Using morphs for rotation in DAZ

gmm2

I want to try out a method for controlling an object's rotation using a series of morphs driven by a single ERC dial. The problem is I have no idea how to implement it. I know this isn't the most practical thing, I'm just curious if it can be done.

What I though of was to export a bunch of incremental rotations and import them as morphs, then have them instantly "switch off" once a certain percentage on the master ERC dial is reached and go to the next. For example, if I had a 10 degree morph, it would be set at 100% when the ERC dial hits 2.77%; when the ERC dial starts going above 2.77%, it instantly sets the 10 degree morph to 0 and begins driving the 20% morph, and so on.

How would I go about this?

Gordig

You may be overthinking it. It's a little hard to tell from your description what exactly you're trying to do, but it doesn't seem like you need to do anything more than apply transforms within DS, then ERC freeze those transforms to a new parameter. 

gmm2

Gordig said:

You may be overthinking it. It's a little hard to tell from your description what exactly you're trying to do, but it doesn't seem like you need to do anything more than apply transforms within DS, then ERC freeze those transforms to a new parameter. 

Say I have a dial object, and using morphs I want to give it the ability to rotate 180 degees. If I only use one morph to get the dial to its 180 degree position, it won't look like it's turning when the morph is dialed; it'll be more like it's melting from side to side or whatever. What I want to do is make that dial look like it's rotating, but only using a series of morphs controlled by one slider.

If I understand you right: you're saying I could do an ERC freeze at, say, every 10 degrees, using multiple dials, into one dial? I know how to freeze, but not how to collapse many different ones into one control. That sounds like something to try, though.

PerttiA

gmm2 said:

Gordig said:

You may be overthinking it. It's a little hard to tell from your description what exactly you're trying to do, but it doesn't seem like you need to do anything more than apply transforms within DS, then ERC freeze those transforms to a new parameter. 

Say I have a dial object, and using morphs I want to give it the ability to rotate 180 degees. If I only use one morph to get the dial to its 180 degree position, it won't look like it's turning when the morph is dialed; it'll be more like it's melting from side to side or whatever. What I want to do is make that dial look like it's rotating, but only using a series of morphs controlled by one slider.

If I understand you right: you're saying I could do an ERC freeze at, say, every 10 degrees, using multiple dials, into one dial? I know how to freeze, but not how to collapse many different ones into one control. That sounds like something to try, though.

Why would you want to do it with multiple 10 degree dials, when you can rotate the object with one dial from 1 degree to 10000+ degrees? You don't need a morph for it. Just look how the movement of the eye is handled with whatever character you have.

gmm2

PerttiA said:

gmm2 said:

Gordig said:

You may be overthinking it. It's a little hard to tell from your description what exactly you're trying to do, but it doesn't seem like you need to do anything more than apply transforms within DS, then ERC freeze those transforms to a new parameter. 

Say I have a dial object, and using morphs I want to give it the ability to rotate 180 degees. If I only use one morph to get the dial to its 180 degree position, it won't look like it's turning when the morph is dialed; it'll be more like it's melting from side to side or whatever. What I want to do is make that dial look like it's rotating, but only using a series of morphs controlled by one slider.

If I understand you right: you're saying I could do an ERC freeze at, say, every 10 degrees, using multiple dials, into one dial? I know how to freeze, but not how to collapse many different ones into one control. That sounds like something to try, though.

Why would you want to do it with multiple 10 degree dials, when you can rotate the object with one dial from 1 degree to 10000+ degrees? You don't need a morph for it. Just look how the movement of the eye is handled with whatever character you have.

I know what I what to do isn't practical. I just want to know if it can be done.

Necriseye

As far as I'm aware it's not possible, I can never seem to get a straight answer from anyone involving a fix for this issue. And yes in a simple sense, just rotating the normal bone would be the answer but what if you wanted to create a not so simple situation?

For example I made a tip toe morph that properly bends the ankle to look like a natural tip toe pose.

Looks pretty great right? So now everything's set no need for anymore work... that is... unless you wanted to "animate" this tip toe from a flatter foot...
wanna see what it looks like at 50 percent?



Not exactly the picture of beauty anymore is it?

"So Nec, why don't you just bend the toes then and call it a day, blah blah blah"
Have you guys seen the regular toe bend in daz?



Pretty nice, if you're an ALIEN. The toe bends and well a lot of other limb and digit bends in daz leave much to be desired... so yea, there's nothing "practical" about us having to limit ourselves to those bends.
Also all morphs have been erc freezed, the melting issue in between min and max still occurs because apparently there's no way to make the morph properly rotate on an axis in daz... I could be entirely mistaken and it just isn't common knowledge, which apologies if so. Also don't even get me started on trying to apply this morph to already bent feet...

Catherine3678ab

I suspect "the" answer is not a one post solution. Likely requires a series of morphs with controllers which include step morph activations along with the pose trigger activations. i.e. a rather complicated procedure which yes, should be doable. It is one thing to know how to do all that, and another to explain it all.

 

PerttiA

Necriseye said:

apparently there's no way to make the morph properly rotate on an axis in daz... 

Morphs do not rotate. the morph moves a vertex (or multiple vertices) from one coordinate point to another in linear fashion. The vertex moves along a straight line from point A to point B.

Kainjy

You must create a joint.. Morphs work in linear way. Perfect for translations but very bad for rotations. You must rig your model and if you want use Erc to link joint rotation to a new custom parameter (grouped as a morph).

Catherine3678ab

I'm not about to start creating joints in the Genesis figures. Make the morph, make the controller. Seemed pretty simple to me - maybe I'm missing the point of what you're all finding so difficult. Try as I might, this foot did not deform into an ugly explosion of polygon goo.