FBX Export limited to base resolution?

ikera_c62dd396a5

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to export Genesis 2 Female to 3dsmax via FBX, in order to keep skinning, skeletal information and morphs. My main working and animating platform is 3dsmax, that's the reason I'm trying to achieve this. The problem is, FBX export in DAZ seems not to support exporting other than the base mesh. This is very unreliable, as the mesh is just 21k and is very lacking in some areas (ears, eyes, face and others...). I'd like to retain the 83K subdivided mesh (standard in DAZ) in this export process. Does anyone know how to bypass this limit?

I've tried a couple of possible solutions, but none of them have worked well. First is in 3dsmax, adding a Turbosmooth modifier (subdivide) on top of the Skin and Morpher stack, but this adds significant overweight to the scene. And for some reason, Max doesn´t cope well with the result (I've had a few crashes and inconsistencies in animation). And second is, exporting all the morphs one by one in OBJ format (which does support subdivided mesh) and then putting them back together in Max, before having to re-rig and skin the whole figure again (probably using the skeleton and skin info present in the base mesh export via FBX).

Both ways seems either unreliable or terribly tedious... Is there any other way to get this done? Maybe some script? I've read other people have done it using Mudbox as an intermediary (i can have access to Mudbox if required) but their method was not clearly explained. Can anyone help me out with this?

Thx!!

mikael-aronsson

Short answer is no, you can't do that with FBX.

Even if you get the rig exported it does not work that well, you usually get crappy deformations, you need to do modify the weight maps to get them work well on the target platform I would think, at least that is the case with LightWave, so many times it's better to export the mesh and use the native rigging in the target platform (but of course you loose the morphs).

Isn't there a limit of 100 morphs in 3DS anyway ? I think I read that somewhere, 100 will not get you very far if that is the case.

An alternative is to do the posing/animation in DS and export to OBJ/MDD/Alembic (you will have to buy MDD or Alembic exporter for DS if you want animation), the good thing with that is that you get the same deformations as you get in DS so what you see is what you get, but of course, if you animate DS is not the best tool for that, the only way I got anything useful out of DS so far has been using OBJ (MDD for animation), you can get FBX working but no out of the box solution (and HD morphs will not work), it will require some work.

Maybe there are some tools in 3DS that allow you to get a nice subdivided mesh from the FBX cage but I have never used 3DS so I don't know, can't help in that area.

You would think that FBX should work well with 3DS as it is an Autodesk baby, and also that G3 dual quaternion weight maps also would work (don't know if they do), but I have no idea if that works better with 3DS then LightWave

In LightwWave many older CR2 rigs will not work well or not at all (I do not know if that is a problem with the FBX export in DS or the FBX import in LW), some weightmaps on G1 can go bonkers, you can have a weightmap on a shoe that is connected to a thigh bone for example so when the thigh bone rotates half the show fly away, no big deal to fix though, but as I said all of this may be LightWave problems and not DS FBX export problems.

 

ikera_c62dd396a5

Up to now I've had pretty good success with the process, regarding skinning deformations and morphs. Maybe Max preserves better the FBX information than Lightwave?!? I don't really know (suppose there's no difference), but at least with my current workflow I can get the work done pretty well. But with the crappy low res base mesh... :(

There is indeed a 100 morph limit in Max. It doesn't bother me much, since I first set up the figure in Daz and bake those morphs, so then I just need expression morphs in Max. In any case exporting close to 100 expression morphs one by one via OBJ and setting them back up in Max... That's just crazy. That's why I use the FBX export support for morphs and skinning, I just don't understand why there is this "only base mesh" limitation!

Animating in DAZ... Well, let's say it's not my cup of tea. It's simply out of the picture. I find Max tools for animation way more convenient than DS, even if I don't get the same deformations as in DS. I can cope with that.

And yes, there are quite a few different methods to subdivide the mesh in Max. But in order to retain the morphing capabilities these have to be applied after the skinning and morphing stages... Which is what I'm trying to bypass.

Any other tips guys? Could anyone elaborate on the Mudbox method? Or maybe write some code that would do the magic, or find another alternative? Thx! :)