Making Poser "master dials" work in DS4.6?

ken_1171_618f9cd0b2

I have a new figure created in Poser that uses "master dials", which I know don't work in DS. The DS documentation and even paid tutorials are still referring how things used to be done in the past with the deprecated "Property Editor", so I can't get any usable information from there.

The goal is to make the eye positions to follow the head morphs, so whenever I spin the "Eyes Y Position" dial up or down, the eye positions will follow the morph. As it is (imported from Poser), they already do and everything seems to be fine until I release the mouse button from the dial - then the eyes immediately jump back to the default position, so they no longer match where the eye bones are.

In the past I have dealt with the opposite situation where the bones were not matching the joints after a morph was applied, and that was a matter of moving the bones to the right positions, and then "freeze ERCs".

The current situation seems to be the opposite, where the eye geometries only follow the morph until I release the mouse button, and then reset to default position. Now the bones are the right position, but the eye geometries are not.

Since the ERC "master dials" from Poser are already set up and partially working, I would assume there is a way to fix this without having to recreate all the dozens of ERC dials from scratch in DS4.6, but I wouldn't know how to do that either. Existing documentation and tutorials on ERC dials for DS4.6 are outdated. Nonetheless, I am hoping this is "simple" to fix?

Any help would be appreciated.

Bejaymac

It sounds like your experiencing the same thing you see in the attached picture, to date I have only experience that on Poser figures I've converted to TriAx WM rigging.

If this is what you have done then you basically have a lot of work ahead of you, aside from the WM being poor and needing replaced, you also have the morphs to replace especially any that used translate, rotate or scale to reposition parts of the mesh ie. eyes and mouth.

The amount of work and time required is why I no longer convert them to TriAx, instead I convert them to the DSON file format.

ken_1171_618f9cd0b2

Bejaymac said:

It sounds like your experiencing the same thing you see in the attached picture, to date I have only experience that on Poser figures I've converted to TriAx WM rigging.

If this is what you have done then you basically have a lot of work ahead of you, aside from the WM being poor and needing replaced, you also have the morphs to replace especially any that used translate, rotate or scale to reposition parts of the mesh ie. eyes and mouth.

The amount of work and time required is why I no longer convert them to TriAx, instead I convert them to the DSON file format.

Hi Bejaymac and thanks for the feedback!

The figure is actually just a head, and it doesn't have any WMs - just morphs and ERCs that try to keep the eyes together with the morphs that reshape the head. That's all they do. There are only 4 bones: neck (no geometry), head, and the eyes. That's why WM are no needed here, since morphs and ERCs don't require them. Everything seems to work fine - just not the ERC dials (master dials).

I have indeed converted from CR2 to TriAx, but since I have no WMs, I could just keep it as regular DS rigging - that would make no difference in this case. Are you telling me that this alone could solve the problem if TriAx WMs were the cause of all this in the first place?

I thought Poser master dials were incompatible with DS4.6, but when I look into the converted file, the channels for the ERC dials seem to be properly placed and configured, and they work as expected - they just won't stay in place when the mouse button is released.

Now that you know the above, what exactly do I have to do to port this head to DS? I have been stuck on this for weeks...

ken_1171_618f9cd0b2

Ok, thanks to the extra info I have figure out how to resolve this issue. First of all, the info I was told about Poser master dials being incompatible with DAZ Studio was NOT TRUE. I was doing things assuming it was true, but it is not. Having that said, simply loading the CR2 into DS 4.6 without any changes already gets all the normal dials and ERC controls working PERFECTLY in DS 4.6.

The problem is that DS will not allow me to save the figure to the library by using the normal ways. That is, going to the File menu and saving as "Support Asset -> Figure Prop Asset". We get an error message claiming the Poser rigging first needs to be converted to weight maps or TriAx. I have tried all possible options, and ALL will destroy the ERC dials. So that's NOT how this will work. There is another way.

After importing the figure as CR2, I have converted it to SubDiv because it was designed to be subdivided. Then I simply added it to the library as a "Scene Sub-set" and that creates the DUF file, and the data structure with all the morphs, geometries and UVs. The automatically created structure is a mess and needs to be renamed to the proper names, but the important thing is that all the morphs and master ERC controls are now working perfectly as expected - no more funky malfunctions. ^_____^

I don't know if this is a BUG, a malfunction, or if I am missing something, but that's how I got things working in DS 4.6 with minimum effort and NOTHING to fix but the path names in the DUF and data folder (if you care to).

I hope this might help other content creators who will probably face the same issues in the future. :)