Sequence OBJ Importer only loading first frame
shaynnhaugen_160e1b5520
Posts: 0
Hello,
I'm sorry to bother you all with what is probably a very silly question, but I can't seem to find the answer on my own. I recently purchased the Sequence OBJ Importer from Digital Carvers Guild, and can't seem to get it to import further than the first frame.
I will use the import function, select the first frame (as I assume I'm supposed to, since it won't let me select more than one at a time), and set the import type to sequenced OBJ. I'd even mess around with the animation settings on the object once it was imported, to no avail.
I'm not sure if I'm missing something here, as the documentation is pretty minimal, so hopefully I didn't look over something obvious.
If it helps for narrowing down the problem, I'm running the plugin in Carrara 8.5, 64bit, on a Windows 8 machine.
Thank you very much for the help,
Shaynn Haugen
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Comments
I would have liked that somebody answers this question because, to say the truth, it's the only commercial plugin which could interests me.
My goal, is to find an easy way to import objects sequences (especially dynamic clothing) since Poser because, at first sight, no programmer is able to integrate it in Carrara…
Hi all,
It turned out the issue was with the file names. Right now I don't handle sequence files (here or in Ground Control) that are just numbers. I'm looking for a first chunk of the file to make sure it's part of the same sequence. I'll take a look at that for the next update, but for now I look for stuff formatted like
filename001.obj, filename002.obj, etc.
001.obj, 002.obj, etc. won't be recognized as a sequence.
Regards,
Thank you for your answer.
Will be it possible to increase the number of images for the demo version, 10 images, it's not enough to have an idea of the result since one needs already these 10 images to conform the clothe in Poser.
2 seconds would be well to really test the effectiveness of the plugin.
Thank you.
I'll give it some thought.
Regards,
I have just sent a message to you on your site, don't take it into account!
I tested a sequence exported with numbers like this “Filename01_000001” etc, and that didn't work.
I have then renamed in “Filename00001” etc and all is OK !
It is true that if one must rename all the files, an update would be welcome because with Windows, the files are renamed like this “Filename (01)”…
It must should be added that the image “0" should be removed because it is not accepted by the plugin.
After this concluding tests, I buy it directly.
Thank you!
Realflow in Carrara ?
Here my first test with an .obj sequence built in Realflow.
I believe that it's very promising but there is a problem concerning the shadow of the liquid.
A second problem, the meshes of the liquid are not interactive with the objects with physical properties.
Allo,Eric ?:-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz7Z88X9p1o&list=UU2ad-B9kftJzKv_0HyekV3g
I didn't see the shadow problem in your animation. Can you elaborate?
The physics probably won't be something I can do anything about. It's not an object that's moving around that could exert a force on other things in the scene. It's a completely separate mesh each frame. You might get some interaction if the other objects interact with the surface as it is in that frame, but I can't see it giving reliable results.
Cool demo.
Thanks.
Hello Eric,
The problem in connection with the shadow is difficult to explain, I will try with my limited English.
In this render published on Youtube, we can see the shadow of the object (the liquid), but the color is very intense.
To avoid that, I added a light for the liquid only and prevented the first one to light it.
I realize whereas there is no more shadow at all !
I will test on other seq objects to see if there is the same thing.
With regard to the interaction with the bullet objects of the scene, there is always a workaround, not problem but I wanted to know if it were normal.
Thank you.
I don't have the plugin, but my understanding is that the animated object is a different object for each frame. I suspect that light linking will work only on the object in the first frame, and then because the subsequent frames use a different object per frame the link is broken.
Is that accurate Eric?
You are right EP, it's only the first object which appears in the lists of the scene but then, why is there a shadow when it doesn't have exclusiveness in the light ?
It is rare that we uses only one light in a scene, it's for that it's awkward.
It's not really a different object (I probably should have used a different word), but the mesh is completely swapped out. I would expect lighting to work like it does with anything else.
What I was trying to convey is that if you animated a sphere in Carrara natively, you'd have this object that changes its position from frame to frame. Carrara can calculate its velocity, how hard it hit things, etc. The local coordinates of vertices don't move, but the global position of the whole object does.
With a sequenced OBJ animation of the same sphere, the movement is baked into the mesh. The global position of the object doesn't change, but each frame gets a whole new set of vertices and facets with different local coordinates than the previous frame. Carrara doesn't know what to do with that from a physics perspective.
I think I see what is going on here. What you've said is illuminate only the spilled wine. Since the table cloth is not being illuminated, it gets no shadow. You have the same effect by dropping a sphere primitive into the scene and making it the only thing illuminated. It will not cast a shadow on the table from that light.
Regards,
It's not really a different object (I probably should have used a different word), but the mesh is completely swapped out. I would expect lighting to work like it does with anything else.
What I was trying to convey is that if you animated a sphere in Carrara natively, you'd have this object that changes its position from frame to frame. Carrara can calculate its velocity, how hard it hit things, etc. The local coordinates of vertices don't move, but the global position of the whole object does.
With a sequenced OBJ animation of the same sphere, the movement is baked into the mesh. The global position of the object doesn't change, but each frame gets a whole new set of vertices and facets with different local coordinates than the previous frame. Carrara doesn't know what to do with that from a physics perspective.
Thanks for clarifying that.
Thank you for all these explanations.
In connection with the shadow, it's easy to duplicate the plan and to apply a shadow cather “texture" to it.
I didn't know that it was an issue of Carrara, I remember now that I already had this problem and I thought that my scene was corrupted.
Next test: to import a sequence of dynamic clothe from Poser.
Thank you!
Poser Dynamic Clothe in Carrara: I like a lot this plugin !
http://www.bond3d.byethost18.com/index.php?topic=173.msg998#msg998
That looks really nice DUDU. Was the whole figure the sequenced object, or just the clothing?
It's the clothing only.
You must adapt it a little bit by places of the timeline, but there is a process to follow:
1- Open the Poser project (.pz3) directly in Carrara (without the cameras, the lights and the ground)
2- Delete the dress.
3- Move all the keyframes of 1 image (to deploy all the tree).
4- Check in the preferences if the tweaners are linear.
5- Import the sequence of objects while clicking on the image “001” (I had to rename the 100 first because I didn't find how to change the name by default in Poser).
The size of importation must be 96.
6- Adapt the clothing to the first and the last image and perhaps, if necessary between both.
7- Built your scene around the character (here V4).
I will try with the hairs simulation later.
It's a plugin for you which work with C7 !
Hi folks,
I know it's been a bit, but DCG Importer will now support file names that are just numbers (e.g. 0001.obj, 0002.obj, etc.).
You can grab the update at
http://www.digitalcarversguild.com/plugin.php?ProductId=21
Also, it now support Carrara 6 and 7. Anybody still using those?
Regards,
I use C7.2 Pro.
Unfortunately I just found out I need a new furnace, so I don't think I'm in the market for extraneous things for awhile. You know, things like food... ;-)
Thank you for this evolution.
I'm not a specialist in the Internet and I dont find how I can download your update.
I believed to receive a notification by e-mail, but I didn't have anything…
Hi DUDU_00001,
The links are at the top right of the page just under the word Carrara. There's a table that lists the versions of Carrara and OS you're running. Click on the one you need. If you can't find what you need, send me a private message and I'll respond with a direct link. DAZ's terms of service don't let 3rd parties advertise on this forum so I try to be brief here.
If you send me a private message with your email address, I can also check to see if you're on the mailing list. It may also be hung up in a spam filter. Those have to be pretty aggressive these days to keep out the junk and can sometimes pick up the good stuff too.
Regards,
Hi,
I tried recently, with reasonable success, to animate clothed figures within Poser 10 while using the Cloth Room.
DUDU in another thread, wrote of a Python script (dyn to morphs) which could run in Poser to capture the clothing morphs frame by frame. When the Poser file is opened in Carrara, both the animated figure and the clothing work as they did in Poser except that the figure is out of sync. The figure lags behind just a little - but enough to spoil the animation.
I also found that Genesis animated in Poser became all distorted when the Poser scene was opened in Carrara.
Likewise the new style of Poser figure, while not as distorted, re-shaped itself in Carrara.
What I'm wondering is: could this plugin be used in conjunction with the dyn-to-morphs python script in Poser?
The idea would be to:
1 run the cloth simulation/animation in Poser.
2 run the python script to create the clothing morphs in Poser
3 select the figure in Poser and export it as an object sequence.
4 Delete the figure in Poser and save the scene ready to open in Carrara
This should allow the animated clothing to be seen in Carrara but without the figure. Would the plugin be able to bring the previously exported (figure) object sequence into the scene so that it would automatically be wearing the clothing?
If so, would the scene be very memory-intensive - would it be the same as having many figures in one scene?
I'm considering buying the plugin for this purpose.
Hi Marcus!
I tried out the three methods:
DCG importer - Fenric's MDD in/out and Dyn2Morph.
All in all, DCG and Fenric' s plugins do the same work, import (+export for Fenric) of objects sequences except which they do not use the same format, Wavefront .obj for DCG and Lightwave .mdd for Fenric.
I use each plugin as pipeline according to the program used:
DCG Importer is perfect to import simulations of liquids from Realflow (meshes only, not particles).
Fenric's plugin is realy nice to import clothing since Marvelous Designer, DCG does it as well, but Fenric has useful presets for each program used (size of the characters and clothing).
Each of these two plugins requires a little work in the repositioning of the imported objects (see my topic higher).
Since Poser, it's the Python script Dyn2Morph which works best, you creates your animation in Poser and you export the converted clothing into Carrara.
For the character, it is the traditional method, you export the pose (.pz2), but I prefer to export the scene in .pz3 and to remove fixed clothing in Carrara.
Dyn2Morph is lighter for Carrara, but the two others plugins are not heavy either because they do not seem to load each object with the sequence in Carrara, but only a reference (our two programmers should confirm it…)
To summarize, I use:
- DCG importer with Realflow and other programs which export objects sequences.
- Fenric' s MDD with Marvelous Designer, but DCG can do it too.
- Dyn2Morph with Poser: lighter and (almost) any work after the import into Carrara.
I'll soon post on Carrarators my test with Fenric's MDD.
@+
Hi Marcus,
Big answer, it might. I think it really depends on where in the pipeline that synch problem between the figure and the cloth is getting introduced. In demo mode, it will import the first 10 frames. If you can see the synch problem that quickly, you could try it in demo mode.
In regards to your memory question, it only loads one frame at a time so it only takes slightly more memory than if you were loading just a single OBJ file.
You could also try exporting the whole sequence (cloth included) to sequenced OBJs and see if that works.
Regards,
Thanks, DUDU_0001 and Digital Carvers Guild, for your very helpful replies.
The issues I wanted to address were discussed recently (but now a good few pages into the Carrara forum) on Page 2 of this thread:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/47935/
Although I still wish to explore Carrara's soft cloth possibilities at some point in the future, I'm really impressed with Poser's Cloth Room and DUDU's guide to opening resulting simulations in Carrara.
My hoped-for workflow would be to use Poser for figure and clothing animation clips only and then introduce the results into the Carrara scene. As described above, there is just the glitch of the figure's movement lagging behind the clothing a little - causing poke-through. I tried having zero draping frames but the results were the same. Perhaps it may be to do with tweeners in Carrara but I wouldn't want anyone to vex themselves trying to figure it out.
In the old discussion I just referred to, I linked to a video showing how a Poser scene using Genesis opens in Carrara with Genesis utterly distorted.
I thought that the DC plugin might allow Genesis from a Poser animation to be brought into Carrara as a sequence of objects and avoid the problem. Then there is texturing....
Thanks again for all assistance and all best wishes for the year ahead to everyone.
Hi again,
I noticed that it was necessary to remove the first keyframe of the clothing seq. and to move back all of them to the start.
You must also be sure that your tweeners are linear (see preferences).
It is necessary also that the second keyframe of DCG plugin is at the good place at the end of the sequence (move it a little to see the better result).
I correctly place my clothing at the beginning of the sequence and at the end too (keyframes for position and hotpoint).
If you have chance, that must work like that, if not, you reposition your clothing when it is necessary (starts at the beginning of the sequence).
Good luck and HAPPY NEW YEAR !
Thanks DUDU, and Happy New Year to you also.
I'm off now to buy some drinks!