How do I Save and Then Apply A Weight Map I Created?

Ghoulsby

So I've altered the weight map of Genesis for the first time, but I was wondering, which of the many save files am I suppose to use to save this mapping so I can apply it to other Genesis figures? I watched the official tutorial on the topic but they never mentioned it.

Thanks for the help!

wancow

Save As:Support Asset:Figure/Prop Asset

wancow

To save the Material Presets: Save As: Material(s) Preset

patience55

'K, I'm gonna ask.

Why would one want to change Genesis' weight maps? Link for official tutorial is what?

wancow

Patience55 said:

'K, I'm gonna ask.

Why would one want to change Genesis' weight maps? Link for official tutorial is what?

Ditto... why?

Ghoulsby

I've used the weight maps to attach the lower jaw anatomy to the lower jaw bone (still works identically with expression poses if you leave lower jaw angle to 0 degrees). Also, a shoulder fix for the protruding/dislocated shoulders that appear when the arm bends up above 60 degrees or so. That's just a start. There are really a ton of tweaks you can do to make the figure better. Ones so simple I can only imagine they didn't do it to add features to gen6. But who really knows.

patience55

Ghoulsby said:

I've used the weight maps to attach the lower jaw anatomy to the lower jaw bone (still works identically with expression poses if you leave lower jaw angle to 0 degrees). Also, a shoulder fix for the protruding/dislocated shoulders that appear when the arm bends up above 60 degrees or so. That's just a start. There are really a ton of tweaks you can do to make the figure better. Ones so simple I can only imagine they didn't do it to add features to gen6. But who really knows.

I dub thee "Dr Ghoulsby", Genesis Doctor :-)

[ ... the tiny rumble you hear in the background would be the growing volume of the cry for tutorials! ... ]

kitakoredaz

I understand what you try, yeah,, I sometimes to think about color weight for genesis jaw,,
and actually I made many JCM to correct and modify original character morph
around sholder and forArm.. and for poze expression,,,

But,, I do not try change weight-map of default genesis,,,
I am scared.

because, if I change it,, it may effect about every morph and clothings of genesis too.

we can not choose weight-map for each cahracter.
and most of clothings weight map are made to fit genesis weight-map and rig movements.
or they apply JCM MCM to modify them for each character.

I do not know the way to change weight map for each character morph,
and I can not change clothings weight map which fit to genesis.

I have not found the way. just know we can change valudge weight value with ERC if we hope.

Usually,, I think ERC JCM and MCM seems only way to modify shape with rig rotation

But I know,, about many case,, to modify weight-map seems more effective way.
I hope and request weight -map presets.

Ghoulsby

Patience55 said:

Ghoulsby said:

I've used the weight maps to attach the lower jaw anatomy to the lower jaw bone (still works identically with expression poses if you leave lower jaw angle to 0 degrees). Also, a shoulder fix for the protruding/dislocated shoulders that appear when the arm bends up above 60 degrees or so. That's just a start. There are really a ton of tweaks you can do to make the figure better. Ones so simple I can only imagine they didn't do it to add features to gen6. But who really knows.

I dub thee "Dr Ghoulsby", Genesis Doctor :-)

[ ... the tiny rumble you hear in the background would be the growing volume of the cry for tutorials! ... ]

The funny bit is I'm a complete nooblet when it comes to 3D modeling/DAZ/Poser/etc, but yeah I might put up a tutorial at some point since it appears people don't realize how easy this is to do. It took me maybe 15 minutes to get it all working as I wanted it.

I understand what you try, yeah,, I sometimes to think about color weight for genesis jaw,,
and actually I made many JCM to correct and modify original character morph
around sholder and forArm.. and for poze expression,,,

But,, I do not try change weight-map of default genesis,,,
I am scared.

because, if I change it,, it may effect about every morph and clothings of genesis too.

we can not choose weight-map for each cahracter.
and most of clothings weight map are made to fit genesis weight-map and rig movements.
or they apply JCM MCM to modify them for each character.

I do not know the way to change weight map for each character morph,
and I can not change clothings weight map which fit to genesis.

I have not found the way. just know we can change valudge weight value with ERC if we hope.

Usually,, I think ERC JCM and MCM seems only way to modify shape with rig rotation

But I know,, about many case,, to modify weight-map seems more effective way.
I hope and request weight -map presets.

Well everything that fits the Genesis Figure, as I understand it, is actually fitted to a Genesis Shell that mimics the Genesis Figure. If the Genesis Shell dynamically, or on application, copies the data from the Genesis figure then it shouldn't really matter (within reason) what modifications you make to the figure because it should all pass through to the shell. However, you're right that things would start breaking if the Genesis Shell is based on the original Genesis Figure and doesn't receive any modifications.

kitakoredaz

when you modify the weight map,, you must need to save it as figure and prop.As wancow said.

if you really hope to overwrite the genesis weight map,you just need to save it as same name, same directory.
(I would not do it)

if you save it as different name, or different folda, it means you make new figure
with new weight map. (with all genesis morphs and all rigs and all uvs ,copy genesis mesh)

then,, my understanding is,,, ,,(I do not know,, if it is different what you said)

how I tweak genesis weight map,, the weigth-map never transfer to the clothing.

there is no direct link between genesis weigth map and clothing (fit-to) genesis.
when I use transfer utility,,I can copy weight map from gensis, or templates,,
.but after that, there is no refference. it means,, all clothings do not know
genesis weight map have changed.

and all character morphs for genesis (which have many JCM to modify shape when rotate some rigs )
do not know,, genesis weight map have changed.

So i think,, if I change wieght map of genesis, I may need to adjust all again.

Ghoulsby

kitakoredaz said:

when you modify the weight map,, you must need to save it as figure and prop.As wancow said.

if you really hope to overwrite the genesis weight map,you just need to save it as same name, same directory.
(I would not do it)

if you save it as different name, or different folda, it means you make new figure
with new weight map. (with all genesis morphs and all rigs and all uvs ,copy genesis mesh)

I was under this impression as well, that modifying the weight map wouldn't change the base file, unless you resaved over the initial Genesis files, however, here is a loose description of what I did and what has occurred...

1. Loaded Aiko 5 default actor.
2. Selected Lower Jaw bone in scene selection.
3. Selected Weight Map Brush Tool.
4. Painted new X-Rotation weight map on lower jaw anatomy.
5. Adjusted till it looked right.
6. Selected full Aiko 5 figure.
7. File > Save As > Support Asset > Figure/Prop Asset... "Lower_Jaw_Fix.duf"

What I expected was to be able to load the default Genesis/Aiko with a non working lower jaw and load/import/merge my support asset file to apply my modified weight map after which the lower jaw would be functional again. Unfortunately, it appears that I have modified the original assets, because now any figure I load up has my altered lower jaw weight maps by default. I suppose the only way to restore the default weight maps would be to reinstall? I don't even know what particular file contains the default weight maps (maybe I could revert by overwriting with someone else's unmodified file?

Also, I can confirm, that the lower jaw fix, as I did it, does not transfer the modified weight map properties to relevant assets (such as a super-suit with a face-mask). However, if you aren't dealing with a wardrobe piece that the jaw can clip through, my fix works perfectly and allows me to create some great images showing monsters/vampires/etc with their mouths stretched very far to show all of the frightening teeth!

I guess my point is, until I have a better understanding of what is going on, I wouldn't recommend anyone try this. That said, due to the lower jaw being a generally unused bone, I don't think you can do much damage by modifying it. The shoulders, however, can and apparently will mess up quite a number of things.

patience55

No I'm also not wanting to overwrite the original Genesis figure ... I made a character that required a rig adjustment and saved that out as a character [new name] file once ... in D/S4.0 ... found that it not only saved my new figure but included with it EVERY other morph etc that Genesis had ... that was one big file. Got deleted too.

As to tuts ... you'll find many of the free ones actually are written by beginners ... aka trail blazers.
Then hopefully somebody who does know 'all the ropes' launches out the better quality tuts ... but you'll find even they were trail blazing just that they have more experience/knowledge to know which forest to be hiking through.

Bejaymac

This isn't Poser, so you can't save mesh/WM/rig changes to a preset that you can then INJect into any character.

There are only 3 things you can really do with these kind of changes to a Tri-Ax figure -

1) "File > Save as > Support Asset > Save Modified Asset" - This will replace the original asset dsf with the data from your scene, this is fine for editing morphs but tbh should never be used to save changes to a figure, if you make a mess of things then you will get a block figure instead of Genesis, which means you will have no choice but to reinstall.

2) "File > Save as > Support Asset > Figure/Prop Asset" - Give the DUF a different name to Genesis, then when the Asset window opens change all of the authorship data from DAZ3d's to your own, DS will then save all of the Genesis data, including your changes, to a new location in the "data" folder, this will give you two copies of Genesis and all of it's asset files, the untouched original with all of it's morphs, and your modified version with all of it's morphs.

3) Save as a scene or scene subset, the mesh/WM/rig changes should be saved into the DUF file and applied to Genesis each time you load the scene file.

Ghoulsby

Bejaymac said:

This isn't Poser, so you can't save mesh/WM/rig changes to a preset that you can then INJect into any character.

There are only 3 things you can really do with these kind of changes to a Tri-Ax figure -

1) "File > Save as > Support Asset > Save Modified Asset" - This will replace the original asset dsf with the data from your scene, this is fine for editing morphs but tbh should never be used to save changes to a figure, if you make a mess of things then you will get a block figure instead of Genesis, which means you will have no choice but to reinstall.

2) "File > Save as > Support Asset > Figure/Prop Asset" - Give the DUF a different name to Genesis, then when the Asset window opens change all of the authorship data from DAZ3d's to your own, DS will then save all of the Genesis data, including your changes, to a new location in the "data" folder, this will give you two copies of Genesis and all of it's asset files, the untouched original with all of it's morphs, and your modified version with all of it's morphs.

3) Save as a scene or scene subset, the mesh/WM/rig changes should be saved into the DUF file and applied to Genesis each time you load the scene file.

Could you explain or speculate on what might happen if someone followed steps 1 through 3, but didn't change the authorship info during the save process? I didn't even see/notice an "asset window" after saving the DUF file under a different name.

patience55

Bejaymac said:

This isn't Poser, so you can't save mesh/WM/rig changes to a preset that you can then INJect into any character.

There are only 3 things you can really do with these kind of changes to a Tri-Ax figure -

1) "File > Save as > Support Asset > Save Modified Asset" - This will replace the original asset dsf with the data from your scene, this is fine for editing morphs but tbh should never be used to save changes to a figure, if you make a mess of things then you will get a block figure instead of Genesis, which means you will have no choice but to reinstall.

2) "File > Save as > Support Asset > Figure/Prop Asset" - Give the DUF a different name to Genesis, then when the Asset window opens change all of the authorship data from DAZ3d's to your own, DS will then save all of the Genesis data, including your changes, to a new location in the "data" folder, this will give you two copies of Genesis and all of it's asset files, the untouched original with all of it's morphs, and your modified version with all of it's morphs.

3) Save as a scene or scene subset, the mesh/WM/rig changes should be saved into the DUF file and applied to Genesis each time you load the scene file.

Thank you :-)

#3 sounds good to me!

kitakoredaz

Thanks bejaymac,,

then I know, weightmap and rig modification should be saved, whan save it as scene subset. or scene.
I belive so.. (I think ds 4 and duf is desigend to save them)

but,, when I saved it only as scene or scene subset,,
after that ,, one or two days after,,, I load them then checked it,,
I feel,, they can not keep wieght -map changing.

I do not know where is problem,, or I may say mistake,,
but as for me,, I can not rely on scene or scene subset
to keep weight map modify . I must save it as figure and prop again.

and about save modified assets,,, I may check it with my small simple figures,,
if it work about weight-map changing too,, it seems more easy to tweak weight map for me.

(because I often save so many same figure to modify simple weight-map, in my current work folda,,
and finally I can not find which figure is my current modifying figure^^;)

but anyway,,, I may never try save genesis as another figure to modify originall weight map.

1 reason is,, same as Patience 55.

and the other is,, I know these modification about orignal genesis and make ideal figure,,
may need so long time,,(there seems no end for me,,)

when I think about rig problem,,, I can not do anything with the character and daz studio untill finish it,
I everyday tweaked original morphs again and again to make my ideal shape with pozing.
and hope they may work as same as product controller,,, so set ERC,, but about some value,,
when mix bend and twist,, it cause new problem,, then make new morph ,, set ERC,,,

So that,,, now I seldom set ERC for genesis.
if there is problem,, just export current shape,, then modify them,, re-import,,
and change value manually when I need only. after that I delete controller,.

Now I do not hope so many .and lern to pretend,
as if I can not see the problem . just wear clothing,, or rotate rig little bit,,
or hide the part,,, yes,, there seems no problem ^^;

Bejaymac

I don't need to speculate as I've done it just to see what would happen, and then again every other build to see if they changed anything.

When you load a Tri-Ax figure (Genesis, mil horse2 or clothing etc) the DUF file you used only holds a small part of the required data, the rest is in DSF asset files in the data folder. While that figure is in the scene DS keeps checking those DSF asset files as they are "live", you see this when you spin a morph dial, there is a slight delay before the morph works, that's the deltas being loaded directly from the asset file. Now when you modify a figure either by changing the grouping, the WM or the rig, then DS flags those changes as the figure is no longer the same as the asset file DS is referring to, so when you use "Save Modified Assets" DS already knows which asset file(s) it's going to be replacing with the data from the scene. With morphs you can spin the dial and it wont get flagged, but change the path, change the name or even just changing the dial color will flag it.

"Figure/Prop Asset" writes everything in the selected figure/prop into the data folder, even if it's an existing figure/prop like Genesis, the only way to stop it overwriting an existing figure/prop is to change the authorship data in the asset window (see pic), this will cause DS to write a second copy of the figure/prop's asset files into the data folder, but into a different sub folder than the original that way they don't clash.
I get the feeling this is why we still get "Genesis is loading morphed" threads, as the idiots have used "Figure/Prop Asset" to save their characters rather than the character or shaping presets they are meant to use.

As for the scene & subset, I haven't had any reason to save WM/rig changes like that, I usually just use "Save Modified Assets", I do know that it saves any group changes I found that out when I tried to help out with the supersuit debacle, so I assumed it would also save any WM/rig changes.

kitakoredaz

Thank you again to teach about saving .

I must use save modified assets about weight -map pending from todya.

I hope if you or richard write clear guide about all options, especially about saving option
daz offer us in daz studio, I may buy them ,,please offer with tender price,, )

Then I remember about old daz stuido4, when I save modified assets,
it record and overwrite morph current value.
after that,,, DAZ remove it from save modified asset in next version..

but at same time, daz changed the way to save morph . if user saved morph with some value,
genesis loaded with the morph value. so that everytime,, when user asked how to make and save morph
in this forum,,I felt l if need to someone mention about it.

then,, I do not remember clear when daz change the way,,
but now when I save the morph with value,, it do not change and record current value.
I remember about each case,, there is bug report,, so that daz remove them.

but,,,,usually these basic problem or question may not need to ask other.
if make some mistake,, usually we can solve by myself easy , then study them.

because usually,, aprication which need to use their products, should have clear documents especially about save option.
I think these true kind useful manuall is joke of daz.

http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/interface/action/index/dzsavemodifiedaction/start
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/interface/action/index/dznodeassetfilteraction/start