D-Forms and Distribution?

[Seliah (Childe of Fyre)]

I have a character currently in very early WIP stages. I've done some refinement on his shape via morphs that I created through the use of d-forms to alter areas that none of our morphs allow me to alter.

The question I have is.. how do I produce the shape preset in such a way that the end user will have these morphs in their figure's shape?

I already have the morphs on the figure :

My question is - how do I go about creating the shape preset with these d-forms applied? I can't very well save Dusk back to the library, as he is not my mesh. Only these morphs are. This was not an issue when I did the Christmas sweater, because the entire sweater mesh was my own work. But in this case, I'm just making morphs to touch off areas that Dusk's morph packages have gaps in.

So how do I go about saving this and making it as a shape preset?

Also - related question - how do I go about moving these morphs into a separate category the way things like Laurie's and FL's morphs are? Or does that require having an OBJ to begin with, rather than using the d-forms?

Thanks!

 

[Gadget Girl]

Hmmm, well I don't know if this helps, because this is the Poser way of doing things, but maybe you'll know what the DS equivalent is. So in Poser if you exported your morphed figure out as an .obj file, you could then select the base Dusk, choose Load Morph Target from the Figure menu, and then choose the .obj file you saved out. As long as they have the same number of vertices, Poser will will create a morph that transforms the base figure to the .obj you loaded.

I don't know if that gives you any ideas on how you might go about it in DS.

 

[Seliah (Childe of Fyre)]

I don't know if that gives you any ideas on how you might go about it in DS.

Actually, yes, that gives me a couple of ideas on how to tackle it. Studio has the Morph Loader Pro... I have a tutorial bookmarked for how to work with it, because eventually I want to be able to start making morph packs and such for our figures here.

I'll dig that link up and take another look at it... the vertices would not be any different, I wouldn't think, since all I did was use d-forms to produce the morphs (d-forms are Studio's equivalent of Poser's magnets).

Thanks, GG! Here's hoping.

 

[Pendraia]

Hey Seliah, the same method that GG mentioned should work in DS.

 

[Gadget Girl]

WoHo! I figured out how to do something in DS. Well okay, I figured out how to do something in theory in DS. If I actually had to find the buttons to click I'd be very lost.

 

[Pendraia]

lol...I've had similar aha moments with Poser!

 

[Kerya]

Uhm - for your own morphs you just have to find the folder where DS saved your morphs ... data \ HiveWire 3D \ Dusk \ Base \ Morphs \ whateveryourfoldernameis
Copy that in a clean folder with the correct subfolder structure and you can distribute them for DS.
To create Poser pmd from them: Converting a DazStudio data morph to Poser PMD - PDF Tutorial

 

[Ken1171]

I love creating morphs with magnets in Poser, and almost all of mine were done that way. It's nice to be able to do everything without leaving the Poser (or DS). ^___^

 

[Pendraia]

I love to use Zbrush but hate using magnets or deformers...it's good that we're all different. I just love the power I have in Zbrush. Now you know I'm just a power junkie at heart...lol

 

[Ken1171]

I actually like both zBrush and magnets, but I will always favor the option where I don't have to leave Poser.

 

[RAMWolff]

I love to use Zbrush but hate using magnets or deformers...it's good that we're all different. I just love the power I have in Zbrush. Now you know I'm just a power junkie at heart...lol

Same. Magnets are old school for me. Every so often I'll mess with the D-Formers but never get the results I like PLUS if your mess with the head it affects everything, you can't mask off stuff like eyeballs or inner mouth areas so EVERYTHING gets deformed. Not a great method if your working on the face.

 

[Seliah (Childe of Fyre)]

Same. Magnets are old school for me. Every so often I'll mess with the D-Formers but never get the results I like PLUS if your mess with the head it affects everything, you can't mask off stuff like eyeballs or inner mouth areas so EVERYTHING gets deformed. Not a great method if your working on the face.

Actually, one of Erik's morphs that I made from the d-forms is a face morph. And near the eyes. It's a morph to adjust the top of the nose bridge's depth, where it sits between the eyes/eyebrows on Dusk. Worked fine, no deformation of the rest of the face.

The d-forms do offer more control than it first appears. They're just fiddly and a little tedious to work with is all. But you can control how much or how little of the mesh is affected by the d-form when you work.

I will do a tut on these soon. It just has to wait until I'm back in town Monday and have gotten the dirt overlays sent to QA.

 

[RAMWolff]

It's just too bad they don't update these with a way to mask off areas you absolutely do not want affected. Looking forward to your tut as I always keep an open mind!

 

[Pendraia]

@Seliah, yes I agree they are definitely fiddly and tedious, which is my main dislike of them. I just prefer ZBrush these days.

 

[Ken1171]

CatsEyes was created with magnets. ^^

 

[Pendraia]

That just shows us how truly talented you are Ken...

 

[Seliah (Childe of Fyre)]

It's just too bad they don't update these with a way to mask off areas you absolutely do not want affected. Looking forward to your tut as I always keep an open mind!

The way d-forms work, Wolffie, the only areas that will be altered are areas that have dots on them. The "field" part of a d-form is where you define what will - and will NOT - be affected.

But yeah, they are super fiddly. Tut will come in a few days, I promise. You'll see more then. LOL

 

[Seliah (Childe of Fyre)]

@Seliah, yes I agree they are definitely fiddly and tedious, which is my main dislike of them. I just prefer ZBrush these days.

Yup! I did all of my adjustment morphs on my Christmas sweater with d-forms. They could do with some improved workflow for sure! LOL

CatsEyes was created with magnets. ^^

Wow. Nice, Ken! I've made lots of morphs over the years via the magnets, but nothing that extensive. That's serious skill with the magnets.

 

[Ken1171]

What I like the most about magnets is that it's a non-destructive tool. At any times we can save all magnets to the props library and later reapply them to the model to do changes, or to create variations of the morphs. It also allows us to keep the morphs separated into different parts we can control individually. Poser magnets can also be "rigged" with weight maps for finer vertex control, and we can change the weights at any time.

As an extra bonus, if we reshape a body with magnets, we can make the clothing fit the new shape using the same magnets. That's what we were doing when we "magnetized" clothing with Vicky4. We can make a magnetizing preset that takes care of that. No wonder V4 became the most popular figure ever - she was rigged with magnets, including her JCMs, so we ever so rarely had to make JCMs for her clothing. That simplified things a lot, and worked well in both Poser and DS.

 

[Pendraia]

Deformers in DS can be weight mapped also I found that out recently. I used to find I got lots of poke thru with Vicki in DS but Genesis and smoothing modifiers fixed that as they add a collision option. I find having them in clothing at default works beautifully with most poses.