Schrödinger's Weight Maps

Dodger

I am having problems with attempted conversion from Poser.

This is a learning experience, and they say you only learn by failing, so this should give me a doctorate right out the door because, oh boy.
 
So I take a figure that I made for and in Poser and import it to DAZ|Studio. (Or is it just Daz Studio? Did youse stop using the pipe and stuff? Is "DAZ" all caps or not? It's an acronym after all--for "DAZ Ain't Zygote", right? It looks like you did but I don't know the official stance there. Anyway.)

I import it and all seems to go well except a lot of "couldn't find weight map" messages, which were weird as you'll see in a sec.

This figure uses the "has buttocks" philosophy from long ago, because I still like that approach. It helps with sitting, even with full weight mapping, and anyway, I can wiggle my butt cheeks without moving my leg, so it seems that's a good idea to me so I stull use it.

This figure also has a jaw and the mouth can be controlled form the jaw. This is important as you'll see in the pics because it creates a weird question.

I'm importing Poser content, and it is acting like it's importing weight maps, but then... says it didn't. And then uses them.

More in continuing followup.

BTW: About me, since it's been long enough I may need some re-introduction.

I am attempting to delve into DAZ. Some of you know me, most of you who do hate me, deservedly so. You totally should. I'm afwul. Just the worst. But usually if you are familiar with it, you like my content (even if you won't admit that because you hate me), and I haven't done a lot lately, and sometimes I get ripped off by people who have too much money for me to sue; so I'm like the Harlan Ellison of consumer-grade 3D content or something. So yeah. I am trying to get back into this and make some DAZ content. I used to have beef with DAZ but honestly, I don't anymore. The people that I bumped elbows with (and who then got upset because I put on razor sharp armour after the first time) are mostly long gone, and anyway I always had way MORE beef with a certain OTHER company. So I may as well, and I have rent to try and pay and no work, and most techbro companies are hella ageist and I'm over 50 now so, yeah.

Dodger

The first thing that's obvious, is the buttock is affecting the thigh twice as much as it ought to. It doesn't do this in Poser.

I have made this all wireframey textured so I hope this is OK, since this figure is a bit less, uh, barbie-ish than your default DAZ figures. If not, mea culpa. It's not intentional. (I hope mea culpa is an okay phrase; every time I apologise to DAZ a company goes out of business somewhere). The point is you can't see any hoo hoo detail this way

(Yes this is DAZ Studio. I just flattened the image with the default Poser colour so these aren't as jarring to go back and forth.)

Dodger

These are rendered in Poser. (If they look a little weird it's because I did a ​2 pixel sample superfly render so it would only take 30 seconds to render on CPU, and then AI denoised them; it's faste than a high end render and looks almost as good.

The first is Liz with her mouth open, twisted, and side-side a little even. Looking like a V alien about to eat a cat or something.

The second is the same thing, but with the weight mapping turned off. This is all in Poser, again, to help you follow along. This is just a demonstration of what happens to this rigigng WITHOUT weight maps. As you can see, instead of a V alien she is now more like an Indiana Jones Na...badguy looking at the ark of the covenant. She's all Cronenberged up.

So the weight maps are ABSOLUTELY essential to this join working and it's screamingly obvious.

Dodger

Over in DAZ Studio, the import with the messed up thighs form the buttocks as seen above, but with the skin textures just off, here's Liz's head with the EXACT same pose.

As you can see, she is not melting and only really bitey.

This is, to me, proof positive that the weght map from Poser is being used. Right?

Dodger

So I figure, "OK, all I need to do is see if that weight map is being used wrong". Right?
So I go into the weight map brush tool in DAZ.

"Resource Error

The Node Weight Map Brush cannot be used to modify the selected figure. To use this tool you must convert the selected figure to use weight maps or select a figure that already does."

Wait WTFrell? Clearly the figure has weight maps on I am proving that. Right?

So I convert it to weight mapping. I have two options.
One is "tri-axe" and I don't know what that is and it sounds proprietary, so I use the other, "general weight mapping"

Now the mouth continues to work and the doubling on the thigh is gone, but the buttock ITSELF is all weird and distorted and not working right. HUH?

And I'm not going to show that one because to demonstrate it, even with the wireframe on, you'd be able to basiclly see her wireframed uterus. So, just no, not gonna. Just imagine.

So what's going on here at all?

(that's hyperbole BTW; she's anatomically correct only in to about the cervix)

Gordig

I've never used Poser, so I don't know what you're referring to with the "has-buttocks philosophy". General weight mapping is what you want; I don't know that Triax is proprietary, but it's not how current figures are weightmapped. Since you're not specifying, I'm going to guess that you're importing as FBX? DS, to put it gently, doesn't have the best FBX import capabilities, so the best, and in the long run probably easiest, solution is to import an OBJ for your geometry, import the FBX for the rig, then set the FBX as a donor rig for the OBJ.

Bejaymac

DS has never been able to use Poser content "as is", everything has to be converted on import, it's what happens when you use completely different engines to try to do the same things.

In DS4 all Poser rigged content is converted into a poormans version of Genesis.

In Poser the mesh is split into "props" using the mesh groups,  these are then "parented" to the bones, DS4 turns this and any Parametric joint parameters into poor general weight maps.

Studio then uses "hidden helpers" to control how these "bend" giving the appearance that the figure still bends the same, Poser WM figures don't have enough Parametric rigging left for DS to convert, resulting in really poor bending and the odd strange behavior.

Basically you are looking at a complete rerig of the figure in DS.

Dodger

Gordig said:

I've never used Poser, so I don't know what you're referring to with the "has-buttocks philosophy". General weight mapping is what you want; I don't know that Triax is proprietary, but it's not how current figures are weightmapped. Since you're not specifying, I'm going to guess that you're importing as FBX? DS, to put it gently, doesn't have the best FBX import capabilities, so the best, and in the long run probably easiest, solution is to import an OBJ for your geometry, import the FBX for the rig, then set the FBX as a donor rig for the OBJ.

The "has-buttocks" thing is that from Mike/Vicky 1 to 3, and related figures, there was an extra body part between the hip and the xThigh, xButtock.

I'm loading them from a Poser runtime, not FBX. That's why I said I'm loading in Poser figures. They are not being turned into anything else along the way.

Dodger

Bejaymac said:

Basically you are looking at a complete rerig of the figure in DS.

I'm seeing everything working the same on load except:

1: this thigh issue as shown
2: ERC-controlled morphs aren't anymore. The morphs still work but when they span multiple body parts, they aren't being triggered by the lead (controller) MT.
3: I did a weird thing with texture maps that used inverted maps to make it easier to texture and iterate over small texture changes in ZBrush, by setting the v-scale to -1. Apparently D|S doesn't have a way to do this. But the tetures need done differently for D|S anyway so that doesn't matter.