Cayman Legacy UVs in conjunction with SH Squishy Human Genesis 9

cowdog

So, I have a custom character that I transferred from Genesis 8F to Genesis 9. That works fine. However, when I use the Legacy UVs on the G9 Squishy model, things start to go sideways. The troube is with the Legacy UVs Geografts -- they don't behave as expected. I added a dForce Dynamic Surface modifier to the geografts and copied the values used in the G9 Squishy materials to their respective surfaces. I added a smoothing modifier, too, since G9 Squishy uses one (which causes issues, since the default Collision model is Genesis 9. You can reset it to "None," but each time you load anew, it reverts to Genesis 9, regardless of how you saved it.)

What happens is that the skin buckles anywhere a geograft exists, e.g. the Face surface. So the material doesn't behave properly and you'll see deformation at the border between the geograft and the adjacent body surface.

I attached two images. The first sets the geografts to a Dynamic Surface.  The second sets it to a Dynamic Surface Add-On. 

I'm looking for some expertise in tackling this issue. My basic knowledge of DAZ Studio and dynamic surfaces, obviously, isn't enough to solve the issue.

 

crosswind

1. You got the issue after Simulation?

2. Dynamic Surface Add-on shouldn't be used in that way... you need to rig an add-on geometry to the geo-graft...

Edit:

Anyway, you can firstly add a dForce Modifier Weight Node (Create > New dForce Modifier Weight Node) to squishy G9 as well as Legacy UVs Geografts so as to retrieve / create weight maps. Then carefully paint weight on Legacy geo-grafts weight node according to the weight map on G9, in the same areas ! (roughly, in ss1 ~ 2)

Then after Simulation, there should be no mesh deformation (ss3)

Well, I don't think Dynamic Surface add-ons can easily help in your case. No need to go for that way which will take much more time... (you have to go for cutting the geometry, re-modeling, and rigging ~~)

cowdog

Yeah, the issue occured after simulation. I did mess around with a dForce Weight Node on the Legacy UV Geografts and created a map with uniform weight... I guess I was expecting a weight map to exist already under Squishy G9, but didn't see it, so I just threw up my hands after that. I'll try giving that a shot. Thanks!

crosswind

cowdog said:

Yeah, the issue occured after simulation. I did mess around with a dForce Weight Node on the Legacy UV Geografts and created a map with uniform weight... I guess I was expecting a weight map to exist already under Squishy G9, but didn't see it, so I just threw up my hands after that. I'll try giving that a shot. Thanks!

NP ! Right, some vendors remove the dForce weight node after painting the weight / saving the figure asset... Then you just need to add a dForce weight node back to the figure to retrieve the weight map(s).

cowdog

Sigh.The results are better, but hardly perfect. Reproducing the weight map on the geograft is challenging. I looked to see if I could copy it from G9 Squishy into the Geografts, but if there's a way, it alludes me. Here's the vendor G9 map, my geograft map, and the results after simulation:

crosswind

Oh... I know painting weight in DS is cumbersome ~~  Besides, Copy / Paste weight doesn't work in this case either because G9 and Legacy geo-graft have different geometry... And this Squishy product was obviously not designed for being used on G9 figure with geo-graft(s).

However, another simplest way is that you can just remove the weight on the neck/shoulder of squishy G9, by filling 0 weight after lasso-selecting the mesh, smooth it a bit, ss1 ~ 2),  then DO NOT add dForce modifier to Legacy geo-graft at all.

There'll be no issue on the geo-graft after simulation. (ss3) It wouldn't be a big deal even if you modified the weight in that area.

Edit: Another option is converting G8F's skin texture maps to G9... but that workflow will be even more cumbersome.

cowdog

Thanks for the workaround. Before you posted your reply, I just flipped the Geografts' Simulation Object Type to Static Surface in the parameters page. That killed dForce on the geograft, but there's still a little buckling at the Arm seam of the geograft. I haven't tried removing the weights from the G9  Squishy neck/shoulder area yet.

BTW, the dForce Companion plugin you show in your images isn't in the DAZ store, although a commercial exists for it in the forum (with a dead link to the product).

I'm curious about how you'd go about converting G8F's skin texture maps to G9.

crosswind

I did some more experiments. Setting it as Static or not adding dForce modifier also worked fine, I've not seen big deformation so far.

I bought dForce Companion years ago. Now the latest version of it is binded to Premier tier... so it's not for sales anymore.

As for converting texture maps, one way is in here: https://www.versluis.com/2022/11/converting-skin-textures-for-use-with-genesis-9/ A free way is to convert them in Blender by using UV projection, but I've not see a full tutorial so far...

cowdog

Just a small follow-up: I zeroed the G9 Squishy weights around the armpit area (the arm region of the geograft) and that solved the buckling issue.

crosswind

Great !

cowdog

crosswind said:

 A free way is to convert them in Blender by using UIV projection, but I've not see a full tutorial so far...

 I have a little (but not a lot) of experience with Blender. In fact, I used it to tweak the character transfer from G8F to G9 (Not sure why, but the lower legs and chest didn't transfer correctly). I've only dabbled with UVs in Blender, though.