Genesis Evolution: Muscularity -- Do they export / work in FBX format?

john_2125931

Hi all,

First, the link of the add-on I'm speaking of:

http://www.daz3d.com/genesis-evolution-muscularity

I've had this purchased for a while now, and absolutely love it with my Genesis 1 characters. I have, however, been wanting to take the characters into other software via FBX, and am curious if these morphs will be carried in & functional upon import into another application? 

I ask beacuse, it seems to me at least, that they may not be. But, I wanted to ask for a proper answer (or solution), since I could be wrong.

If there are any steps I need to follow in order to ensure they are carried through, please do let me know! :) 

John 

WendyLuvsCatz

Well you would need to bake them on the timeline to appear in any export but doubt they would be joint controlled, you could manually dial them though.

WendyLuvsCatz

An animation with them would export to a compatible program if key framed/baked

(not iClone for example where vertex morphs are limited to the expression editor)

larsmidnatt

In general you can export morphs baked(ones that don't change), say the base figure shape. And you can export animated morphs that can be used as morph targets or blendshapes in another program.

They can be baked (ie you can't manipulate them) if you don't need to adjust the morph later, don't have these animate in the timeline. I have had success exporting/importing most morphs if they are animated at some point in the timeline(never had any issue with baked ones but you won't have control of them later). I've only tried Unity and UE4, but if they show up in those apps I am sure theyw ill show up in others.

As Wendy referenced, morphs that have controllers sometimes get weird. For example if you have any fancy corrective morphs to fix posting, those typically  won't work.

Another thing to keep in mind is that while in Daz studio negative values are permitted many other programs don't allow for negative morphs(i wish they did). So if you have eye movement from left to right, the eyes may only move to one direction and back to center. So you have to make your own custom morphs for that, which shouldn't be too hard if you get the concept.

 

john_2125931

JaguarElla said:

An animation with them would export to a compatible program if key framed/baked

(not iClone for example where vertex morphs are limited to the expression editor)

It's funny you mention that, as iclone has become my main destination for most of what I'm doing (whilst en-route to UE4). While I don't think I'll likely be doing my animation in DAZ, I may try exporting it out baked & see if the flexions do indeed carry over (which it sounds like they do). Thank you!

larsmidnatt said:

In general you can export morphs baked(ones that don't change), say the base figure shape. And you can export animated morphs that can be used as morph targets or blendshapes in another program.

They can be baked (ie you can't manipulate them) if you don't need to adjust the morph later, don't have these animate in the timeline. I have had success exporting/importing most morphs if they are animated at some point in the timeline(never had any issue with baked ones but you won't have control of them later). I've only tried Unity and UE4, but if they show up in those apps I am sure theyw ill show up in others.

 

Thank you also for the wonderful input; it's good to be in-the-know. It's somewhat of a bummer that they aren't exported without being baked-in, but I suppose that's understandable, since it's a pretty specialized thing!

larsmidnatt

Well to be clear, if it is ANIMATED it doesnt have to be baked. If it is static, then yes you need to bake it. Which it will do by default. You can override this though it may get excessive.

Like you could make a rule where all morphs that contain the name LARS are exported regardless of whether they are used/animated. You might end up with 1000 morphs in the file and it could take a long time. I tried exporting all breasts morphs once and ended up with waaaaay more than I needed.

WendyLuvsCatz

when I refered to baking to timeline I simply meant they need to be keyframed at some point in the timeline, not some extra proceedure as that means as well as the default zero frame shape which is "baked" with the morphs in place at that time, the changes in mesh shape are also recorded which a program like iclone 3dxchange will see in expression editor, other programs see them as blendshapes and many will play them back along timeline as animated, the trial I had of 3dsMax a couple of years ago played back any morph animation such as lipsync so asume others would too, it appeared to work in UDK4 too.

larsmidnatt

yep yep Wendy, that's how it works. I just have the default character in frame 0. then in frame 1 i dial in all the morphs i want to have control over in the next software. Expressions, movement morphs, flexing etc. Tends to work in Unity/UE4.