MOCCA Morph tag + Symmetry generator

[Kokosing]

You'll be fine.

After you've made the symmetry editable, you'll need to mirror your morphs. This will give you individual control of the two sides.

Morph targets use the vertex numbers to identify which points get moved. When you make your symmetry editable, you create new points (with new numbers.) They won't get any morph target information until you mirror the morph target.

W

[pjz99]

That's what I'm saying. When I make the symmetry editable, and I mirror the morphs, the center line of points gets the morph two times. This happens whether I leave the morph tag's mode as Relative, or I force it to Absolute at every step.

[pjz99]

Well, I found a workaround using the Morph brush:
- Model w/symmetry
- Add morph tag, build morph target
- Make symmetry editable
- Make a point selection for the center line of points
- Mirror morph target
- Apply the mirrored morph
- Select the center line of points
- With the Mocca morph brush tool, brush the base morph onto the center line of points, for the mirrored morph
- Combine the two morphs, and the center line only gets the morph one time

Is there a way to exclude the center line of points, or does this have to be done for each and every morph target? Seems a bit dense.

[Kokosing]

Apologies, I didn't realise which step you were at. In my (limited) experience with face rigging, you've got to keep in mind that any overlap between morph targets can potentially overdrive the vertices' movement. So in this case the center vertices are getting the morph twice when you activate both targets.

If you're hell bent on not changing your morph targets, you could play with the morph deformer or the morph brush and try to control the influence of the morph target. Then once you get a satisfactory result save this out as a new morph target. But that seems a little excessive.

W

[pjz99]

That workaround I posted earlier actually works fine, a bit tedious but a lot less tedious than redoing the entire model and morph targets. There ought to be an option "ignore symmetry line" when mirroring a morph target.

[LucentDreams]

next time, add your morph target AFTER making the symmetry. Then you can make morphs on one side and flip them to the other side, and if you want one whole more thats symmetrical you can combine two morphs.

Also you should check out Fabians plugins for morphs they will make creating symmetrical poses and such even easier than using the morphs mirror functions.

[pjz99]

I thought about doing the morphs after symmetry, but how can I use tools like Brush -> Smooth or soft selection and restrict changes to only one side of the model? If I move any points that are to the left (e.g.) on the symmetry axis, while doing the right side's morph, then when I combine the morphs the changes on the left side will be mirrored onto the right side. I don't see an easy way to be certain the morph is entirely symmetrical without using ... symmetry :/

Do you have a link for the plugins you're talking about? I'll look for them myself also, thanks.

[pjz99]

http://www.studio-fabian.de/Images/downloads/newPlugs/DirectMorph/Manual.html

It sounds like his plugin can restrict a morph target to only selected points, which would be okay too. Thanks.

[LucentDreams]

you can use the morph deformer to restirct any part of a morph too. so instead of having two morph targets, one for left and one for right, you have on whole morph and use two deformers to split it. Fewer targets means less memory consumption.

[pjz99]

That's a little better:
- Model with symmetry
- Add morph tag. build morph target
- Make symmetry editable
- Make a point selection of the right side, minus the symmetry line
- Add a morph deformer as child of the model
- Add a restriction tag to the deformer that is set for the point selection of the right side
- In the morph tag, Flip X (e.g.) for that morph
- Dial that morph to 1
- In the deformer, dial the flipped copy of the morph to 1
- In the morph tag, "Freeze State" to combine the two morphs into a single symmetrical morph

Thanks, that is quicker to do than brushing the morph out of the flipped copy of the morph, although it's still rather boneheaded - not your fault, thanks for the suggestion. I'm going to mail Maxon and whine about this I guess, it shouldn't be this many steps for what seems to me would be a common requirement.

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.