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Preventing necklaces and earrings from distorting.

jukingeojukingeo Posts: 711
in The Commons

Hello all,

I have had a question that has been on my mind for a while.  I have noticed that necklaces and earrings sometimes distort when loaded on a figure.  Certain shapes that are known to be perfectly round, for example, they turn out becoming oval or even worse.  It looks terrible and unrealistic.  I know that this happens when mixing figures  (i.e. using Gen 3 items on Gen 8), but I have seen this happen with items meant for a character.  I know it has something to do with the auto-fit system, but I am not sure on what to do to correct the problem. 

Any assistance would be helpful.

Thank you,

Geo

Comments

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 38,633

    only way I know is to use them as props

  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,680

    You can parent a necklacke or earing to a null and place them manually. Otherwise they sometimes attempt to conform. You can also 'show hidden properties' on the conforming jewelry and remove some of the modifiers it is using to fit. This can sometimes zero out the deformation.

  • The Blurst of TimesThe Blurst of Times Posts: 2,410

    You can also go into the Body section of the Auto-fit jewelry and turn down or remove some of the morphed body part (Twist, etc) though it may cause other issues.

    Newer jewelry seems to use Follow Nodes, which is better. You can link some of the old jewelry to those Nodes (especially Rings, Earrings) and it'll perform similarly.

  • jukingeojukingeo Posts: 711
    Serene Night said:

    You can parent a necklacke or earing to a null and place them manually. Otherwise they sometimes attempt to conform. You can also 'show hidden properties' on the conforming jewelry and remove some of the modifiers it is using to fit. This can sometimes zero out the deformation.

    I will try and give this a shot.

    The Blurst of Times said:

    You can also go into the Body section of the Auto-fit jewelry and turn down or remove some of the morphed body part (Twist, etc) though it may cause other issues.

    Newer jewelry seems to use Follow Nodes, which is better. You can link some of the old jewelry to those Nodes (especially Rings, Earrings) and it'll perform similarly.

    I have been doing it this way mainly for the neck, but the side effect is that it doesn't look right in terms of the neck since I would keep the upper and lower neck morphs facing front and do all the movement with the head alone.  When I don't use a necklace or use one that isn't affected by the neck rotation, I prefer to start head movments with the lower neck first, then move to the upper neck and finally do the fine adjustments with the head.  This makes the neck look more natural.   But for some pieces of jewelry, it doesn't matter as it triest to conform to whatever the chest is morphed to and a round object on the necklace distorts into some rather unusual shapes!

     

    Thank you for the info.

    Geo

     

  • j cadej cade Posts: 2,310

    Turning smoothing way up with base shape matching can also sometimes help, while conforming to the new shape. It will vary from item to item. Some items just dont play as well with smoothing for whatever reason, but others it will work perfectly

  • nicsttnicstt Posts: 11,715

    Parenting to the appropriate part is best. I return new items that don't use follow nodes - if I notice in time.

  • MelissaGTMelissaGT Posts: 2,611
    edited May 2020

    I've run across some newer (G8) high-end necklaces that can distort pretty badly when a body is moved away from the base G8F shape. For example, I have a character that uses the DO Olympia 7 for Olympia 8 body, and I tried out the necklace from Classic Biker Gear Two and it got all sorts of wonky. Most necklaces I've had pretty good luck just parenting it to the neck and not "fitting to" at all. That way, you should keep all the morphs. It's pretty much what you have to do if you want to use a body other than the base G8F. 

    Post edited by MelissaGT on
  • Silas3DSilas3D Posts: 619
    edited May 2020

    For earrings, the best technique is to parent them to rigid follow nodes which in turn are parented to each ear  - the product I'm currently working on has earrings and I'm using this method and it works great, because there's no distortion and it still follows the geometry. In some cases some very minor tweaking may be needed, but on the whole it works like autofit but without the distortion.

    Post edited by Silas3D on
  • eshaesha Posts: 3,255

    Earrings can be made distortion-free by using rigidity or just parenting them (also when you're using rigid follow nodes the item linked to the RFN is just a parented element).

    Necklaces are more difficult. You'll always have at least a bit of distortion in the neck area.
    Distortion can be caused by two things: movement and shapes.

    If it's caused by movement there is not much you can do. Creators can minimize it by tweaking the weight maps and adding corrective morphs but a bit of distortion will always happen, especially with more extreme poses (e.g. collar bent up all the way). You can always play with the weight maps, of course, but by doing that you can easily mess up a custom JCM which makes it worse than it was. So whatever you do, don't overwrite the original files!

    If the distortion is caused by the auto-following of shapes, you can use rigidity. If you search for "rigidity" on Youtube you'll find some very useful tutorials.
    However, setting up rigidity that really works in all cases can be quite tricky. I often use it as a base for my custom morphs which I then adjust further and import them back in.

    Setting up earrings with rigidity is easier, just make each earring its own rigidity group and use one or a few polys close to the earlobe as references. For necklaces, you have to find a balance between making it rigid enough to keep its shape but not so rigid that it doesn't follow the body shape anymore. I usually use it only for the pendant and adjust that manually as required for each shape.

  • CMacksCMacks Posts: 202
    Silas3D said:

    For earrings, the best technique is to parent them to rigid follow nodes which in turn are parented to each ear  - the product I'm currently working on has earrings and I'm using this method and it works great, because there's no distortion and it still follows the geometry. In some cases some very minor tweaking may be needed, but on the whole it works like autofit but without the distortion.

    Could you give brief instructions how to parent earrings to rigid follow nodes?  Also, will this method allow the x,y,z rotate to work properly?  I notice some earrings allow easy adjustments using these dials (to compensate for head and body position) but some really don't.  Sometimes I have fixed this with joint editor but I don't really know what I'm doing there.  Thanks!

  • felisfelis Posts: 4,697

    Regarding Rigid Follower Node.

    Select character and select Geometry Editor Tool. I prefer changing viewport to Wire Texture shaded.

    Then select one or a few polygons (Ctrl adds, Alt subtracts), and in the viewport right-click > Geometry assignment > Create Rigid Follower Node from selected.

    You will then get a 3-colored cross marking the rigid follower node.

    Then place your earring in the wanted position and parent it to the follower node.

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 102,931
    CMacks said:
    Silas3D said:

    For earrings, the best technique is to parent them to rigid follow nodes which in turn are parented to each ear  - the product I'm currently working on has earrings and I'm using this method and it works great, because there's no distortion and it still follows the geometry. In some cases some very minor tweaking may be needed, but on the whole it works like autofit but without the distortion.

    Could you give brief instructions how to parent earrings to rigid follow nodes?  Also, will this method allow the x,y,z rotate to work properly?  I notice some earrings allow easy adjustments using these dials (to compensate for head and body position) but some really don't.  Sometimes I have fixed this with joint editor but I don't really know what I'm doing there.  Thanks!

    Select one or more ppolygons on the base item with the Geometry Editor tool, right-clkick>Geometry Assignment>Create Rigid Folllow Node from Selected. That will add a new node to the item, parent your item to that. Now whatever happens to the selected polygon(s) will also happen to the parented item. Usually the parented item would be close to or on the polygons selected for the node. You can save as a Wearables reset.

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 24,884

    Save as a Wearables Preset

  • jukingeojukingeo Posts: 711
    felis said:

    Regarding Rigid Follower Node.

    Select character and select Geometry Editor Tool. I prefer changing viewport to Wire Texture shaded.

    Then select one or a few polygons (Ctrl adds, Alt subtracts), and in the viewport right-click > Geometry assignment > Create Rigid Follower Node from selected.

    You will then get a 3-colored cross marking the rigid follower node.

    Then place your earring in the wanted position and parent it to the follower node.

    Thank you all for responding.  So far the above suggestion seems the easiest to follow.   I am not in Windows / Daz Studio now, but I will give this a shot later on to see how well it works.

    Geo

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