Using Figure Setup Tools

Roygee

Good day all :)

It's been a while since I've used the FST and it appears that the Tri-Ax weight-painting system is very different to what I remember in previous versions of DS 4 and the official tutorial. For one, there doesn't appear to be a method of copying the weights from one axis to another - previously (and in the tut) a dialogue would come up, giving various options.

Where I'm having a problem is that most of the groups are not welded. I used UU3D, a UV mapping app to make the groups - should I have used the group editor in DS instead - does that make a difference? Secondly, some of the groups are missing, although they are shown in UU3D, but the geometry is present. These are in the toes - for instance, in UU3D, for each toe, I'll have,say, l-pinkie 1,2,and 3, but in DS, it only shows the groups for 2 and 3 - the geometry of 1 and 2 is fused.

I started off by importing the .obj into the FST, using the parametric weights, set up the hierarchy, set the rotation order, welded the groups to parents and created. When I saw that some of the groups were not welded and I couldn't fix with weight-painting, I copied the figure back into the FST, only to find that nothing was welded to parents - although in the figure some were.

OK, I fixed that, deleted the figure and created a new one. Copied back into FST and saw that they showed as welded, but in the figure, they are not. Converted to Tri-Ax, still no joy.

I need to make a .cr2, because I use Carrara 8.1, which doesn't read DUF - is it OK to use Tri-Ax, or must I stick with Parametric?

Really appreciate any help - I far preferred to use the DS rigging system and made quite a few figures with it, than the Carrara one, but am now really puzzled :)

Richard Haseltine

Make sure there are no spaces in your group names.

You should be able to copy and paste maps by right-clicking in the Tool Settings pane on the target map.

Roygee

Thanks, Richard:)

I've checked out the group names - no spaces. Names are typically l_f_foot. I'll try doing the grouping in SD, see how that works out. Before using UU3D, which is so much easier to define groups than DS, I tried the grouping out on a quick figure with only a few groups and this worked out fine, so assumed it would work on my figure, which has something like 70 groups!

Found the tool settings to copy/paste weights, thanks for the guidance.

Now for the $60 000 question - is Tri-Ax OK for cr2?

Richard Haseltine

Not for DS - the CR2 exporter will write the weights, but it won't read them back (nor will it read the weights for a Poser weight-mapped figure from a CR2 or PZ3).

Roygee

Apologies for taking so long to reply - I had to run some tests :)

What I found was that, either Tri-Ax or parametric, the cr2 worked fine imported back into DS, but Carrara made a mess of both - and the same mess. Carrara reads most of the nodes wrong; for instance, it reads r-leg as r-thigh. Where it goes wrong, it reads up in the hierarchy and the child bones are not connected to the parent. In other places, in this instance, the shoulders, it reads them correctly and the hierarchy is fine.

I guess I'll have to give up on using DS to rig for Carrara and bite the bullet with Carara's terrible weight-painting :(