How To Make Nonhuman Head Morphs That Work With Poses/Expressions?

lurdanjo_8ca8796c24

Heya! I've been a long time Daz Studio user but now I want to take things to the next level by creating my own morphs for Genesis figures. I have ZBrush and I'm learning how to use that so that I can take the basic Genesis models and make some really cool custom creatures out of them, like what RawArt does.

Only thing is, I've run into a pretty huge snag. I haven't been able to find any tutorials on how to create nonhuman morphs in such a way that the vertices remain accurately in place so that expressions and other shape keys will still work once they're imported again. I don't know if there's a process for reassigning the vertices to key areas such as the edges of lips or ears, but I know that RawArt is able to keep all the vertices in the same relative position. However, when I use ZBrush and I'm creating something that has very alien looking ears, for example, I'll lose the original placement of those ears and then I know that future morphs and expressions won't work. However, RawArt's morphs still work, for example if I use his Croc character and dial up a smile expression, it will still look like a smile, but if I try to create my own reptilian character and import it as a morph, the shape keys won't line up.

I've been trying to find tutorials online for this but all I can find are related to making very simple face morphs for human characters. This is of course very easy because you can just gently sculpt the edges of the original Genesis models to change the shape while the vertices for the tip of the nose or ear, for example, are still there. Considering that lots of artists like RawArt, Josh Crockett, DarioFish, and TheAntFarm have been able to make very good nonhumans that still have the vertices in the right places for expressions and posing, what I am missing?

Cris Palomino

Depending on what you do, how extreme the morph, you will use Adjust Rigging to Shape. If the morph is truly extreme, you will need to create JCMs (joint corrective morphs) or MCMs (morph corrective morphs). to assist in making things look and work right. Take a look through Josh's tutorials. Different Josh, this Josh works at Daz. 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtqhpxQyGa7fm0LPoDz4s4A