Daz Studio 4.5 Rigging

[pugman 1]

Blender rigging is so easy for basic poses ,and when you want full animation its also good but harder to learn.
i myself like blender for modling and rigging , rendering in vue .
I will not install another app from daz again i dont like them that goes for carrera to.

[Finis]

Thanks Pugman. Glad to know Blender is good for rigging. Now I will have a more positive attitude about learning it.

What was the problem with Daz stuff? If you just don't like the way it works that's fine. Everyone is different about what things suit their ways what does not. But I would like to know about any bugs or areas where it just doesn't work well. Especially with Hexagon.

I'll learn Bryce since I have it but I'd use Vue if I could afford it.

Nigec: It just sunk in that those Carrera versions were free. Might try that then but I think, unless Modo money should ever appear, I'll be using Blender for most things.

[Finis]

Some quirks in the weight mapping parts but it looks not too difficult after some learning. I am not sure of the correct way to save things in Daz. All save options seem to make a .duf file.

Daz has "TriAx" and "traditional" rigging/mapping. I think TriAx is just for Daz and traditional is portable to other programs. TriAx allows separate maps for X,Y,Z axes and some other things.

Their figures have both a hip and pelvic bone. Hip is the root bone. Root bones seem to effect the whole figure with few other options so I think skeletons need one just to start but that it otherwise is not connected to any poly groups or weight maps.

Here is HearO with a head bone and weight mapping. His head is moved in each axis.

[Finis]

Not much time for this lately but I have been trying the weight mapping. So far there are unintuitive procedures and it takes practice to learn the tools. Once learned, sometimes as rituals that may not make sense, the procedures are easy enough. Of course a good map will still require knowledge and skill so I won't be producing a good one for some time. No successes to show yet just experiments.

I found one concept that is important. 100% of the mesh is "weighted" to some bone(s) at all times. Adding weight for a mesh area to a bone takes it away from some other bone(s). It starts with the root bone (hip in their models) having all the weight. The entire mesh is 100% weighted to that bone before you do any weight mapping. It starts with all weight and has none when you are done.

Given the above, the most intuitive way to weight map things in Daz, for me, is to always think of adding weight and not think of removing it. Say you accidentally map an elbow to the shin bone. Don't think of removing that weight from the shin bone but rather think of adding it to another bone. (The one the elbow belongs to or the root.) Use the root as a reservoir of weight.

There are abilities linked to Ctrl-click or Alt-click for unmapping mesh but I don't know how they work yet.

A different issue. Although I named the bones the way Daz models are named the animations that came with the program don't work with mine. There must be more to that than bone names. I wasn't planning on using those but they could provide a good test of rigging.

[Finis]

I weight mapped HearO enough to pose his leg. The WM needs work but this is just to learn to do it. It seems better to start with a more detailed mesh. I don't know how to limit bone movements yet. I did create polygon groups in Daz corresponding to the bones. They act as IK handles. Although weight mapping is unintuitive the Daz interface is not bad. It has the universal manipulator like Hexagon and there is no need to use hot keys. The workspace layout you see in the official tutorial videos is called "self serve".

[v3rd3]

Keepa goin' Finis... I may have a project later this year that I might use Daz stuff to do.

[Finis]

Will do V3rd3. Probably I'll use Blender for easy stuff and Messiah for power ... if I ever learn all of that. I think Daz is fairly easy so far. I want to learn more than one rigging/posing/animating program so I have a better, broader, knowledge of it.

I've also been thinking about learning Daz's renderer since it is 3Delight. It does decent cartoon renders too.

When I finish experimenting then I'll start over with HearO and try to really rig him. I'll start with a more complex mesh, extracted SDS, and use the "legacy" weight mapping since it is simpler and I think it is more compatible with other software. The "Triax" Daz WM seems powerful but I think it only works with Daz. It allows separate WM's for 3 axes and scale and bulge, etc.