Adjusting genesis 3 female rigging in DS4.9 for super thin characters.

IsaacNewton

Hi,

I'm planning to make some character morphs for g3f giving extremely narrow hips and or shoulders. I expect that I will need to adjust the rigging at the hips and shoulders to maintain realistic leg and arm movements. (If one can talk about realistic in terms of extreme morphs and extreme limb positions.)

I have read the thread on a related topic: Fix Pelvic Distortion - how?, which deals with exactly the opposite problem, namely adjusting the rigging for extremely wide hips. Unfortunately, this thread has not come up with any hard answers.

I have seen some tutorials on the topic of rigging and advanced rigging, but they mostly seem to deal with rigging starting from scratch, and they are not cheap. So if I am going to invest in professional tutorials I'd like to get the most appropriate for the task I have in mind.

Does anyone have any suggestions about how to adjust the g3f rigging or advice on which tutorials would be most appropriate for me to learn how?

Thanks

Richard Haseltine

Apply morph

Edit>Figure>Rigging>Adjust Rigging to Shape.

Usually the defaults will work, though you may want to enable the option to adjust orientation if, for example, the relative positions of hip and knew have changed - you may want to exclude body parts that are completely unaffected by the morph, especially the exprssion bones and eyes as they are easy to mess up, using the list on the right.

Test the result, if there are mnor tweaks needed you can use the Joint Editor tool to adjust the centre and end points of bones, or to realign the bone by right-click menu.

Once happy with the results, right-click in the Parameters pane and put it in Edit Mode if it isn't, then right-click on the morph slider and select ERC Freeze - you should see only the changes to joint centres and orientation listed in the lower part of the pane, if there are any actual posing or other morph settings listed deselect them, then click Accept.

Check that everything still works, if so File>Save as>Support Assets>Morph Asset.

IsaacNewton

Hi Richard,

I'll give that a try, though this method was proposed (in far less detail, I should say) by grinch2901 in the thread " Fix Pelvic Distortion - how?". The OP said that it didn't work that well.

Anyway, I'll give it a go as soon as I have some morphs done.

Thanks

Leana

Adjusting the rigging is the first step but might not be the only one. You might also need custom JCM to adjust the morphed mesh when it's posed, especially if the shape is very different.

IsaacNewton

Hmmm.. this looks like things could get very complicated very fast.

Is it possible to adjust existing JCMs and if so are there any tutorials?

Richard Haseltine

Yes, it is - first you need to thaw the frozen ERC:

1. put the Parameters pane in Edit mode via right-click menu, if it isn't.
2. right-click on the controller morph and select Show in Property Hierarchy
3. in the Property Hierarchy right-click on the morph and select ERC Bake

Now you have the bare morph and other property settings, adjust them as desired and when done go through ERC Freeze again.

IsaacNewton

OK, I'll give that a go and report back later.

IsaacNewton

"Now you have the bare morph and other property settings, adjust them as desired..."

I'm stuck on this part. What do you mean by "I have the bare morph" ? How can I adjust them? 

I have explored both the "bones" and "parameters" dropdowns and still do not see what it is I must/can change in order to affect the JCMs affecting a joint.

IsaacNewton

"Now you have the bare morph and other property settings, adjust them as desired..."

I'm stuck on this part. What do you mean by "I have the bare morph" ? How can I adjust them? 

I have explored both the "bones" and "parameters" dropdowns and still do not see what it is I must/can change in order to affect the JCMs affecting a joint.

IsaacNewton

oops repeat post

Richard Haseltine

I meant the properties are no longer linked, so you can adjust them independently until you have the relationship you want and then refreeze. That may not be what you meant by adjust existing JCMs - perhaps you could explain in a bit more detail what you want to do.

IsaacNewton

In the base g3f if you bend the arm down so the palm of the hand is at the thigh the JCMs which affect the shoulder will adjust the bending of the mesh to give a realistic arm bend. The same for the legs and the hips.

If I change the shape of the mesh with morphs the existing JCMs may no longer be in the correct position to do a good job. So by adjusting the JCMs I'm refering to changing the JCM values (here I assume properties such as x,y,z location, scale, shape?) so that the figure mesh will once again bend normally when the new shape changing morph is applied.

I hope that makes it clearer.

I should point out that I will be pushing and pulling things randomly as I don't know exactly how all the parameters work together. I recall that when i did this in Poser the Spheres of Influence were made visible. I don't know if that's true in DS.

Richard Haseltine

What you essentially need to do is make a new JCM that is triggered only when your morph is applied that corrects the existing JCM. Export the posed and morphed mesh, or GoZ it, make the corrections, and bring it back as a moprh using Reverse Deformations to strip out the morph, pose, and existing JCMs. Now you do need to add the JCM correction to the list of things controled by your morph, attenuate it by the JCM (so it kicks in only if both are set) - rather than using ERC Freeze use the Property Hierarchy pane to show your new JCM correction morph, drag your shape into its lisy of controllers under Stage 1 additive and drag the main JCM (you will need to Show Hidden Paarmeters) into the Stage 2 Multiply controllers; since both controllers are morphs going from 0 to 1 you should not need to adjust the scalars.

barbult

Here are some related videos that might help:

Setting Up Bone Movement On A Morph With ERC Freeze 

Creating and Hooking Up a JCM