This is a mesh with no corrective JCMs applied (more on that soon), but with Dual Quaternion Skinning.

And here is the same mesh, but with Linear Blend Skinning.

Now some quick questions for you, yes YOU!

1.  Can you spot the difference?
2.  Do you know what is DQS and what is LBS?
3.  Do you know what TK17/Daz3D/Blender/Unreal are using for handling mesh deformations?

All I can say is, this looks AWESOME! Are you incorporating any TK17 assets exported from the game?

Hi, here are my answers to the question:

1. I don't see any difference between the 2 shots

2. It's 2 things that looks identical for me 

3. Since the paper for DQS are older I will say that TK17 use only DQS and the 3 others can use both, maybe with DQS by default

On 9/16/2024 at 4:51 PM, Trapp said:

All I can say is, this looks AWESOME! Are you incorporating any TK17 assets exported from the game?

I'm still considering if I should do that, but after some thoughts not sure if:

1. worth the effort because of low quality stuff

2. Not sure what else I should add except for h5m support, which might come into problems related with point 1 and might take some considerable work which I can't properly evaluate right now.

What do you think it should be included?

On 9/16/2024 at 9:29 PM, Exiled_Vizir said:

1. I don't see any difference between the 2 shots

2. It's 2 things that looks identical for me 

3. Since the paper for DQS are older I will say that TK17 use only DQS and the 3 others can use both, maybe with DQS by default

Look at the bent knee, where the bones meet.

Most games use LBS, TK17 for sure use only that. Unreal by default also uses LBS, but it can be modded to support DQS or DQS support can be enabled. 

Both DAZ and Blender by default use dual quaternions, but it can be turned off.

DQS is all about volume preservation when bending/twisting joints, and having this enabled helps with a more natural look. On top of that DAZ for example use JCMs (Joint Corrective Morphs) to correct the DQS to make it look more natural.

tl;dr version: My plan would be to enable DQS in Unreal, then take Daz bodies with JCMs and apply them in Unreal.

 Some IKs implemented for the limbs, found some issues with the armature which is snapping so I need to make some new changes to the body and Blender armature which is slowly killing me.

1 hour ago, hfg2 said:

Look at the bent knee, where the bones meet.

Most games use LBS, TK17 for sure use only that. Unreal by default also uses LBS, but it can be modded to support DQS or DQS support can be enabled. 

Both DAZ and Blender by default use dual quaternions, but it can be turned off.

DQS is all about volume preservation when bending/twisting joints, and having this enabled helps with a more natural look. On top of that DAZ for example use JCMs (Joint Corrective Morphs) to correct the DQS to make it look more natural.

tl;dr version: My plan would be to enable DQS in Unreal, then take Daz bodies with JCMs and apply them in Unreal.

Ah ok, I can see that now, it just my brain that focus too much on the boobs and ass... But it's clearly more natural. You should enable it if it's manageable by a middle spec computer. Also if we can import more easily from Daz it's better.

1 hour ago, hfg2 said:

I'm still considering if I should do that, but after some thoughts not sure if:

1. worth the effort because of low quality stuff

2. Not sure what else I should add except for h5m support, which might come into problems related with point 1 and might take some considerable work which I can't properly evaluate right now.

What do you think it should be included?

I agreed with 1. even for high quality mod and assets they are constrained by some 2001 techs, limited hardware from that epoch and questionable dev choice. I think it may be simpler for you to focus on your vision of that alternative which solve (or at least try to) the issues you have with TK17. And after converter can be made or people can try port their in your game with blender or Daz. 

Just some rants...

I worked a lot on the villa armature in the past and when I started the new project in Unreal I started to work with the same armature as the villa one, however since my tk17 modding days I had some issues with some joints (bones).

First, the face joints created problems, in my custom bodies I had to repaint the weights for the mesh
(the face/head region) and realign the face joints to match the new topology. The results were mediocre, so I decided to remove the face joints and instead go with pure shapekeys (blendshapes) for the face expressions.

Now this is not the best solution either, but is more like a compromise, however in my early testing this was good enough for my standards. One classic issue is that the a joints based system could affect the mesh in any way, while a shapekey can affect it only in a linear way.

When I switched to Unreal Engine I also took a look at other projects, and some use tons of bones for genitals for example, also different bones for breasts and some bone for jiggle physics, like breasts, butt, thighs, etc.

While I like the concept of using a different bones armature for breasts, I wasn't able to understand how to properly wire the bones for a vagina for example. Even TK17 can't do it properly, and it has two corrective vagina morphs. So my question right now would be why do I need vagina joints if I could go with just some morphs to handle this?

Now I dont know much, but a vagina is supposed to open/close only or lets say stretch/stay closed as in rest position. Sure I've seen some other stuff, like open some parts of it, move left/right, open urethra, and so on, but again, those could be handled only from morphs, why we need joints, why others use joints? Is a bit of a mystery to me.

For a male, yes, I can understand why some shafts joints should be there, but not for the female genitals.

Not saying that the joints/bones should be removed, maybe there will be more usage based on their position as triggers or detection or something else, but right now I can't wrap my head on how to manipulate the female genitals using a joints system properly.

So good bye a bit to the standard villa armature, no useful genitals joints,  no useful face joints, new breast joints, and some new parenting for joints to support the IK systems and twisting for the bones.

In the Video the new breast bones. There is a bit of a math behind, spread at a perfectly 90 degrees, inner, outer, top and bottom bones.

4 hours ago, hfg2 said:

...

When I switched to Unreal Engine I also took a look at other projects, and some use tons of bones for genitals for example, also different bones for breasts and some bone for jiggle physics, like breasts, butt, thighs, etc.

While I like the concept of using a different bones armature for breasts, I wasn't able to understand how to properly wire the bones for a vagina for example. Even TK17 can't do it properly, and it has two corrective vagina morphs. So my question right now would be why do I need vagina joints if I could go with just some morphs to handle this?

Now I dont know much, but a vagina is supposed to open/close only or lets say stretch/stay closed as in rest position. Sure I've seen some other stuff, like open some parts of it, move left/right, open urethra, and so on, but again, those could be handled only from morphs, why we need joints, why others use joints? Is a bit of a mystery to me.

...

Hi, thanks a lot for these very informative posts about the problems you encountered and the solutions you find for them  . For these problem of lot of bones versus morphes, you saw in others projects, maybe it is a NIH (not invented here) syndrom? Maybe I'm wrong but to me the bones approach seems to be "the old way" to me: to make more realist 3d objects we throw a lot of triangles and beautiful at it, and for objects that will be animated (like models, enemies, etc) we had bones to make skeleton that will be animated and the more complex the objects and animations are the more you need bones... It can be good looking and rely on geometry and texturing that GPU are good with since a long time now and they get better at every generation. Complex morphes to me (but maybe I'm wrong here) are a more recent approach that can be done with all the "goodies" (more tesselation power, better abilities to work and deform textures, etc). So it may explain why more mature projects don't use morphes a lot, they have a complex bone system in place, it works, so why change? But in your case if the morph can do better and faster for what you want to do, it's more interesting to use them.