Needing some help with a JCM (Solved)
Dark45
Posts: 75
Hey guys,
I'm hoping someone here may have a bit of knowledge to share with me. I have worked with JCM's a bit and for the most part they come out okay but for whatever reason I cannot figure out this one. I am working with a paw geograft that I want the Right Toes X Bend Rotation of G8 to trigger a morph on that geograft. This is a corrective type of morph to try and make this bend more acceptable for this type of character.
Here's what I have done. Made a new property called "Foot Bend" on G8's Right Toes. Linked this property to the corrective morph that is on the Geograft Foot. This works and now when I click on the "Right Toes" I can control that morph now from G8 without having to go to the geograft and I can now set the geograft morph to a hidden property for now. But now I need to have the "X Rotate Toes Bend" for G8's right foot be the main slider I would use to apply the bend correction, therefore I need to set it as a controller to the new property I made.
X Rotate goes from value -65 to +40
New property goes from 0 to +100
What I am aiming to do is for X Rotate from -65 to 0, nothing happens with the new property. From 0 to +40 with X Rotate, I wish for the new property to go from 0 to +100 so this way the morph is gradually applied over that value. Where things stand currently is that these properties are linked and the new property has the bend controlling it. However, every +0.01 I set from zero increases the new property by 4%. So it goes 0.01 = 4%, 0.02 = 8%, etc.. As you can image, by time you are at 2.0 the morph is already at 100% which I don't want to happen until the value of X Bend is at 40.0.
I know this most likely has something to do with the scaler but I haven't been able to figure it out. I have also read about something called "constants" but that seems like a keyframe thing whenever I just want this to be a corrective morph, perhaps I am miss understanding that bit.
I thank you guys in advance for any help.
Short video of the issue
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Comments
1. I'm not experienced enough to comb through all the steps for this type of a project.
What I do know is that sometimes we make several corrective morphs, and use the timeline to dial them in as required.
Then when making the corrective controller [if I'm recalling the steps correctly], tell it to use the timeline for the ERC.
Hmm, thank you for the reply, gives me a bit more to think about. I also have an issue witht he ERC freeze resetting all my morphs either back to 0 and the base g8 or just not applying at all. My experience here is obviously new territory too lol so no worries, I appriciate you.
I got it to work finally with the ERC Freeze finally. Thank you again.
Scratch my last. I tried to save it out as it was working perfectly and now back to square one even though I have redone everything the same way....
Okay, idea: make the morphs [not the controller yet]. Zero and save the morphs. [can do the adjust rigging to mesh and ERC, save morph].
Close D/S, open D/S and load in figure to continue working on it -- make the controllers. If all seems to be working, zero morphs again and this time save the controller [morph].
If you own any of characters from Rawart for eg., take a look at their rigging -- might present some more ideas to try.
[purpose of closing/opening D/S is to clear memory so past work doesn't interfere with new work]
Thank you so much. I have it working now but no matter what I've tried they will not save properly. I save both the New Property morph on G8's toes that is connected to the bend morph of the geograft. I also save the bend morph on the geograft. I also made sure that in the properties they were set to save with their morphs. They were zero'd at the time of save.
When I reload, in the property hierarchy all of the elements are there. The link and the controllers are all attached to the "Foot Bend Control" morph I created on G8's toes. But when I move the default "Bend" of G8's toes, the controller doesn't engage until I freeze ERC again.
More likely you wanna use ERC [Keyed] as the Type of Controller dial, pls check this thread for the 2nd option other than using Scarla : https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/635286/controlling-morphs-in-sequence
Pls try to set two Keys -: Key 0:0 and Key 0.4:1, see if it's gonna work. The controller morph's Min and Max should be -65.0 to 40.0...
PS: by the way, for such a case, I don't think you need to manually ERC Freeze the corrective morph... though you still use a geo-graft. Maybe I'm gonna test it some day...
I have tried using "Keyed" with two keys, one at 0:0 and one at 0.4:1 unfortunately this is the same result as if they were set to delta/add before the ERC freeze. The result from the video above is how the action has been without the ERC freeze.
I can consistantly get it to work by using delta/add. On the graft I have the "Bend Morph" and then on the G8 toes I have the "Bend Controller". I set the Bend Morph as a control on the Bend Controller. This works.
Then I set the default X Rotation Bend of G8's toes as the controller of the Bend Controller. I also have this working so now if I dial only one slider, everything works as it should.
However when I save the two custom morphs, the "Bend Morph" and "Bend Controller", the hierachy will save just as I had left it. But if I go and use the X Rotation Bend on G8's toes, the controllers no longer activate after a reload.
I will be adding some pictures.
Image 1 is the hierachy of the "Bend Morph"
Image 2 is the hierachy of the "Bend Controller"
Image 3 is the hierachy of the "X Rotation Bend"
The issue might come from Min and Max values. Pls check if they're absolute values or %... if they're -65 to 40, set the key as 40:1, while if they're -65% to 40%, set the key as 0.4:1...
A clip as below - : https://mega.nz/file/6CxRRQBJ#0uCjh8mQ6Ntj2qmnKQ_I88LMZ37KhHubTNVh9HD-ns8
So after the long night I decided to get some rest. When I woke up it just kinda clicked what I needed to do after processing everything you guys have been trying to help me with. When you do the ERC freeze, it takes any morph that is applied and will add it as a sub component (this is why in some of my images you see two of the same controller / components). This was the issue with the not saving and also, me and my small brain was over thinking how this would work for this scenario. All I needed to do was set the corrective morph as a sub component to the X Rotation Bend but rather than manually dragging and dropping it into the X Bend sub component, I let the ERC Freeze do it for me.
Everything saved and is working now.
I really appriciate all of your guy's help. It's a little convoluted for someone like myself but I started to wrap my head around how these connections work with your guy's assitance.
Take care all!
okey dokey... for most of the cases, actually 'drag and drop' in property hierarchy works well as always. And most of the bs / cbs, esp. relate to PBM or do not relate to custom bones on such a graft, etc , don't need to be manually ERC Freezed... Some improper Freeze even may bring you a Ds crash, so it really depends... Anyway, the more experiments you do, the more optimal results you're gonna have. Good luck!