Face units, facs and other assets don't adjust automatically after converting to MHX

[Jake]

Yep so another issue. Basically after converting an armature to MHX, what I mentioned in the title don’t work properly. And they work just fine before converting an armature to MHX. Some of them work just fine, others don’t, even if I add a value of 1.000, until only when I use the “keyset” function.

For example, in Face Units, eyelids and eyebrows inner and up don’t work at all if I don’t use the keyset function and it’s pretty difficult making fine adjustments with having to press that button all the time. And they get adjusted automatically outside of MHX rig.

Am I missing something? Before, they worked just out of the box without having to insert any additional keyframes or do anything really. I personally don’t see any options for toggling something like this.

[Alessandro Padovani]

importer 1.7.4.2051, mhx 1.7.4.0117

I can’t reproduce the issue here, everything works fine unless there’s specific steps. Be sure to update both the importer and mhx.

my steps:

1. Easy import G8F with “face units” and “transfer to face“ and “make bones posable”.
2. Convert to MHX.
3. Do some animation with face units. I can adjust any face unit both with and without keyframes, the shape is updated in the viewport while I adjust the morph.

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[Alessandro Padovani]

p.s. bug. make bones posable.

@Thomas, I see that “make bones posable“ is removed from the default presets in easy import, that’s a bug and probably why Jake has issues.

[Thomas Larsson]

No, I cannot reproduce the problem either. If the channel has keys and auto keying is disabled, the pin and X buttons don’t work, and any changes to the sliders disappear when you change frame. But that is normal and not mhx specific.

[Jake]

Well I have version 1.7.3 of Diffeomorphic, I’ll see if that is present in the experimental version.

[Alessandro Padovani]

1.7.4 is not “experimental”, it’s the development version including the latest fixes. When reporting a bug it is essential to use the development version. Unfortunately the 1.7.3 “stable“ version is not granted to be bug free, and fixes in the development version are rarely ported back to stable.

In general, personally I always use the development version for a new project, after ensuring that everything I need works fine, otherwise I report a bug. If I started a project with a previous old version then I stick with it for that project. Same for the other blender addons as well as the blender version itself.

[Jake]

I tried it on yet another fresh import in 1.7.3 and I can use the units just fine there after converting to MHX.

However, in the other finished scene I’m working on, I noticed that if the imported units, facs and other face control adjusters, that don’t have actual shape keys attached to them, just won’t budge. FACs work fine because they have shape keys.

I also tried removing all units, facs and other things I had on the model in a duplicate test scene, then tried reimporting them and now they won’t even change when the armature isn’t even changed to MHX. Though FACs still work after deletion and reimport.

I’ll try 1.7.4 next and see if the same things happen there.

[Jake]

I might have figured out the issue. It’s probably because I combined some old clothing physics related bones when I was redoing the scene, which apparently imported some old custom properties to the new armature and now the new armature has broken. The expressions probably work in the pre-MHX rig, because I imported them before I combined the bones with the new rig, so when I update the rig with the MHX rig system, the units break as well.

[Alessandro Padovani]

Then if there’s nothing to add we close as invalid.

[Jake]

Yep, I think that was the issue. I deleted everything from the scene, except the armature, then deleted all but the bones I needed. Then I used a script to delete every single property in the entire scene. Then I imported a fresh model to the scene, imported the units, combined the old bones with the properties removed, then deleted all standard morphs, then reimported them and the units work fine with the old physics bones.

I also tried the new import, but without the custom properties removed from the old bones and after I reimported the units, only the bones with (drv) marked were moving. The model itself wasn’t budging. I also checked the finished scene after I had deleted the standard morphs and reimported them, but there not even the bones with (drv) were moving with the units.

Such a shame noticing this after I’m pretty much finished with everything.