose "Create>Create Child Bone" set the  rotation order to something you like maybe let the bone point forward and correct the bones end point placement. After that you should "Memorize Selected Nodes Rigging" to make the bone placement default values (the coordinates in the joint editor gets grey).

 

I have the idea to combine the additonal bones with the DFormers.

To do that parent - for example the belly DFormer (also the DFormer Field but not the Base) - to the new belly bone. If you rotate the belly bone the deformer should deform the belly of the figure now. Maybe add rotation limits to the belly bone. Then I would "spawn morphs" from the DFormers in all xyz directions it moves and set the DForm parameters to zero in the figure parameters. After that you could link the new "belly fat move" xyz morphs to the belly bone rotations xyz with ERC-Freeze or the Property Hirarchy pane. Then - for doing the animation - I would add a null target, make it a parent of the abdomen bone and let the belly bone point at it - so you just have to move the null target and the belly fat would move along. To fine tune the animation of the null target going up and down and bouncing around you have the option to use a Daz3D plugin called "graphMate" to draw bouncing waves but this is not physically accurate. Better do it with some script like mcjDelay take a look at:

mCasual's Daz Scripts

 

Some Thoughts

I have also added some additional bones to my genesis 2 figure, but then I had saved this one to a whole new figure into my library for personal use.

I think there is no easy way how you can share the additional bones. I have some ideas how to use additonal bones on every standard genesis 2 / 3 figure in your library.

Therfore I thought of using this "Extract Donor Figure" in the joint editor, add some bones to this skeleton with no geometry and make it conform to the original figure so the additional bones will snap to the right place.

The next step would be to create empty parameters for the Donor Figure with the same names like the new morph ones in the figure - for example "belly fat move up-down". Then link/ERC-Freeze the "rotate x" parameter of the belly bone to the empty parameter "belly fat move up-down" in the Donor Figure.

And here comes the triky part I dont know if this will work:

Since the Donor Figure is fitted to the genesis figure the morphs of the Donor Figure should follow the morphs in the genesis figure. If you can set it up so the genesis figure morph "belly fat move up-down" will follow the empty parameter "belly fat move up-down" of the Donor Figure - you could controll the figure morph by the rotation of the additional bone of the Donor Figure fitted to the genesis figure.

Syrus_Dante

sorry I clicked quote instead of edit.

johann.hesters_2e9dd0ece9

@Syrus83227_202e840f4e

Wow, such a great answer!! Thank you!

I'm trying the bone add method for a start.

Could you please help me? I have attached the child bone and done all the steps that you told me.

Then I used the Tool Settings window, selected "X Rotation" and painted the region that my belly bone should influence.

Is that the right way?

If yes, do I have to do anything to "memorize" my weight mapping?

 

Edit:

Question 2: I have uploaded a video here:  Video removed for nudity.  Please see this thread for info:  http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/3279/acceptable-ways-of-handling-nudity

 

When I change the X Rotate value of the belly bone, the upper part of my weight-painted region rotates outwards, and the lower part of my weight-painted region rotates inwards. Can you tell me how to achieve that the area goes up and down only without going inwards and outwards?

Thank you.

Syrus_Dante

I could have been more precise on that - I never sayed something about weight mapping the additional bone - it was intended to be only a I think its called a ghost or helper bone with no weight map on it.

This is something I am using right now to control some morphs of the figure by linking the bone rotation with some parameters and let the bone point (with the Daz "Point At" feature) to something like a null or a little gizmo prop geometry that I can grab and move around with the universal mainpulator in the viewport. I am using it for to let the figure bend and twist the head with the pose control parameters and let the eyes point at a second target but thats another story that I will continue here LookAt-PoseControl with EyeTarget someday.

 

I also had this idea of adding bones to do some deformations once but there are some pitfalls along the way that I've learned from and therefore the method I've descriped earlier should go something like this

1. create morphs with DFormers

2. create bone

3. link the bone rotation to the morphs

You finished step 2 now - if you want to continue you need to finish step 1 before we start with step 3 where I can explain how you could use the Property Hierarchy pane to do the ERC-linking.

You sayed you never painted weightmaps before - so this is learning by mistakes - this is like I started with rigging in DazStudio about two years past now.

So you painted the "x rotation" weight map of the additional bone for genesis 2 I guess - at least now we know weight mapping the bone dosnt lead to the desired result - but wait did you try to translate the bone instead of rotating it - maybe this will move the influenced area of the belly like it should - you could save the shape as morph obj and use that on a default weight maped genesis figure or some of your scene file where you have added the bone but not the weight map. I'm assuming you doing incremental saves before every critical step - at least I would suggest to do it DazStudio can crash all of the sudden if you playing around with all these content creation tools?

 

There is a problem with this bone weight map method:

You altered the genesis 2 figures TriAx weight map channel for x-rotation in the belly region this means the figure will for shure no longer bend the waist like the original. Try to test it by bending (x-rotating) the abdomen, abdomen2, chest or use the pose control waist bend an you propably see what I mean. But dont act desperately I think we could copy and paste this weight map to a DFormer influence weight map.

Instead of just adding the belly bone influence on top of the figure bending system you have substracted the influence frome the other weight maps that also had some influence in this area and added that to your new bone.

Let me try to explain this: the weight map tool is by default set to automaticly "normalize" all weight map channels.

This means the more red weight map - that is higher influence - you paint on some spot of the figure - the more blue - that is lower influence - some nearby bone weightmap with the same rotation direction (in this case x-rotate abdomen and so on) will get in this spot. Since you have added the new bone as a child of the abdomen bone - and the influence map is not that bright red - it is maybe not that noticeable, but depending on the size of the area you have painted - the other maps suffer from that.

 

Use DFormers with Weight Map (Influence Weights) instead

Parenting the DFormer to the bone and doing x-rotation was a bad idea of mine and the deformation will also going inwards and outwards as you descriped. The deformer should be translated up-down and left right a bit - with maybe a slight rotation - I dont know how heavy weighted your figure is.

Did you know that you can switch the deformer influence field from the default sphere to a weightmap influence?

Maybe not everyone knows about - so you have to select the DFormer Field go to Parameters pane look for "Influence" and switch the "Influence Mode" from "Sphere" to "Weight Map". Then go to "Tool Settings" > "Node Weight Map Brush" and under "Unused Maps" you will find the "Influence Weights" channel you can now add with the button "Add Map". The new weight map gets the initial gradient of weight paint we have seen as shpere influence before.

Now you have the choice to eighter copy and paste the weight map you once painted in here or paint on this map untill you like the result - to see any deformation in the figure the dformer gizmo object in the scene should allready have some translation - rotation or scale.

For to copy your weight map you can select your added belly bone select the x-rotation weight map channel in the "Node Weight Map Brush" tool settings and right click > Copy Selected. Then select the DFormer Fild again right click on "Influence Weights" in the tool settings and choose "Paste Selected".

 

I hope everything will work as descriped and some interested readers will learn from this example.

Syrus_Dante

Syrus83227_202e840f4e said:

To fine tune the animation of the null target going up and down and bouncing around you have the option to use a Daz3D plugin called "graphMate" to draw bouncing waves but this is not physically accurate. Better do it with some script like mcjDelay take a look at:

mCasual's Daz Scripts

Please let me correct this: I didnt mean to use the mcjDelay script but the mcjLagEffect for DS 1,2,3,4

...see the funny demonstration video there for a better understanding what I mean.

Damn its late - so I answered with Delay due to the Lag of time.

Syrus_Dante

Hey I also found this new one mcjElasticSim have to try this - that script seems to suit even better for fat wobble - jiggle - as you see in the demo video.