Issue with master bone in complicated animations.

[bouich jules]

Hello!

I raised this issue few months ago, and i’ve quickly closed it because i though have nothing to do with the plugin.

but now i’m almost sure it’s about it,

here is a quick 20s video:

https://streamable.com/880ezr

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let me explain, the MHX master bone stay at the bottom of the character at the end of the animation but in blender it does not.

This is a major major issue when you want add a pose or another animation after your initial animation end. because it will send you to the other side of the map.

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For exemple let’s say you want to walk then you want to use a sit animation that you will import with blender.

it will just not work because the master bone in the walk scene is miles away from the sit animation.

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[Alessandro Padovani]

There’s an option when you import the animation to use the object or the master bone for the daz animation. To get the same as daz you have to use the “object” option for the main transformation. That’s what daz does.

The other two options “master bone“ and “none“ were introduced to fit some users need, but they don’t reflect what daz does. Then I don’t know if for mhx Thomas changed this behaviour for some reason.

About this there’s also an interesting note in the blender 3.0 specifications where, if I understand correctly, it seems it is no more necessary to switch between pose and object mode to move the object.

https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/3.0/Animation_Rigging

New keying set: Location, Rotation, Scale, and Custom Properties (rB7192ab61). Effectively, it combines the behaviour of Whole Character (selected bones only) (which keys loc/rot/scale/customprops, but only works in pose mode) with Location, Rotation, and Scale (which works in both object and pose mode, but doesn't key custom properties). This makes it possible to use one keying set for animating both characters and props.

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[bouich jules]

Thank you so much Alessandro im gonna give it a try in blender 3.0

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[Alessandro Padovani]

Nope, it seems the object transformation is broken for the daz rig too. That is, in daz the object is moved but in blender the root bone is moved instead, even with the “object“ option. Test animation included walk-g8f.duf.

This is also related to #217 #235 where similar issues were solved.

@bouich As for blender 3.0 the plugin is not tested for it yet so it’s not wise to use it atm.

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[Alessandro Padovani]

animation test for object vs root transformation

[Thomas Larsson]

There was indeed a bug: object transformations in DS affected the object, even if they were set to affect the master bone. That is fixed now.

However, Alessandro’s file was loaded correctly, because only the hip moves in DS as well. I made a new animation with two walk cycles and a jump in the object location halfways. That now correctly affects object, master or none depending on setting. For the native daz rigs, master = object.

[bouich jules]

@thomashow how did you make that jump in the middle?

my animation is similar to alessandro.

also how to make the master bone move with the hip ?

because when master bone and hip are far from each other, it make things impossible to add a new animation to the current one.

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[bouich jules]

my animation similar to alessandro.

[Thomas Larsson]

Well, you have exactly the same situation in DS: the hip bone moves but the figure itself remains at the origin.

So the plugin imports the daz animation correctly, which is as much as you can demand. If you want to keep the master bone close to the hip, you need to keyframe the figure translation channels in DS (at least X and Z) instead of the hip.

As for the jump, I actually made the animation in Blender and saved it as a pose preset. But that’s because I don’t really know how to do things in DS.

[bouich jules]

Thank you! i got it.

@Alessandro do you have any idea how we can transfer the hip channels to to the main channel automatically in DS ?

[bouich jules]

ok i got it, very easy lol

just copy selected items x and z from hip to master bone

make sure to delete the hip bones x and z, and master bone rotation.

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and it works smoothly when imported now!

thank you so much thomas.

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and alessandro i’ll close this issue if you dont mind

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[Alessandro Padovani]

Commit 40383b8 works fine.

Thomas, you’re right that walk-g8f.duf doesn’t move the object, I didn’t check it right sorry. I tested another animation that moves the object fly-g8f.duf and it works fine.

Bouich, yes please mark as resolved.

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[Alessandro Padovani]

animation that moves the object

[bouich jules]

thank you!