How to zero and save character with a default pose

gepetersiii

One of my favorite characters, MSO's Echo, comes with a default pose baked in. Her lips are open. Mousso includes a morph to close the lips. In order to use any facial expressions with the character, the lips have to be closed first. Otherwise, the expression does not work or looks hideous.

What I would like to do with characters like this is set the lips closed, then bake it closed so it is zero'd. That way, I do not have to close the lips everytime I reset the character. I know those are the things I need to do, I just am not positive on how to do it. It seems like it would be only a couple of short and easy steps. Can anyone walk me through that?

I appreciate your assistance!

TimberWolf

Rather than save over the original character I would simply save your altered character as a scene subset. File -> Save As -> Scene Subset. Place it wherever you like, obviously. Uncheck the boxes for the Tonemapper and Environment Options if they appear to avoid importing any lighting into any scene you load that character into. Loading a scene subset will not prompt Studio to ask if you want to save the existing scene and reset.

There are other ways to do it, but this is as simple and straightforward as it gets I think.

The other way to do it is via File -> Save As -> Support Assets -> Prop/Figure Assets. Select the library you want to put it in in the Asset Directory drop down field and then fill in the rest of the info as you see fit. 

crosswind

Saving a Subset or a new Character preset are common ways you may go for. If you frequently use this character with "closed lips", technically you may add Echo's head morph as the controller of that "Lips Closed" morph in Property Hierarchy, and save the dial as a morph asset with "your Vendor Name" . In this way, the original morph file won't be changed, the modified morph will be automatically dialed when loading this character...

TimberWolf

Actually, the method suggested by Crosswind is a much more elegant solution than brute forcing the whole thing by saving the entire character. If you use Smart Content (I don't) then you may find it more useful as you'll be able to access your figure from its usual place in there. If you use Echo a lot then you could add a custom action to your menu bar to load the scene subset but I think Crosswind's suggestion is neater and cleverer.

Now, this is delving into the murkier areas under the hood of Studio which will be familiar to content creators but if you get this wrong you could actually cause problems in your base character (you do not want this mouth closed morph applied to every character by default!) Quite a few folks have got this wrong and it can be non-trivial to correct. That said, this is not difficult to do and it's well worth knowing about controllers because it's very useful in a lot of places. Posing a car? Link both front wheels to the steering wheel controller so you only have to move one slider. That's just one quick example. Essentially what we're doing is linking sliders together so when you move one, others will also move. One, two, three, doesn't matter how many - you can link them all up.

You can get one slider to move down when one moves up, all sorts of fun things. They don't even have to move at the same rate. Move your main slider and another shifts half way... in either direction.

If you know how to do this just ignore the rest of my post but it might be useful for other people in the future. I'd like to have posted pictures with this but... you know.. the forum.

 

1 - Load Echo and nothing else and then select the figure.

2 - In your parameters tab, make sure Echo 8.1 is highlighted and then right click. Select Edit Mode.

3 - In Echo's properties right click on the MSO Echo Head morph. Ignore the Alt Morph. Click 'Show in Property Hierarchy' which is down at the bottom of the list (you may have to expand the window that opens - mine always initally opens minimised)

4 - In that new window expand the Sub-Components drop-down and the 1st Stage drop-down (if they're not already open). You should see a fair number of ERC [DeltaAdd] properties if you've reached this stage successfully. If at any point you lose your place just right click on the head morph and select the hierarchy option again.

5 - Look across to your parameters properties and drag the MSO Echo Lips Closed morph up to the 1st Stage (Add/Subtract) line in the property hierarchy window. This has a minor bug on my setup which means I often have to click away to another morph and then back to the one I want before it becomes draggable. You want to drag it onto that actual text so it becomes a child of the 1st Stage category.

6 - Back in the property hierarchy window, scroll down to the end of the 1st Stage Morphs and you will see your newly added MSO Echo Lips Closed ERC. If you expand the drop-down for that you'll see a property called 'Scalar'. This determines how far and in what direction the slider moves. In your case we want the lips closed morph to move to 100% when the head morph is at 100% so the scalar default basically says 'match the closed lips slider to the head morph by a factor of 1. If you set the Scalar to 0.5 the lips morph would be at 50% when the head morph was at 100%. You can also set the scalar to a negative number so one morph will be dialled out when another is dialled in.

Test this out by dialling the Echo head morph in and out. You'll see the lips morph move accordingly and will close as the head morph is applied.

7 - Save it. File -> Save As -> Support Asset -> Morph Asset. Select only your changed morph and use your own name to save it. If you get this part wrong you'll be back on the forums looking for help very quickly!

crosswind

Nice instruction !   I forgot to remind one thing - : if one would not like to update the original morph files, pls assure "your vendor name" (folder) is after the product's vendor name, i.e. "your morphs" should be loaded after the ones from the product, otherwise, pls overwrite the original dsf files. 

gepetersiii

Precisely the information I was looking for! Thank you both for the lessons!

I assumed that I might be able to load and add a script to the character file that would alter the file after loading. Not that I would know how to do that either.

Sincerely appreciate all the help!

TimberWolf

Technically you could do what you described but this would involve altering an installed file with an editor. This is a complete no-no in any professional coding or creative environment as product updates will over-write any changes you have made. It's very unlikely Mousso will ever update Echo at this point in time but it's not impossible. It's good practice to avoid altering the code in any PA supplied files unless they contain obvious errors and I don't allow it at my little company. You make a copy and you alter that copy so that if an update arrives, you can simply move your own adjustments into the new code or file.

At this point you may as well use a scene subset or save a morph asset.

If it's just you in your home studio you can take or leave that advice as you see fit!

I do recommend you have a go with Crosswind's suggestion of using controllers. They are so useful for making shortcuts for props or figures you use on a regular basis and understanding how they work can save you a lot of time and effort.