How to make a single dial from a mixture of morphs, which then available as an asset?
IsaacNewton
Posts: 1,300
I have a (G8f) character head which is a complex mixture of morphs (some commercial and some Zbrush I have made myself). I want to condense this in to a single dial so that I can quickly try mixtures of this character head with other character heads. This is not for commercial resale or for redistribution in any way, shape or form.
I can export the figure as a head only morph to a obj file and then loading that through Morph Loader Pro, however I want the dial to always be available for all G8f characters, or be loadable from an icon.
I have tried Save As: Shaping preset... and this allows selection of various body parts and other properties. When I select the Head under the Hip property, and save that, then the resulting icon does nothing at all when applied to a new character. If instead I select the Head under the Actor property, then the resulting icon not only changes the Head of the character but also the body (even though the body was completely zeroed when I saved the Shaping Preset).
I want to be able to produce a dial (or access to a dial via an icon) that changes only the head.
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Comments
Shaping preset is just a script which applies morph settings, it doesn’t include the morph itself.
If you want an actual morph you need to save a morph asset.
A better option is to create a master slider, since spawning the comcpound shape to a new single shape will lose any corrective morphs.
You would need a new Control Property
[Edit]: Sorry didn't refresh the page just saw Richards comment after posting this.
A single slider for your custom character shape is nice to have but it is more complicated than saving Shaping Presets. Using Shaping Presets is also more flexible if you want to change someting, editing Control Properties is also not that easy if you decide to further customize the character shape.
You should be able to save Shaping Presets seperate for head and body if the morphs in use are split up like this. It is not that efficent to have a fully dialed in custom character and then selecting the properties you want to save in the Shaping Presets save dialog depending on if it is a head or body shape.
You could just dial up the shapes you want for the head or if you work on the custom character dial down the body shapes and save Shaping Preset. Then do the opposite for the body Shaping Preset.
In the Shaping Preset save dialog you also have an Option Menu button on the upper right use Check All Modified Only while saving. This will make shure that the Shaping Preset will not reset other morphs currently on the figure if loaded. In addition to that you also have the Shaping Preset Load options by holding Ctrl while loading the preset.
But first of all make shure that every of your custom ZBrush morphs is already saved as morph assets. If they are saved embedded in the scene file they are not available on a fresh loaded genesis figure.
If Shaping Presets got saved with embedded morphs that don't exist on the figure obviousely they can't work the same applies to morphs that you link to new Control Properties with ERC Freeze.
Also there seems to be a bug with ERC Freeze that it shows a list of changed properties of everything in the scene making it harder to select single properties that you want to have as sub-components in the control property. You can have it simple and just start with a new scene and load the figure you want to create properties for with ERC Freeze. Or if you work with a crowded scene select everything else but not the genesis figure and use Memorize Figure / Item. If you want to have seperate head / body sliders you could also memorize the figure with only the body shape applied then load the full Shaping Preset again, create the head controller and use ERC Freeze. Then do the opposite memorize all head morphs and create the body controller.
Thanks guys. Couple of followup questions.
1) in the Create New Property popup there is an option at the bottom to "Create As Empty Morph". What is an empty morph and why would I create one?
2) I followed the instructions given by Richard and everything appear to work up to step 6. I then Loaded a new scene with a G8f character and looked for my newly saved master slide but I can't find it anywhere. I assumed that it would now be available for any G8f character in any scene, but I can't see it. What am I not doing?
1) Create empty morph does all the set up for a morph except for loading the deltas (the changes in vertex position). That would give an empty slot into which data could later be injected.
2) had you used File>Save As>Support Assets>Moprhs Asset to save the new property after setting it up (adding the ERC)?
It can happen that if you right-click the Parameters pane the new property gets created in an unwanted property group. Sometimes I didn't care about the group that was selected while creating the property and the new slider appears in some General or in the Transforms group that was currently selected. To search for the new property select the upper "All" group in the Parameters pane and type the name of the new Property in the top Filter Box. If the new slider appears and you are in edit mode right-click the slider and choose Set>Property Group or click the gear icon and set the group there. I keep all my new morphs in the Mophs group with sub categories so I can find them.
I can imagine if you had selected something else than the "root node" of the genesis figure the slider will be hard to find. Yes it is not recommended but possible to save morphs on selected nodes / bones other than the root node maybe we should have mentioned that while writing the instructions.
You can also look out for the actual DSF morph file that got saved on disk with a file browser. The name you gave in the Create New Property becomes the filename. Depending on the Content Directory you choose the morph file should be saved somwhere in the "data" folder. You may have to deal with that more often if you want to delete or update morphs you've created read Update Custom morphs?
References:
How do I save a eye morph/ translation with a new character?
Update Custom morphs?
@ Richard, In answer to 2, yes I followed step 6 fully.
@ Syrus, I specified the Head group. However, I did search for my new Head name in the root group too but it is not there either.
Are you shure you had selected the genesis figure root node and not the head bone while creating the new property?
If you can't find your new property in the parameters pane on a fresh loaded original genesis figure I can't tell whats gone wrong.
The only thing I guess you can do now is search the morph file on disk in some of your Content Directories with a file browser. Whichever was selected on top of the Morph Asset Save dialog while saving.
more references I found regarding creating aliases for expressions on the head node and saving control properties to another figure node / bone than the root node:
How to change morphs location?
How To Create A Shortcut To Expressions
I've written more on that Property Cloner / Mover but I can't find in which thread I posted these screenshots anymore.
I am following these instructions, they're great, they work, but uh, when I created the property there was one key setting I didn't comprehend, "auto-follow" when creating a new property what does "auto-follow" do?
does lacking autofollow mean the morphs don't project to clothing?
That means the fitted wearables will auto follow the morphs, e,g. FHM, FBM, PBM xxx... etc. The properties with 'auto follow on' will be automatically triggered on the wearables. You are right..