Well I figured out how to fix my previous mistake with my custom mane model for the Daz Horse 2 3d figure and then I decided to make a morph to temporarily fix the bending problem until I work out how to use Daz Studio’s rigging.
Fixing the broken geometry
At first I thought I’d lost around 8 hours worth of work with the mesh breaking on my object but luckily I had saved the base figure under a different name a couple of days previously so opened up the broken figure in NotePad++ (please note I always save my work uncompressed so that I can edit it if needed in a text editor) and searched for the .dsf file in it so that I could find it’s location. I then opened the dsf file folder up in windows explorer and changed the file extension to .dsfbak.
Next I opened up my previous version in NotePad++ (free program) and found where the .dsf for that figure was stored, used windows explorer and copied and pasted it into the folder where I had backed the corrupted version up. Luckily both .dsf files had the same name so I didn’t have to do any additional editing in NotePad++ but if they had been different I would just have changed the old dsf to the same name as the old one to keep it simple.
Crossing my fingers I then imported the hopefully fixed mane figure into my still open Daz Studio, it was still broken… Stifling my frustration I closed Studio, reopened it and again imported the mane figure, this time it worked AND all my new morphs were still there and present 🙂 Happy Bunnies R US!
Bending fix
Next I decided to hold off on playing around with the rigging until I have time to practice and so exported my mane and the Daz Horse 2 figure into Hexagon via the Daz Studio bridge.
I morphed the mane so that the front base points are lower than normal, exported the mane only back into Studio and saved it as Bend Fix morph. After testing in Studio it seems to do the job for now as you can see from my screen shot above.
More work needed
I have a few more morphs for the forelock that I’d like to make and then I have to organise the textures and their paths and double check how to package the items so that they will work on other peoples machines as this is the first Daz Studio item I will be offering for download.
I was going to change the material names for the base geometry as at the moment they are all named base strand 1 etc for every seperate strand but I found it useful to use with coloured horses such as CRWR’s Gypsy Vanner texture that comes with the Pro Bundle so that you can change the colour or texture maps for different parts of the mane so that it matches the coat texture. I’ve attached a render of what this looks like below.
I’ve already made some MATs, including one for the Gypsy Vanner with different textures to match the skin.
Once I have released this package if anybody makes any extra morphs or textures for it I will be happy to host them here as free downloads so that it keeps everything tidy and easy for users to find.