Saving actor or character parameter/morphs
SileneUK
Posts: 1,975
I wish you could just search the Carrara forum!!
I thought I had learned that you could do this in Carrara: save what you select on all of the sliders for an actor (eg body/face shapes) to apply to eg a new base figure. I have made some that work well. Of course I can save the whole morphed character to my browser, but I thought you could save the parameters and then load them to a new base figure that you want to quickly model without having to keep a long litany of the morphs. OR, that you could use that little save utility up at the top of the parameters list, but it only seems to save as a .cbr. I tried that, saved them to my browser in same folder where the Carrara character file is, then loaded a new base figure and clicked load on the parameter.cbr, but nothing happened.
OR maybe it's a plugin?
Also under the Animation tab you can Memorize all kinds of things... but I thought that was only for when working on the current file.
How did I do this... or am in hallucinating and never did it at all?
Silene
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Comments
cbr is a carrara pose file (nla), which should also hold morphs in the pose.
i think you'd go to the keyframe you want to save, or select it
is a plethora of tickboxes
Hmmmm... OK. That's going to take some reading up on as I don't animate and I thought that the first keyframe 0 was the 'current' one as when you render. I have one other thing to try....
Thanks!
Silene
NLA clip
expand all the options and tick the morphs
Thank you! Create Master Clip? I am looking in the Car manuals for 7 & 8 so will have to report back later on how I get on after making the clip. Never have touched NLA before. New world... yay!
SIlene
it was a nice feature in poser, save a head pose or a hand pose
It will be tomorrow before I can get back to this... have granddaughter for a couple of days .
Silene
Sorry to be thick as treacle, but when I make an NLA clip, it only seems to include morphs that you can make on the entire character, such as facial expressions, limbs movement, poses, etc. It is not showing me a way to save the PARAMETERS for ACTOR. EG, facial structure changes, body changes, character slider applications. How do you save those, or does NLA not work for them? It would be strange if you could not as how would you do an animation from a normal figure to eg an ogre in your tracks?
I do NOT animate.. the only animation I have ever done is with Flash in Adobe for 2D which is totally 'simples' compared to this. I'd like to explore it in the future if it saves creating many scenes of the same characters in the same setting doing different things, but I still would be using single static renders of a current frame.
OR is this not working because I am using Misty's G3? I tried on a plain old Genesis figure, but the same choice comes up... no actor morphs get saved to the clip.
What am I doing wrong, or is there another way to save figure SHAPE vs POSE. I would hope there is as there is that Animation dropdown that has all those memorise features, but where do the 'memories' go when you choose them? Do I have to load another plain figure into the same scene as the ACTOR morphed on and transfer the morphs to the new added base figure?
I have tried to search for vids in Carrara Cafe and on PhilW's Carrara training, but I can't seem to get NLA to pick up ACTOR parameter morphs. (I am talking naked people here, no hair or clothing yet put on them).
Any idiot proof tutoring gratefully appreciated!
ETA: Trying one other thing..... be back later.
you need to expand everything drill right down to find them, is probably under actor or model miscellaneous data
oh and Master Pose not clip
untick the top then drill down under actor I had many to expand and find MrBear
if you only tick the ones you want not everything ticked you can apply them like poses and even do multiple tracks
OK... I wasn't looking at POSE... now I see all the parameters. There are gazillions I have used. Will try to follow this now. Cheers, Wendy!!
Silene
OK, I was able to create a Master pose clip from my Neanderthal woman morphs (and there are tonnes of them under Actor). She is not from a morph package like Mr Bear. I saved it to the Clips browser. I then tried opening a 'fresh' new Janette to apply the clip on, but Carrara just froze up. So I went back into my original Neanderthal woman file and ZEROED the figure under the Animation drop down and she went back to a plain version of Janette, but with skin texture. I am sure they are the same, just one has skin.
Anyways.... the results were weird per screenshots. I had selected Actor for the morphs in the expanded dropdown for creating a Master Pose. I did not tick the main character above Actor, and I did not select hip, and all the body parts below. See other screenshot. Every morph I own is ticked under Actor by default. I hope I am not supposed to untick those and only choose the ones with which I made her in the first place? Yikes. It would be easier to use my list of morphs with their values from the get-go when I need another Neanderthal woman to tweak so they are not twins.
I am sure I have gone wrong here... but not sure where. I went back and looked at the character I created and at all the arms, legs, facial expressions, etc parameters yout have when selecting the full character and all were ZERO, so I had only ever played with the ACTOR morphs. I can see what is wrong.... her body shrank in height as it should, but the head did not completely reduce, leaving the neck to stretch and the eyeballs never came down at all.
The figure is a bit crude... I had not smoothed her body or anything yet in Zbrush. If I am doing NPR, I can managed those things in PS. Trying to cut down on production time. The original figures arms, legs, waist, head all move when I manually pose them in the correct way. Under Motion.... rotation is set at Angles, but would that affect Actor morphs? There is also no displacement. I also am not using any Normals or Bump maps just to keep things clean.
The answer is probably obvious... but not to moi!!! Any ideas?
it might be a genesis 3 and 8 quirk as I found it applying other parameter morphs and poses too bone based poses were fine
sadly opening DAZ studio and doing it there on Misty's preset and saving characters might be your only option
I find the sliders interface in DS hard to look at. Might be better after corneal and then cataracts surgeries in the autumn.
I don't mind going by my list. I think that was how DS forum people posted their custom morphs back with M4/V4. I copied a couple of their 'recipes' which were completely accurate. It was something that Die Trying did with 182 morphs or something, then I thihnk SicklyYield publised a lot of morphs later on. So I am used to making lists.
I was hoping for a shortcut. Oh well. Maybe I can just do the head. That's the hardest!
Thanks for following along...much appreciated!
another option for a figure already converted to car,
is to save your accumulated morphs as a new morph in carrara. export obj,
reimport as new morph.
carrara would do the channel creation work.
think it would be easier to keyframe, then doing each individual morph every time.
if you want to use DS to save a a collection of morphs and poses and pose controles, you would do an ERC freeze to save all.
an ERC pose should apply to figure you've already loaded from DS runtime.
if you've saved your character as .car, you'd need to save a new one after you make an ERC pose.
tho would be nice to be able to inject it to a character already saved to carrara. dreams. lol,
there was an old fenric utility to save a carrara pose as a poser file. sadly gone from store now,
if you talking about animating to show the morphs effect over time.
you can drag the arrows on the keyframe bars down the timeline.
save your first frame as a zero pose,
mmoir made a tutorial, shows tweeners and ik boots. the tutorial from the store is sadly gone, but i did see a few tutts on you tube by mmoir.
there are nla animated poses and keyframed animated poses.
each methos had their strong points.
agreed we could use a g3 video tutorial on animating face rigging and morphs.
i think mimic would only save face morphs, not the face rigging pose. might be easier than ticking boxes in the drop down list.
Hi Misty, That was sort of how I started out. Up in the Parameters tab, whether you are on ACTOR in the tree or the entire figure, there is an option to save and load. It saves as a .cbr (2 types). I thought its purpose was just that, to save parameters and then load them on other figures that were a generation/sex match.
Guess not? But how do you save them as a new Car morph... where and under what files? How do you export as obj and reimport as a morph? I tried messing about in the Modelling room and the figure in Animation mode, but nothing happens, it just saves as Actor as the whole file.
I have almost all of Fenric's plugins.... too bad pose transfer didn't include morph transfer!
for rigged figures in Carrara you need to save using an existing morph target
some got around this by using send to Hexagon in DAZ studio and slightly moving one vertice to create and save morph target to use
you will get crazy distortion in Carrara doing this on weightmapped figures because the morphs need to be adjusted to rigging space and ERC freeze run before saving in DAZ studio
for genesis + figures you really need the Carrara plugin called DAZ studio, not much getting around it
OK thanks.... it seemed such a simiple thing... who knew!
Silene
are you working with a specific figure already saved to carrara?
what are a couple of the morphs you using?
or PM me.
i have the fenric erc thingie but never've used it yet.
Not the same thing as DAZ studio ERC
Hi Misty,
It's a mix of about 25 or so morphs to exaggerate facial features. More for the body. I have a list and they are from several different vendors. This is an image of a more refined version than above with my Neander girl next to her Cro Magnon friend. It's a kiddie-friendly look. The previous one was a hag-older woman look, but I have another way of doing that with an old genesis figure.
It's not a biggie, I just thought it was something I'd failed to learn and am used to just adjusting the morphs from the base figures from my list. I have one for the males, too. Your Carrara G3s work just fine and I love using them and they are the ones who will be front and centre!
Am going to give it a rest for a while... will try to get back to things later in the weekend. Little granddaughter coming and going each day which is unusual and demanding! But soon over... whew.
We ll figure it out
doesnt seem a way to filter the selection list to filter only usrd.
But the tracks in sequencer can filter to show only tracks with keyframes.
Part of the trick is to make sure camera or lights have not moved. And hip hasnt a keyframe
a quck cripeman tut on morph targets