New Product: Carrara Genesis Walks & Poses Early Preview

mmoir

I haven't submitted it yet but I will shortly . It is a bunch of walk cycles and poses created in Carrara for the Genesis figure .I also have little workflow tutorial on creating Genesis prop or clothing that works inside of Daz Studio and Carrara.
Here is a couple of videos showing the walk cycles for the Genesis and Genesis child figures.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NoMVVJqmQ0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riF0SGX4cwo

I will submit it sometime next week so it is about a month away from being released.

jrm21

The videos look great. Looking forward to the release.

FYI - the "robot walk 2" could also be useful as a "march" (i.e. soldier/military).

Dartanbeck

I don't know how I've missed this post... looks really cool... is it still coming?

mmoir

Hey Dartanbeck,
In testing there was a major problem with using the NLA clips with the genesis figure , I didn't see it from my end but when Daz tested the clips the genesis figure was doing strange morphs all the time. We couldn't solve the problem so the product is a no go. I could post the files as is and see if anyone can get any use out of it. You can post here if you guys want to take a look at it.

Dartanbeck

Well... I'd like to think that there would be a way that I could pay you for it. I've seen your efforts before. You put a lot of work into this stuff.

mmoir

Dart,
Oh, don't worry about it.

Here is the link to the zip file which contains all the files, there are several little video tutorials included showing how to use the product as well as the process of creating props/clothing for use with the Genesis figure inside of Carrara. It would be interesting to see if people can use the NLA clips on the genesis figure without the unpredictable morphing problem. I should post the issue I had as a bug because this issue certainly "bugged" me.

Guys, let me know if these NLA clips work for you. Thanks

https://www.mediafire.com/?ph9qxxan7f7m0ua

Dartanbeck

Thanks Mike. I'll check this out right away.

Dartanbeck

Hi,
I've given a small lighting experiment to my friend, Garstor. So I used that initial exercise here, with your run cycle with all settings at their default. Before doing so, I've watched all of your tutorials and tips. Really cool. So I've changed the smoothing like you said. Funny... I mentioned that back when Genesis was new, and Carrara 8.5 was in beta testing, and everybody looked at me funny for saying it. But it surely speeds things up considerably, doesn't it? ;)

It was the speed savings that got me to add my lighting exercise, as it uses low object accuracy and lower shadow accuracy, Fast AA, Gamma Correction = 2.2, Sunlight on and at 10%, Same with Indirect Lighting, turned off Interpolation, and set Irradiance Map to "One for all frames". I set the default light to set soft, raytraced shadows with a 33' radius, and put the default Bi-gradient in the scene settings, but then override that with a black backdrop, so I still get the black backing, but the lighting will be using the gradient.

I added a second NLA Track to Genesis and added the head turn Right. I still don't know how to make that stuff work. That is why you always here comments from me about editing cycles by getting rid of keyframes for parts that I want to animate across the entire time range, rather than on a per-clip basis. Do you know of how to combine clips like that? I've tried changing override to Additive, but didn't really try much beyond that, aside from changing the levels of the tracks, like putting the head turn on the top, for example.

Very cool Cycles! I'll do some more examples!

evilproducer

Don't you go to the Animation Menu and add a new track or something?

Dartanbeck

evilproducer said:

Don't you go to the Animation Menu and add a new track or something?

I don't. I just right click in the existing NLA Track.

Dartanbeck

Mike, I've figured out the strange behaviors. It's not morphs, it's bones. I have also come up with a fix for it if you'd like to fix it and resubmit, turn this into a product:

I get horrible results when I add the other walk cycle clips. It blows Genesis apart as shown below (bottom image).

I was remembering how you and I set up clips differently, so I thought that I might be able to come up with an answer, and I did.

► To begin with, I select Genesis (second line down) and go to the NLA tab

► Select Load data from Clip

The cycle now works perfectly in keyframes. No blowing apart issues, but it's only one cycle.
I tried just quickly saving a new clip from this, but that won't work.
What I ended up discovering, is that you would need to go to the NLA tab again (after Load Data) and select Create Master Clip

► Create Master Clip. Expand out the dialog to make plenty of room.

At this point, I often just set the hip as the loop agent - but whatever...

Notice that the top line has a dot rather than a check mark. This means that something is not selected to be recorded. Good.
In further investigation, the only thing not chosen is Actor, so that's good for now.

It's everything below Actor that will need the following work, since the hip is the part that directs the motion, that one has to be edited separately. Being at the top of the list, we'll start there:

► Uncheck the hip. Notice now that you've just deselected everything else below it. This will make the work much faster

Start opening up the hierarchy of the hip.

You can stop when you get to ► Motion method. Note that, before we deselected the hip, it had a check mark, meaning that every box within was checked. But we need to deselect everything from Motion Method except for Position and Rotation. That's why clearing everything makes this faster - much less clicks to perform.So check Position and Rotation for the Hip only

Now follow down and do this to everything else that is animated, except do NOT check position for any other part - only Rotation (see top image below)

I went through this whole thing. For kicks though (mostly as a test), I just checked the finger joints, rather than opening their hierarchies. Sure enough, the fingers got blown apart - but just the fingers!

So after you go through the whole thing like this, then just click OK and save the new clip ;)