Morph and Surfaces settings help

RAMWolff

Hi,

Picked up Ken's Nature's Wonders Lizard over at Hivwire.  Nice figure but I want to make it fully compatible with DAZ Studio without having to go into the Runtime - Pose folder as it's just too many clicks to get things done.  So he's got the pz2 files set up to apply shaping and materials.  I was under the impression that DAZ Studio could do this but apparently I'm mistaken or I don't know what I'm doing. 

I've tried the "Character preset" but upon applying the Gila Monster morph via the pz2 folder and then testing out the .duf file for the Black Necked Agama lizard the materials apply but the shape stays as a Gila Monster.  Same when trying out the "Properties preset" which gives you more options to save a pose and that last tab which I have no idea what that's for.  So I'm at a loss as to how to get both done.  In the PZ2 folder I've opened up the pz2 file and only see info for applying, I don't see any references to a pmd file or anything like that. 

Richard H, do you have any insight? 

 

Thanks for any insite or help you can offer. 

jestmart

It is a Poser format figure, you will have to inject all its morphs then save as Scene Sub-set, load this from now on.

RAMWolff

No actually I saved it out as a figure in .duf format.  My initial question was related to saving out pz2 poses with shaping info embedded as a pose preset retaining the shaping info.  Ken suggested I try using the Property preset. He gave a little tutorial so I'll try that and see if it works...

jestmart

You are making it harder than it needs to be, Studio effectively converts a Poser figure to a Studio friendly figure when loading it.  Saving as a Scene Sub-set approach gets you a file that is in Studio native format, can be merged with active scene and has all the morphs (at the time of saving the file, you will need to update the file as you aquire new morphs for the figure) available without injecting.  Character, shaping and material presets can be made from the figure as if ws a native Studio figure.

Bejaymac

[quote]No actually I saved it out as a figure in .duf format[/quote]If by that you mean you used the "Convert to WM" feature then jestmart is correct in that you have made it a lot harder for yourself.

"get's out crash helmet" The problem is that Poser figures aren't compatible with DS4, it was after all designed around the Genesis series, as a result the import plugin has to convert every rigged Poser item into a very poor mans version of Genesis.

To understand why that causes problems you need to know the differences between Poser native figures and Studio native figures. In both programs you have a root node (Usually called BODY in Poser, and the figures name in the scene tab in DS), in Poser the skeleton is attached to it, the mesh is ripped up into props and each prop bolted onto a bone, each prop then has it's own set of morph deltas (including JCMs). In DS the mesh is attached to the root node with the morph deltas attached to the mesh (all are FBMs), the skeleton is also attached to the root node but the mesh and skeleton aren't actually attached to each other, it's the weight mapping that ties the two together.

The import plugin removes all the props from the bones, combines them back into a single mesh and attaches it to the root node, it then removes the morph deltas from the bones and keeping them as separate entities attaches them to the mesh and then hides them, leaving empty ERC linked channels on the bones.

DS also has hidden controllers so that a Poser figure appears to bend just the same as it always has, but when you "Convert to WM" you lose those so it actually bends worse than it did before. On top of that each of those separate morph deltas and empty channels get saved out as separate morph asset DSF's, some of which will no longer work right.

Trust me fixing all the garbage you get from that feature is a lot of work, took me nearly 6 months to rebuild Aiko3 when I did that to her back with DS4.5.

RAMWolff

Thanks folks!