mcjElevate
RevA DS1,2,3,4
Introduction
mcjElevate lets you modify the shape of objects including clothing items, based on a gray scale image
Watch mcjElevate in action here
The terrain in the image below started as a simple 100x100 primitive plane, and it took less than a minute to turn it into a terrain
Versions
mcjElevate RevA was released around Jan 31, 2010
as of Dec 16 2012 it now includes a version for Daz Studio 4.5
note : the first version of mcjElevate can be found HERE
Mar 9, 2019, 11:37 PM - Updated Upgraded and SAFER
by safer we mean, if you create o morph on a subdivided surface, before this update,
this made your scene save'able but not loadable ever again !
( unless maybe you can delete the data/element from the data/ folder )
Installation
The zip package is found at the bottom of this page
unzip it in your daz content folder,
typically :
C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\DAZ 3D\Studio\My Library
once installed, it will appear in your content library, under
The Daz Script will be found in My Library / Scripts / mcasual
Starting with Windows 7 if you right click on the downloaded zip file
and select the [Extract All ....] pop-up menu item
you simply browse up to your Daz Studio Content Folder
and the files will fall in the proper folder
USE
1 - Select an object in a daz studio scene
example: a 4 meters by 4 meters primitive-Plane, 32x32 divisions
2 - launch the mcjElevateRevA script
3 - click on the "Load Elevation Image' button
and select an Elevation image also known as bump map or displacement map
here is an example of an Elevation map
where you see white dots, the plane will be pushed upward
where you see black dots, the plane will not move
the height for black and white dots is given by the "Level" settings
shown below.
values are in centimeters, so, white pixels push the plane 10 cm up
3b - Deselect unwanted materials
Only checkmarked materials will be affected by the morph.
This is a new feature of Rev. A !
4 - Click on the "Create Elevation Image" button
there can be a rather long waiting time while the script performs thousands of computations
In our example, a 32x32 division planes means there's 1024 vertices to process.
in one test, processing a 64x64 divisions plane ( 4096 vertices ) took 3 minutes
When computations are complete, you'll be able to close the script using the "exit button"
5 - Go in daz studio's parameters tab
there's a new morph channel named Elevate !
turn it up to 100%
and there you have it, the Elevation map was transformed into a morph
Note: You can specify a name other than Elevate for the Morph name
it's probably better to avoid using names already in use
You can also specify a channel name other than PBMCC_01.
but this feature is intended for "experts".
Creating pz2 files (for experts)
This is another new feature of Rev.A
it will create a simple injection file for the
selected node name and the morph channel you specified
i am not extremely familiar with pz2 files, so ...
you will possibly want to tweak this INJ file by hand later
here is another example of what can be achieved with mcjElevateRevA
and
Let's try to add wrinkles to a piece of clothes
we take a skirt by Zardok a.k.a Jean-Jacques Roh
we select the skirt and we tell Daz Studio to show us the UV maps
we set the mode to "View by Node"
and we get this, which we copy using "print Screen" on a PC
then "Paste" in a paint program
here is our elevation map
here is the elevation map on the Diffuse Color channel of the skirt's surface
i select the Skirt's hip
and run mcjElevateRevA
select the Elevation map,
process ...
and here's the result after conversion to subD
to get better looking results, the wrinkles xhould follow more closely the geometry's polygon edges
applying this map
adds a rippled fringe
and applying this to a sphere and to a cylinder
gets us this