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Old cr2 to Duf - ERC subcomponents lost in conversion

gitika1gitika1 Posts: 948
edited April 2020 in Technical Help (nuts n bolts)

I have been playing around with converting old 3d Universe characters to duf.  I know that some in the forums indicate that it isn't worth it because weight mapping can cause serious wonkiness.  Either way, it has been a great way to learn more about DS and what properties impact what.

With the Toon Snake, I ran into a new (for me) puzzle.  The toon eyes are a slider/morph but there is a subcomponent of ERCs. They are the only piece that I can't figure out to have a accurate conversion.  Is there a way to preserve them?  Currently, my DS version of the toon snake only has traditional round eyes because the subcomponents are not carrying through the conversion.

Thanks for any help you may be able to provide. smiley

 

 

Tooneyes.JPG
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Post edited by gitika1 on

Comments

  • NorthOf45NorthOf45 Posts: 5,442

    The "Toon Eyes" are done with D-Formers, but they are hidden, so select Show Hidden Nodes from the Scene tab context menu. Thing is, when converting to TriAx, the D-Form  field has none of the figure's mesh included. I don't know if it is out of range because of the rigging change, but I can't get it back in view. The red circles are there, but no influence anywhere, moving it and scaling it all over the place. The D-Form values do not respond to the controller, so something is lost in translation...

  • SpottedKittySpottedKitty Posts: 7,232

    Maybe it's connected to the way Poser figures are lots of parts welded together, whereas D|S figures are one whole mesh. If the head or eyes are a separate body part, and the D-Formers are attached to that part, maybe that's the change that doesn't get carried over properly?

  • NorthOf45NorthOf45 Posts: 5,442

    I hacked at it a bit more, and managed to get a little progress, if you can call it that. First, the figure is one mesh with several bones for the head, eyes and eyelids (and a lot for the tail). The original has the deformer attached to the head, but after conversion to weight-mapped, Studio will only allow the D-Former to be applied to the top-level figure, not any of the bones, i.e., the head. Adding a new D-Former to the figure and copying the exact parameter settings from the original D-Former (translation and scaling) gives the desired morph when dialing in the top-level D-Forms parameter setting. The red circles for the field position are way down the body, but the highlighted mesh is in the proper place. Problem is, anything influenced by the D-Former retain their deformed shape when applying any of the expression morphs (eyes, eyelids, eyebrows, top of the head) even when they should be moving away from the field. I guess that's what the controller did, adding/subtracting the influence of the D-Form on the morph. Now, I'm in over my head. No pun intended...

  • SpottedKittySpottedKitty Posts: 7,232
    NorthOf45 said:

    The original has the deformer attached to the head, but after conversion to weight-mapped, Studio will only allow the D-Former to be applied to the top-level figure, not any of the bones, i.e., the head. Adding a new D-Former to the figure and copying the exact parameter settings from the original D-Former (translation and scaling) gives the desired morph when dialing in the top-level D-Forms parameter setting.

    Yes, that's one of the big differences between Poser and D|S figures when it comes to D-Formers — the D-Form effects are applied to the figure as if it's in its default pose, with all pose parameters zeroed. When you pose a bit of the figure, the D-Form parts don't move relative to the figure root, but the coloured "effect" dots will follow the posed body part.

    And yes, it can be a major headache; it took me a while to wrap my tired little brain around the idea, but I think I've got it now... after several years trying...  

  • NorthOf45NorthOf45 Posts: 5,442

    There was a suggestion to scrap the idea of converting to weight-mapping, and instead use the figure setup tools. That does produce a working figure, but no morphs, and it still has parametric rigging, so no closer to Studio-native format, which would still require converion to weight-mapping anyway. And how to get the morphs back (those deltas are all in the .cr2)? At least the D-Former loads in the right place, but then there is the effect combined with the morphs... Lost cause?

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