I recently submitted an update for Genesis 8 for Maya that should be released sometime soon and wanted to go over some of the important changes.
Added Set Driven Keys for the eyelid joints surrounding the eyeballs.
Prior to this change when rotating the eyeballs they would commonly poke through the eyelids. The new functionality also more closely mimics that of Daz Studio. There is also a limitation with Daz Studio’s FBX export that it does not export out the negative affect of morphs and pose controls. Therefore, the “Eyes Side-Side” and “Eyes Up-Down” would only move the eyes and eyelids in one direction. I feel this is a good solution to the problem. If this change negatively affects using your mocap systems, the connections to the eyelid joints can be broken to remove the effects of the “Set Driven Keys.”
“Smooth Mesh Preview” with “Preview Division Levels” set to 2 and “Use Preview Level for Rendering” will now be turned on automatically inside Maya for both the figure mesh and eyelashes (if they were exported).
With most render engines this change should make the mesh less faceted and look better when rendered.
Genesis 8 will now be exported out of Daz Studio at the “Base Resolution” level.
I recently learned that even though FBX export always exports the mesh with the same number of polygons of that of the base resolution mesh, if the resolution level isn’t set to base before export the mesh is smoothed a little bit and doesn’t look good when subdivided inside Maya. This should also make it easier if you decide to create any extra blend shapes for your figure.
Added an option to select an alternate HumanIK definition that is compatible with MotionBuilder when importing the figure into Maya.
The original HumanIK definition isn’t compatible with MotionBuilder 2018 and would need to be re-defined if you sent the scene to MotionBuilder. The difference between the two definitions is that the arm and leg roll joints get defined as “roll” joints for the MotionBuilder HumanIK definition and required slightly different arm rotations. With the original definition they get defined as “roll leaf” joints.
I don’t know all the implications of using one definition over the other. If you use motion capture I would suggest trying both and see what one produces better results. Please let me and everyone else know in the comments below. Please note when sending a scene to MotionBuilder (MB) that it doesn’t support “Set Driven Keys” and the JCM functionality of Genesis 8 for Maya will be lost. Also, after sending the scene to MB some blend shapes get turned on inside of MB and the mesh may appear distorted. Either turn off the influence of the blendshapes inside MB or delete the blend shapes from the scene in Maya before sending it to MB.
Added full support for Mabel 8 and Teen Kaylee 8.
I hope you find these updates an improvement, please provide any feedback in the comments below.
Thanks!
