1. Thomas Larsson Avatar Thomas Larsson
  2. Diffeomorphic
  3. import_daz

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import_daz / Setup / Morphs / Import Custom Morphs

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Import Custom Morphs

The tools above only import standard morphs that were made by DAZ for genesis characters and located at standard locations. However, they can not be used to import morphs for clothes, hair or geografts, nor to import morphs made by other vendors. To import such morphs we use the Import Custom Morphs tool.

import-custom-morphs.png

A file selector opens, with the file path set to a directory where morphs for this mesh should be located. The options are:

  • Use Rig Property Drivers: Create drivers for the loaded morphs.
  • Category: Name of the category to which this morph(s) belongs.
  • Body part: Part of the character that the morphs affect.
    • Face: Transferred to lashes by Easy Import DAZ.
    • Body: Transferred to clothes and geografts by Easy Import DAZ.
    • Custom: Not transferred by Easy Import DAZ.
  • Treat HD Meshes: How to deal with vertex count mismatch for HD meshes:
    • Error: Raise errors.
    • Create Shapekey: Create empty shapekeys.
    • Active Shapekey: Drive active shapekey.

Navigate to the directory where the full body morphs are located. Select FBMPearFigure and FBMThin, and choose Category to be Shapes. We can select either the .dsf or the .png file, the .dsf file will be loaded in either case. Finally we press Import Custom Morphs to load the morphs.

A new panel called Custom Morphs opens up. At the bottom the category Shapes contains the two loaded morphs, corresponding to the twodriven shapekeys. Each categories contain sliders for the morphs that belong to it, and a pin button to set this slider to 1.0 and all others to 0.0. The sliders in each category can be hidden by unselecting the corresponding checkbox.

The new options at the top are

  • Open All Categories: Show the sliders of all categories.
  • Close All Categories: Hide the sliders of all categories.

pear.png

At the top of the Shapes box we again have buttons selecting and keying properties. However, these buttons only affect the properties in this category, whereas the buttons at the top affect all custom morphs, independent of category.

Turn up to PearFigure to 1.0. Aiko grows fat, but she has not bought bigger sized clothes to match. We will fix that later.

In a previous version of the DAZ Importer, there was a separate button to import custom JCMs. This is no longer necessary, because the Import Custom Morphs tool will recognize JCMs automatically and create bone drivers for the shapekeys.

import-custom-jcms.png

Navigate to the Aiko directory and import all JCMs. We can easily select them by filtering with the string pJCM. Set the category to JCMs and the body part to Body.

custom-jcms.png

The corrective shapekeys are driven by bone rotations when Aiko is posed.

adjust custom jcms.png

The JCMs section in the Custom Morphs panel is empty, except for a slider that adjusts the overall strength for all morphs we just loaded. This slider can be used to mix JCMs from different characters. Say that we create a character which is 30% Aiko and 70% Victoria. Then we can import custom JCMs for both characters, and set Adjust Aiko to 0.30 and Adjust Victoria to 0.70.

notes from Thomas added by Alessandro Padovani.

The PBM morphs are part of the character definition and are typically baked into the dbz file, so it is not a good idea to load them separately. If you do, there should be matching FBM morph that you must set to the same value, e.g. PBMLegsLength and FBMLegsLength should always have the same value.

https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/issues/1552/

One needs to be careful when importing custom morphs. It is usually best not to import FBM and JCM morphs, because most of the time those files only contain the shapekeys and not the formulas for the drivers. Instead, import FBMs and JCMs to the base character and transfer the morphs to the geograft; the transfer tool automatically loads the geograft shapekeys if it finds any. However, the mix jcms pJCM_ThFwMix_L and pJCM_ThFwMix_R (which triggered the error) have to be loaded, since they don’t have counterparts for the body and have their own formulas.

OTOH, it doesn’t hurt to import the other jcms too, provided that you also transfer them from the body later to get the drivers. The plugin only has to do some extra work but the end result should be the same. Normally we don’t want to import FBM morphs at all, since they are baked into the dbz file.

So importing custom morphs can be tricky, but I don’t want to move the button to the advanced panel, since it is something that I do frequently.

https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/issues/1563/

The problem is that both the left and right headlights have a bone called Nipple. When you merge rigs with the default settings, in particular Create Duplicate Bones enabled, the merged rig has two bones called HeadLight_L:Nipple and HeadLight_R:Nipple. Therefore no bone called Nipple was found. Note that the GP bones do not have a prefix, since they are unique.

You must then import the morphs with Use Suffix set to Geograft. Although the name of the option is bad, since it is a prefix rather than a suffix. See https://diffeomorphic.blogspot.com/2021/11/morph-suffixes.html.

https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/issues/1565/

note by Alessandro Padovani.

Now that we have daz favorites and baked correctives in 1.7.0 there is little use for custom morphs. We can just use easy import with those features instead that's much easier. Geograft suffixes for easy import are included too in 1.7.1. Then if easy import fails that means the morphs are complex and you have to reverse to custom morphs, but at least common morphs are now easy.

https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/wiki/Setup/Morphs

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