Copying rig/bones from one object to another - possible? how?
andya_b341b7c5f5
Posts: 694
I have modeled and laboriously rigged an object intended to be a geograft. I have now realized that a small part of the mesh needs to be changed 
. The bones do not need any updating. The change involves (only) decreasing the number of vertices in one area of the model, so the 'Update Base Geometry' option refuses to work.
I cannot face re-rigging this thing from scratch. So, is there any way at all in which I can copy or transfer the existing rig/bones to the updated mesh after importing it? I think I would rather have to do the weight mapping manually than re-position all the bones as accurately as I have already done, if that is what is required.
Gah, stupid me for not checking the geometry earlier. Any helpful suggestions appreciated.
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Comments
Use the Transfer Utility, with the old version as the Source and the new mesh a the Target.
Phew, thanks for that, had not thought about Transfer Utility. It seems to have transferred the bones correctly, but there are some errors with the face groups, surfaces and weight maps which I am working through finding and correcting. Looks like the Transfer Utility gets confused by geometry that is quite close together, sometimes choosing geometry that is actually further from the bone in preference to geometry that is closer. Still, it's less work than rigging it from scratch.
Incidentally, (perhaps this is another thread) I can't find any keyboard shortcuts for some functions within the tools Geometry Editor, Joint Editor. So, e.g., selecting all or clearing the selection in GE, which I'm having to do many times via the fly-out menus. These menus are a recipe for RSI! When I try to set up a shortcut in the Customize Daz Studio pane (F3), all the options I try to set give me an error saying it is already in use and do I want to clear other uses of the shortcut. It does not tell me what other function is using that key combo, although clearly this info must be available internally, so it's impossible to answer that question.
You can assign new shortcuts in Window>Workspace>Customise. Find the command on the left (all the rigging tools are under CCT Name), right-click>Assign Shortcut, press the key combination.
Yes, sorry, I was trying to say that's what I was doing when attempting to set up keyboard shortcuts. Every keyboard combo I try to set up, I am told it's in use and asked if I want to remove all the existing uses. But I'm not told what the existing uses are, so it's impossible to tell whether removing the existing uses is acceptable. Can I somehow list all the currently defined shortcuts so I can find some that are unused?
Rob has a sample script that will give you a list of accelerators http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/scripting/api_reference/samples/actions/action_accelerators/start
My rule of thumb is: if you don't know for what this shortcut is used by default its OK to overwrite it because you never had used this default shortcut anyway.
I think the default shortcuts are good as they are and easy to remember, those are:
I've just added one thing (no shortcut assigned by default)
With those you don't need a shortcut for Select All you can archive this by Clear Selection followed by Invert Selection now everything is selected (and you don't have to remember another shortcut).
Here is my thread about all the shortcuts and things you can customize to speed up your workflow:
How to Customize Daz Studio - to speed up Workflow!? [WIP]
I've just added My customized Keyboard Shortcuts - Downloadable Config File
If you had exported the mesh with the right OBJ export settings like in this screenshot below you don't need to transfer the Face- and Surface- Groups. Instead they already get imported with the OBJ. You can simply uncheck those in the settings of the Transfer Utility. I've also discovered not realy usable results with transfering such polygon based groups like the face/surface-groups / selection sets with almost identical meshes.
But the quality of the result you get with the Transfer Utility depends on the upper settings in Projection Options.
For the weight maps I would try to lower the Distance Tolerance slider. As the name implies its a tolerance so the weight maps will look more blury after the transfer with higer settings. I don't know which distance this default value of 0.032 represents maybe its realted to the default 1 cm unit scale in DazStudio. But its just a default setting for the deafult usage scenario where you want to transfer the figure rigging to the clothing item with a completly other mesh that is some distant away from the actual figure body mesh. You could also try those settings like Closest Vertex First or Use near Vertices maybe even UV Space can help to get a better 1 to 1 copy of the original weightmaps but I don't know if they will produce better results. In the end I would say just do a few tests to find a good setting for your scenario and compare the results on different settings.
One thing to mention is the Replace Source With Target checkmark that is important to get all properties transfered to the target figure. Otherwise you don't get all sliders and the property groups transfered, again something you don't need in the default usage scenario. An example would be the clothing item needs all shaping morphs of the figure tansfered for proper fitting but some properties that are of type pose parameter like the pose controls are unneseccary in a conforming item.
You see the default settings of the Transfer Utility are not the best in your case for transfering rigging and morphs between almost identical meshes.
Thanks, that's exactly what I was hoping for! I have found some combos to use now. I can probably tweak it to write them to a file for easier reading.
Syrus_Dante, thanks for all that information. The keyboard shortcut issue is addressed by the script Richard pointed to but I will check out your thread on that subject.
I think my OBJ import options were fine, I have those pretty much understood. So I probably would have been better not transferring the face groups, as they would be the correct on the updated mesh after import.
The Transfer Utility I think I used what you recommend, except I did not use Replace Source with Target, because I wanted to keep the 'source'. Without better documentation about what this means and does, I had to assume that it would overwrite the source object in some way. I think I also had Face Groups checked because I wanted them transferred. I did not deliberately choose Merge Hierarchies, but it may be checked by default. Again, without a full explanation of what these options will do it's hard to choose. Note that this wasn't clothing; it is a model I have built whichi is intended to be a geograft (if I can get that far!), so I ignored options that seemed to relate to clothing like the projection template for example.
I note what you say about the, tolerance slider and options like Closest Vertex First. I will bear it in mind in future, though I hope not to have to deal with a similar issue again. Hopefully lesson learnt - check the geometry sooner rather than later.