Development status
Added 2024-05-18 20:02:43 +0000 UTCHi. I've made some good progress on the technical side and UI. Not much progress on the morphs yet, however I'm pretty confident that the acceleration based morphs won't take long to create.
The joint angle based morphs are more labor intensive to do because of the requirement to start the sculpting of each morph from a different pose (specific joint at a specific angle), and those poses can't be done within DAZ on the base Genesis 2 figure because of how the bones are positioned and rotated in DAZ compared to VAM. I need to export the object from VAM in the correct pose and then sculpt from there, otherwise it won't look right when imported back into VAM. The joint angle morphs are also technically more difficult to sculpt, and involve more background research into reference poses etc.
I'm aiming for the next release to have acceleration morphs (maybe not the final versions, but something close to that), and then the releases after that to add the joint angle morphs into the mix.
The next release will also have a new feature called Bone Offsets.
Bone Offsets
In VAM, morphs can contain bone morphs (aka bone formulas) which are just position/rotation offsets that target specific bones in the skeleton. You may be familiar with the red cog symbol shown on some morph sliders in the Female Morphs tab which indicates that the morph has bone morphs.
Turns out, it's possible to apply these offsets programmatically (on the fly) without requiring actual morph files.
In the Bone Offsets window of the upcoming Shapeshift module, you can configure every major bone's x, y and z position and rotation. Current UI with some test adjustments applied:
The reason for including this in Shapeshift (as opposed to a separate plugin) is because the positions and rotations of bones can have a drastic effect on the shape of the skin mesh around the bone/joint. The plan is to include a default setup that's optimized for the plugin's built in joint angle based morphs, or rather that the morphs will be optimized for.
An example of such an optimization would be shifting the shoulder bone closer a bit towards the collar bone so that the shoulder bends more naturally by default. The angle morph targeting the shoulder's rotation along each rotational axis will then be based on this new bone position:
Other completed tasks
Acceleration morphs will be known as g-force morphs, and all acceleration units will be expressed in g's (1 g = 9.81 m/s^2)
Storing g-force morph and angle morph configurations in plugin data (and restoring from)
Multipliers on the overall effect of g-force and angle morphing
Implemented a somewhat intuitive visualization of the current amount of g-force in the direction relevant to the selected morph configuration, as well as a similar visualization for the change in angle of the selected angle morph configuration. I will demo these in a video that explains the basics of how to use the system.
Table formatted overviews of g-forces and angles affecting the whole body (helps with forming an understanding of the system, and for debugging angles at different poses etc)
(a bunch of polishing of the Shapeshift codebase)
Thanks for reading!
-everlaster
Comments
It will be possible to have any morph to be adjusted with any joint angle. How good the result looks will depend on the quality of the morphs themselves. I definitely want to see how far I can take things by adding more and more morphs for targeting specific poses, but as mentioned, the focus at first is on the chest and glute areas. The joint angle and joint g-force morphs targeting those areas will form a base layer of morphing that the morphing in TittyMagic and BootyMagic will then build upon. Subdermal movements is an interesting idea. Even a relatively small subdermal movement would require multiple morphs, each applying the same subdermal shape but on a slightly shifted part of the mesh, and those morphs would then be applied in succession to produce the movement. It sounds overly complicated to do with VAM1 technology. I think it will be easier to do in VAM2 which reportedly will support direct runtime control of the mesh (without needing morph files as a go-between).
everlaster
2024-05-19 17:11:23 +0000 UTCI cant help thinking that something as "simple" as a shoulder roll or a dance movement would really come to life with something like this.. I guess its technically difficult though
ShadeAura
2024-05-19 16:08:59 +0000 UTCjoint angle based morphs sounds interesting, would it be possible to simulate back bone when bending forward and hips and ribs when bending backwards or to the side etc? and ribs when breathing hard for example. I guess that is already difficult but if it was not vertex fixed could it also simulate subdermal movements?
ShadeAura
2024-05-19 16:03:29 +0000 UTCThe joint angle morphing (Angle Morphs tab) will be similar to Joint Correct in how it works (applies morph values based on joint xyz angles), but will be fully configurable. The morphs that will be included at first will be specific to the glute and chest areas, but additional morphs like knee/elbow bends and such can be added later, or as custom morph configurations by some creator/user. The bone offsets however are technically completely different from Joint Correct, although the purpose is similar in that the goal is to make the joints behave more realistically. It's not applying actual morphs at all, it's just repositioning and rotating the bones that are part of the DAZ G2 skeleton. You can show the skeleton in-game by enabling Debug Joints in Control & Physics 1 - in Shapeshift the debug joints will be enabled automatically when editing the bone offsets.
everlaster
2024-05-18 20:13:26 +0000 UTCVery nice! So it's something like JointCorrect more or less? I'm aware VAM figure is a little jank, but I wonder if it could potentially help with weird looking armpit areas (looking nice on screenshot). Very often I see there's an unnatural gap there, even when using JointCorrect, and I have to dial down a bit shoulder area scaling. I assume it's just innate limitations though.
babul
2024-05-18 20:06:52 +0000 UTC
