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For rigged figures, you can move existing vertexes around (morphs), but you can't add or subtract vertexes.
For M4/V4 and earlier figures, you can easily create additional morphs if there are morph areas created. In this case, I have the M4 T-Shirt (upgrade edition) and it has existing morph areas.
I can select an existing morph area and choose to create a new morph, a dialogue pops up asking me for a name and I'm going to leave it as the number.
I can then click to edit the new morph and the mesh turns green. When done, I click the checkmark to validate. A new morph will appear in the parameters tab for that morph area (can vary).
Back in the assemble room, the validated morph is automatically reset to zero. I find it in the parameters pane (maybe group level, maybe mesh, maybe a specific bone) and turn to 1.
As an example, I recently saw the movie Alien again, so here is a morph to have the alien come out of M4's stomach.
New morphs for genesis figures and their conforming clothing must be loaded to the figure in Studio. You can model the morph in Carrara, but it has to be loaded in Studio using MorphLoaderPro. More on that later.
You cannot change the number of polygons for a mesh while it is attached to a skeleton (rigged). That is what sparked this series of posts. So, in the above example, th model room for the T-Shirt has active tools for selecting and moving vertexes such as the magnet tool, but construct, extrude, and similar tools are grayed out because they involve changing the the number of vertexes.
Thanks for you help Diomede. Honestly, I stay out of this thread because it makes my eyes glaze over. :) Just not ready for this stuff in general, I think.
I know how to move polygons with soft select, and how to make morphs and morph sliders. Phil covered that in the basic course. But rigging and weightmapping are different animals altogether.
What I wanted to do was to make some clean boolian cuts and to add polygons to existing products, and not merely pull polygons. Looks like I am out of luck.
But, it is good to know why! Now I can stop beating my head against a wall. :)
Now, suppose you have some item of conforming clothing that you would like to make changes to for your own use. Of course, you can use the morph tool, which can be useful for things like lengthening or shortening cuffs. This also has the advantage of preserving the existing riggng and weightmaps. But most clothing would not have a dense enough mesh to enable a moph to create a button, for example, so morphs are not a solution for everything. Even if it did, the mesh distortion for shading would be significant. So what if you want to add or subtract vertexes. You have a number of options, which again differ slightly from V4/M4 and earlier compared to Genesis and later. The most obvious would be to locate the actual obj of the figure on your computer, Just load that in the modeler of choice (Carrara's vertex modeler!), save under a new name, make the changes you want, and then attach this new mesh to the skeleton. For this, M4/V4 and earlier content generally have their objs saved in a subfolder of the runtime\geometries folder where your content is. If you installed using DIM, then you can use DIM to find the content's geometry obj subfolder. You can import the obj to Carrara and all tools will be active. MAKE SURE TO RENAME THE IMPORTED MESH IMMEDIATELY SO YOU DON'T WRITE OVER YOUR ORIGINAL. There can sometimes be scaling issues for import and export so pay attention to that.
Content for Genesis later generations do not include geometry \ obj files like this.
Detach skeleton.
Another option is to detach the existing mesh from the bone skeleton. Do this by selecting both the mesh and the bones inside the group (in this case the t-shirt group), but not the group itself. Go to the top menu under animation. There is an option for detaching skeleton. You would normally just click that. Unfortunately, for this example, it is grayed out to protect purchased content. I believe there is a Fenric plugin to enable this option even for purchased content.
Export and import obj
Yet another option is to load your conforming figure as normal, export it as an obj, then import it again as an obj.
Eventually, you will have your modified mesh. The good is that you do not have to create a new bone skeleton from scratch. Just load your figure, such as M4 in this case, move your new mesh to within the same group as the figure, select the bones and your mesh, and use the animation menu to attach you mesh to the m4 skeleton. The bad news is that you will have lost all of the morphs of the original mesh (remember, different vertex count so even if you find them you can't use them), and you will have lost the original weightmaps.
If you have Poser, you can use Wardrobe Wizard to turn a mesh to a conforming figure for M4/V4 and earlier, including creating many common morphs, if you have the appropriate character pack.
For cuts, you might try to use shaders. You can use 3D paint to create a white/black alpha map. That way you can turn a long sleeve shirt to a short sleeve shirt without any modeling, for example.
UB - You are Ready to Model!!!!!!
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Much frustration!
I was having some trouble with the hands and fingers for my custom Moxie figure, so I decided to do the rigging again from scratch. Some of it went OK because in general I am getting better. However, I am having trouble with with the elbows. They should bend up to 140 degrees in the main direction. They bend fine up to 90 degrees. But if I try to bend more than 90 degrees, they bend back AND twist. Inexplicable. It is not a general problem because the knees can bend more than 90 degrees. I have double checked the constraints for the elbows.
The following pics show
(a) constraints for elbow is above 140 degrees
(b) elbow bends fine below 90 degrees
(c) but - PROBLEM - elbow bends back and twists if I try to bend more than 90 degrees
(d) knee can bend more than 90 degrees without this problem.
OK - I have a hint
If I change the elbow constraint to FREE, it can bend in toward the chest. However, the Z numbers still bounce back, but the X and Y numbers jump from 0 to 180.
See constraint numbrs in attached
SOLVED!
When setting up joint constraints, there is a choice for order of axes - X, Y, and Z. For example, the spinal column is vertical, so the Z axis should be first. The arms come out from the shoulders so the X axis should be first. And X was first, so far so good. The problem of the snap-back elbow was due to the second choice. I had it as XZY. That was wrong and caused the snap back (actually flipping positive and negative at 90). Solved by choosing XYZ.
(EDIT: now I can fix the weightmap and joint morph at the elbow)
ever rig sliding scifi doors? sliding windows?
think i understand swinging doors,
I have to confess I do all my hardbody rigging in DS and import it back to Carrara. It's so much easier and faster - weightmapping is just a single menu click, then simply set the constraints. Here's one I just happen to be working on:
In DS I added an ERC-based slider that opens both doors together, but short of using Fenric's ERC plugin, I'm not sure that's doable in Carrara.
mebe an nla clip to open the doors?
the erc thing is tempting, pricey tho >.<
the poser heirarchy editor made for some fast rigging back in the day. those were the days, lol dr geep and naysayguy.
a pose would work too, thats how I get around ERC etc I save as poses
For sliding sci fi doors entirely within carara, another option is to just create morph dials.
Yucky model attached, but it works. Doors are meant to glow and shed light in a cool rainbow laser type way. But, you know, really just purple.
Just select morph area "doors" and you will see morphs to open both, open left, and open right.
Morphs . . . now that's an idea
thanks for the dorrs demo
In carrara,. you can move the "hotpoint" and then add a Contraint "motion tab",. to limit the movement of a door,. (Axis,. Limited)
ot you can set the constraint to "Slider". if you want a sliding door rather than a swing open.
The door model does NOT need to be rigged with bones,.
UNLESS you're exporting to a basic software which doesn't have the functionality of Carrara.
any serious 3D software should allow you to create and manipulate the axis and motion constraints for objects.
Items can have motion contraints/limits and be connected to other objects to create more complex animated structures,. without the need to add any bones or rigging.
I used to do all my "rigging" that way, but it can be quite fiddly setting up the constraints, especially on a high res screen. Also my experience is that those constraints are prone to break somewhere down the line.
This is the door from above, "rigged" using morphs. Very easy to do - just export an obj with each door in the open position, then apply it with the morph editor.
I think that might only work because the doors are just sliding. I seem to recall that if the doors are swinging/rotating you can't do it with morphs because the doors will deform in the in-between stages. I have been known to be wrong though. :)
The only downside to this method is that those ERC dials don't always work when the object is loaded in Carrara. I set some up with my two-headed flail freebie and they only work in DS; to pose the chains in Carrara you have to grab the individual pieces.
That's also been my experience. But since my usage of ERC is mostly for sliding double doors, the morph trick does nicely. Plus it has the dual advantages that the morph sliders are more obvious/not buried in a nest of bones, and the model can be duplicated. You're right that morphs wouldn't work for rotating doors.
Hello Diomede, juste un grand merci pour ces explications.
J'ai réalisé hier un petit personnage dans Carrara et ton aide m'a été très précieuse :)
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Hello Diomede, just a big thank you for these explanations.
I realized yesterday a little character in Carrara and your help was very precious :)
Where is Mike Moir?
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/212131/animation-club-starting-another-animation-my-favorite-alien-modeling-starting/p3
@Jamy - That is a great character. I love how expressive it is (face and pose).
@Dudu - I haven't seen Mike post in a while. Hope everything is OK. He has had long absences before, so hope it is just being busy.
minotaur 6 needs a whole new carrara rigged tail.
existing tail has like a mud flap on the body end
I think the existing tail is done with a geograft. Maybe try creating a conforming figure (shorts with tail), and then make the shorts' alpha invisible?