Morph injection

NASSOS

what remains a mystery is what I do next, that won't load and brings a window that it is not a runtime folder. If I go up the tree and find the runtime folder and load it it looks like nothing extra is loaded. The items remain the same and there is not morph++ folder added atthe tray on the left.

Dartanbeck

The morphs will be inside your Poses category.

Click the little white triangle next to "Poses" (circled in red) and scroll down 

click the little white triangle next to "Daz's Michael 4"

click on "Morph Injections" (alt - you could click the little white triangle for individual INJ)

Dartanbeck

Some people like to drag the INJ file directly onto the figure in the instances tray. I prefer to select the figure in the instances tray (list on the right of the working window) and then double-click the file I want to INJ

NASSOS

Yes, they are there! Thanks you so much!

How can I now inject them to my allready animated michael. I had so much trouble with this Bvh file I got and I do not wish to reanimate him. He was sliding all over the place but I found a way fix that with a huck.

Dartanbeck

Should be fine.

Just keep the time scrubber all the way to 0:00:00 and:

Select Michael 4 (line just above "Model") and double-click the morph files you want to INJ

If you dial up some morphs on frame 0:00:00, they shouldn't animate unless we move the scrubber forward in time, then dial them ;)

Dartanbeck

My pleasure NASSOS

Dartanbeck

Now just remember this part:

In Carrara 8.5, the morphs are no longer listed in the General tab - there's a new tab called "Parameters" - all morphs are in there, but there is an exception: Props (not figures with a rig hierarchy) with morphs - their morphs are still found in the General tab as they used to be.

Also new in 8.5, the "Zero Pose" and "Zero Figure" options are also no longer on the General tab. They are now in the menu at the top "Animation" under several "Zero" options at the bottom of thhat drop-down. Much, Much better now!!!

NASSOS

thank you so much! I was spending so much time trying to figure this out. I have a presentation to do and I want to use Carrara for it.

Dartanbeck

NASSOS said:

thank you so much! I was spending so much time trying to figure this out. I have a presentation to do and I want to use Carrara for it.

Awesome! Glad to help... Always!

Cheers, Sir!

UnifiedBrain

NASSOS said:

Thanks!, both were done in Carrara but Dinner for few was animated in mesiah studio and then exported as mdd files and layout in Carrara as wella s render. It was also modeled in Carrara.

Modeled and rendered in Carrara?  How is that possible?  Haven't you heard that Carrara is dead?

Sorry, it's a silly comment pulled from another thread.

Thanks for the answer.  You and your team do amazing work.

 

3DAGE

HI NASSOS :)

If you're seeing those figures , your Runtime folder, or Daz3Dd library,.. is already setup,. so forget that bit...

 

Once you load the Michael 4 figure into a scene...

Go to the Content browser again,. and look in the Poses section,.

Then you'll see (Daz's Michael 4)  ,. and inside there,. you'll find the Morph Injections.

see pic

 

Hope it helps :)

Dartanbeck

All fixed ;)

UnifiedBrain

I watched "Dinner for Few" on Amazon Prime tonight.

Incredible work Nassos, on so many levels!  Super creative and thought-provoking.

I loved it.  The fact that it was modeled and rendered in Carrara is just icing on the cake.

NASSOS

Thank you for your good words. I managed to finish the little thing I was working using Michael and some mocap I found in the store. It was trully a nightmare to load the mocap into the mIchael figure in carrara, not much other than that the skeleton of the mocap and the skeleton of Michael were in different proportions and there was no unit mesurment I could find that translated the skeleton correctly. At the end I had to eyeball it which kind of worked fine for this small project. It is part of a presentation I created for a job hopping that they like the rendering style and go with that. Here is a link to the 10 seconds video.

Diomede

 

@Nassos, so it is a story about a little grl and her puppy?  ​  Very effective story telling, lighting, and animation. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dartanbeck

NASSOS said:

Thank you for your good words. I managed to finish the little thing I was working using Michael and some mocap I found in the store. It was trully a nightmare to load the mocap into the mIchael figure in carrara, not much other than that the skeleton of the mocap and the skeleton of Michael were in different proportions and there was no unit mesurment I could find that translated the skeleton correctly. At the end I had to eyeball it which kind of worked fine for this small project. It is part of a presentation I created for a job hopping that they like the rendering style and go with that. Here is a link to the 10 seconds video.

Cool video - love the render style as well!

Sorry to hear about your woes. I think I have that MoCap set... it's easier than you think, I think.

I use the Poser formats when it come to V4 and M4 and family. It works so much easier in Carrara.

If you have the same one I have, the one by Poermocap, just select Michael 4 in the tray on the right, go to the Pose category in the content tab under Posermocap > Spy Moves and double-click the one you want to load onto Michael. It should be that easy.

Did you use a BVH file or something?

Dartanbeck

Wow! Congratulations on the EMMY!!!

I'd love to help make your experience with store content in Carrara easier, if I can. We need to show the world what Carrara can do!

I also use the aniBlock Importer for Carrara

Some of the aniBlock information might cause some issues with certain shapes

I guess some animated pose files might do the same

What I do in those situations is to go to the Sequencer and click the button on the top left of that window and change it from "Sequencer" to "Graph Editor"

Then if it's an arm that's poking directly into the body or something, then I select the shoulder on that side and scroll along in time until it goes wrong

With the should (in the example) selected, I choose the Rotation gizmo to see which color axis needs to be tweaked, then compare the color to the xyz indicator in the bottom left of the working window to figure out if it's the x, y, or z axis that needs to be tweaked

Then, in the Graph Editor, I scroll down to the selected shoulder and open the tiny triangle next to it, then open the one for "Motion Method", then "Translation" then "Rotation", and then select the axis I wanted to tweak

Along the upper left of the editor window are three little icons. We're using the one that looks like an arrow, for selection. If I cannot see all of the keyframes without scrolling to the right, I click the Zoom icon, the furthest from the arrow one. Holding ALT, click the timeline to zoom out until we see all of the keyframes. Switch back to the selection tool and drag select around all keyframes, then select the zoom tool and zoom back in the same number of clicks

Now we want to do our best to not drag left or right. We want to drag all of the keyframes up or down on the grid, which ever corrects the angle we need to correct. Since we have ALL keyframes selected, we can scroll along with the time scrubber to see more of the animation until we know we have that axis fixed. If we need to tweak another axis or another joint, we just do the same thing on the other axis or the other joint... whatever. 

It's really easy and fast after we do it once.

If you even want me to, I could record a video showing the process ;)

NASSOS

I imported the bhv file from the same set you mentioned. I bought the set and the alley. But in Carrara I just imported the bhv. Never thought I should have done it the way you mentioned. All rotations were fine but the hip translations were all off since the scale was off. As said I eyeballed it and end up working. Next time I would ask more. I wanted also to get the morphs for the legs that looked too thick to me. After your help I managed to get the morphs working but they had little effect on the conforming pants. So it is what it is. I hope my clients line it and we move ahead. This is a very important project for me.

NASSOS

I was able to them play with the keyframes easily. So the problem was loading the bhv file in the right scale.

Dartanbeck

Gotcha. 

I think it turned out great! But I don't want you having to jump through so many hoops when you don't have to. Try the animated poses next time... should be a LOT easier/faster.

M4 does have some 'bummer' moments like that. sometimes the shoulders look way too huge, etc.,

 

magaremoto

very inspiring Nassos, it could turn out a cool and proficuos new opportunity for you (and carrara). hope so

can't wait

Dartanbeck

I just watched it over a few more times and I really like the effect. I really do!

magaremoto

yes, Nassos knows how to build up a product ready for business, lucky to have him here

NASSOS

I have nevered worked with the Michael character or any similar character or genesis character before for a 3d project. I have used more cartoony stuff but never the realistic. Usally I pose the realistic character and use that to draw a drawing of a character for storyboard purposes.

I found that is better to use themocap and adjust it, the outcome is always better. As far as teh proportions, I believe that there are sertain body parts that move becasue of muscles pull that differents from rotations. If you see some advanced Maya rigs you can see alot of more controllers than the rotations. These do not exist for Michael or genesis figurs and so some poses look forced or "unconfortable". 

 

Dartanbeck

I agree, Mocap works really well. The animated pose (PZ2) files that Posermocap does in his products are really good and match with M4 and V4 really well. But if you like BVH better... then go for it. The motions are the same.

Yeah, Poser figures have always used "morphs" instead of the extra controllers for muscles and expressions. I got used to using morphs before ever even seeing how the Pro's do it. 

The Genesis line for Daz Studio are now getting closer, yet still use morphs for most things, but the newest one that doesn't work in Carrara, Genesis 3, has many more bones, especially in the face, to help with that.

Using M4 and V4, if I need a specific shape to occur, I make a morph especially for that and save it to my character. This is easy for V4 - she's the only one in that family who is not 'locked' from having full body morphs added by individual artists. So for her clothes and hair and M4 and others, I use the Daz Studio/Hexagon bridge to add a new "Official" morph target to the whole figure, so that in Carrara I can make and save these new morphs.

Dartanbeck

I like Mocap so much that I bought most of the aniBlocks available, which are designed for Daz Studio using aniMate 2

I have an article about my using that here:

► AniMating in Carrara

NASSOS

The pitch went well, I now have to wait and see if they will want to proceed with a longer proof of concept.

 

 

Dartanbeck

Awesome!

If it was me, I'd say "Yes... Run with that!" 

NASSOS

One of the things they asked to see was depth of field. Granted I didn't want to use depth of field myself since I was going for the comic book look and that doesn’t exist in that format and for the same reason didn't exist in Dinner for few. Like motion blur , it does not belong to the world of toon shading. In any case now they are asking for it and i had to figure a way to put it in. I tired to use the Multi pass depth render in carrara but this thing is so non flexible! It arbitrary chose to start with black in whatever was closer to camera but the farther object is not white. It really is an one setting solution. Also it doesn’t anti-aliasing the image which is very strange though the button is there but inactive. One solution will be to re render everything with the depth of field camera so the effect is not a post process at after effects but that will require to render everything again and there is no time for that. I figured since the youtube compression destroys a lot of detail the minor problems of the post process is not going to matter much and I went with that. The true question is do they ever going to fix these carrara problems?

 

 

Dartanbeck

I was told once (by someone from Daz3d) that the devs like to get feature requests so that, when they do get the opportunity to work on it they have a list of what customers want.

So the way to do that is to Submit a Help Ticket which has an optionfor "Feature Request" as well as Bugs

Definitely contact them. If you need it, you know there are many more that also need it!