In a previous article I’ve explained how to put a gun into your character’s hand using the Attach Component to Component function. This works great if the component in question is a static or skeletal mesh, but it does not work for another blueprint class. Say you had a weapon and it has functionality, there’s …
Blend Spaces can mix animations together depending on value input. This can be used when say your game pad input determines how fast your character can walk, so that an idle animation is blended together with a walking forward animation. That way there’s no pop between each animation. Let’s take a look how to setup …
Unreal Engine 5 offers an exciting way to share animations from UE4 skeletons on the new UE5 skeletons. This works by way of a pre-configured IK Rig and Retargeter specifically made for this purpose, and an export option so that we’ll end up with a set of new animations that are ready to be used …
I’ve been meaning to make a note about the “attach gun” part, because I always forget how to do this. It’s relatively simple when you know, but not… well when you don’t. Let’s fix that! This procedure can also be used to attach other things besides guns into the right places, such as hair and …
The retargeting process has completely changed in Unreal Engine 5. It appears we can now use a system of IK chains that make animations from one skeleton usable on another by way of an IK Rig and IK Retargeter. It took me a while to comprehend this, but I’ve successfully managed to use this system …
Reacting to user input was always a little naff in Unreal Engine: define an input, then build a rather complex graph with booleans around it to see if a key is pressed or released, all of which using a section of the Project Settings to map the actual input sources and axis. It felt a …
Like most apps, Daz Studio writes a continuous text output to a log file with any status messages that are generated under the hood. The most obvious of these is the render progress window, as we can see each line update live while the render is happening. We can also read the full log from …
Text Objects can be formatted with a funky node called Format Text. It’s a very powerful little thing, even though at first glance it certainly doesn’t look like it. When you drag in a value, it is literally passed through without much change. However, if left alone as in the example above, we can use …
When dealing with float values, we’re often less interested in the exact value and can make do with a more human readable one. Unreal Engine has a couple of rounding functions we can use to make this happen: Ceil to Integer and Floor to Integer. Ceil rounds up, so 1.6 becomes 2 and -1.6 becomes …
Enums are a great way to create state lists with memorable names. Rather than having to remember numbers, we can create Enums and switch depending on phrases. This can be handy for game state switching among other things. We can create Enums by from the Content Browser under Blueprints. This brings up an empty list …
I didn’t know about a handy event that can apply damage to an actor, thanks to the OnTakeAnyDamage function. It’s an Event Dispatcher that Actor classes listen to, and if applied from another object, it’s really easy to pass on how much damage happened and also how it was caused. Consider this code plugged into …
Creating my first HUD widget in UE5 was a little disconcerting, as I didn’t see a reference to where any of my UI elements would end up on screen. Turns out there was an invisible default element called Canvas Panel in previous versions, into which we would place our UI elements. Thankfully this thing is …
The first thing that threw me in UE5 was the absence of that blue “make blueprint button” at the top of the scene outliner. No such option was obvious in the new interface, and a Google search yielded literally no results. Let’s change that, because I’ve figured it out! In UE5, we need to click …
Blender has a nice feature that allows us to merge vertices automatically when we move them into the place of an existing one. As an example, if I grab an edge of my subdivided cube and press GG to edge slide it over to the nearest one, there would be two vertices in the same …
I’m notorious at forgetting shortcuts in Blender: just as I had remembered that any viewport can be switched into a quad view with CTRL+ALT+Q, I was stuck with another problem: the views I was seeing were locked, and I couldn’t change say a back view to a front view, or a top view into a …
Here’s a high-level overview on how we can convert existing skin textures from older Genesis figure and use them with another generation, like Genesis 9. The principle is the same for the other direction too, should you wish to use a G9 skin on an older generation or perhaps a different figure altogether, like the …
I’ve recently made the above video about converting Genesis 8 characters to the new Genesis 9 figure. It’s been a runaway success and I felt we all might benefit from written instructions in addition. These are easier for me to update as new tips and tricks come to light, and link to other relevant resources …
I had a minor catastrophe the other day when all my Smart Content had seemingly disappeared in Daz Studio. I’ve had such things before and could fix it by re-importing all my metadata, but this time round it didn’t seem to work. I had to first reset the whole database, then employ a very specific …
Blender has a very powerful yet somewhat confusing re-timing feature. This comes in handy when you want to render animations at a different frame rate than they were designed to be in. As an example, you may have setup your scene with 24fps in mind, but want to render out a 60fps version, or vice …
I use Morph Loader quite a bit in Daz Studio, and the deeper you go down a rabbit hole, the more parameters you have to adjust. The main ones are usually “Reverse Deformations” and “Apply Deltas Only”, and if you use the tool only occasionally they’re easy to remember. If you’re a PA and use …
Now that the Head and Body shapes have been released for Genesis 9, I thought I’d let you have the complete “character recipes” as it were for the two custom figures I’ve built on stream over the last month. Hand and Greta were a fun project, particularly because I feel we’ve made them together. Here …
The other day I imported Normal Maps from Marvelous Designer into Substance Painter. Turns out they were flipped, or at least parts of them were. I was trying to find a way to invert them, which I knew had to exist, but it wasn’t very intuitive to find. Thanks to Fugazi (aka John from 3D …
When you trace patterns in Marvelous Designer, you end up with a Graphic Trim on each piece, which can look a little distracting on the final garment. This is in addition to a texture you may have applied, so it’s vital to remove the graphic trim eventually. Sadly this is neither intuitive nor memorable, so …
I had a weird issue that threw me when I was working in ZBrush the other day: flipped normals (not Henrik and Morten, the actually phenomenon of normals facing the wrong way). ZBrush only shows the “right” side of the normals by default, and although it has the option to show both sides, the default …
Sometimes we may need access to occluded parts in Substance Painter. The easiest way to deal with such hidden parts is by making them accessible before importing the model, such as opening the lid of a chest or the mouth of a figure, or even “exploding” an object to make all its surfaces accessible. While …
This week I’ve been playing with the fascinating Warp Projection tools in Substance Painter. This way we can project an image onto a 3D object and add vertices onto the projection grid, with which minute details can be lined up for a perfect fit. I’ve tried it with one of those pre-made head textures and …
I’ve just figured out how to do Projection Painting in Substance Painter, and thought I’d best make a note of it. The magic happens inside a regular Paint Layer. It works in both paint mode and projection mode, but to transfer colour information, we’ll need to switch into Projection Mode. With your paint layer selected, …
Blender can do projection painting with textures that can be used as stencils. It’s super handy when it comes to transferring 2D images onto 3D objects. All we need to do is load in a texture, then rub it onto our objects in either Vertex or Texture Paint mode, as well as the new Sculpt …
One of my supporters was asking if there was a way to use Genesis 8.1 materials on the older Genesis 8 figures, and if the reverse of my character conversion video on the opposite process could be used. It got me thinking and experimenting, and while it’s not a one-click process, I’ve made it work. …
A while ago I watched a nice video by CG Cookie about pouring some coffee into a cup in Blender. It’s a great starter video, even though I found it really tough to follow when I tried it for the first time. I thought I had made some notes on the process back then, but …