Full transfer of morphed and posed character?
mikuda
Posts: 4
Hello! As in the subject. I'm a beginner so be patient and use as little abbreviations as possible :D
So, I want to create simple, nearly static scene in unreal. It's FOR interor visualisation purpose, so there will be only free flying, non colliding observer and characters in static poses, (or - if can handle it later - performing some idle, looped animations).
Creating characters in Daz was super easy and intuitive. Just love this program.
Did "Daz to Unreal bridge" YT tutorial and everything covered there worked like a charm. But I need more, and I want to know if it's possible.
I'm just learning unreal so before I waste more time on looking for solution I'd like to know IF this solution even exist, and if so HOW certain things are possible. So please bear with me :)
Here is step by step of what I'm doing and where I'm stuck:
1. I have fully clothed and posed Daz character with multiple morphs applied.
2. Exporting it to Unreal with morphs selected, and morph export rules defined.
3. In Unreal I get all textures, materials and 3 files: Skeletal Mesh, Animation Sequence and Physics Asset (that last one is probably irrevelant here)
4. Skeletal Mesh:
- it's just base Gen8 character with applied hair, clothing and materials but no pose and morphs. I can retarget it and assign unreal preset animations just as in tutorial BUT it's neither animation nor character I want.
- in edit mode I can move morph sliders to "recreate" character I made in Daz and fix some clothing glithces but changes are visible only in preview window. Saving nothing changes, so how do I save the result
as new Skeletal Mesh? Is it possible? Does it have something to do with animations and animation blueprints? Wached few tutorials but it's still very confusing for me.
5. And there is Animation Sequence file.
- It has pose and morphs of MY character created in Daz and I can drag it onto the scene BUT thats all I know about this type of asset.
- sometimes it has "destroyed" face - morphs fault? Is it fixable?
- Is it possible to convert it and use it the same way as Skeletal Mesh?
- further tweak and modify it's morphs and pose?
- apply animation?
Help me understand how those files are related to each other. I'm lost and a bit discouraged.
Please answer me here if You think it's possible or point me to some "for dummies" level resource, article or YT video. :D :D :D
Thank You in advance!
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Comments
I'm not sure if I get your question. With the bridge, you can send a character to unreal. You can also send animations. Usually, everything should work as expected. You can create an actor blueprint with the character you created and set the mesh and animation for it. Drop the blueprint in the viewport. There is an option to do a high-resolution print screen. Anything besides that will require blueprints.
If you don't need collision or user interaction, render the scene in daz studio is less work.There is no limit to what you can do with Unreal Engine, as long as you are willing to spend the necessary time learning and creating what you want. You can't pose your character and edit morphs as you do in Daz Studio using only your mouse out of the box, but you can create something like that with blueprint and control-rig.
You should start watching a beginning course to see what features the engine offers to you and what you need to create yourself.
Unreal has a visual programing language that is very powerful and easy to use, but you need to watch a course or at least spend some hours watching youtube tutorials to learn the basics.
You can start here: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/onlinelearning-courses/introducing-unreal-engine
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/onlinelearning-courses/your-first-hour-in-sequencer
Exporting the morphs using the list is only for morhps you want to change at runtime. If you don't export morphs, they will be "baked in" to the character. I recommend you export without morphs, or just the the JCM morphs to see what I mean.
For the animations messing up the face, make sure to set the retarget source. https://davidvodhanel.com/daz-to-unreal-animations/
well lets start,
1 - you only export the "moprhs in morphs rules if you want to use then "inside unreal" i means if you want to create a sort of characters customization or a blue print which gonna apply those morphs to the characters during the scene otherwise you don't need to "check" the morph target rules, just apply the morphs you want to the character and export it, the morphs will be baked in the character mesh and you don't need to apply then inside unreal.
2 - posing: it's very simple but can be a little trick if you not too familiar with unreal import window, if you already export others characters and stuffs no issue but if its your first time it can be trick with your unreal open the daz to unreal pluging enabled, (before you export the character), look for the buttom settings or look where it is the file, edit, window and then click in edit then look for the project settings and click on it, then scrool down and look for "plugings then look for the daz to unreal settings then look for the opton show fbximport dialog and mark that option in the cube after the name then close it(this window don't have a sort of save buttom just mark the option and close the window it will auto save the change)
now go back to daz then place the character you want in the pose,
then export it
then inside unreal a window will pop asking you to choose the options you want to export it
pay attention to skeleton and the arrow under it, click in this arrow then in the skeleton you gonna click on "none" and choose the dazgenesis8 skeleton which already is inside unreal
then in the new options which appeared when you clicked in the arrow you will mark the "use t0 As Ref pose, mark the box next to it like what you did before.
then after that just hit the import all buttom
then after that you must wait a little then the process will finish
then after that i would recomend you to open again the project setting and disable the box to open the import window, it will go back to the auto import old way without the window, but you don't need it anymore once you marked the option to aways use the t0 pose reference it will do to all your characters then you don't need the extra window again unless you want to enable others stuffs as you learn more about how to use it. inside unreal in the character window, is possible to save the pose to be applied later to the character but it's another story for another time.
if is just render and poses, you don't need blueprints just drag the character in the pose to the place you want, adjust it in the scene then it's all finished, you only need blueprints if you are going to do more complicated stuffs like animations for simple poses just drag the character in the pose, remember this would means which for each scene you want to render you need to have multiples versions of the character one for each pose, then save then in different foders or if you know how to save and proper apply poses to the character then you only need one character and know how to change the pose which again would need some "BP" making a little more work to do.
i hope it helped you with what you wanted.
Thank You, I'll certainly will. Meanwhile please help understand some besic concepts on how Daz and Unreal "understand" each other. For example "Animation Sequence" file in unreal looks like source Daz project. Does it mean (give or take) that animations, poses and morphs exported from Daz are all treated like "Animation Assets" in Unreal?
Thank You! I'll check Your tips later this evening.
Just a quickie: I saw JCM morphs at the bottom of export window.
What are they exactly and how they are different from other morphs?
Ellesar! Thank You very much for longer read :)
I have just few moments now at the computer so I'll dig into it later.
Nice tip on "fbx import dialog"! I saw it during manual import and wondered why it's not there whe using Bridge :)
The JCMs are Joint Controlled Morphs. They get applied as certain joints bend to improve the shape. There are some examples at the bottom of this page: https://davidvodhanel.com/daz-to-unreal-jcm-examples/
So JCMs are essentially the same from technical point of view as other morphs, but since they are essential to correct "flesh" bending they are recommended to export as "bare minimum" right?
BTW - going thorough Your site, good read!
It really depends on how close to your character the player gets and ho much you bend the joints. If you're far enough away to not really notice, they probably aren't worth the extra memory. I generally use the JCMs. In Daz Studio they're connected to automatically get applied when the character bends, so I've mapped the ones on those buttons to automatically get applied in Unreal.