Auto-dial morphs for clothes?
icemage1993
Posts: 68
Hello guys, Iam making an outfit for a custom character. I make the outfit based on the base genesis 8 female body, and I used transfer utility to fit it to the base g8f. Problem is the custom character is very big so when I load the outfit it look deformed. So I exported the outfit and fix it in blender, and then using morph loader to import it as a morph.
Now everything is working fine, and my question is, is these any way to make my outfit to auto-dial this newly created morph whenever I dial in the big character morph?
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Making a cloth, bringing it in and transfering the Genesis bones to it is just the very beginning of the process. Then the real nightmare begins ;)
I guess the beginning would be to look for info about JCM and Reverse Deformation. You can find some info here :
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/publishing/adding_jcm_clothing/start
What you're asking here is one of the things I still have to work on so I won't be able to answer clearly. Hopefully someone else will provide a detailled and exhaustive answer. But out of the bookmarks I saved for my "to-work-on-list" before I can say I'm ready to become a published artist, I believe this bookmark explains what you need to practice. The example given is about a prop, but if I'm not mistaken, glasses or a fitted dress doesn't matter, the idea is to make the imported item follow a morph. It's a process content creators should do for at least all the Daz Original bundles as it helps to position things properly no matter what character or partial face/bodymorph is dialed in. Hope this will help :
Transfer Utility will do its best to follow the vertices movements when morphs are loaded. But on top of having to create morphs for extreme Genesis' limbs movements, you'll have to create morphs morphs that'll help Daz finding the best vertices position so that your cloth adapts properly to more extreme body shape differences.
If what you're doing is only for 1 character it won't take long to make that 1 extra morph, but if it's to sell the cloth, it'll be a lot more work ;) That's why, often on Renderosity, some clothes creators like to show a promo pic with very small, very tall, very fat, etc. Genesis morphs, to show that they worked on hidden morphs sliders that auto-slide to help the cloth follow skin deformation.
Thank @hansolocambo, I will watch that video when I get back to home. I read around and I think property hierarchy is the way to handle this problem. Iam not sure how though.
Is the shape you are matching a single morph or multiple, possibly with a control slider on top? AutoFollow simply depends on having matching names (names, not labels) which derive, on loading, from the file name.
If the shape you're using has a single dial when loading your custom morph to the figure you need to give it the exact same name on the new morph. That way it will automatically be dialled in when you dial the morph in the character.
If your character is made up of multiple dials you can create a new slider that dials them all in.
An example...sorry not genesis as I don't use the current figures much.
When I'm making clothing for the Diva morph for Dawn I will create a custom morph and name it plDiva and when people dial diva in Dawn it automatically follows in the clothing.
When loading the morph something you need to be careful about is that if you have dialled the character into the clothing if it's a single dial it will already have created an autofollow morph in the parameters. You can find this in the Currently used section and will need to delete it before loading your custom morph.
If you want me to walk you thru the process step by step I can but I will need to know more about your morph first and you will need a single slider for it before we can begin.
Here's a video if you need to combine multiple sliders
It's a complex matter and finding information about that given that 99% of Daz users are... well just users, is basically close to impossible.
The things I have so far that seem related to that all turn around the idea of creating (out of Daz) custom morphs for specific shapes and injecting (once in Daz) CTRL morphs that will auto load for characters that need a more specific deformations. I find a lot of blah blah about that but damn still no clean clear tutorial about. Finding information as someone who can 3D model more or less anything and wants to become a content creator is a nightmare. After months I still have more questions than clear understandable answers.
Anyway... the few things I believe are definitely related to what you (and I) need to know have answers in the links I found so far :
- 1 ShapesInjector
https://www.daz3d.com/shapesinjector
This seems to help a lot the process of creating not just one but multiple control morphs to help your clothes adapt to multiple shapes. What I still don't understand is : when creating one let's say much taller morph for the cloth. a very fat custom morph, another for very small body (growing up), another for big busted characters, etc. How to name that morph so that it auto-dials the slider, is it just based on the naming of the slider like Pendraia says ?
Hopefully this tool explains a bit the process it does automatically because then, using it would definitely answer a lot of questions.
- 2 Creating Clothing Morphs With Blender and Daz Studio
And then there is that video, that definitely is exactly about what you (and I) need. All done manually. I hope that using ShapesInjector and following SickleYield explanations, all will be more clear. This is by far the best (and for all I know the only one) video that really explains that subject.
Please if anyone around, content creator, has some more bookmarks to share about tutorials explaining how to inject custom made morphs for custom made clothes, so that they (on the user side) adapt better than what Daz does by default, this would be great. Although I have the feeling that SickleYield's video is the Eldorado on the subject.
@Pendraia @Richard Haseltine Much obliged it guys, I think the naming trick to overwrite the morph is the best solution, thats so cool actually. My custom character has a single dial morph but I also ERC Freeze some base genesis 8 female morphs in (arm length, shoulder scale...etc), I think it should be fine, no? And thank Pendraia, but I dont want to bother you with anymore hassle, I will try to fix this thing by myself.
No problem, contact me via message if you need. Just remember it's the Custom morph in the clothing that needs the same name as the morph in the character.
I was specifically referring to character morphs which I've done many times for my own use and also on the more recent freebies I've created. I'm currently in the process of completing a freebie for dawn that has 4 custom character morphs that autofollow when the character is dialled in to the original figure. In discussions with mec4d recently we were discussing creating custom morphs for full body morphs and I haven't tried it but believe it would work for those also as it's a function of autofollow to use morphs in the outfit or create them if needed. Unfortunately autofollow created morphs often have distortions.
If you like tomorrow I'll have a look as I have a freebie in the works I'm doing for genesis 8 and can try it out on things like a tall morph.
Sickle is amazing and I was lucky enough that having known her since elder scrolls days she has in the past been patient enough to answer my questions and she is very expert in using blender. I highly recommend her tutorials.
A lot of what I've picked up over the years has been from forum threads and bought tutorials. To my knowledge there is no one all encompassing tutorial. Esha's digital art live tutorials in the store cover 6 parts of the process and is probably the most thorough. I only have the rigging one but I would suggest looking at those and perhaps Arki's tutorials also in the store. They are fairly expensive... the alternative is to hunt for tutorials on specific areas for example mcm - morph control morphs, or how to split morphs. Josh Darling has some good YouTube videos on things like this.
wow I didnt know Sickle was involved with Oblivion's mods. But then again I saw a lot of daz stuffs in Oblivion/skyrim.
By the way, I think I fixed it!
I loaded g8f, dialled in my custom morph, loaded my outfits, and I didnt delete the custom morph like your said, but I use morph loader pro and replace it out right following this guide by Richard:
I hope that wont cause any trouble down the line!
Richard Haseltine said:
You can replace a generated morph with one of your own making, using Morph Loader Pro, giving the imported morph the same name as the target morph, and setting Overwrite Existing to Deltas Only.
Try morrowind it was a long time ago, a group of us used to hang out on the Canadian ice forums and started ds around the same time. And yes some modders back then did the wrong thing.
That should work fine also as long as you selected to overwrite deltas. Sounds like you got it working which is terrific. I didn't mention it because I thought I might end up confusing you. You can do it either way.
well Iam only stand on the shoulder of the giants and follow their words to a T. The forum is truly a treasure trove of knowledge.
Yes it is. I'm not sure if you're referring to me but I'm vertically challenged definitely not a giant but Richard has definitely been a resident expert for many years.
The issue with having slave morphs set by a slider is that what DS projects is the actual morph, so a morph to match the compound shape named to match the slider will be applied but all the salve morphs will still be projected. Ideally you want a match for each morph used that works only on the actual shape of that morph, not any others that it also sets - with luck the standard morphs will either alrady be covered or will project well so you don't need to add a custom shape for most of them.
So your suggesting doing each morph as a separate part rather than a single controller? Interesting, it would be a lot more work in some ways.
Will it still autofollow, yes but what about if you use one of those morphs for a different character and you need it to do something different wouldn't it cause issues?
I've always been told it's best to use a master slider, I mainly create my own morphs in a modeller these days so haven't yet messed with this type of morph much.
Another thing to try and see what happens.
That's two differnt things. Yes, having a master slider that controls the sub-morphs is better - in several ways - than baking everything to a single combined morph without links. However, when you do that setting the master (whether a pure controller or a morph which also triggers sub-morphs) will trigger multiple morphs and DS will apply those to the fitted items, projecting any that are not initally present. When creating a custom morph for fitted items you should there ensure that the custom morph is matching only the raw changes of the identically-named figure morph, it should not incorporate any changes from the sub-morphs because if it does they will be doubled up.
Okay, so the process should be to dial in the character with the dress fitted and send it over to create the morph and then send it back with reverse deformations?
Sometimes I like to send the clothing over unmorphed as it allows for less distortion if you do the full morph in a modeller. Sounds like with a master controller I need to do it as outlined above. Good to know.
Thanks Richard.
Yesterday I promised to try with a morph as opposed to a character like Victoria. The morph mention was a tall morph which I don't have. I do have a height morph which shortens the figure but there wasn't enough distortion to need a custom morph.
So I did it using the Pear Figure morph for Genesis 8f.
The dress before and after a morph was applied. Morph automatically dialled in. The thing to be careful of with this is sometimes the label and the name of the morph are different. The label in this case in the parameter tab was Pear Figure, however I had to actually call my morph FBMPear Figure I found this name by looking under the currently used. Please note that this file is a hidden file and you need to have show hidden checked.
This can be found on the parameter tab, top right hand corner icon, the arrow with lines. Go to preferences/ show hidden properties.
I'm also including a couple of renders with the dress simulated using dforce as it's a dforce item.