Figure shaping and morph thinning question/idea (esp. Genesis1)
mindsong
Posts: 1,701
Like many, I've got way too many unneeded morphs on my Genesis base figure.
As inspired by Dart's new Genesis1-based Rosie, I wondered...
(And this is in concert with alberto's wonderful morph thinning tool)
Has anyone (esp animators) tried to reduce the morph loading (count) of a carefully dialed character by consolidating the character shape, then pulling *all* of the no-longer-needed shaping morphs from the remaining figure base and saved/worked with that minimized character/figure?
e.g. something like:
- take a carefully dialed character and export it as an OBJ
- reimport this shape as a new single morph slider
- (add ERC corrections for eye oddness, etc.?)
- get rid of almost everything else related to shaping in your Genesis morph list leaving expressions, visemes, and maybe some 'primary' facial expression controls (e.g. brows, cheeks, mouth controls, hand-controls, etc.)
- then save and animate the thinned figure from there?
My thinking is that once the primary character is shaped and dialed, 'consolidate' it and then 'thin' out the extranious shaping morphs in preparation for the new character's actual use.
Is there a flaw in this logic, or perhaps some mechanical issues with going down this path? (Of course I can try/experiment, but perhaps this road is already a known quantity)
Obviously, muscle, smoothing, and other morphs and slider controls may still be desired and retained/re-added for the new consolidated character-save - but as I've got every friggin morph made for Genesis1, and probably only need 10% of them once the character is 'set', carrying this extra baggage is eating me alive (time and performance-wise). While I've got Alberto's great morph thinner tool and completely depend upon it, I also think the above workflow may actually cure the real problem, rather than the symptom. Why am I carrying all of this shaping overhead after I'm done shaping?!? I don't need the ethnics, various character P/FBMs, or head/body-morph kits once my character is 'complete', but I *do* need facials, expressions, hand-slides, and maybe musculature, right?
Anyone else try/do this?
cheers,
--ms
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Comments
The problem with your "consolidation" method is that you will lose all corrective morphs which would have applied due to one of the individual morphs used.
For example let's say your character is made from morphs A and B, and there are corrective morphs made to fix the figure expressions or joints when using morph A. Those morphs would be triggered when you use the character as "A + B" because A is used. But if you create a combination morph C, then it won't trigger the corrective morphs for A since it's a different morph.
well in Carrara you can use Alberto's morph eraser on it and save a much smaller file
DAZ studio you are left with Misty's method
a separate figure save
that is save as new figure asset your name, go through data and delete unneeded morphs
I think she actually moves the morph folder before saving
Thanks for that response/detail!
So keeping the originally used sliders intact/present is required to preserve the corrective effects, and doing the export/import-to-new-slider will lose those... Urg, but good to know. I knew it couldn't be that easy... :)
So, options at this point (?):
- Thin out the now-extranious shaping morphs, but keep the active morphs 'as-is' with the character. This might still be a useful thinning effort.
or
- Consolidate the figure as described and add our own corrective morphs to the new character. It believe this is an art in itself, but perhaps it's still doable for those who are good with the tools.
yes/no/maybe?
thanks,
--ms
Makes sense.
Like Misty, I would also probably do the bulk of the shaping and morph management (dialing and thinning) in the DAZ Studio plugin :), and then load/import the resulting figure into Carrara.
I like and use alberto's tool, but it also gets rid of morphs that I sometimes plan to use but haven't activated in the character yet - so they get 'thinned' too :) - I suppose I could 'preserve' those by adding a very small use of the morphs I want to keep and then 'thin' the rest out pre-save. Hmm.
After putzing with the Genx2 tools, I figured out how the DS 'data' morph folders work, so doing a manual mass-morph-cleanout of a figure in the DAZ Studio duf/lib 'data' folder structure isn't too crazy to manage using the windows filemanger, otherwise it's kind of a brute-force shlog through the list using DS itself.
interesting/tnx,
--ms
if you save as a new figure under your name and rename it
it creates its own data folder
Mmmm..... I did not know that. Thanks Wendy
ditto - cool tidbit!
For anyone following this who uses the same DS/Carrara workflow, the DS GenX2 plugin/tool has a tab/option that lets you disable/enable specific morphs (one or many) on a figure. Best I can tell, it simply appends '.OFF' to the selected morphs to disable them, and then removes the '.OFF' suffix when you re-enable them.
The thing about this that might be particularly valuable, is that it probably also manages the dependent morphs (morphs that build on each other) when you enable/disable them. This would be a royal pain and probably very error-prone if you try to manage/tweak specific morphs using the Windows file-manager manual approach. That said, the Windows folder management approach does work when working with folders of morphsets (enabling/disabling folders at a time works pretty well for me).
For the adventurous/curious, try opening the GenX2 plugin (in DS) if you have it, and play with the enable/disable buttons as you watch the contents of the related morph folders - way down in the 'data' folder of your DS library(s). Then see how those same DS libraries work in Carrara with the figure. This might be an easy win for those that use both and have GenX2, or can script something together to accomplish the same.
YMMV,
--ms
Ditto again. I never knew that since I made a data folder for myself beforehand.
As for the Custom Figure thing, I did dabble with that before using the method I'm using now. I didn't take it too far, however, because there were more problems than just JCMs (joint controlled morphs).
However, if you're really into trying, I suggest checking out all of the incredible video tutorials by Josh Darling. He has tutorials for all of that kind of thing - he's how I found out about the Genesis 2 Cross Figure script, which allows us to make Male clothing compatible with Females and vica versa. He didn't make it, but has a tutorial on how to use it. So I use that to convert Genesis 2 Female clothing to fit the Male, then open that in Carrara to fit to Genesis, so that I can make a Genesis 1 version of the clothing. That makes it a lot easier for me since Genesis' base shape is male. I know we can also just fit the clothing to Genesis Basic Female and subtract that during the creation process in DS, but I'm not that savvy with all of that.
With such little time to play with all of this, I kind of adopted a "Screw It!" attitude and only work with stuff that just works out of the box now - well... along with the corrective morph goodies I've acquired since then, like SickleYield's awesome breast clothing fixer for Genesis 2, which I added to Rosie 5 via GenX2! LOL I also prefer PokeAway for Genesis 2 over the Genesis 1 version. I have both, but I loaded the G2F version onto Rosie via GenX2 as well.
Okay, back to the subject at hand.
I think you know how I slim mine down, right? Just in case, it goes like this:
I open the Data folder and navigate to DAZ 3D > genesis > morphs or however that lays out. I have a bazillion morphs and I want to use them all, but I wanted a way to keep them from loading onto every Genesis figure I create, when all I need are a few for each. So I start by making a backup of my main morphs folder that has everything installed on it. I keep this backup on my desktop for safe keeping, but anywhere that works for you.
After that I systematically go through and literally delete everything I don't want on my figure. I've also recently adopted the idea of then making a backup of the morphs folder for each of my custom setups like this to save time for future projects - just in case. For example, I just recently added new morphs to Rosie 5. But to do that, I needed to start from scratch in Carrara again. That's the caveat about working this way. If we don't mind having ALL of the morphs (dials) on our actor, transferring the character to a fresh Genesis is as simple as making an NLA pose of the shape morphs and applying that to the fresh copy of Genesis. The last time I tried that, however, I didn't have all of the morphs on the new Genesis that made up the old one, and instead of just ignoring the missing morph shapes, applying the NLA pose didn't work at all, resulting in an error. So I've actually become very proficient at making Rosie characters! LOL
Now, back to the Custom Figure idea. Here's a wonderful tutorial showing how elegant Daz Studio developers made it to tweak their figures using JCMs. It's just amazing how much work they put into making the job easier for their PAs (and themselves), which makes it no surprise why they are truly on top of the industry for this sort of thing.
So without further ado, Ladies and Gentlemen I give you Mr, Josh Darling on creating and hooking up new JCMs onto a figure in Daz Studio
To elaborate on this aspect a bit, I must admit that I love how the tools work in Daz Studio to help us create clothing for Daz figures that work really, really well. I kinda wish more of the Genesis clothing had more of this stuff built into it, but that requires a lot of time for the creator. Back in the days of Generation 3 and 4 (and 2) many of the products did come with hours and hours of these kinds of tweaks for them - because they had to to make them work without the new auto-follow that we have since Genesis. Generation 4 had that, but it was much different due to still using the pre-Poser 9 way of rigging.
Okay Dart, you're babbling.
I've been having all sorts of success with using Generation 3 and 4 clothing on my new Genesis 1 characters. I use the Bodysuit > Loose preset during auto-fit which gives me the General Volume morph slider, which works to enlarge or shrink the results.
SickleYield's Breast/Clothing fixer morphs help to relax the clothing after being shrink wrapped to Genesis, and Xenic101's PokeAway is just an essential part of my game at animation.
Another thing I love about previous generation clothing in Carrara is that I can add all the custom morphs I want directly in Carrara as long as I do so before I fit it to Genesis. So lets say that I have something fit to my Genesis character and I realize that I need some new morphs for it. First thing I do is to make a list of what morphs I need, even take a few notes about which direction I need specific polygons to go if I need to. Then I go through my process of loading the original clothing into Daz Studio and sending it to Hexagon to make my first morph - or at least the start of what I want the morph to do. I'm not so great in Hexagon, so I often just make a small enough change that Morph Loader Pro kicks in when I send it back to Studio. This all gives me my new Full Body morph zone to work with (as opposed to having to adjust chest, abs, and hip, etc., individually), so I then save the new CR2 to my library under a new name.
Now in Carrara, I load in that CR2 and make all of the morphs I noted down - and often a few extras. If I need to get something fairly specific I'll make several morphs that push and pull in various directions to help me get what I need in the end, as well as to tweak the shape during the extreme poses of animations.
Once I have the new item ready, I can now auto-fit that to my character and my new morphs are there and ready to use. I just swap the shaders from the copy I was using and, voila!
It feels like forever since I've gone through the process mentioned directly above. Lately the Aiko 3, Vicky and Mike 3, etc., stuff I've been buying has been coming fully equipped with plenty of Open/Close and movement morph options. One thing I did notice, however, is that I cannot just add a morph on the fly (as I did with Gen 4 clothing) once it's been made into an Actor for Genesis. I know I can model new morphs in Carrara and apply them to Actor clothing in Daz Studio, however, so there's that.
I think my next step for all of this will be to try getting Genesis 3 clothing to work for Genesis 1. In doing so, I plan to start again with just an OBJ of the original mesh and make it into a Genesis item right from the start. I lose any premade morphs this way, but at least I can make new ones on my own.
On that note, I've done quite a bit with opening an OBJ into Daz Studio (even though DS is still very much greek to me in nearly every other way) and getting it to conform to the intended figure, and then modeling morphs (in Carrara) and adding those to the item. Daz 3D development team sure have made a fine set of tools for all of this stuff!
This is a couple of custom clothing I modelled in Carrara just to try out the tools in Daz Studio. The armor on the upper left is showing how the female shapes auto-followed my simple mesh - I didn't need to model that in. Other than the boots, high action V6 is wearing stuff for V4 that had my own custom morphs (that I made for V4), especially the hair, which I've used until just recently - since I watched Alita Battle Angel! LOL
What a gold mine of tips. I gotta sit down with a new DS/Carrara session, some form of caffeine, and a mouse - and actually run through what I just read to really appreciate the time-saving experience being shared. Thanks for 'rambling'!
FWIW, the part where you talk about backing-up and deleting the morphs and morph-folders, if you didn't catch my comments on GenX2 being able to disable single or group morphs, you might want to re-read that. To my thinking, its greatest workflow value is that it might allow you to use handy check-boxes and GUI-lists in the DS GenX2 tab to quickly sort out the morphs you want, then use scripts or the file-manager to tuck all of the *.dsf.OFF morph files that have been disabled, leaving only the desired ones for the custom project/runtime.
And while I haven't verified it, his tools are good enough that I bet when you 'enable' a morph with dependencies, that his tool 'does the right thing' and leaves the dependencies enabled too, so we don't have to analyze the dsf files for external references before we 'toss' them. I believe we can trust that if it's got an 'OFF' suffix, we don't need it for our project. And while this may relate to the normal GenX2 conversions workflow, it is definitely NOT the only use/value for the function. It could almost be a product on its own as far as I'm concerned. Maybe you knew this, but it bears repeating if not.
My reasons for 'thinning' a figure are partially for space and reducing complexity, but the loading and bogging time for my animation workflows have gotten pretty long and stuttery. It's gotten even worse with DS 4.12, in spite of its great new animation features. That time and program response is what I'm trying to get back in the long-term.
(and thining things like this satisfies my suppressed OCD-like tendencies :)
Cheers!
--ms
And BTW, if any Genesis1 users like using the conforming cloth templates and projection meshes (?) to get imported clothing to 'sit' well on a figure, there are a couple of useful ones by sickleyield over at rendo.
cheers,
--ms
On that note, have you (or anyone reading this) tried using a clone for fitting Genesis 2 or 3 clothing to Genesis 1? I bought one a while back but returned it when it didn't work in Carrara, since auto-fit was never actually updated for newer generations of Genesis in Carrara.
I used it to fit clothing from Genesis 2 to Genesis 1 in DS and then save the newly fit clothing to the library, but it still wouldn't work on my Genesis figures in Carrara.
I have a feeling (especially after hearing some of Wendy's comments) that there's a workflow that allows us to save Genesis versions of clothing to the library that does work for Genesis in Carrara - but it still eludes me. I would really love to buy some Genesis 3 clothing too, but only if I can fit it to Genesis 1 in Carrara.
it needs to be saved as a support asset, figure in DS
Hmnpf. That's what I did. :(
odd
you didnt save it as scene subset by mistake?
is it by some chance parented to the figure?