Zero or Restore?
marble
Posts: 7,500
With the later releases, DAZ has made a change to the way we zero poses. I have a keyboard shortcut (Shift-CTRL Z) which has been a quick way to do this but now I have a decision pop-up and I am not sure of the difference even though the pop-up has an explanation. Please could someone clarify the difference? I am wary of using Zero because I don't want all my custom morphs and shapes to be removed but I am also not sure wht "default" means. I am not in the habit of "memorizing" anything on the character so what does "memorized" mean in this context? Bear in mind that I never use characters out-of-the-box ... all of my characters have quite a lot of my own dialled-in morphs and they're what I don't want to "zero" out.
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
If you zero the figure, you get the base figure in base pose - No morphs applied and all the bones in their default position.
If you dial in your character and you want a method to clear the pose and any additional morph dials you have used, "memorize" the figure (in base pose) and you can use "restore" to clear you figure from all the poses and morphs that were not in "memorized" state.
If you want to just clear the pose, you don't have to zero the figure, but you can also zero the pose, although I find using Zero Pose from pose packs faster to use.
OK - so my keyboard shortcut (Shift-CTRL Z) is for "Zero Figure Pose" and that's what I want to do. I DO NOT want to clear my morphs (and end up with a base G8F). But I am still unsure about which of the pop-up options to use. Also, there is no cancel option for that pop-up - we have to choose one.
I have noticed that the zero from Pose Packs often leave the feet posed for high heals. Sometimes that's exactly what I want but at other times I want to return to the basic A-Pose.
Restore is the same as the Restore command, Zero is the same as the Zero command always has been.
The point of the pop-up is that it is very easy to break features (even on the base Genesis 9 - the control enabling joint corrections for example would be turned off by zero - but older figures could have issues) and so a warning is given. Restore will restore the figure to its loaded (or last memorised) state which is probably what you want for the base figure but may not be what you want for a character (and there may be times, for example when a rogue morph has been saved with a non-zero value, when restoring is wrong). In most cases choose Restore, be aware that you may need to reinstate some things if you use zero from necessity.
Zeroing or restoring the pose will not affect (properly typed - Modifier/Shape asigned) morphs, and vice versa. A zero pose will affect only properties that were present on the figure from which it was saved, so if a high heel pose comes from so,ething the creator did not have it will not be zeroed.
You could save a Properties preset from a figure that was correctly set, then apply that after a zero to reset the things that should have non-zero values - just be aware that you may need to update it from time-to-time in order to manage new properties that need non-zero values for their proper function.
Thanks Richard - I hope that most of that information will sink in as I continue but I have to say that these zero/restore options have always confused me even before the addition of the pop-up. I don't have (nor do I intend to buy) any G9 characters so I would prefer not to have the pop-up if that's possible.
I also use a shortcut linking to a script to Zero Pose as the standard Zero function is pretty slow. To me it's simple and clear, use Restore if you wanna all defaults back, use Zero to set all dialed values to 0. I mostly use Restore to reset shapes while Zero to reset poses.
But as marble said, the new dialogue is a little bit annoying ~ There should be a toggle in F2...
I think the popup is a kind-of lazy solution to the issue. It's a bit worse than that actually. It's a modal window I cannot cancel. I would add another menu to go along with restore and zero if that's needed to prevent issues. When I select zero I know I want to zero as that's what I selected. I didn't select restore. Daz is second-guessing my intention. Just make it clear on the menu what the options are.
And do you know that you will lose some features of Genesis 9? Do you know to turn them back on (which is how the equivalents would be after zeroing an older figure)?
That's an issue for the UI developer to sort out, preferably by not irritating the user (who isn't even using Genesis 9).
Pickle Renderer is correct, the dialog is annoying. I get it, Zero and Restore are different. A side effect of this is that some resource scripts are now broken as anything that makes use of Zero stops working until that dialog is answered, that is exactly what a Modal dialog does. And it pops up for all Zero actions, not just Zero Figure.
There are better ways to handle this, as an example; if the zero action is part of a Custom Action Daz could be smart enough not to invoke the dialog. If you directly invoke a Zero action from the Edit menu you could pop it back up. Still not a perfect solution, but better than what we have now.
There is an option that scripts can use to suppress the dialogue - it's listed in the chnage log, though I can't immedaitely find it.
Sorry, I thought this was a thread about the options dialogue for saving - no wonder my search was failing. The relevant section for the zero command can be found here http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/change_log#4_21_1_14 , no thanks to me.
I accept all the explanations about the difference between zero and restore but I'm not sure whether I understand the definition of a default value. What determines whether it is default? I think default values are those that might be non-zero but are greyed-out in the parameters panel but I'm still not sure how they have been designated as default.
When you memorize a figure, you are setting all the dials as default (for that figure) in their current state. When you restore that character, that state is where it is returned.
If you zero a figure, all the dials are set to zero.
That's probably why I wasn't sure - I rarely memorize. Indeed, I've only recently started using memorize so that I can use the dForce option of starting from memorized but even then I am not sure whether I am doing it right - the simulation often ignores my memorized position.
I use memorizing all the time, as it allows me to take one of my dialed-in characters and try different things and if the result was no good, restore brings back the original figure I started with.
At some point there were also problems when one saved a character preset without memorizing the character first, when one brought that character into a scene that already had other characters using the same base figure, the character didn't come out looking as it was saved - That was when I started routinely memorizing figures whenever I got something I liked.
Thanks for the tip - I will experiment. I use morphs extensively to create my own dialled-in characters but I always save them as Scene Subsets. However, I can see how it might ne useful to have a restore point while creating these characters and before the final save. As I say, I tend to use Scene Subsets rather than character presets or any other preset.
Using a Character Preset to load a new figure will also memorise the current values for that particular figure in the scene.
"Current values" being which, exactly? Not only morphs but also pose, translation/rotation? Also surfaces (materials)? What about geografts?
With Geografts I have not yet found a way to save a character with all the geograft morph sliders intact. They tend to retrun to defaults.
Perfect, I find the changelog, especially for beta releases very dry reading and I likely would have skipped over this little nugget if you hadn't found it. It will prove very useful.
I just tested this and my method still works as normal. In fact, depending on what you want to zero this may be a better solution... see: the problem with zero'ing a pose is that it will also affect the position of the figure within the scene which is something you often don't want to happen if you're working in a specific area within your scene.
So what I usually do is combine 2 options: "select children" and "zero selected item(s)".
This allows me to reset any part(s) of a figure without it affecting anything else but the actual pose. And well, no annoying pop-ups either.