Problem with D-Former

jwainscott

I'm experimenting with d-formers and there's something I must be missing in how it works. I've watched some YouTube videos and looked through the DAZ online tutorials but I can't figure out what's wrong. Basically, I want to make a hinge for a box and lid. Here's what I've done:

1. I created a primitive cube and renamed it "box"
2. I created another primitive cube and renamed it "lid".
3. I changed the Y-scale of the lid down to give a lid-like thickness then moved it along the Y-axis to put it into place
4. I re-parented the lid to the box
5 I created a new d-former, moved the d-former base to the hinge area, expanded the d-former field to cover the entire lid and finally edited the d-former spline so that all the lid would be affected
6. Next, I set a limit on the d-former Z-rotate between 0 and 160 degrees. When I move the Z-rotate slider it does a nice open-close motion
7. I selected the lid object, clicked Spawn Morph and gave it a name

When I look at the Parameters tab, I see my new "Open-Close" morph. When I slide the dial it doesn't just change the Z-axis. It seems to affect others as well. What I see is that the lid will shrink to almost nothing then expand to much larger than the original size.

I tried creating another d-former to "bend up" the edge of the lid. It has the same problem where it's not changing just the d-former translations but also some others.

Does anyone know what I'm missing or is this something that d-formers aren't supposed to do?

Richard Haseltine

This isn't a DForm problem, it's that morphs are linear and so don't handle rotations. When you spawn a morph DS stores the final shape, when you use the morph the vertices are slid along a line between the base shape and the new morphed shape, their distance along the line being the morph value, so what you are seeing is correct. That's why body parts are moved by the rotation controls, not by morphs.

mjc1016

Richard Haseltine said:

That's why body parts are moved by the rotation controls, not by morphs.

Which is useful to know, if you want to do some Dali-esque renders.

Also the reason to realign the bones/ERC freeze morphs when they are something other than dial spun ones.

A better way to do open/close is to assign a rig to the item and limit the rotation on the bones, using the joint editing tools...you can rename the rotation sliders.