Batch rename morph maps, in Rename Vertex Maps, tool for character animators

[Sensei]

Hi!

I would like to inform that a new Modeler plugin Rename Vertex Maps has been released.

Rename Vertex Maps, is the most useful to batch rename morph maps from one naming convention to another naming convention, or from one language to another language.
Renaming 60+ typical morph maps in character object can be annoying and frustrating spend time. Especially if they are in a foreign language.


Product website:
http://renamevertexmaps.trueart.eu

This tool accepts regular expressions in filters, search and replace strings,
therefor it allows impossible conversions in plain "replace source string by target string".
The tool previews the renaming process before it completes. Eventual errors in the syntax are presented to the user.

e.g.
to replace the all sub-strings "_L" which at the end of name, user should use "_L$" as search string.
If replacement string is (Polish language equivalent word) "_Lewy" (or "_Left", "_Gauche" or "_G" if you're Frenchmen)
Eye_L, Arm_L, Hand_L, Leg_L, etc. etc.
will be converted to:
Eye_Lewy, Arm_Lewy, Hand_Lewy, Leg_Lewy.
or
Eye_Left, Arm_Left, Hand_Left, Leg_Left
or
Eye_Gauche, Arm_Gauche, Hand_Gauche, Leg_Gauche
or
Eye_G, Arm_G, Hand_G, Leg_G


(plain "replace by" would generate in some cases wrong results, like I showed on the video! "_Lip" and "_Lips" also have "_L".. but aren't at the end of sentence)

e.g.
to reorder sub-strings, which have two groups, separated by character "_", user should use (.*)_(.*) as search string and "$2_$1" as replacement string.
XXX_YYY
will be converted to:
YYY_XXX

e.g.
to replace the all "_" by spaces, user should use "_" as search string, and " " as replacement string.
to replace sub-string by nothing, just leave replacement string empty.


There is pretty nice on-line regular expression checker at
https://regex101.com/
where you can learn nuances of regular expression and verify syntax.


Once created set of rules, can be stored as preset. Presets are saved in LightWave configuration folder for later use, or exchanged by people.
The next time you will find similar named source object from 3rd party application, or artist using the same naming convention, you can pick up preset, preview changes and voila.

Please watch video carefully, with subtitles enabled.



Best Regards!

[Ma3rk]

Consider this a sale Sensei as soon as my next check comes in.

I know your tools are Modeler related, but don't suppose you have anything similar in the works for bone renaming do you, since it of course would need to do weight map renaming too?

[jwiede]

A few suggestions:

1. Per Ma3rk above, allow arbitrary object (or at minimum, bone/z-bone/joint) searching/renaming as well.

2. Allow option to indicate whether targeted map name "exists" in a pref-set directory or path-set, content dir, scene (for objs), etc. -- both w.r.t. source naming, and target renaming (also useful to show if name already exists / in-use).

3. If not already possible (wasn't clear), allow option to also rename matching disk file names, if present (and matching source name per #2), to target rename. Here too, likely want indication of and "overwrite/skip/abort" option for target name collision.

No worries if too much work, just can easily imagine how the above could be useful in various renaming scenarios.

[Ma3rk]

<Psst!> Careful not to spook him.

My dilemma is with FBX export. As I was telling someone else privately, this new tool will help greatly on the morphs that are exported as they don't adhere to the dot naming convention used in LW. As it is now, they're all in one group making it quite awkward to find items at times.

My FBX knowledge is limited in that it's always pretty much just been a one way trip from Daz to LW. Daz won't even import it's own FBX. I suspect much of the issues are due to what they have & haven't implemented.

In Daz however, everything starts out nicely named & labeled. Upon export though, many things get often renamed &/or slapped onto a Null AND renamed, Cameras in particular.




This hasn't been too much an issue with most humanoid bi-ped characters. But some older models and many quadruped figures though rely on morphs from a base figure such as a dog to get similar breeds. Within the DAZ interface, the Rig itself will also "morph". That however doesn't/can't get exported; just the geom morphs.

As such, I'm having to bake certain morphs then adjust the rig. But if you need to mirror the hierarchy, here comes the fun part: Instead of having a good, distinct prefix as you did, you're left with a rather pathetic prefix of just an "l" or "r" and not even a "_". So, when ya go mirror the left side to the right, you get things like "rCorrar" from "lCollar". Really, really helpful. Needless to say, I'm not even going to touch the face rigs w/ 64 bones a side.

But what would even motivate someone to "dumb-down design" an exporter to do that in the first place? Maybe it's just me, but it's times like that ya just want to lead them off behind the barn, to have a little chat with your friend Guido for say 20 mins. or so.

So there's the challenge.

[Kryslin]

Jweide: WRT #1 above, I believe there are several batch renaming scripts for layout out in the wild; Michael Green has one that has been very useful over the years.

However, I suspect I'll be purchasing Sensei's plugin, because I do have a use for batch renaming vertex maps of all sorts...

[Sensei]

Thank you for your input.
Based on your opinions, I realized that a warning system might be a good idea to let you know that the vertex map will have a duplicate name.

In this example, replacing _L with nothing results in the same names as those already existing:


In this example, replacing _L and _R with nothing leads to the same names as the existing ones, and duplication between the ex-_L and ex-_R morphs:


Obviously, if vertex mappings is applied to the same vertex in two morphs, one cancels second one, and we lose data. Which we should avoid (or at least be aware it may happen).

Introduction of warning column to the listview also allowed better information about mistake in regular expression syntax.

[Sensei]

Changes made in the 1.1 (25-Sep-2020)

- Fixed unhandled exception after entering wrong regular expression.
- Fixed per-polygon vertex map rename i.e. UV maps.
- Disallowed to create preset with the same name twice.
- Better error handling. Information what kind of mistake user made is displayed in special column 'Warning'.
- Display warning that after rename there will be created duplicate of existing vertex map.
- Added support for conversion to uppercase and lowercase (replace string \U, \L and \E)



In this video I showed how to convert names which were the all uppercase, to just the first letter uppercase, and the rest lowercase, in each group-word.


Search string e.g.
^(\w)(.*)_(\w)(.*)_(\w)(.*)$

Replace string e.g.
\U$1\L$2_\U$3\L$4_\U$5\L$6


\w matches any letter, digit or underscore. Equivalent to [a-zA-Z0-9_].

\U transforms text to uppercase until either end of string or a \E is encountered.

\L transforms text to lowercase until either end of string or a \E is encountered.

\E terminates any of the previous \U or \L transformations.

[Sensei]

On this video tutorial I showed new features of v1.1.

At the beginning batch converted the all morphs to uppercase-only names to simulate import of such morphs from 3rd party source.

Then showed how to configure search-replace RegEx strings to convert uppercase-only to 1st letter uppercase and the rest of each word to lower case.
so e.g. BROW_RAISE_OUTER_L is automatically changed to Brow_Raise_Outer_L
(and 68 others morphs maps in my example character as well)

[Sensei]

I found great regular expression video tutorial:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sa-TUpSx1JA

38 minutes, but well worth watching.

[sami]

...
In this example, replacing _L and _R with nothing leads to the same names as the existing ones, and duplication between the ex-_L and ex-_R morphs:

...

I like your interface - it's clean and very readable. I imagine you're using C++ and all your plugins are .p files - but have you considered using more graphics in your interfaces to make them even more scannable at a glance?

This is probably trivial to you, but I've written some LScripts to help with all that - I've written a helper class called Super Text which has markup like tags, so I can insert graphics or text colors into the interfaces easily, and also a GRID control with sortable column headers. Let me know if you want them - at this point I don't mind if they're in commercial products if they improve things or make things easier to develop. But if you're all C++ then these may be useless. Happy to donate the clean-ish LScript code if you're interested.

[Sensei]

I like your interface - it's clean and very readable. I imagine you're using C++ and all your plugins are .p files - but have you considered using more graphics in your interfaces to make them even more scannable at a glance?

This is probably trivial to you, but I've written some LScripts to help with all that - I've written a helper class called Super Text which has markup like tags, so I can insert graphics or text colors into the interfaces easily, and also a GRID control with sortable column headers. Let me know if you want them - at this point I don't mind if they're in commercial products if they improve things or make things easier to develop. But if you're all C++ then these may be useless. Happy to donate the clean-ish LScript code if you're interested.

Yes.
The all my LightWave 3D plug-ins are written in C/C++ compiled to machine code and stored in .p file.
Thank you for your kind offer, but any usage of ready Lscript code, in C/C++ is equal to "start from scratch" (if I would like to add images to the list. I would not know what to put in these images..).