Helmet changes shape with expression
vonHobo
Posts: 1,700
I purchased the Orbital Suit.
https://www.daz3d.com/orbital-suit-for-genesis-8-females
It's an amazing spacesuit. But I can't use it on a male figure unless it's expressionless. If I change the expression, the helmet deforms.
See images attached.
There is an included product to load a male character, but it's the default Genesis 8 Male and without the ability to change the shape as you can with other G8M figures, so you are basically stuck with the base figure.
For my project, I'm using Lincoln in the Orbital Suit, so I am basically stuck.
The only workaround, if you even want to call it that, was to Duplicate Lincoln, change the expression to zero, load the helmet, and then delete everything BUT the helmet. Then go back and remove the helmet from the Lincoln character. The Duplicate helmet is not deformed, and I can change the Lincoln expression after that which does not affect the helmet.
Very time consuming.
Does anyone know of a better solution to this, or why helmets deform in the first place?
It's so frustrating.
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Are you autofitting? I believe that changes the weightmapping, which would explain the distortion. You could try the Scene Identification trick and see if that works better.
Thank you. Is there a link to the Scene Identification trick?
Load the outfit without fitting it to the figure, then select the suit, click the "hamburger" icon in the Scene pane, go to Edit -> Scene Identification and change Preferred Base to Genesis 8 Male. Then fit it to the figure.
Sounds pretty easy! Thanks! I will give it a try.
Well, I tried.
The only choice in Scene Identifications / Preferred Base is Genesis 8 Female. There is no other choice actually.
I guess it's back to the drawing board, but at least I have that ridiculous workaround I invented for this wardrobe item.
Sorry, I maybe should have mentioned that you have to click the button next to the drop-down to select G8M. I don't know why it's even a drop-down, since I don't think it's possible to put a second option in there.
Does the Genesis 8 Cross-Figure Resource Kit not take care of it? It isn't the clone mentioned. It makes a new slider to fit the female clothes on the male without autofit (or vice versa), and then you can shape the male any way you want. (Been a while since I used it).
OK Thanks. This time I was able to adjust it to G8M.
It was worth a try. But as you can see the initial "fit to" is way off.
It did however fix the expression deform issue. It's just not fitting right from the start unfortunately. Even the microphone is outside the helmet now. And it looks ridiculous.
Sigh.
No. I tried both. You cannot apply the Lincoln shape to either the G8M Clone and the G8M Xfigure that come with the product (and those characters require the G8 Cross-Figure Kit to work as shown below from the promo page). The character it loads for the Clone or Xfigure appear to be male in appearance, but the only shapes DAZ will show in the Shape pane are for female G8 figures. I guess because the figure is actually female and made to look male.
But I could be missing something here.
The Bonus ORS !Outfit G8M Xfigure, and ORS !Outfit G8M Clone requires Genesis 8 Cross-Figure Resource Kit
If you can't get it fixed properly, you can try to weightpaint the helmet, so all of the helmet belongs to the head bone.
Weights will be a factor - the helmet will be weighted for the facial bones - but morphs will also be projecting in.
Fixing the weighting is fairly simple, if tedious - you just need the Node Weightmap Brush tool active, right-click>GeometrySelection>Select All, select each expression bone in the helmet in the Scene pane, make sur the weightamp is selected in the Tool Settings pane, right-click>Weight Editing>Fill Selected and give a value of 0.
Thank you Richard. I will write this down for future reference.
I finished the scenes I need with the Orbital Suit. But I can see this being very useful if you have a character that is required for a lot of scenes.
Do you have the Cross-Figure kit? If it is required, then you will need it to get the outfit to work with the male. Midnight_Stories has a habit of loading a figure with his outfits. You won't need any clones, something is added to the clothing to make it work with the crossed-over-to figure. The Readme in the Documentation center has very detailed instructions. Genesis 8 Cross-Figure Resource Kit [Documentation Center
Yes. I purchased the Resource Kit and tried the Xfigure male version and it works. The problem I'm having is that you cannot adjust the shape of the "crossed-over" figure to any of the male figures, because it is technically a female figure. When I pull up the Shaping pane, it's all female assets listed. There is no way to apply the Lincoln character shape. So I am essentially stuck with the Genesis 8 Male Base look which is not what I wanted.
Are you saying I should not load the clone or the xfigure, and just somehow apply the outfit to a G8 male character and it should work??
Because I bought the kit and tried that, and the expressions deform the helmet. So I don't understand how it's supposed to work.
You put the modified clothing on the regular male figure, and it should "auto-follow" like any other male clothing on the base male as you change the shape. I'm not sure how the product in question is set up, with the included clones and whatnot. That sounds like a workaround for those who do not have the cross-figure kit. I have used the cross-figure kit before (IIRC, on the Bad Clown Jumpsuit for G8M to use on G8F with those nifty clown wigs) and had no problems with the suit when dialing in shapes for G8F. (Not at my DAZ machine, so I can't try it out, just to make sure I remember correctly)
It is true that the helmet might deform if the morphs extend that far from the face. To me, only the inside of the helmet should conform, and maybe expand the whole helment with the size of the head. Does the helmet deform with female characters? If not, it shouldn't with the male characters, unless they are extreme.
No helmet deformations when the clothing is loaded onto a female figure, even when you change the expression. It works just fine!
It's fitting the clothing to a male figure that causes the problem with the helmet deformations.
The PA said in the video that he ran out of time so that is why he did not create a male version of the wardrobe.
Are you still trying to use auto-fit? That will assign polygons to bones where it sees fit if there is no specific clone to use, so morphs tend to not transfer well in some cases (i.e., distortion). Again, I do not have this product, but try the Cross-Figure Kit from scratch on the base female outfit and follow the instructions to make it fit the base male.
I suggest to simply solve it using two overlapping figures:
- the first (not morphed) will wear the helmet and will be invisible.. so you won't have morphs/expression effects on helmet
- the second (with morphs/poses) wil be visibe and will be your main figure
Another simple solution is to fit to none the helmet and parent it to figure head joint
The need a tag that can be added to surfaces/regions - autofit ignore but not autosize I guess
Thank you! Yes. This is what I did before I asked in the forum.
So it is definitely one solution, however if you need to adjust the pose of the figure you have to do it to both figures and it's a royal pain. :)
I would try autofitting the space suit, but not the helmet. Then parent the helmet (unfitted) to your character's (or possibly the suit's) chest bone. Normally you'd parent it to the head, but in this case it doesn't look to me like the helmet should move when the head does.
If you want to Autofit, you have to edit the weightmaps after the Autofit.
You have to erase all eyes, eyelid and low jaw weightmaps.
So the helmet would not be affected by expression changes... if you don't knew how do it, use other solutions because it's not so easy edit weightmaps in DAZ.
Thank you everyone for the suggestions.
This is becoming so complicated, and I already did the scenes I needed even though it was tough going.
But I appreciate all the responses.
There should really be an easier way to use clothing items between figures. And I never understood why DAZ Studio cannot just figure out you are fitting a G8F wardrobe item to G8M. Instead you have to answer about 6-8 dialogue boxes everytime you do this. There should be a default to just fit the stuff and be done with it and not ask all the questions. It's very frustrating, but there you go, I'm done with my soap box drama!
@von Hobo
The autofit projects the weightmaps not considering the original weightmaps. So when you apply a clothing from a G8F to a G8M, the autofit will project the G8M weightmaps on the clothing (the data about how wear on a G8F is ignored).
So all male eyes, mouth nose, etc.. will be projected on the helmet. This is why if you try to change expression the helmet will deform.