Morphing brush
mmoch25
Posts: 134
A Morphing brush similar to what Poser has would be an excellent addition. I realise Daz has DForm, but it's more of a magnet based system. Where as a morphing brush would allow you to manipulate vertices directly with the brush tool, also allowing morphs to be created form it afterwards. The current DForm tool can be awkward to use at times, (much like the magnets in poser) particularly when a pose has been applied to the figure, the X,Y and Z axis sometimes become reversed, other times the field won't appear at all and requires some guess work as to where it is in the 3D space.
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Comments
This is a great idea. I have been asking for this for years, but no luck so far. Maybe in the next version of DS? Even as a paid for plugin, it would be a must buy item.
It's not the same as a moprh brush, but if you want to push the mesh in or out along its normals you can do that by adding a Push Modifier or two (Edit>Figure Geometry) and adding a Push Modifier Weight Access Node from the Create menu and use the Node Weight Map Brush tool to "sculpt".
A little bit disheartening if you've been asking for years already.
Hexagon is free and there's a Bridge to it, so it's not as if there are no options for morph creation.
Indeed there are options. It's a long time since I used Hexagon since it was such an awkward (for me at least) program to work in, but I don't recall there being brushes for freehand mesh manipulation. There is Blender which is also free. I understand Blender has a steep learning curve with maybe some issues with DAZ figures? Then there is Zbrush, certainly not free but easy to use and with a great selection of brushes. DAZ Studio can connect with ZBrush via GoZ and it even works, most of the time. However, if I understand correctly, the OP was requesting freehand mesh manipulation brushes for on the fly use within DAZ Studio. Such brushes would allow DS users to create mesh morphs in sub divided (character) meshes and hence high resolution (character) morphs.
The thought occurs that this might be a reason for DAZ3d NOT to allow/produce such mesh manipulation tools in DS as they might allow people to get around the current proprietary HD morph making block for normal users. Perhaps the smart people at DAZ3d could come up with a method of preventing the export of such morphs, to prevent them being sold by third parties.
I'm pretty sure that is not the case - restricting any moprh tool to the base mesh would be trivial (indeed, doing otherwise would be the tricky thing - and I'd guess performance-sapping to boot).
Ah yes, but I wasn't talking about restricting the morph tool to work only on the Base mesh. That facility is already available through Blender, ZBrush etc. It would be most useful if the morph brush could be applied (on the fly) within DS at High Resolution in order to make subtle or detailed morphs that are currently not possible at all in Base resolution. The potential problem I was pointing out is that once made, maybe the high resolution morph could be exported in such a way that it could be sold by Third Parties, which obviously would be undesirable for DAZ3d. However, maybe such high resolution morphs that are made in DS could be embedded in some way within the character and activated only when the character is in High Rez mode. I don't know if that's possible and it has the downside of limiting that specific high rez morph to that specific character. Alternatively, perhaps some sort of author recognition code could be used, so that only the person who made the morph could use the morph.... just throwing out ideas here.
Really the only mesh available would be the base mesh, as everything revolves around that. Think of HD as being as editable as a normal map in DS, or the subd smoothing, it's only a detail pass that you can see in DS when you turn on the actual subdivision or render time; it's only for show. The way Poser's morph brush handles subd meshes and DAZ3D's HD are not the same, there is no HD sculpting tool in DS.
In the end it really doesn't matter what happens under the hood, as long as it works! What the OP, myself and many others would like to have is a brush based system (at least as far as the user is concerned) for morphing meshes of objects, clothing or characters within DS. Obviously this is going to work on the Base mesh, but should also work when the object, clothing or character is sub divided, providing the potential for subtle and high resolution morphs which are currently NOT possible with the Base mesh alone. Whether this is done by moving "actual" verts/polys in the base mesh and then creating a displacement map for the detail, or by moving "virtual" verts/polys in a sub divided mesh (with or without a displacement map being involved) doesn't really matter from the users perspective. Obviously, this needs to be done in such a way that DAZ3d's rights are not impinged.
I understand that DS currently does not have a mesh manipulation tool like Poser. That is currently a distinct advantage for Poser over DS. However, DS has other advantages like (IMO) better character support. The issue is not whether such a tool currently exists but rather could it be made for DS? Is this something that DAZ3d would allow/invest in?
Again, HD and subd is a detail pass not actual mesh. So if there's a mesh brush, it would only work with the base mesh as everything is tied to that. .
Groundhog Day!
@ IsaacNewton
If you realy want to sculpt morphs get yourself comfortable with a modeling app. Hexagon, Blender and Sculptris are free and do the job far better than anything I can think of what could be added to Daz Studio. I mean why should Daz invest time and money to integrate moddeling and sculpting tools while they offer you Hexagon for free.
For morphs I use ZBrush but I don't like the goZ bridge plugin so I export-import OBJs all the time. The advantage is the face groups gets imported and with default 100% Daz Scaling (1 unit = 1m) preset choosen in the OBJ export dialog the model comes in pretty big that allowes much smaler brush sizes for sculpting finer details. Speaking of details you can subdivide your mesh as you like in ZBrush and sculpt in all the fine details you can imagine with the alpha brushes, SpotLight image Projection and what not. Finaly you project the high poly mesh details onto the low poly base mesh with a normal map or even better with a displacement map that you can export with the ZBrush multimap exporter plugin.
@ mmoch25
In case you don't know instead of using the default DFormer Field influence set to Shpere, you can also set the DFormers Influence to Weigt Map. This is a great way to do morph adjustments.
Once you set the DFormer Field Influence to Weigt Map the Field position is ignored and you can hide it and forget about the issues with posed figures.
I know its a bit fiddly with DFormers but with Weigt Map Influence its possible to use the Node Weight Map Brush tool as a sculting brush.
Below are a few forum posts with examples.
[Tutorial] D-former with Node Weight Map Brush - at Deviantart
D Former Tutorial- Screenshots
How to Use a Push Modifier: Creating a Blanket / Adjusting ...
One thing I noticed is the hierarchy of the different modifiers that get applied to the mesh in a special order that can't be altered. I think the following is correct.
So first the SubD Modifier subdivides the mesh if "Convert to SubD" is appied to an object/figure the mesh is by default subdivided one level.
See the Mesh Resolution properties in the Parameters pane. Sometimes people get in trouble with pokethrughs if the resolution sliders are set wrong. There are actualy two sliders for Mesh Resolution one for Preview and one for render mesh resolution.
Next the DFormer deforms the mesh. Then the Smoothing Modifier gets applied and depending if you have set a Collision Item it pushes the mesh back to not intersect with the Collision Item. Typicaly its a clothing that gets fitted to a figure. Finaly the Push Modifier can further adjust the mesh but it seems you can paint back pokethrughs with a negative Push value so this got me thinking its the last modifier applied in the chain.
Plane with DFormer and SubD Modifier
Here I demonstrate the sculpting abilities of a DFormer Weight Map on a simple primitive plane with 22 subdivisions. The plane is a simple example but the method can be adapted to clothing and figures.
Plane with Push-Pull Modifer and SubD Modifier
So after I read Richards suggestion about the Push Modifierer Weight Node I thought lets also do a little demonstration with them on the simple plane primitive. I've created two Push Modifierer Weight Nodes one I call Push Modifier with a value of 10 to push the mesh up the other I call Pull Modifier with a value of -10 to pull the mesh down. Unlike the DFormer that can move, scale and rotate the vertices the Push Modifierer Weight Node will act like a Inflate/Deflate Brush to Push/Pull the vertices along their surface normals. This is not seen in this example because of the perfectly flat plane. See attached screenshots.
@Syrus_Dante
"@ IsaacNewton
If you realy want to sculpt morphs get yourself comfortable with a modeling app. Hexagon, Blender and Sculptris are free and do the job far better than anything I can think of what could be added to Daz Studio. I mean why should Daz invest time and money to integrate moddeling and sculpting tools while they offer you Hexagon for free."
1) "If you realy want to sculpt morphs get yourself comfortable with a modeling app." I do, I use ZB, but the OP was asking for brushes in DS, which I support.
2) "Hexagon, Blender and Sculptris are free and do the job far better than anything I can think of what could be added to Daz Studio." Hey, don't blame me for your lack of imagination. :) PS Hexagon is a right royal pain in the *** IMO.
3) "I mean why should Daz invest time and money to integrate moddeling and sculpting tools while they offer you Hexagon for free." The "Why" is simple. Because people are asking for it and willing to pay for it. It's called capitalism :) Oh yeah, Hexagon; see the reply to point 2.
If it's capitalism, the question should be asked how would that feature be able to make money for DAZ3D considering the other features that they've released in the past few years? DAZ makes it's money from content, which supports development for new features for their free program. What would a morph brush do for content in the store that you can't already do with tools already in the market?
@ Male-M3dia
Please read my previous reply. Unless you speak on behalf of DAZ3d board of directors, I guess the descision about whether or not they think it would make money would be up to them.
But let's get back to the original point. The OP asked for brushes within DS, I support that. You clearly don't.
I didn't say I didn't support the morph brush. And I was on the original point. Just because someone asks for a feature doesn't make it feasible.. In finite resources, features do ultimately have to be justifed. If a request can't be justified, then it shouldn't be implemented.
@ Male-M3dia
You wrote "I didn't say I didn't support the morph brush."
Well, do you? Come off the fence. Stop shilly-shallying around. Do you think the OP's request is justified?
I would like a morph / sculpting set of brushes. And a PBR material / texture painting set of brushes too.
I think adding these things directly to DAZ Studio and letting customers learn to do their 'own bespoke' characters and models in DAZ Studio on content bought from the DAZ Store would keep more customers longer.
I would find it hard to believe that those arguing against the implementation of the Poser morph brush tool in DS have ever heavily used that tool in Poser.
I'm not sure you know what you're missing. There's no comparison between exporting back and forth to Zbrush or Hexagon (both of which I have) versus just having open the Poser morph brush tool to make edits all during the process of setting up a scene. It makes Poser really robust versus just a "drag and drop" software program. You can constantly edit morphs, joints, clothes, hair...moving and sculpting in real-time. It's amazing and so fast. And it's not just push/pull either. You can smooth, flatten, tighten and loosen clothes, etc. against a target figure. There are many tools, including morphing only by a material/group and you can pin down areas to be affected.
There's a lot I like about DS. And, I prefer the Genesis 3/8 content so I find myself going back and forth between Poser & DS for work flow...which is slow and annoying.
Once you heavily use the Poser morph brush tool, you'll understand why we want it in DAZ Studio so much.
I don't know why but it seems that the communities request for simple mesh brushes (push, pull, move, smooth) in DS fall on deaf ears, despite the obvious utility of these features.
Throw my vote in there for the morphing brush, too! It saved my bacon many times in Poser, and I agree, why go throw all the workflow of porting to another app to create minor adjustments, then bring them back in, when a few strokes in situ are what you really need? "The other program is free" is not a convincing argument - with the brush, you can make fine or broad strokes and see your results immediately. It really is a superior way to do things that you don't plan to make enduring or sharable morphs.
I'm not familiar with Poser or the morphing brush, but we do have Mesh Grabber now, which sounds like it fulfills a similar function.
The Mesh Grabber is a useful tool, although the way in which it works is cumbersome. This is not a reflection on the vendor but rather the way in which it works which is limited to the existing magnet system within DS. The vendor has done a good job with the limited tools available.
Morph brushes work in a completely different way than clumsy magnets. If you wish to see how morph brushes work (and the amazing results you can get), there are a number of free software packages which use such tools, for example Sculptris (which is a simplified version of Zbrush) and Blender. The technology for Morph Brushes has been around for a very long time. I don't understand why DAZ3d won't implement them in DAZ Studio; maybe someone from DAZ3d would care to comment?
The obvious question is; if there are other third party software packages (even free ones) which do implement Morph Brushes, why don't we just use those? The answer is simple; communication and compatibility. You have to be able to send the DS figures/objects back and forth between the third party software packages, and that is not always easy or smooth. For Zbrush, DS uses GoZ to send objects/figures back and forth and that works (most of the time), but it would make life much simpler if the Morph Brushes could be used on the fly within DS. That would avoid some of the incompatability problems that sometimes exist between DS and Zbrush. Further, Zbrush is an expensive program and so not available to all. I don't know if GoZ works with Sculptris.
If Morph Brushes were implemented in DS then issues like poke through or clothing intersecting with the figures hands etc could be dealt with within seconds. Mesh artifacts caused by Autofit could be corrected within seconds. Every DS user could (with a bit of practice) make their own morphs to figures and clothing. That last point is the only reason I can think of why DAZ3d won't implement Morph Brushes; on the basis that it may take work away from vendors. If that is the reason (and it may not be), then it is based on shortsighted thinking. Implementing Morph Brushes in DS would not only make using DS easier and more fun, it would also release a tidal wave of creativity from many people and be a starting point for people on the path to creating new content (though again, where this new content would/could be sold might be an issue for DAZ3d). At least this is my opinion.
Poke through can usuallly be dealt with using a weight-mapped Push Modifier or weight-maped dForm.
As far as I ama ware the Mesh grabber is its own deformer, not an expansion of those buil into DS/suppllied by other pllug-ins
I doubt you will get an official comment, but I would imagine that the amount of development itme it would eat and the problem of implementing it in a UI that is already doing a lot of other things may both be factors.
True but both these methods are not so intuitive and are more time consuming. Morph brushes could easily, quickly and intuitively be used to solve these problems and do a lot more besides.
Regarding the time required to implement Morph Brushes in to DS. It may indeed take some time to do well, but the advantages are significant. Morph Brushes would make DS easier and much more fun to work with and additionally open up significant opportunities for creativity; isn't that precisely what DAZ Studio is there for??
As a side thought; would it be possible for PA skilled in this area to produce a plugin specifically designed to provide on the fly Morph Brushes within DS. I'd pay for that!
Guiven what has already been done with the SDK I'm sure it would be possible, yes.