Optimizing eyes for Unreal
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Posts: 5
Hi, I'm working on an animation project in Unreal. We've hired a company to build some characters, and they're using Reallusion's CC3 as a base mesh. I have to say, having used both CC3 and Daz3D, Daz is much better. Reallusion is a horrible company if you ask me. Some of the biggest issues I've had with characters from Daz, though, is the eye setup. While it works great for a renderer like iRay, it's really not ideal for something like Unreal. I don't need all the excessive layers of geometry. Does anyone know of any way to swap out the eye geometry of a Daz Gen8 model with something else? Ideally, I'd love to drop in a simplified eye with the same UV's as the metahuman's, so I can use their eye textures. Or even just grab the metahuman geometry and use that. Does anyone know of any way to do this?
It would be amazing if Daz would make a modified base mesh that maybe was adjusted for use in Unreal. Man, I'd pay good money for that. Better than giving Reallusion my money.
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Comments
Well the good news is there is nothing unique about the eyes that replacing them with your preference should not be an issue. For example you could hide the eyes in Daz Studio so they are excluded during the export to Unreal 4 and replaced as a component with in the character BP.
I did up a how to video back a bit that is out of date but should give you some sense on how to do this that I never made public as it's out of date
The other good news is now that G3 and G8 are covered under open source better solutions will be solved in due course.
Thanks frankiev888_28. I've been looking for ways to avoid doing the Unreal fix to get the eyes looking correct. It would be nice to create a new, modified base mesh in Daz that already has the new eyes attached to the rig. I've experimented with this, but I think I always had problems with the eye rotation being off a bit for some reason; so the eyes wouldn't sit properly in the eye sockets when they were rotated. I haven't tried replacing the eyes via a blueprint though. I'll keep experimenting I guess.......
Well the way things are going I would expect that at some point eyes will be solved at the source level as it is clear that Daz3D is shooting for a 1-1 fidelity match and with a developer grant from Epic is also being encouraged by Epic directly. In away Daz3D, in partnership is being paid to improve cross platform compatibility between Daz Studio and Unreal 4-5.
In the mean time as a digital asset G3-8 are not app bound as the models are first consolidated to your document folder from which it is then imported into Unreal 4. What I do to make corrections is to import the FBX from that folder into 3ds Max, modify the requirements, and export over the consolidated model. Doing a reimport solves the small problems, skin weights for example, and also add mapped eyes from Metahuman model and make us of Metahuman materials.
Thing is a model is a model and with editing skills and tools you can force things to work the way you need it to and not settle for what is given at a push of a button :D
Someone made a tutorial for swapping out the eyes. Hopefully it has all the info you need.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/434292/using-the-unreal-engine-eye-shader-with-daz-characters
Some good tips.
Also to consider if an element is hidden then the hidden elements are not exported as part of the consoladated model. If you hide the left and right eyes they wiil be excluded when imported into UE4. You could also do the same for other parts so if you just want heads with morph targets you hide everything that is not part of the head. You could also go this root for 1st person hands on a G3-8 rigged character.
Which brings up an intresting point. Eyes are not unique for the most part as to the overall shape of the character so a set of eyes could be configered like a prop and added and attached as such. I believe at some point this is what will happen as eye sets could be made for the different game engines out there and make us of ready made materials
The eyes also probably have the weakest material on the Unreal side currently. I spent more time on the Hair and recently on the Skin for the new PBRSkin shader. I need to go back and do a pass on the eye materials.
A way to do it at the source.
YES! That's exactly what I was looking for. It works like a charm. Thanks so much frankiev888_28!
Your welcom. Besure to give GutoCrafts thanks for making the resource avaiable. :)
Yes, definitely will. His eye assets are a lifesaver. Thanks to everyone else who replied as well.
hmm while i do loved the fact which the eyes are a "single material" which make it much better when comes to polycount they where actually "high than daz eye, a full daz eye counting all the "parts" is like 1k less while this 'unreal eye" is almost 1600k vertices much bigger than daz, a full daz character normally is around 18k tri with they default eye when you add this "new eye" they go around 19k+ which means they have more polygons than daz eye, but the fact which they are not break into different parts and you use a single material is really what make then more "amazing to work" reducing the drawback of too many material zons which normally in unreal you would adress using id maks maps like you do in substance paint.
Edited to fix unfortunate typo
hey hey!
Because I am creating a base model off of which we will be generating all the characters for a UE4/5 project I felt that the empty eyes were a bit lackluster while editing the base model.
Because of that I rendered out the meta-human eye shader as a texture and set it up as a material for Daz.
You can grab it here (for free if you want): https://luos.gumroad.com/l/DazMetahumanShader
if GutoCrafts wants, he can add it to his GitHub repo related to the eyes.
(Aforementioned GitHub repo can be found here: https://github.com/guto88/Epic-Eyes-Geometry-for-Genesis-8.1)
Example:
Need help from Daz experts! I'm using gutocraft's eyes and by default they are too small, you can see the skin inside the eye socket. But then if I try to move or scale them they poke through the eyelid, especially when the eye closes.
I tried to setup the smooth modifier on the body so it will push the eyelids but it pushes the whole socket (see attached screenshot)
Does enybody knows if I can tell daz to push only the eyelids? Like painting some kind of map on the body which says: "here you can push, here you can't? @Richard Haseltine