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SickleYield — Fun With ERC Freeze in DS4.5: Chain Blades
Published: 2013-04-03 18:39:51 +0000 UTC; Views: 3113; Favourites: 14; Downloads: 31
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Description
Planned as an upcoming product at Rendo, then a larger pack at DAZ. The things you can do with ERC freezing and Pose Controls are just incredible. Features that took days of work followed by expensive external programs with Poser can be done in an hour with DS4.5 Pro thanks to its rigging and control features.Promo Credits:
DAZ Genesis and Morph Packs
DAZ Marrakesh Soukh props
Nathalie/Subgraphick Takashi skin
SickleFuse Shadow Warrior clothes
Lit and rendered in DAZ Studio 4.5 Pro. No post.
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Comments: 29
These blades are so awesome, they're my new favo MA-weapons.
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Thanks, a lot of people seem to like them. 
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What is ERC freeze? i've never heard of it?
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It's a feature of DAZ Studio that can be used to rig long-chain items and pose them.
[link]
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Yikes! Posing a chain like that would have me in Bedlam inisde 30 minutes!
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Good thing it only takes two, then.
This ain't EasyPose.
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So ... not that I have the ability or skills to do it, but could this be used to "fix" something like Vayne Braid after Asset Transfer? I figured out that if you simply do a direct Transfer the normal way, without making any changes, the transfer wipes out all of Vayne's own bones and morphs. However, if you merge the skeletons, Vayne keeps its own bones -- they wind up in a weird place, because Vayne doesn't normally have the rest of the skeleton, but they're there -- but all the morphs are nonfunctional. It's kind of Easypose-ish, so do you think this process might restore the functions?
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Maybe, how do you merge skeletons? I'll try it with another braid I have.
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It's under Transfer Utility > General Options. Click on "Weight maps" -- not the box, but the words, to highlight them. Over on the right side, three items will appear in Extended Options:
- Remove Unused Bones (UNcheck this option; it's on by default, and I think it sees Easypose bones as unused ghost bones, because they don't have weight-map equivalents)
- Respect hidden facets on target
(No idea what that does. I tried this a while ago, and couldn't quite figure it out. Checked it anyway, since my guess was that it allowed Transfer Utility to recognize that the possibly non-weight-mapped Easypose bones were there. The shiny new documentation on the feature just repeats the words in the box, which isn't precisely helpful.)
- Merge hierarchies: Checking this allows Transfer Utility to slot Vayne Braid's bones under the Head bone of Genesis (braid Head bone merges with Genesis Head bone), and allows the Easypose bones to appear underneath the head. You'll get the entire Genesis skeleton as well, but at least the braid's own bones come along for the ride, and it might be possible to use Property Editor to remove the rest of the skeleton later, maybe.
The transfer process seems to zero all of Vayne's own bones and morphs, even after all this, so they don't do anything.
Although ... it has just now occurred to me that if you do all that, do the transfer, then put another copy of the braid into the scene and transfer source morphs, maybe that will work too. Hmm. Have to give that a shot.
And documentation, such as it is, seems to have appeared on the wiki just a month ago, a few weeks after I last tried this:
[link]
Doesn't really say much useful, though.
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You don't have to do that at all. Here's what you do. Fortunately V4's body parts use a lot of the same names as Genesis.
Load the braid. Use Scene Tab edit--rigging to change to TriAx.
Run Transfer Utility from Genesis to the braid, using Morph/V4 or Clone/V4, and UNCHECK Weight Maps and Morph targets.
We don't need Genesis weight maps because we generated perfectly good ones by switching to TriAx.
Now It doesn't look like it fits right, but that's because of head bone translation issues which are VERY fixable.
Go to Bone Tool and select the head.
Now open a Tool tab and look at the settings. You must change the Center Point, End Point and Orientation values to match those of Genesis' head. In my Genesis they are, going down the list of nine values:
0
161.84
-2.28
0
179.57
-2.34
1.45
0
0
Conversion distorts the lower part of the braid just as it would a long skirt, but since it's a braid we can narrow it with xscale and mostly fix that.
Try it and let me know if it works for you?
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Actually, come to think of it, I *won't* try with Blue Soul. I think it has the same sort of lazy modeling that you mentioned with Amazing Braid; when I weight map it and try to move one of the braid sections, using some of the bend/twist/side-side translations just makes the braid section detach completely. Which does not sound like a thing that should happen, weight map or no.
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Tsk. No, that sounds like an inappropriately split geometry, and when you've got that you're just screwed as far as conversions.
Thanks for getting back to me, at least we have a method that can sort of work when we're really desperate to use an item.
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I think there may just be something truly odd about how Vayne Braid is put together. For one thing, it doesn't actually have a head bone -- I was mistaken earlier about that, but if you merge the hierarchies, it does attach itself to Genesis' head bone, which was how I got confused.
Anyway, when I try your method, using the main bone of the hair itself, it seems to work up to a point, but a fairly hefty chunk of Genesis' head still pokes through the top after I type in the Tool settings changes -- which, considering the pile of hair wrapped around the braid, is saying something. I thought at first it was a Y translation issue, but my Genesis head bone is essentially in the same location as yours, so that shouldn't be the problem.
I tried a couple of variations. One of the things a few of us discovered, when we were working with RAMWolff in the initial hair conversion attempts with 4.5 in that huge meandering thread, is that using the fit poses that come with hair sometimes put it in the right place for conversions to work. Vayne comes with V4 fits, so I tried that. The first time, because I did things in the wrong sequence, I wound up with hair both fitted and parented to Genesis. Which worked beautifully, until I realized what I'd done and unparented the hair, to discover that while Studio says the hair is fitted to Genesis, if it's not parented, it won't move with Genesis. But it does change shape if I change Genesis' shape, as much as it can, which is ... weird. Creatures with long necks, like Starman, seem to stretch it and do weird things with it. So apparently it is fitted enough to change shape with the Actor, but not fitted enough to move with Genesis. I didn't even know that was possible.
The second time, I did everything in the right sequence, and had hair that was only fitted, and not parented. And again, it won't stay connected and move with Genesis if I translate Genesis on the XYZ axes. I haven't seen anything like it; my only guess is that because the hair does lack a true head bone, it doesn't connect properly, maybe? No clue.
Anyway, the only method that actually worked is one that I screwed up at the start. And it shouldn't work, but it does. All the pose presets work, it needs minimal tinkering to put in the right place in the head, and it changes shape (within limits) when the actor does. Good enough for now, I guess. Just very strange.
I may try again later with Blue Soul, which I *think* does have head bones, and which does lose its morphs when converted. Then again, that's so complicated that I may confuse things even more. We'll see, I guess.
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If you can confirm results I"ll do a tutorial on the forum for it. I used the Amazing Braid from Rendo because it was cheaper than Vayne, but it has very lazy modeling (the braid sections are NOT intertwined) and I wouldn't really recommend that one.
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Thank you for another great tip and tutorial! I'll try experimenting.
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Awesome, I'd love to see if you make something!
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Awesome! So many possibilities!!! I just read your tuts and after a brief brain-hurt moment I was pleased to realise what a handy tool that is! You're so tech-y! I love reading all of your helpful hints and tutorials.
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Thank you!! I know this isn't for everybody, but for the ones who are, it can be frustrating to find good workflows (not at all the same as the kind of documentation that tends to be in manuals). So when I learn something new, I like to share it - it also helps solidify it in my own mind so that I don't forget it.
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It's confusing how the chains appear to hover in the air, isn't it? Because obviously you can't see him.
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It's a very useful set of features in DAZ Studio 4.5 Pro's Property Editor tab.
It can be used to link a morph to a joint or vice versa. You can create joint-controlled morphs by turning a morph on when the arm or leg is bent. You can also set a pose as a morph dial or "pose control," which is what I did here. I posed the chain by selecting all the children of one bone, setting them to 45 degree bend, and then freezing the ERC to create a pose control. From then on, that creates a morph dial that can be used to move the bones into position.
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Sounds so good, thanks!
Is there a tutorial for it?
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