Bones of geograft displaced when character shape applied

andya_b341b7c5f5

I have created a geograft to replace the right hand of Genesis 3 Female.  It is rigged with 20+ bones.  It is intended to be non-organic, so to avoid it being distorted by projected morphs I have applied rigidity (via a group with participants and refs and a weight map) to all but a couple of rows of polygons where it joins the G3F figure.  This all works well with the base G3F figure: geograft bones can be rotated and the geograft posed as desired.

However, when I apply a full body morph e.g. the Height morph or the Victoria 7 shape, whilst the geograft's mesh is unaffected by the morph (except near the join with G3F) the geograft bones all become displaced from their correct positions.  As a result, because the bones and mesh no longer line up correctly any rotation of the geograft bones results in the geograft mesh breaking apart.  The amount and direction of the displacement varies with the morph applied to G3F.  To be clear, the bones are displaced because they are not moving; the mesh is moving but retaining its shape.  When I dial the Height morph, for example, the geograft mesh follows the end of the arm; the geograft bones don't, even though they move when the figures right arm is posed.  The geograft has a Right Forearm Twist bone, and I used the Transfer Rigging (Figure Space) to 'weld' that to the same bone in G3F.  The geograft bones and mesh follow the forearm when posing.

It seems I have made some mistake in creating the geograft, but cannot figure out what I have done or not done in error.  I'll be grateful for any suggestions how I can fix this.

Syrus_Dante

Maybe the issue you have now comes from something that went wrong before you have used the Transfer Utility. You have to make shure to you use Memorize Rigging in the Joint Editor before projecting the morphs.

To fix this you could unfit the geograft, then manualy dial in all 'auto generated' morphs and character shapes you have issues with, one by one with the Joint Editor active to see if the bones of the geograft follow the shape or not. I have the suspicion that the only thing you have done wrong is not to save the morphs that where auto-generated or transfered with the Transfer Utility imediatly as Morph Assets. You may have saved a scene file and now that you open it again there are problems with the auto-generated or transfered morphs that no longer include the joint placement properties. Of course this is just my wild speculation of what eventualy went wrong.

Its even easier to see if the joint placement properties are saved with the morph or not. You could set the Parameters pane to Edit Mode, right-click the morph and choose 'Show in Property Hierarchy'. With the Property Hierarchy pane you can expand the the hierarchy tree of the morph and have a look under 1st Stage [Add-Substract] > Sub-Components, if there is a list of bone joint placement properties listed and controled by the morph. Those joint placement properties are all called something like CentrerPoint X Translation, EndPoint Y Translation and so on.

If the bones don't follow the shape, zero the geograft figure and dial in one morph where the bones don't follow the shape. Then switch to the Joint Editor tool and use the "Adjust Rigging to Shape" from the right-click menu on the viewport. Next the bones should fit to the shape but you need to save the 'adjusted' positions into the morph slider that was dialed up. Therfor you right-click on the morph with the Parameters pane in Edit-Mode and choose ERC-Freeze from the menu, make shure only those joint adjustments properties are selected in the ERC-Freeze list, it sometimes shows alot of other things not to save with the morph.

andya_b341b7c5f5

Syrus_Dante, thanks for the input.

I am pretty sure I did memorize the rigging for the geograft at several points before using the Transfer Utility, because I was paranoid about losing all the work I had done getting the bones positioned exactly as required.  I've tried again after unfitting the geograft, then refitting it - no joy.

The bones of the geograft don't follow any morph.  The full body Height morph is a good example, at least a simple one.  With that dialed to 100% for G3F, the figure gets a bit shorter (oddly, not taller...negative is taller, huh).  The bones of the geograft stay exactly where they were before dialling the morph, the mesh does not - see attached image.  You can see the projected FBMHeight morph that is projected on to the graft on the right, dialled to 100%.

The same effect happens if load a default G3F, dial the Height morph to 100% and then load the geograft.  The geograft mesh is in the correct position, but the bones are above it at the same level as they would be on a default G3F.

In the property hierarchy, the projected FBMHeight morph has no sub-components or controllers - none.

If I use Adjust Rigging to Shape on the geograft, the bones of the geograft still don't move.  Instead, the mesh of the geograft moves up (in this case) to where the bones are - the opposite of what I would expect this option to do!  It is adjusting shape to rigging, definitely not desirable.  The same happens if I set the projected morph to 0% - mesh moves up, bones stay put.

andya_b341b7c5f5

Ah, wait...looks like to get Adjust Rigging to Shape to behave itself, I have to deselect the Right Forearm Twist bone of the geograft in the dialog and leave all the other bones checked.  Then the bones move down to where the mesh is on the morphed G3F.  I need to carefully test the rigging again now - it's precise, and the tools have butchered it on a number of occasions previously after appearing initially to have worked.