Muscle-Based Deformation
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The male morph was created with Modo. My aim is to create a series of morphs for both the male and female to cover a wide a range of character customization as possible within Daz itself. I'm interested in an exaggerated, caricature-like look hence the extreme proportions. Right now I'm working on the puppetry aspect of the figure so I didn't get a chance to add extra morphs. To cut the answer short: no, the figure can't do what you said but it will in the future.
Wow! Thanks for the info.
Love the work. Awesome results. (But I am not seeing anything that "hasn't already been done before", using Maya. Not by default, but with skin, muscle and bone plugins.)
Yeah, I'd pay for that too...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spIRr9OcODk
Here is a video from 2012, same muscle system, I believe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIsttuOO3NU
At some point, you just can't use full-frame "weighting", done by hand. You need actual scripting and muscle-formulas, which are based off individual bones, not "fixes", and "generic form morphs". (Eg, move three fingers, now twist an arm. Then move those same three fingers again. The deformation is not the same as just bending three fingers in a relaxed arm, as they are in a twisted arm. Taking into account the actual "bone shape". Like how our shoulder is not attached to the socket, by a solid beam, it's an offset beam, creating our shoulders and determining flex, which can't be "guessed" from a linear bone going from the socket to the elbow, because there is no bone poking through our armpit.)
Not going to get into "unstressed muscle motion", VS, "stressed muscle motion". Even at the same flex, the results look nothing like one another. Hold a paperclip, now hold a bowling-ball, with your arm extended. One shows massive flex and "tone", the other is more like a soft deform.
Seen here, in this video of a horse running at various speeds and styles. Though the actions are the same, the deformations are not, by stress-loads on the muscles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKaD76wdMNU
You are at the limits of a singluar-skin deformation tool. Your only real option is to, like Maya does, use multi-skin deformers, if you want to ALSO get body-types and an accurate portrayal of body-shape reactions. At the moment, the results you are getting, will never portray "fat plus muscle", because you are just deforming the muscle, and fat, on top of muscle, is neither the same form or reactions to the same bends.
However, the shapes of the muscles underneath, does ultimately determine the potential shapes of the fat above. Unfortunately, the more fat, which is never uniform, the less deformation is bound to any muscles. It becomes bound to itself, as the deformation of adjoining surfaces. Eg, a thigh full of cellulose, joined by a knee that has no fat, connected to a lower-leg that only has fat on the calf and not on the shin-bone. It is too complex of a deformation to be portrayed by any "muscle deform", only. Especially since you would not see any muscle deformation, just bending and folding and wrinkling of the cellulose.
Also, muscles don't just get bigger. They get bigger at specific parts, which also alters the way they deform too. So, all of these specific deformations will only, ever, be true to this specific muscle-form. Expanding the muscles out, to be larger, will result in deformations that no-longer function as desired, and the whole model will require a specific "fix", for every individual muscle that can be adjusted, individually. (Or you would have to settle with something like a simple "all or nothing", "fix", which is simply a transition from low muscle-mass to a high muscle-mass body, still devoid of "body fat", which would need another individual set of "fixes". A body with tiny muscles and lots of fat is not going to deform the same as a body with lots of muscles and a little fat, but they both look the same, in shape, by fattness perspective. The one with more fat and less muscle will be less reactive to the muscles deformations, while the one that is just a "thick muscular body, with some fat", will still show muscle deformations, but not as much as a body of the same thickness which has zero fat.)
If you believe that people already achieved in Maya what I did within Daz then it means my method is truly revolutionary. To give you some perspective, in order to achieve a realistic deformations you need:
- high end processing power
- expensive professional 3D package
- skin deformer add-on
- muscle add-on
- bone add-on
I achieved better and more realistic results, with real-time performance, on a free software package, with zero plug-ins, and zero programming.
Nope. My aim is faux 2D animation which cannot use typical 3D animation techniques otherwise it will break the 2D illusion. The foot-floor contact thing is indeed a serious problem for animating. I did come across a workaround that keeps the feet in place. For instance you use the pose tool and lock the feet at Frame 01. Then go to frame 10 and move the figure around as you wish. The interpolation severly messes the feet placement making the whole 10 frame animation unusable. But if you save the pose at Frame 01, then the pose at Frame 10, then erase the whole animation, then load the first pose at Frame 01 and the second at Frame 10 the program will interpolate correctly.
Daz is also not just sitting there as is. Maya and 3dsmax are industry standards because they were there when the industry started. They're slowly being replaced by more versatile and more stable programs like Modo, Blender, and hopefully some day Daz. Users have been complaining that Maya hasn't had a real update in years whereas Modo went through 5 iterations in 2 years. If things are a certain way it doesn't mean they will stay that certain way forever. I see great potential in Daz.
Example of Daz animation with stable feet: LINK
Here's a video of the eye-rig: https://imgur.com/a/6pEN3Em
Awesome! I just spent 5 minutes looking at your foot demo. Wow!
Just as a matter of interest, how do you erase the whole animation? I couldn't figure out a way so I asked here and got a couple of good tips but I'd like to know how you do it.
Here's how I did it the first time I tried: started from a new scene. I did delete the frames but something always stayed, got frustrated and went to a new scene altogether. This is how I came accross the workaround. Because it was a new scene I had to reimport the poses and thus discovered that the interpolation worked properly.
I did install add-ons like keymate and it does seem to be doing a better job at frame management though I didn't do any test runs with it whatsoever.
Thanks - I guessed that was what you meant. I too get frustrated by the fact that there is no effective "clear timeline" button or the ability to save a frame as a scene (or scene subset) without bringing along the rest of the timeline too.
In your rig you use JCJ (joint controlled joint)? How does export this rig to other 3D packages - Blender3d or game engines?
Holy crap. Your stuff keeps getting more amazing, Fuzz!
Anyone saying this is a "waste" or has "already been done before" is off their rocker. For DAZ, this is a whole other level and I'm amazed!