OBJ files save the morphs used?

TheCediz

Hello good peoples,

So I am an hobbyist trying to figure things out. It is actually hard to explain because I don't have the technical vocabulary for the problem I get. So I start my figure with a model and then I add some existing morphs from sliders alright. Then it's not exactly like I want it so I export the figure OBJ and load it in zbrush lets say. Go back to Daz, zero my figure and apply the morph (rig figure to shape to get the bones right, ERC freeze the thing and save as a morph asset. I thought OBJ files were only the polygons. But, atm I have a problem with some hair product that gets distorted when I apply my custom morph to the figure. The said hair was on the figure I made the morph for. Even in a new scene, I apply the morph to a new figure, load the Hair in question and it gets distorted still. So the morph knows that the hair was fitted to the figure before I export the OBJ of the model. 

So, How do I bypass this when creating the morph? Can I save the said morph I made?

Am I understandable here?

thanks in advance

Syrus_Dante

You are not supposed to merge the whole dialed in custom character shape to a single morph. Shure its possible and you made it work with Adjust Rigging to Shape, but it seems as you fit the hair to your new "merged" character shape morph Daz Studio fails to generate a new "fitting morph" for the hair. Usualy you turn up the base character (model) and other morphs independently this will also allow the hair to adapt to the shapes independently and works far better most times.

Since this is the technical help forum I will talk about all the complicated technical stuff next that is associated with the issue you have. I tried to explain this as easy as possible but also tried to cover everything and by doing so my post got quiet long sorry for that I just couldn't stop writing. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong with some explanations but I hope it all makes sense and it is helpful to you.

 

Conforming Figures, Autogenerated Morphs

The hair is a "conforming" figure and which ever morphs are dialed up on the genesis figure the hair tries to follow the shape. It works like this: morphs on the genesis figure that are set to "autfollow" gets projected to the hair. BTW you can turn off autofollow on most expressions so for example the hair bangs don't follow the brows movement anymore. Those projected morphs are called "autgenerated" morphs and every morph dialed up on the gensis figure gets its counterpart with the same name on the fitted hair or other "conforming" items like clothes. If a "autofollow" morph with the same name already exists on the conforming figure those don't get updated. It is possible to manualy replace "autgenerated" morphs with adjusted ones for example imported with OBJ if you give them the same name like the morph set to "autfollow" on the genesis figure.

Sometimes if you get issues with those "autgenerated" morphs you can unfit the conforming hair or clothes select it and use Edit>Figure>Clear Generated Morphs to delete them. Next time you fit the conforming hair or clothes new "fitting" morph will get generated. This is useful if you have updated some morph on the genesis figure but you also want to update the generated morphs on the conforming item.

The big advantage of autogenerated morphs is that the user don't have to care about this most of the time, the conforming items automaticly fit to the figure shape. Also the conforming item dosn't need to provide the "fitting" morph, its all generated on the fly so the product artists don't need to necessarily prepare any "fitting" morphs and those don't have to get saved as morph assets. Ofcourse you can provide "fitting" morphs if you like for example for the base characteres shapes that you have currently available for the genesis figure if you think the autogenerated ones are not that good.

If you manualy replaced "autgenerated" morphs to fix issues with distortions or anything don't forget to save those with File>Save As>Support Asset>Morph Asset this will make shure the morphs will be available everywhere not just for the current scene. Well for example you could also save the hair as Wearable preset to have all the morphs available, but only if you load this Wearable preset, because before you save the Morph Asset the morphs get saved embedded in the Scene, Subset or Wearable/Character Preset file.

 

Transfer Utility

Instead of having the "fitting" morphs generated on the fly you can also use the Transfer Utility. Mark your morphs as Favourits on the genesis figure, then open the Transfer Utility elect the genesis figure as Source, the hair as Target, select only Morph Targets in the dialog and in the options select only to to transfer "Favourits and Sub-Components". The varoise sliders and checkmarks in the Projection Options on top of the Transfer Utility dialog like Projection Tolerance gives you options how the morphs will get projected. I guess with the right settings its possible to get better "fitting" morph results compared to the autogenerated ones. Then I would save those Morph Asset so next time you load the conforming item from the content library it will include the better fitting morphs.

Transfer Utility dialog: The screenshot shows the Morph Tagets extended options menu From Source: "Favourits and Sub-Components" - ignore the other settings showen

 

ZBrush Morph,  Reverse Deformations

If you export your dialed character shape with an OBJ to ZBrush to make adjustments and bring it back to Daz Studio I highly recommend you to use the option in the Morph Loader Pro called Reverse Deformations. With this you don't have to zero your current character shape. The ZBrush morph imported with Reverse Deformation will only add the shape adjustements you made on top of your current character shape in the scene.

Then you can save the new ZBrush morph with File>Save As>Support Asset>Morph Asset to the content library so it will load everytime with the genesis figure and not just with the figure in your saved scene.

You can also save a Character or Shape preset to the Content Library to load your custom character into other scenes, but to avoid issues with embedded morphs I would save the Morph Asset first.

TheCediz

Thank you for your answer! I did not know anything about conforming figures, autogenerated morphs and transfer utility. Very helpful and informative ; I thought nobody had any answer for me here. 

Altought, This does not explain why a freshly loaded hair gets distorted when my created morph is applied. After further observations, I noticed that the hair bangs stay at their initial point in space when i apply the morph. In other words, while dialing the created body morph, the hair follow the head going down but the bangs stay in place (the morphed character is smaller than G3f model). 

Syrus_Dante

I would skip the idea of using your "all in one" merged character morph, instead use the Reverse Deformation in the Morph Loader Pro to load your ZBrush morph. Or another method: you could export your all in one morph from DS as OBJ again - load a shape/character preset with all individual morphs your character is made of (maybe you have an older scene with the individual morphs dialed up on the figure from where you can save a shape preset), then load the OBJ with Reverse Deformation in the Morph Loader Pro onto the figure to end up with a morph that only containes the additons you sculpted in ZBrush.

Daz Studio conforming figures can have issues following the shape especialy with those morphs that change the figure scale. If your custom character shape is made out of idividual morphs its much easier to detect the morph(s) that produce deformations and you can deal with them individualy.

Well if you insist to use the merged character morph or otherwise Daz Studio failes to generate a fitting morph you could export those generated morph as OBJ load both the hair and the character into ZBrush and fix the deformations there. Then back in DS delete the generated morph from the hair (Parameters pane in Edit-Mode - right-click morph Delete Property), load the fixed morph with Morph Loader Pro with the same name to replace the generated one.