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Universal Anime Head

Pendraia

Pendraia

Sage
Contributing Artist
All I know Ken is that I've seen presets to fix eyeballs for character morphs from other artists. In the end it's up to you what you do or don't do. I was just trying to help but I'm going to bow out and leave you to it. I get the feeling I'm annoying more than I'm helping.
 
Ken1171

Ken1171

Esteemed
Contributing Artist
No, no, I welcome all suggestions, and I appreciate them! Sorry if I sound like I don't. :)
 
Pendraia

Pendraia

Sage
Contributing Artist
Sorry Ken...I've been home sick today and I'm probably a bit grumpier and sensitive than normal with it. Please ignore my previous post.
 
Ken1171

Ken1171

Esteemed
Contributing Artist
Last night Paul has clarified that the binary DSF morph files auto-generated from the figure are not what I thought, but compressed files instead. The reason I thought they were not was because DAZ doesn't use standard compression like Poser does, so the files had no PK signature I was looking for. After decompressing the files, they are all compatible now, but I will still have to change the file paths to be able to replace the originals, since they were saved under a different path and name. If this works, we may have a solution. It's a pain to do, but only a few morphs need fixing.
 
Ken1171

Ken1171

Esteemed
Contributing Artist
First try has failed, but I did a lot of small mistakes, so I have to try again. When we create a new figure, DS places the morphs on the "Morphs" folder, but any changes are stored at a "Base" folder, and there are also the mysterious "Alias" duplicates I have no clue about. This is where I realize that making morphs and ERCs for Poser are child play comparing to this. DS adds several layers of complexity that leave my head spinning. How in heaven do people learn this without any documentation?
 
RAMWolff

RAMWolff

Wolff Playing with Beez!
Contributing Artist
Too bad there wasn't a batch decompression script for internal files like that. :ninja:
 
Ken1171

Ken1171

Esteemed
Contributing Artist
I have used the "Batch Convert" tool to decompress all files in one pass. That makes sense since DS is not using standard ZIP compression like Poser does. We can open and extract any Poser compressed files using generic ZIP tools, like WinZip, WinRAR or 7Zip, but DS uses some other kind of compression. That's why I have previously thought they were just plain proprietary binary files.

The issue now is that I have to create an extra morph to adjust the eye size before I ERC it to the Eyes Width morph. In Poser I can ERC anything to anything, and with as many keys I want. We can even edit the curve these keys make in the ERC timeline with the dependency editor. Now in DS we can only have a single key, and we cannot ERC scaling directly. First we have to make a morph that handles the scaling, and then we can use that to create the ERC that goes into a negative range. That's why some Poser ERCs stop working when imported into DS. They are not handled the same way.
 
RAMWolff

RAMWolff

Wolff Playing with Beez!
Contributing Artist
Ken1171 said:
I have used the "Batch Convert" tool to decompress all files in one pass. That makes sense since DS is not using standard ZIP compression like Poser does. We can open and extract any Poser compressed files using generic ZIP tools, like WinZip, WinRAR or 7Zip, but DS uses some other kind of compression. That's why I have previously thought they were just plain proprietary binary files.

The issue now is that I have to create an extra morph to adjust the eye size before I ERC it to the Eyes Width morph. In Poser I can ERC anything to anything, and with as many keys I want. We can even edit the curve these keys make in the ERC timeline with the dependency editor. Now in DS we can only have a single key, and we cannot ERC scaling directly. First we have to make a morph that handles the scaling, and then we can use that to create the ERC that goes into a negative range. That's why some Poser ERCs stop working when imported into DS. They are not handled the same way.
Click to expand...
Well that totally sucks on the DS side of things then. Grrrrrrrrrr Limitations like that are just stupid! :mad:
 
Ken1171

Ken1171

Esteemed
Contributing Artist
Looking at how DAZ has been handling things, I expect incompatibilities to keep growing with every version. It's pretty incompatible as it is already.

Even if Paul's suggestion works, it's a pretty cumbersome solution and it will take a lot of effort since we cannot ERC things directly like in Poser. I will have to create many extra morphs to compensate for the shortcomings.

One of my beta-testers suggested I add some extra info on the README file, giving instructions on how to handle the pokethrus when they happen, since they can be easily handled with simple operations. I have been using the head like this for 2 years, and it was fine with me. The issues are few and easy to handle. Not sure if HW or the general public would like that, though.
 
A

akuei2

Inspired
Ken1171 said:
Looking at how DAZ has been handling things, I expect incompatibilities to keep growing with every version. It's pretty incompatible as it is already.

Even if Paul's suggestion works, it's a pretty cumbersome solution and it will take a lot of effort since we cannot ERC things directly like in Poser. I will have to create many extra morphs to compensate for the shortcomings.

One of my beta-testers suggested I add some extra info on the README file, giving instructions on how to handle the pokethrus when they happen, since they can be easily handled with simple operations. I have been using the head like this for 2 years, and it was fine with me. The issues are few and easy to handle. Not sure if HW or the general public would like that, though.
Click to expand...
No problem.It fine will got tutorial support for small thing happen.
 
RAMWolff

RAMWolff

Wolff Playing with Beez!
Contributing Artist
Well you are allowed to spank me since I suggested you bring this to market. I'm sorry to have you stressing about this mess. I've just discovered, what I think is, a bug in the Symmetry dialog. Alisa has my next pose pack and is internally testing it and ran into a slew of issues. I fixed one, looked great in Edit Pad Pro and all the numbers look within range. Used the Symmetry dialog to mirror it... all the numbers are doubled up in the M version of the newly resaved pose. WTF! :mad: SO I submitted a bug report to DAZ (not even going to cross my fingers about getting a fix) and wrote Paul with all the info I could give him. So while this isn't about ERC's it's just as annoying and pisses me off that DAZ concentrates on new toys rather than making sure there is an ease of use and SOLID code to make things happen correctly! It's a turn off, BIG TIME! :mad:
 
Ken1171

Ken1171

Esteemed
Contributing Artist
I have tested Paul's suggestion (convert to triax, save changes, replace morphs), and I can't make it work. I copy the morphs, fix the paths, but when I load the figure, the new morphs won't show up. In addition, DS crashes when I close the program. I have tried restarting DS, for maybe it was caching the existing morphs, but the changes still won't show. That was my last option to make this work in DS.

Before I even tried to do all this, my beta-testers were already saying the issues were easy to adjust, and there weren't many anyway. They said they didn't mind it, and extra instructions on the documentation should suffice. But I am a perfectionist, and wanted to have it fixed the "proper" way - just to find out that it can't be fixed. Paul was telling me I should had started this on DS, but it was done 2 years ago and I had no intention of ever selling it. It was for personal use.

One reason I wouldn't want to start things in DS is the fact that it doesn't have anything to help creating morphs, like for example the Morphing Tool in Poser. We have to go work in another programs, such as ZBrush, and then go back to configure it on the figure. In Poser I can do everything without leaving the program. Even though the Morphing Tool is not as good as ZBrush, it has dedicated tools that are specialized on content creation that ZB doesn't have, like the conforming brush. That alone can do things that ZB can't, and it saves a lot of time. Not to mention the times when morphs look different after imported back in Poser.

The funny thing was that I thought the head should work great in DS since this figure doesn't use weight maps, but I was not counting on ERC incompatibilities. If anything, I have learned something new with this experience. ^^

The only alternative is do leave it alone and add more info on the ReadMe file.
 
A

akuei2

Inspired
Ken1171 said:
I have tested Paul's suggestion (convert to triax, save changes, replace morphs), and I can't make it work. I copy the morphs, fix the paths, but when I load the figure, the new morphs won't show up. In addition, DS crashes when I close the program. I have tried restarting DS, for maybe it was caching the existing morphs, but the changes still won't show. That was my last option to make this work in DS.

Before I even tried to do all this, my beta-testers were already saying the issues were easy to adjust, and there weren't many anyway. They said they didn't mind it, and extra instructions on the documentation should suffice. But I am a perfectionist, and wanted to have it fixed the "proper" way - just to find out that it can't be fixed. Paul was telling me I should had started this on DS, but it was done 2 years ago and I had no intention of ever selling it. It was for personal use.

One reason I wouldn't want to start things in DS is the fact that it doesn't have anything to help creating morphs, like for example the Morphing Tool in Poser. We have to go work in another programs, such as ZBrush, and then go back to configure it on the figure. In Poser I can do everything without leaving the program. Even though the Morphing Tool is not as good as ZBrush, it has dedicated tools that are specialized on content creation that ZB doesn't have, like the conforming brush. That alone can do things that ZB can't, and it saves a lot of time. Not to mention the times when morphs look different after imported back in Poser.

The funny thing was that I thought the head should work great in DS since this figure doesn't use weight maps, but I was not counting on ERC incompatibilities. If anything, I have learned something new with this experience. ^^

The only alternative is do leave it alone and add more info on the ReadMe file.
Click to expand...

Ha-ha, you are right!
Perfectionist is easy self-disappointed no matter how much good jobs are done, 0.1% fail always in-count as 100% fail.
I feeling as same.

Finally, the alternative ways is better than restart again at D|S .
Ya, more info in read-me file is good enough!
 
Ken1171

Ken1171

Esteemed
Contributing Artist
The alternative was not to release for DS, and that's rather drastic when the problem itself is rather minor.
 
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