Applying Poser poses in Carrara
cobusp
Posts: 303
Hi, I'm somewhat frustrated. Working on a big project (with deadly deadline) in which I place and render my Poser figures in Carrara scenes. All works well -- except that when applying poses form the Runtime library, the figure will "jump" to another position in the Carrara space.
The poses themselves are applied nicely, but it's a big time waster to have to re-position a figure after every pose.
Can anyone help please?
Cobus
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Comments
I would blame the pose creator for forcing to translate to some arbitrary location. The better pose sets I have leave the figure in roughly the center of the universe. The exception being if it is a pose set for two or more figures interacting with each other, such as a fight pose or something.
Free pose sets are usually the ones that cause me fits, but not always. I suspect it is the newer folks that do that.
I haven't found away to correct it. I suspect some programming or scripting guru could open the .pz2 file (or whatever it is called) in an editor and fix the x, y, and z translations, but that is outside my knowledge.
I always drag and drop my poses onto the 'hip' of the character. This works 99% of the time in giving me the pose but without making the character jump globally to a new location.
Aah -- thaks I will give it a try.
Evilproducer -- have you tried this trick?
First I've heard of it! I'll file it under, you learn something new everyday, or D'oh! Why didn't I think of that!
Thanks Jon! I will definitely give it a try!
Jonstark, thats clever thinking!
Eh, I just answered without thinking, but then thought 'I'd better test this to see if it works' and pulled out one of ironman13's pose sets where there are 'goto' poses that are specifically designed to put someone globally at a certain place in the room. I'm sorry to say that if the pose is designed to put someone somewhere globally that dropping it on the hip won't work (sadly), it will still move my character. I never ever use 'goto' poses myself, and for regular poses dropping it on the hip works fine. So I may have spoken too soon and given wrong info... I started dropping onto the hip when I first came into Carrara as I noticed I had significantly fewer pose and morph problems that way (I remember the Corvus shoulder fix wasn't happy and bent weird when I didn't drop on the hip. Nowadays I don't often use that fix, using the perfect V4 morphs instead, but I still tend to drop on the hip whenever possible so that my character is in the same relative position when the pose is applied). So the trick won't work for all situations; if the pose creator specifically encoded global translation coordinates on purpose (or on accident) that will still carry over. Although with Fenric's pose exporter utility, it's easy enough to save a new pose that doesn't include the global translation movements that will work to strip this info out if needed.
Ah, good to know about Fenric's pose exporter. Does it work like a python script inside Poser, and will it work for poser pro 2012?
The pose exporter lets you save Poser PZ2 format poses from inside Carrara. It writes very basic pose files that should work in any version of Poser starting with Poser 7. It is intended for poses, not morph presets - those are hit and miss because Carrara loses the channel names. And it really doesn't work well at all for Genesis.
From inside Poser, use the Pose Writer Panel that comes with it (Scripts | Partners | Netherworks | PoseWriter Panel)
As a previous poster stated, I also have problems with Poser type poses and animations in Carrara, specifically they relocate the figure elsewhere in the scene. E.g. I have my scene all set up with a figure where I want it at frame one. Then I drop a Poser animation (multi-frame Pose file) on the figure, wanting him to, say, look around for the next several dozen frames. But the animation moves him at frame one, and all succeeding frames. Will Pose Exporter (which I have) let me save a version of such an animation without the "global translation", and then use it in Carrara (I don't use Poser itself much)? I get that from this post by Jonstark:
"Although with Fenric’s pose exporter utility, it’s easy enough to save a new pose that doesn’t include the global translation movements ... "
If not for animation sequences, can it work like this for single frame poses?
I took a quick look at Pose Exporter and didn't immediately see how to do this.
You should be able to do what you want...
Thanks for the prompt response. Yes, that would be correct if that menu showed up. The reason it does not is probably because I am using the wrong product, "Pose Helper for Carrara". :ohh:
"Pose Exporter" is now in my cart ... :coolgrin:
That will bring me up to 5 of your 7 products. I have Lightwave but don't use it much, so I assume "MDD File Format For Carrara" is not of much use to me. The only one left is "Pose and Shading Tools 2" which looks interesting, if a little complicated. The "Stack Tweener" for oscillation sound particularly interesting, any video demo around?
The Stack Tweener allows you to blend other tweeners...
So
here's the standard Linear tweener: http://www.fenric.com/download/Linear.avi
here's the standard Oscillate tweener: http://www.fenric.com/download/Oscillate.avi
here's the standard Noise tweener: http://www.fenric.com/download/Noise.avi
Using my Stack Tweener, you can do things like:
50% Linear, 50% Oscillate: http://www.fenric.com/download/Stack-HalfLinearHalfOscillate.avi
or 85% Linear, 20% Oscillate, 20% Noise: http://www.fenric.com/download/Stack-LinearOscillateNoise.avi
(And yeah, they don't add up to 100%... Noise is a little weird and you have to compensate for it)
Yes, very good. That last one is what I think I can use. Machines that are supposed to work smoothly, e.g., but tend to develop some ... shakiness. Or people, same thing ...
:grrr:
So does that mean that there's no way in Carrara to save morph presets ? I'm kinda rusty on all of this. I thought there was a way that worked well...
Oh, yes - there certainly is: NLA Pose. They are a bit large due to Carrara's verbose text format, but they work well. Select the root of your figure, choose the "NLA" tab, and "Create Master Pose". It will then be in your "Clips" tab. You can drag it from there to your browser to save it off separately.
To use it, drag it to the "Track" line in the sequencer. If you want to get rid of the clip, use "Load Clip Data" from the NLA tab and then you can delete the pose clip.
I wrote this back in the Carrara 7 days very specifically to get a pose/animation over to Poser for dynamic cloth simulations.
Ahhh, okay...that's the place where you have to scroll down and find "Body Morphs" if you want to save morph presets....Cool, thanks.
Okay, dumb question...
Once you have an NLA pose of morph presets applied on the Track, is there any way to modify some of the morph sliders? Or better yet, just apply the morph presets to the character and get rid of the NLA track?
When the NLA morph pose is applied it doesn't allow you to tweak any of them...they jump back to their initial positions.
It's been awhile, but is there a Make Clip Editable button or something similar?
Yeah, there is, but it doesn't seem to do the trick. I think it's just for the clip itself, not the internal settings and stuff.
Hmmm.... I don't know about the pose clips, but with the animation clips you can edit the keyframes. There may be another step. I'll see what I can remember.
Pick the root of the figure, go to the NLA tab, click "Load Clip Data", pick the pose clip from the dialog -> the clip is turned into proper keyframes. Then delete the NLA clip from the track.
Here's what I did:
Make sure your clip is in the sequencer and the play head is located over it. Select the Pose Clip and choose, Convert To Editable Clip. After that is done and Carrara gets done thinking about it, you should now see an Edit Clip button. Press it and the clip should turn red. You can now edit the morphs. When you are done, click the Finished Editing Clip button.
I tried this with shape morphs and expression morphs and it worked.
I don't know if you looked at the window with the figure hierarchy that opened when you chose to create a pose clip, but if you expand it, it shows the complete rigged figure with checkboxes next to the various trees. If you deselect the checkboxes for any of the trees, you can move the limbs that were left unchecked when you created the clip. I wanted to see if morphs behaved in this manner as well. They don't- sort of.
I used a morph on the left and right eye to slit the pupils. I also made the ears pointy. I created the clip and un-checked the left eye. After the clip was created, but not in the timeline, I zeroed the figure which got rid of the morphs I had applied and the pose. I then put the clip in the sequencer and the left eye retained the normal pupil shape and right eye had the slit pupil. I could rotate the left eye using the rotation tool, but not the morph slider.
When I went into edit mode, I could do whatever I wished. If I had advanced along the timeline it created a keyframe within the clip.
Then again, Fenric's method sounds a hell of a lot easier. ;-)
Just another little tidbit to share regarding NLA clips. If you use IK tracking, it will over-ride the clip.
A good example is if you create a clip with the figure's arm in a certain position, then it will normally be locked in position, or locked into the animation data that is in the clip.
If you were then to enable IK tracking in the hand, and place the object to track in a position different from the pose or animation, the hand will still want to track the object and pull itself and the rest of the IK chain in the arm towards the tracked object.
In this cheesecake video, I was testing three things. A walk cycle I had built, Sparrowhawkes' Jiggle Deformer and the IK tracking.
Both arms had minimal animation. They both basically hung down at the side, and had a minimal back and forth motion as you would expect when walking. They essentially mirrored each others movement. I created an NLA clip and looped it.
I parented a target helper object to the hip and offset it a bit. I selected the right hand, added the IK tracking modifier and chose the target helper. The animation I had done to roll the shoulders during the walk helps with the look of the walk I think. If I wanted it to look better I would have done some work on the hands.
This method could come in handy for animations, if your figure needs to carry something or point something.
Probably not quite safe for work or spouses watching over shoulders. ;-)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkWBRuJlQhA
its difficult to drag on to track. is there a way to lock the tracks so it's not scrolling?
thanks.