Jay Versluis

Daz Clothing with Chaos Cloth in Unreal Engine (Release Version)

Happy Saturday Supporters!

We've got heavy rain and thunderstorms down here in otherwise sunny Miami, and as such we've been dealing with patchy internet and threatening power outages. Nothing too drastic, but the state of Florida have issued a permanent flood watch in our area. That aside everything is fine, but I thought it best to postpone the Daz+ stream we had tentatively planned a couple of weeks ago. We'll do that on the last Saturday of June instead, I hope I'll see you there. 2024-06-15 19:35:22 +0000 UTC View Post

Motion Matching with a Daz Character 😊

Hello everyone!

Yesterday EPIC have released an interesting sample project featuring Motion Matching. That's a newfangled AI technology that blends a huge amount of small animations together for infinite variety on the fly. It essentially tries to predict where the player directs the character next and pre-empts the movements. I have no idea how this works, but it means that retargeting 500+ animations is impractical. 

This is where Live Retargeting comes in. I was able to re...

Follower Clothing in UE: Chaos Cloth Preview

Happy Tuesday my dear Supporters!

Today I have a video about Chaos Cloth, a new system that's been introduced in Unreal Engine 5.3 and sort of became usable in 5.4. It allows us to transfer weight maps from a rigged figure onto static fitting clothing, much like we can use the Transfer Utility in Daz Studio, with the added benefit of real time cloth physics. 

It's in beta at the moment, extremely buggy and a bit of a nightmare to setup, but works extremely well (if UE doesn't...

Texture Compression in Daz Studio - what is it and how to avoid it

Hello Supporters!

Last week we had a little discussion on Chris' Discord about a phenomenon some of you may be familiar with: texture compression in Iray. In a nutshell, Iray is trying to be helpful by compressing textures for both speed and maxing out VRAM, but it comes with the cost of lost details. It's enabled by default (naturally) and disabling it currently can't be saved with a scene file in Daz Studio. 

In this quick early access I'll tell you all about that phenomeno...

dForce to Groom Hair Preview (Supporter Exclusive)

Happy Memorial Day everyone!

Today I have a supporter exclusive video for you in which I'll give you a quick rundown of my emerging Daz Hair to Unreal Engine workflow. It involves exporting hair from Daz Studio into Blender (either card or strand-based hair works), saving it out as Alembic with a few special settings, and turning it into Unreal Engine Groom Hair. This then has a nice native hair shader and real-time physics. 

For the final release I'll de...

Combining Bump and Normal Maps in Daz to Unreal

Top of the morning, Supporters!

Today I have an early access video in which I explain how to combine normal and bump maps for things transferred with the Daz to Unreal bridge. Some objects are setup this way in Daz Studio, but the bridge can only transfer one map or the other, not both at the same time. We need a way to combine them so that the effects of both maps are arriving in Unreal Engine together.

There's two options for this: either use Substance Painter and combine those ...

Checking out Humanify for Blender and Genesis 9

Hello Supporters!

In today's early access video I'm having a quick look at Humanify, a new Blender product that promises instant photorealism for Genesis 9 figures. The idea is that any Genesis 9 mesh in Blender, no matter how it was imported, can benefit from an optimized human shader that looks rad and is easy to adjust for your needs. I thought I'll spend the $39 it currently costs so you don't have to, or at least to get a better idea if this thing might be useful.

• Eng...

  2024-05-16 15:45:41 +0000 UTC View Post

Installing the Daz to Unreal Bridge from GitHub

Howdy-ho Supporters!

First of all, I've had a much needed haircut this weekend, which apparently made me super productive and I've been able to record three videos in two languages each. Could also be that note notebook of "ideas for new videos" that I've started instead. 

Either way, here's the first one in which I'm showing in detail how to install the Daz to Unreal Bridge from David Vodhanels's GitHub repository. David is the main developer of the bridge and his latest ver...

Neander Surfer - Daz Studio/Unreal Engine Animation

Hello Supporters!

Today I have a cute little animation for you that I've started on Saturday during the Daz+ live stream. I was showing how to use Limb Stick to animate a Genesis 9 figure using IK chains, and how to transfer an animation from Daz Studio into Unreal Engine. The concept worked so well that I spent a few hours polishing it off into what you see here.

I was able to utilise several new animation features in Unreal Engine 5.4, specifically the new Layered Control Rigs o...

Separating Unreal Engine Assets with Blender

Greetings everyone!

Today I have an early access video for you in which I explain how you can separate objects from an Unreal Engine asset with a quick round trip into Blender. This is sometimes necessary when multiple things are stuck together (like a table with coffee cups stuck on top), and you want to move them independently, or if you need to make architectural changes that the asset was not designed to allow. A little Blender knowledge is necessary, but not much and I'll gently gu...

Using Control Rig to trigger Morph Targets in Unreal Engine

Hello there, fellow traveller!

Today I'll show you how to hook up Control Rig properties to drive Morph Targets so we can animate them from the Sequencer in Unreal Engine. For me this was the missing link for full character animation, and something that's seriously unintuitive to figure out (like so many things in 3D applications).

I've uploaded a concept demo to my 3D Shenanigans channel for a quick overview and figured an in-depth tutorial might come in handy, for both you and m...

Creating Control Rigs in Unreal Engine

Hello Supporters! As promised, here’s the second UE Control Rig video, in which I’ll explain how to create these things from scratch. This is (currently, as of UE 5.3) a necessary process, without which we won’t be able to make adjustments like I’ve shown you in the previous video. This requires a bit of Blueprint hacking, but it’s not that difficult when you’ve done it a few times.

Trust me when I say I really don’t like the way this is implemented, but it’s as good as ...

Using Control Rigs in Unreal Engine

Hello my people! Today I have the first of two UE Control Rig videos for you, in which we see what they are, why they’re useful and most importantly how to use them in. Control Rigs are objects that bind a figure’s bones with an object we can select and animate. It sounds crazy that there’s a separation between these two things, but programmatically I guess there is, and by default Unreal Engine doesn’t show us the skeleton to manipulate on the timeline (unless we’re adjusting data ...

Aligning Animations with Forward Motion in iClone

Hello Supporters!

In today's early access episode I'll show you how to automatically align motions in iClone. This process works well when a new animation is applied from the library, but when we take out part of an existing animation it does not. I'll show you a trick to make it work though. Enjoy!

• English Version: https://vimeo.com/922069427/e23b9632ff

• German Version: 2024-03-25 13:24:16 +0000 UTC View Post

Saving Corrective Blend Shapes for Body Morphs in Daz Clothing

Happy Monday everyone!

Today I have a quick early  access video for you in which I'll explain how we can store Corrective  Blend Shapes in our outfit. Much like Joint Corrections, our clothing  can distort when we dial in custom shapes that out outfit doesn't know.  Once again Daz Studio creates an automatic morph but doesn't always know  how to handle this, so it's up to us to make a correction, then save  that morph manually.

This can be done one by...

Saving Clothing Items in Daz Studio

Hello Supporters! I've spent the weekend recoding and editing  several more instalments in our little MD to Daz series, for a total of 5  new videos! Three of which are English and two are in German, and I'm  still polishing off a few edits on the last two, but here's what's  finished for your viewing pleasure.

This part deals with saving  out our entire garment so that it becomes distributable, and it's a  little complex. We need to create a new folder str...

Jay's March 2024 Update

Well hello everyone!

I was out on my bike yesterday and thought  I'll give you a quick update on what's been going on with my life.  There's also some bits I've forgotten to mention in the video, so here  we are:

We've settled in well after the big move, and although  I'm still surrounded by some buff boxes here and there, both Julia and I  are back in the saddle working on projects.

I'm still very busy  with Heart of Mercy, the feature length m...

iClone Crowd Test with Walkway in Synty Town

Hello Supporters!

I've cobbled the above animation together in  half an hour on Sunday, trying out the new Walkway Crowd feature in  iClone 8.4. It's based on Motion Director (I think), but according to  the interface regular motions should also work.

The idea is that  you create a walkway object, drag in a bunch of characters, specify how  many you'd like to be there and how they should behave. Next thing you  know you have an autonomously walking cr...

Genesis 9 Facial Animation Testing in iClone

Hello Supporters!

I've spent this Sunday afternoon testing out  how to send Genesis 9 figures over to Character Creator and make them  talk. This proved rather difficult at first, and although I've managed  to do this successfully before, the pipeline seems to have serious flaws  (isn't that always the case when data needs to be interchanged between  different 3D programmes, huh?)

After many hours of trial and  error, I think I have a workflow that wi...

Walter Needs Coffee: iClone Lip Sync Test

Hello everyone! I’ve been crazy busy these last few weeks but wanted to share this little animation with you I’ve cobbled together yesterday on the stream. It’s my first test of lip syncing inside of iClone, a rather daunting endeavour I had imagined to be more time consuming than it actually was.

The whole process is still a giant learning curve for me, but within a 2 hour window I’ve managed to load up Walter 9 in Daz Studio, send him over to Character Creator and further on t...

My Final EVER Sale at Renderosity

While I'm settling into my new digs, surrounded by boxes and clutter, I've just received note from Renderosity that most of my products are  currently on a huge clearance sale. This means that until the end of  January, you can pick them up for a bargain before they'll be removed  from Rendo FOREVER.

This is sort of sad as well as good news: I've not given Rendo much love, nor have I received much in return. It also  gives me the opportunity to "vault" those items fo...

It’s all about SHOES!

Hello Supporters!

Today I have an early access video in which I’m showing how to rig a pair of boots in Daz Studio. I got these from a pack of OBJs on Artstation by Milan Kambari, and Transfer Utility can handle this really well. All I had to do was to move the shoe into position in Blender, using G9 as a reference figure, then apply a mirror modifier to get the second shoe to match. Although this leaves a bit of poke through underneath the sole, I’ll show you a way to hide the foot...

The “on again, off again” Move… is ON again!

Happy New Year my dear Supporters!

I hope you had a “great slide” (guten Rutsch) as we say in Germany, and that all your wishes, hopes and dreams will come true. I’m looking forward to more creative challenges and more learning, and I hope I can share it all with you.

It’s been super chaotic here for the last couple of weeks. I’ve mentioned this in the above stream from New Year’s Eve, but just in case you didn’t know, we’re moving - and this time it’s for real. ...

Fitting and Rigging Trousers without MD Auto Fit

Merry Christmas, everyone!

I’ve managed to record a couple more Marvelous Designer videos yesterday and finished editing one of them this morning. I thought they’d make a nice Christmas present for y’all :-) 

I’ll show you how I’m fitting a pair of Marvelous Designer pants that were designed for an avatar I don’t know. MD’s auto-fit option doesn’t work for every garment, so I’m exporting the pants as is, fit my Genesis avatar to match, simulate, then import ...

Jay's Saloon - 2hr LoFi Music Loop

As promised yesterday, I've been able to render out a two hour version of my snowy holding loop. If you're free and want to hang out over on YouTube, come join me in chat and get ready for the Holiday Spirit :-)

I'll be around until 8:30pm EST, see you there!

Fixing Corrective Blend Shape Morphs with Hexagon, Blender and ZBrush

Happy Holidays Supporters! 

I have an early Christmas Present in the form of three early access videos for you today, as part of my MD to Daz Studio series. All videos deal with the same thing, namely fixing automatically generated Corrective Blend Shape morphs, but each one deals with doing this tricky business in a different 3D application. We all need a little practice, and not every 3D app is everyone’s cup of tea, so watch them all and see which method you prefer. 

Fixing Weight Maps after rigging clothing in Daz Studio

Here's where it starts getting a little complicated in our MD to Daz Journey: after the Transfer Utility runs, you'll likely find some issues with how the garment behaves. 

Problem areas are usually under the arms, in between the legs, and sometimes in elbow and knee bends. This is caused by a combination of un-smooth or wrongly assigned weight maps and auto generated corrective morphs.

In this video we'll take a look at finding and fixing the weight maps, then smoothing them...

Rigging our MD Shirt in Daz Studio

Hello again my friends! 

In this early access episode I'll show you how to use the Transfer Utility in Daz Studio to add rigging to our Marvelous Designer garment. This magic tool will transfer the bones, infer face groups and weight maps from the Genesis figure so that our shirt can follow and deform as the figure moves. I'll also take a look at how to rename the material zones that have been created by Marvelous Designer to something more meaningful.

Enjoy!

Automatic UV Packing in Marvelous Designer

Hello Supporters! 

Here's the next early access installment in the MD series, in which I'll show you how to use that new fantastic UV packing option that was just introduced with Marvelous Designer 12.2. I've been waiting for this feature ever since the UV editor was introduced many years ago.

We'll also learn how to export the garment for use in Daz Studio, and while we're at it, I'll explain how to take a look at the mesh resolution of each pattern and how to make it more c...

Fitting our MD Shirt to Genesis 9

Happy Sunday everyone! 

Today I have the second early access episode of my Marvelous Designer series for you, in which I'll explain how to use the auto-fitting options in MD to fit the shirt from our previous episode to the Genesis 9 figure. We'll talk about UVs and export next, then it's on to rigging and fixing things. 

Enjoy!