Property editor
spearcarrier
Posts: 686
So... the property editor in DAZ 4.6 has been replaced with Property Hierarchy. Mmmkay.
The tutorial here wants property editor: http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/userguide/creating_content/assembling/tutorials/basic_character_creation_genesis/start
And I am unable to translate over when it comes time to do an ERC freeze.
Anybody?
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ERC freeze can be done for individual character morphs without using hierarchy now. Follow the tutorial right up to that point, including doing bone adjustment, then:
Right-click in Parameters tab and choose Edit Mode.
Right-click on the morph when it is dialed to 100% and choose ERC Freeze.
Click Accept.
Save the morph to library.
Done!
Thanks!!! It worked!
Now the only thing is my Genesis figure now loads as the character. I did make sure to save the morph with Genesis zeroed, but meh! It ignored me. I've tried saving over with Genesis at 0. It still ignores me.
It sounds like you saved the figure and not the morph. Morphs are saved using file--save as--scene assets--morph asset.
I'm not sure how to fix it now that it's changed. You might have to reinstall genesis and copy the morph back into the data folder.
Shoot, it's not save as - support asset - morph asset?? I don't have a scene asset in my drop down menu.
I found a thread about this while you were typing to me (but you were so much more to the point LOL it helped a lot) that said you can change the dsf with a text editor. But when I open mine with a text editor I get gibberish.
Here is the thread: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/6483/
Hm. You're correct, and if you saved as that it should have worked. I'm not sure what happened unless it somehow saved the morph as having a default state of on. Turn the morph to 0 and resaving just the morph didn't work?
You have to decrypt it first with 7zip or another program that unzips files - it will unpack just like a zip archive. Then delete the old .dsf and rename the new one to the .dsf extension and you can edit it with a text editor.
OOoh! Silly me, it must work like a mobi or an epub. Change the extension to zip, then unzip, edit, rezip, and replace. Yes?
So I hope final question because I don't want to be a pest: is it possible to dial up two morphs and save as a new morph asset? See I did the head and body separate and I have a separate morph for each save. I dial them both and tell is save as morph asset and it just glares at me. It wants peaches, I swear.
You don't even have to change it to zip unless your program requires that (or you're using the Windows default one).
No pest at all. :-)
In that case you might actually be better off to actually use the property hierarchy tab. Dial them both to 1, then go to the tab, right-click and choose ErC Freeze. Then choose Save As Empty Morph or Create As Empty Morph (I forget the exact wording). It should create a dial that controls the other two.
That worked like a charm. Thanks! I was all set to export and reimport; go through the whole process. I also noticed it's a good idea to read the list of things it's going to save before hitting accept. It tried to stick morphs in there I don't own.
Now to get to mat making and hopefully find someone to test her. I mean, she tested okay with me but I'm a terrible tester (unless it's not mine, then I always break things).
You've been a fabulous help. Thank you so much!
No problem! If you're looking to release it check the eye controls first. I often have to do closer MCMs.
Well I just noticed her eyes don't close all of the way. I'm not sure how to fix that or that it's even fixable. I doubt I'm anywhere close enough to think of "releasing her to the paid wild" as it were, especially since I'm not sure what you mean by MCMs. Sharecg probably. I'll sell a texture set I made but the morphing is a new type of bear right now.
But anyway, I'm rambling. Thanks again!
An MCM is a morph-controlled morph. Any time you see a character with eyes very different from default, you're also seeing MCMs that are used to ensure their eyes work properly. I can show you how to do that also if you get to a point where you're interested.
I am very interested.
My goal and inspiration here is I'm making a set of characters that would each be fraternal twinned: same morph but one male and one female character out of it. Some I plan to give away, some it would be cool to sell but I'm not quitting my day job or anything. The one I'm working on now is called Blossom. I'm nowhere near a male counterpart, obviously. I had sort of thought she'd be one to sell because I just gave my first attempt away, but I clearly have a lot to learn. And really this is fun so I could never put one up for sell and I'd die happy. I just want to populate the 3d universe with toons.
My goal is get it so I'm making a real good one for Genesis. Then I'll learn how to transfer to Genesis 2.
This started out as a project to create a toon base anyone could use to build from. That fell through. :-)
Toons are very difficult, one of the harder things to do from a non-toon base, and they're always going to need eye help.
The cardinal rule is never change the shape of the eyeball itself, only its scale, position, and the head around it. Most modelers have some way for you to selectively control what is affected by sculpting.
To create an MCM for eye movement:
Turn on just your head morph. Set resolution to base and 0 divisions, as you would for any other base export.
Activate one eye close pose control (we'll start with that).
Export as obj.
Import to your modeler and fix it so that the eye is closed properly.
Export as obj from the modeler again.
Load as a morph using Morph Loader Pro, but use the group Hidden/MCMs/YourItemName and set reverse deformations to "yes".
Accept.
Now the morph is there, it's time to connect it to 1. the pose control and 2. your head morph.
Open the property hierarchy tab with Genesis selected. Search for the name of your MCM by entering it in the bar at the top (much faster than trying to sort all Genesis' morphs for it).
Expand. Then click to expand the Controllers heading.
Over in Parameters, right-click and choose Edit Mode if you haven't.
Navigate to the Pose Control for the eye that is active. Click the P next to it, and drag and drop it over to the Controllers Addition/Subtraction (or Add/Subtract, it's got those words in it somewhere) heading.
Do the same with dragging your head morph to the Multiply heading under Controllers also.
Now your MCM is controlled by both the Pose Control dial and your head morph so it doesn't come on at the wrong time. Under Add/Subtract on your morph, there is another thing you need to do. Expand Attributes and find Scalar. You need to set it to something between .014 and .02 to get it to trigger at the right amount when bending is on - leaving it at 1 has it always on or always off. It is positive by default and you may need to change it to negative to have it work - there's a rule for this but I haven't figured out what it is yet.
You'll know when the scalar is right because your morph will trigger automatically when the pose control is activated.
Save just your MCM to the library. It will save its own connections to the other morphs automatically.
If anything goes wrong with the MCM you cannot overwrite it and have it work properly; you'll need to delete it and redo this process.
Wow. That's very detailed. Thank you so much for your effort.
I was trucking along great until I got to "Navigate to the Pose Control for the eye that is active. Click the P next to it, and drag...". There are no P's. There is a giant M. So I dragged and dropped.
I had to guess where to drag and drop. There are a lot of controllers additions/subtractions. I thought maybe it should go under the OTHER controller for closing the left eye so I put it there. So far so good.
Then I dropped the head morph. The head immediately zeroed and would "no' be moved."
And I could find no trace of a Scalar... so I have frozen in place and "will no' be saving." :-) It seems easy but it's also slightly complicated.
EDIT: Got some caffeine, reread... okay I'm up to changing the scalar.
Edit Edit! It appears the scalar for this eye is .40. I don't think there's a magic number. I thought to myself: how much of a mesh gap will my morph need to close? when the .14 and .02 and less wasn't working. So I started at 1, looked at how my eyelid went crazy down the face, and said, ah ha. And went backwards from there. Kind of reminds me of parking starships, what with me having to move eyeballs back and forth and close eyelids and all like some giant spaceport.
Okay yeah I'm showing sleep dep at this stage aren't I.
But it's working! I think.
Toons may be hard but I love making them. I can't really render something realistically but I can render a toon. I'm always experimenting with looks.
You want the one from the head pose control, not the one accessible from the root node. (It is actually an A and not a P OR an M, sorry, I checked just now.)
The pose control needs to be dropped under the Controllers-->First Stage (Add/Subtract)--> of the MCM in Property Hierarchy. The thing in Property Hierarchy DOES have an M but you do not want to drag it anywhere, you drag things TO it.
The head morph should be dragged to Controllers->2nd Stage (Multiply/Divide) under that same MCM in Property Hierarchy.
The Scalar is under the ERC (DeltaADD)-->Attributes of the pose control after you have dragged it into the Property Hierarchy. It does not appear until then.
Good morning! =^-^=
I got the eyes to close all the way last night using your original instructions (and reading them slowly outloud to keep sleep dep from messing things up). When I realized what you meant by the first drag and drop was the actual original pose control and not the post control I was trying to make, it fell in line. I opened and shut her eyes a few times and promptly fell over. I should have said something. Sorry!
Now I have a conundrum. I noticed that the edge of the right inner eyelash has been mushed out slightly away from the eyelid mesh. It's a small flaw. I could just let it be, but it's slightly irritating. Which means I need to kill the morph entirely and start over? If I can find it. You can't just right click a morph and tell it open folder like you can the objects (to my disappointment).
I keep opening and closing her eyes, I'm so thrilled it's working though. LOL. Again, thank you. And I hope this thread helps others in the future.
I thought I'd put up a quick render so you could see what I'm up to. Cuz it only seems fair.
Yep, unless it's part of the MCM that's causing the problem, then you only have to kill the MCM.
Nice progress. I always love seeing people's projects come together, and she has a cute face!
Okay so what you're saying is if I import the new eye morph and unlink things in the MCM from the old eye morph and put in the new eye morph, that should be okay? I already have things unlinked and relinked, but... I'm sitting here with a perfectly set of closed eyes and unsure if saving will work at this point.
Glad you like her! I'm glad I will only have to go through this once per set of twins. Although having to do the eye over and over again at least has memorizing the process, which is important.
Mmm, yes... I need to find that old MCM to delete it. -_-
EDIT: But I did manage to get the rest linked. It's just there's this unlinked MCM floating around....
Thanks so much though. Her eyes are closing wonderfully. Now I just need her really tested so I can see what else needs to be done. And then on to her brother.
It's in data/DAZ 3D/Genesis/Base/Morphs/N/N+1, where N and N+1 are the names you put in the popup at the top when you saved it. Hopefully those are N = your screen name and N+1=your product or character name.
There's the ticket!
It had several copies here and there, I guess from where I was just learning how to save things and wotnot. I've deleted a lot of things in there and found placement of one morph by trial and error. Hopefully it's all clean now. And woot! Now I can go back to paying work without feeling plagued by this.LOL.
Yay!
This thread has been very informative, though I'm not yet to the point where I need to use everything right away. I am stuck on what to do to edit and fix the rigging on a new morph that created. It's a full-body G1 morph with altered proportions, and shoulder rigging (which looked great in a zeroed pose) that ended up too narrow--the figure's rib cage collapses in when the arms hang down naturally. I have held off on trying to adjust the rigging by hand (or at least saving) because I'm not sure what I have to do to ensure the new rigging is saved to the correct morph. I suspect I should be able to manually adjust the rigging then repeat the morph saving process from the ERCfreeze step, but I wanted to confirm that before trying in case this is one of those times when you need to start over from the beginning--or at least the export/import through the morph loader.
I hope that's a reasonable request; I plan on learning the whole rigging process properly, but I'd like to be able to make these little rigging corrections on my morphs while I'm trying to grasp morphing and modelling enough to use the characters I'm creating.
Thanks!
...
Ah, I just fired up DAZ (4.6) and applied the morph and a pose to show the deformation... and it's gone. Odd. Well, the problem has come up before and will probably come up again, so it'd still be good to know if you can go back and edit the rigging if later posing reveals problems you did not see when you originally adjusted rigging to a new morph shape. I'm pretty sure I just need to right-click on my morph, after I'm done adjusting the rigging, select ERCfreeze, uncheck "Restore Figure Rigging" and then zero out and resave my morph.
If you need to change a morph with bone adjustment and ERC freeze, as far as I've found you have to fully delete the morph in Parameters edit mode and then reload, readjust, refreeze and resave it. If you try to adjust and freeze an already-frozen morph you will cause a duplicate IDs error on reload.
That's what I was afraid of. There's a warning that you have to start over if you mess up the ERC freeze step, but I did not know why. Now I do. Thanks! It's not very convenient to have to start over to fix a problem that may not be discovered until much later, but at least I always save my work before going trough the morph creation process. Now I know to test the rigging before freezing--assuming that won't screw something else up. I assume I can adjust the rigging, pose to test it, then zero the pose for the ERC freeze, before saving the morph. The only question I have left is, how do I properly delete a morph?
Thanks!
Delete the item from the 3d window, and then I'm afraid you'll have to delete the morph from the data files (under data/thenameyougaveit/theproductnameyougaveit).