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Export Genesis 3 Models to FBX But Maintain Bone Names

rooseveltrprooseveltrp Posts: 12
edited September 2017 in Daz Studio Discussion

Hey All,

I have been doing some motion capturing, and it's working great. But I noticed a weird problem and I believe it was by design. Here's what I am doing:

  1. First, I exported out the Genesis 3 Base Male model to FBX.
  2. Imported the FBX model to my motion capture software.
  3. Retargeted the bones.
  4. Exported out the animation to BVH format.
  5. Imported the BVH file to Daz3d and applied it to the Genesis 3 Model.
    1. On the advanced options window, I noticed that the bone names are all camel cased (e.g., lShoulder) whereas, on Daz, they are written out like regular words (e.g., Left Shoulder)
    2. So, I mapped the bones accordingly.

Even though 90% of the animation is okay, in certain parts, the animations are not applied correctly to the right shoulder, forearms, hands, etc.

However, if I import the FBX I exported out initially, and use the BVH animation to that version of the model, the animations look just fine.

So, something is going wrong around 5.2 above. I was wondering what could be causing this and if there's any way to export out the Genesis 3 models to FBX maintaining the original bone names. That way when I import the FBX to the motion cap software, the bone names are already identical to the bone names on the DAZ3D app.

Post edited by rooseveltrp on

Comments

  • pdr0pdr0 Posts: 204

    rooseveltrp said:

    Hey All,

    I have been doing some motion capturing, and it's working great. But I noticed a weird problem and I believe it was by design. Here's what I am doing:

    1. First, I exported out the Genesis 3 Base Male model to FBX.
    2. Imported the FBX model to my motion capture software.
    3. Retargeted the bones.
    4. Exported out the animation to BVH format.
    5. Imported the BVH file to Daz3d and applied it to the Genesis 3 Model.
      1. On the advanced options window, I noticed that the bone names are all camel cased (e.g., lShoulder) whereas, on Daz, they are written out like regular words (e.g., Left Shoulder)
      2. So, I mapped the bones accordingly.

    Even though 90% of the animation is okay, in certain parts, the animations are not applied correctly to the right shoulder, forearms, hands, etc.

    However, if I import the FBX I exported out initially, and use the BVH animation to that version of the model, the animations look just fine.

    So, something is going wrong around 5.2 above. I was wondering what could be causing this and if there's any way to export out the Genesis 3 models to FBX maintaining the original bone names. That way when I import the FBX to the motion cap software, the bone names are already identical to the bone names on the DAZ3D app.

     


    Which mocap software?

    Default G3/G8 figures have some bone/joint properties hidden ,some locked , some restrictions. When you export FBX, they are no longer hidden or locked - so applying motion data that had been solved onto that same FBX  should work as expected

    Likely the issue is either you didn't show hidden properties, didn't unlock joints, or didn't turn rotation limits off in the target figure

    The bone names can actually be different if the skeleton matches source vs. target.  There are probably other explanations for you observations

    For example motionbuilder does this way - and different bone names work correctly in DS if you transfer it correctly as FBX motion to animated pose preset, then apply the pose preset to the target (with unlocked nodes, rotation limits off) ; it automatically "maps" everything correctly.

     

     

     

  • Bryan SteagallBryan Steagall Posts: 238

    Hi Rooseveltrp

    You can also just import the fbx file as is (I'm assuming you are using motionbuilder) after you finish the animation back into Daz, save the file as a properties or pose preset .duf file and apply to your character.. without even using the bvh file format, avoiding all the problems associated with it, and you can also use facial morphs..   Here's my workflow https://vimeo.com/227139373 works very well

  • wolf359wolf359 Posts: 3,836

    @rooseveltrp
    Hi sadly your problem is that the Daz studio BVH importer does not properly recognize
    the G3 Bone hierarchy.
    When they added those utterly useless twistbones to the G3 models they
    did not consider that it would break compatibility with the DS BVH importer
    and the animate2 aniblock system.


    As of now Bryan's method is the best option other than using G2 firstand retargeting 
    to G3 with one of the available scripts  

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