Making a Fitted Figure Attach Itself With Geo-Grafting™ (WIP)

2012-04-25T18:19:38+00:00

Making a Fitted Figure Attach Itself With Geo-Grafting™ (WIP)

This page is a WIP. There are likely to be incomplete and or missing steps while the page is being built.

Summary

This page will describe the process of taking an articulated mesh that is designed to Fit To another figure, for the purpose of adding or replacing a portion of that figure with itself, and cause the mesh of the fitted figure to seamlessly integrate with the mesh of the base figure while it is fit to it. This process makes use of the new Geo-Grafting technology that is available in DAZ Studio 4.x.

Process Overview

Build a mesh that shares coincident boundary vertices/polygons with the host it is intended to graft to.
Construct a skeleton and rig it as you would a typical figure that is meant to fit to another figure; i.e. clothing or hair.
Fit the grafting figure to the host figure.
Select the polygons on the host figure whose collective edge boundary corresponds with the open edge boundaries of the figure being grafted.
Assign the selected polygons on the host figure as the Graft Faces for the Fitted figure.
Assign the selected polygons on the host figure as Auto-Hide Faces for the Fitted figure.
Save the grafting figure assets to the new figure file format.
- Set the Content Type of the grafting figure to one of Follower/Attachment…
- Set the Compatibility Base of the grafting figure.
- Set the Compatibility of the grafting figure to the Compatibility Base that represents the host figure.

Foundation

Prior to the existence of Geo-Grafting technology in DAZ Studio 4.x, when a figure was built to take advantage of a Catmull–Clark subdivision surface, any add-on figure whose purpose was to extend that figure by adding new geometry had little choice but to include a significant portion of the base figure's mesh in the mesh of the fitting figure in order to account for the smoothing effects of the Catmull-Clark algorithm. The need to do this stemmed from a desire to create the appearance of a smooth transition from one organic shape into another. Copyright concerns and eula restrictions aside, while this approach was better than abruptly ending the mesh and creating a “stabbed-in” look, it still suffered from misalignment of boundary edges with their base mesh counterparts, particularly at sharp angles, and required tricks with opacity/transparency maps that often result in parallax errors.
This process requires the use of the polygon_group_editor to select and assign polygons to specific groups from within the Viewport.
The Polygon Group Editor is a Viewport Tool included in the Content Creator Toolkit (CCT).

Step By Step

Note: These steps assume you have already launched DAZ Studio 4.x. That you have loaded the figure that your item will graft to, into the scene. That you have modeled, UV mapped and rigged the item you wish to graft to another figure, as a figure, in accordance with the geo_grafting and geo_grafting pages. That your figure has been rigged using TriAx™ Weight Mapping technology and that the figure you will be grafting to is also built on that technology. And finally, that you have your figure already loaded into the scene.

Step 1: Prepare the Figure

Details

Step 2: Define the Graft

Details

Step 3: Save the Figure

Details

Documentation Center public:software:dazstudio:4:userguide:creating_content:assembling:tutorials:geo_grafting

Making a Fitted Figure Attach Itself With Geo-Grafting™ (WIP)

Making a Fitted Figure Attach Itself With Geo-Grafting™ (WIP)

Summary

Process Overview

Foundation

Step By Step

Step 1: Prepare the Figure

Step 2: Define the Graft

Step 3: Save the Figure

Wrap-Up