ERC-Freeze / Property Hierarchy / merge property Sub-Components

Syrus_Dante

As my topic says - I have some questions and maybe a bugreport / feature request to announce in this department.

Let me first explain what I am dealing with
Some time ago ERC-Freeze was a mystery to me. I saw tutorials but they only scratch the surface and everytime I click on ERC-freeze the dialog list gets filled up with a very long list of things I don't want to have as sub-componsents in my property dial / slider. So I mouse-click to mark a line on the list and uncheck with "space" and "down-arrow" all the things I don't want to be as sub-component. This took a while even so I am realy fast at this ;).

What I didn't understand at this time was what ERC-Freeze decides to recognize as changes to store as sub-component and what not. This isn't well documented I think at least I didn't get it.

For everyone to make clear the ERC-freeze dialog lists every property value / parameter that is not at its default state / value in the current frame of the timeline you are in at this point. Check the property group "currently used" for values.

Yes clueless as I was I loaded my scene and somwhere in the timeline where all the propertys / morphs are at a state I want them to be I decided to try out ERC-freeze to store my custom character in one property dial / slider. Before that I always save out a character preset - jet another way to do that.

This is how I use the timeline frames - to setup my character - not to animate in first place - but to store different shapes and quickly compare them or blend two shapes somewhere in between untill I find the frame with the character shape I was looking for - a bit of this a bit of that - wow the genepool is big and ever growing - it's evolution baby .

What I found out is how to quickly tell ERC-freeze what values should be stored while still working with diffrent shapes / poses on the timeline. To do that I use the memorize and zero figure shape / pose (always design a character in t-pose is boring) at some frame in timeline so all currently used property values get stored as default values. Then I go to the frame with all my preferred values applied - differ from the currently memorized default values - create a new property and with ERC-Freeze on this, just these property-values show up in the list of sub components and I can easily create my own custom character control property.

I don't know if this method is meant to use it this way or common to most of you but thanks daz3d for these functions and features I can work with .

Here comes the questions
(sorry if I bore someone with my long post not getting to the point in the first line - but maybe some intrested reader can benefit form the methods I descriped)

So once I had my custom character property permanently stored to the figure with "save modifyed assets..". I was happy with that for a while untill I purchased a new set of recource morph kit from where I also want to apply some property values to my custom character.

Now I want to add a list of new propertys with custom values as sub-components to an existing property with sub-components. How do I do that?

I thougth the "property hirarchy" is the right place to do this. So I created a new control property and ERC-freeze the new propertys with their custom values to this - so later I can add these to my custom character control property that I created before. Then within the "property hirarchy" tab I use the text field search filter to get a short list with the new control property and my custom character control property showing up. I use prefixes like CTRL_ERC_... for my own created propertys to do that.
(propertypropertyproperty how many times you can say this in a row? Sorry I try my best to explain myself as good and precise as I can but then it gets complicated and enlish isn't my nativ laguage)

>bugreport<
In the property hirarchy tab I shift select a list of "sub-components > 1st stage" from one figure control property - drag and drop them to an other property "1st stage" entry to combine the list of sub-components in one control property to get my custom character even more customized.
It turns out that this dosn't work like I have expected because every scalar value of the sub-component I drag and drop gets set to a value of one and this is not the value it should have. Did I do something wrong here?

>feature request<
To me it feels like a one way street - once the propertys with their custom values are stored as sub-components in a control property they can't be exchanged or combined between other control propertys. Also the ERC-Freeze function recognizes only control property value changes not the value canges of the sub-components anymore.

If I want to merge down the sub-components of control property A with control property B do I realy need to create a control property C with only A and B as sub-components?

Or do we realy have to export a morph target OBJ and bring it back with morph loader to have a single property slider for a custom character morph that isn't that flexible anymore and can not be shared because of copyright violation?

Richard Haseltine

Having a new controls that sets two sub-controls that set your target properties is one option. Another is to use ERC Bake (right-click menu in the Property Hiearchy pane) to "unfreeze" the properties for both and then ERC freeze the results directly to a single controller.

Syrus_Dante

Big thanks go out to richard for this quick and realy helpfull answer.

LOL "unfreeze" nice word thats what I was seraching for they should name it like this in the right-click menu or what about ERC-melt as opposite of ERC-freeze - I'm just joking.

But seriously - I have tried this method and it does work exactly as descriped.

In the Property Hierarchy pane right-click a property entry with sub-components and choose "ERC Bake ( ERCDeltaAdd )“ in the menu will delete all the sub-components of that property and make them "curently used“ property values again in parameters pane (unfreeze) so they are easily editable there and can be ERC-freezed later. If done with more than one controll property all the sub-components these are now "curently used“ can be combined with ERC-Freeze to a new property.

Now I was able to create my customized character property consiting of 54! sub-components (some have only little scalar values) in one single controller-property slider. Sounds complicated - actualy its easier to not loose the overview of what properties your character is actualy made of.

The Property slider of my customized character type "modifier/shape“ within the group "actor > full body > people > real world“ of my genesis 2 figure now is made of a purchased character morph FBM/FHM with all the other morphs FBM/PBM/PHM/SCL that fine tune the appearance.

Damn stupid who I am I just recently found out if I use ERC-Freeze on an existing coltroll property with sub-components the list of currently used properties that will be shown in the ERC-Freeze dialouge will be added and not replace the list of sub-components of that coltroll property. This made me insecure and is the reason for all this confusion.

For everyone who reads this to descripe how my propery dependencies are look like here as an example now with a flat dependency chain thanks to the hint from richard.

Master Controller Property [CTRL_ERC_MyCustomCharacter]	Sub-Component	Target Properties
	CTRL[DazCharacter]	FBM... / FHM... / SCL... / (xyz bone - Rigging adjustments)
	PHM[adjusting head/face shape (nose / mouth / ect.)]
	PBM[adjusting body details]
	FBM[thin / fitness / ...]
	SCL[adjusting limbs & neck length / head & chest scale]

 

Syrus_Dante

Maybe one should make a tutorial about this complex subject and call it something like advanced technics working with ERC-freeze / Property Hierarchy Editor Pane / Sub-Components.

Is anything like this maybe allready to find in the shop – any suggestions will be wellcome.

If I go to „shop > Recources > Tutorials > DAZ Studio“ I can't find anything like this.

I realy like Daz Studio because everything I have dicovered so far seems to be well-thought-out and the tools and functions offers really great possibilities if ony you can find out how to use them.

To find some threads and posts here in the forum with some guidelines would be great. For example you can create near endless chains of dependencies with ERC-Freeze and edit them in the „Property Hierarchy“ like one controll property can control another control property that consists of other sub-components but some make sens others do not. As I wrote this I first had to think of the terminology - how it is called in Daz Studio examples: parameter or property (type of ) / value (scalar) / dependencies / Sub-Component so everyone knows what you are talking about. Also an overview of the common prefixes would be great so we dont get such a mess of property names and groups in the „Parameters“ pane from all the diffrent artists I see currently in my genesis 2 figure that I have to rearange by myself.