copy hot point location from one object to another? Move hot point to bone diamond?
Diomede
Posts: 15,165
Is it possible to copy the hot point location from one object to another?
Specifically, I want to copy the hotpoint location of the left thigh of genesis2 figures to a vertex object. (repeat for other body parts). I am not rigging the objects. I don't want the vertex object's location to move so that the hot points are aligned, I want the two hot points aligned so that they each rotate around the same point.
CORRECTION: Turns out what I really want to do is move the hot point of a vertex object to the bone diamond (center of rotation) of another object, which is attached to a bone skeleton. Pics in a new post below.
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Comments
Try grouping the two objects, and set the hot point of the group.
Or could you parent the other object to the thigh?
Hi :)
Edit / Align or Ctrl+K
Select the source object,.. then shift-select the object you want to move to the source position,. then go to Edit / Align.
you'll notice a little graphic with 3 arrows (x,y,z,) you can click on all three to select them, (or whichever you need)..and that will align the two objects hot points.
The hotpoint of any object can be moved manually, but I don't think there's a way to mov the hotspots on tier own apart from Align and move manually
I'm trying to get my head around why you would want to do that, but,.it's either a manual move the hotpoint, or use align.
Q: Does it need to be a Vertex object,... I'm thinking a "Target helper" woud be easier, then parent the verrtex object to that, or use a modifier to make the vertex object track that helper if it's moving.
Thanks all.
What I am trying to do is create an editable work around for soft body cloth. I am NOT using softbody attaches to the bone skeleton. Instead, I am trying to create a set of vertex objects, parented similar to body parts, with hot points set to mimic a robotic motion of the figure. Why vertex objects? Because I want to be able to have very precise control of morphs.
I made a "tin man" set of vertex objects that corresponded to a custom genesis 2 shape. It does not quite match up to the body parts because I shortened "limbs" and added "joints", such as shortening the forearm and shoulder, but added an elbow. The idea is that I can more precisely address the "blend" zones of figure poses.
That was just context.
I have two immediate problems. First, the one I started this thread for. I have created my "tin man" robotic shell. However, it would be less hassle if I could easily make sure the center of rotation for the robotic limb corresponds to the "diamond" of the bone that the limb is attached to. At the moment, I am just manually moving the hot point and trying to visually line it up in the front and side cameras.
My second problem - which is not the immediate concern - is that for some reason the test dress that I made has problems with the sleeves. The forearms of the tin man are not colliding with the forearms of the dress. Everything else seems to work OK. I tried increasing the mesh density of the forearm robot object, the forearms of the dress, and changing the "margin" setting in the soft body settings of the dress. Anyway, I deleted one sleeve just so it would not interfere with the rest of the test.
The concept seems OK (except for the sleeves issue, which I think I don't think will be systematic).
The idea is that the softbody dress will not collide with a rigged figure (collisions are turned for G2F), but instead will collide with a key-framed moving set of objects that closely mimics the rigged figure, and whose parts can be morphed to address possible poke through.
Saving undersuits for softbody attach has had problems with the "named vertex" getting screwed up, and making it difficult to use again. Furthermore, joints are a problem for undersuit construction. This robot shadow can be saved and used again for other clothing for the same figure, and the hot point can be set so the rotations more closely mimic the rigged figure.
Yeah, like I said... if you bring in an Target Helper, select the thigh, then Shift-Select the helper and type: Ctrl K (or Edit > Align), select all of the axis in the dialog, and leave it set to Hot Point.
This will align the Helper to the thigh. Assuming that the vertex object is already in place, just drag it over the helper object. Now, when you select the helper object, you'll have the same hot point location as if you've selected the thigh. Any translation/rotation done to the helper will respectively affect the vertex object.
Also be sure to go into the rigged figure's Effects tab and turn off any physics attributes.
Hi diomede64,
For what you want to achieve, you could simply make each vertex object a child of the genesis body-part. I tried quickly with a stretched-out cube made into a child of one of the thighs. The cube follows all the rotations of the thigh. I even placed the cube's hot-point at one end and it made no difference. (But if I select the stretched-out cube it will rotate around it's own hot-point.).
It still leaves you with the issue of placing the vertex object into a good position. Going into 2-4 window mode would seem the best way.
I don't know about Genesis but with a home-made figure rigged in Carrara, it is possible to detach the skeleton and then remove a chunk of faces from the model - eg the entire midriff. Then re-attach the skeleton. The midriff could be replaced by a vertex object parented to an appropriate bone.
Removing a skeleton causes weight-painting and restraints (constraints?) to be lost, however.
If I remember correctly, if you make a hierarchical figure out of vertex objects linked by hot-points, there will be no more rotation-animation possible if you make it into soft-cloth.
Thanks everyone. All excellent suggestions and I will be trying each. A key component here is avoiding having the vertex object behave as if it was part of the rigged figure when the softbody calculations are done. That was why I was avoiding attaching, parenting, etc. The problems with the save/export command and named verteces make the softbody-attach approach impractical for items with both long sleeves and ankle-length, and a hood or head scarf. But I thought a "shadow prop figure" constructed with movement constraints rather than rigging could avoid collsions with a rigged figure and still create an envelope around the base figure if the hot points matched the bones.
Just doodling. There is no specific project here. Just looking for an alternative to the softbody attach until the named vertices become more stable through save/reload.
I am not making the vertex objects into sotbody. My goal is to avoid the bone structure entirely. The genesis figure will have its collisions turned off. The "tin man" shadow prop figure does not have bone rigging. Therefore, the cloth item will only collide with props, not a boned figure in any way. (now I'm not sure how a target helper or parenting would affect that but I am trying to avoid association with the rigged figure in any way). As vertex objects, the props can be loaded with morphs, which can be animated, to make sure there is no poke through. Best of all, a custom figure and its shadow tin man prop figure can be saved and reloaded for future use with completely different clothing items.
In theory anyway.
hya Diomede64, love how you are exploring this concept
Don't know if it helps, but last month I had a play by replicating ovals onto an M4 figure (model) and using the result for the collision body for a cloth. I had slight success, lots of poke through, but I feel this could be a way to go if you could get the replicated objs to sit parralell to m4's skin. It's a balance between the number and the quality.
cant remember the exact details of what I did.... - old age is a bug bear ha hahahahahahhahahah , er excuse me , where was I?
You could explore leaving the ovals as primitives (or use spheres?) to see if that cuts cloth sim time?
I also tried making them real instances and then doing a decimate function to reduce polys etc
looking forward to a workable cloth sim in car 12 ;)
of topic
I had good success with blender cloth sim by using posed m4 as a morph target for an m4 obj in blender
running the cloth sim and then bring cloth back into carrara
Blender was quite easy to use for this. I'd recommend it as Carrara plugin.... ;)
@ Diomede64,
When submitting my post above I did wonder if I was off-the-mark. It's just that I can't see the vertex figure and it's morphs going from pose to pose without passing through the soft cloth instead of pushing it in the direction of motion.
For static drapes Carrara soft-body works very well IMO - depending on the clothing mesh and settings. And your plan to use morphs is good for eliminating such poke-through as might occur.
An idea I mentioned a long time ago was for the possibility of a plugin to be written to automate the creation of morphs on a draped garment.
The idea was to create an animation of the figure with keyframed poses. The animation would be from pose to pose.
What I tried to do was a static drape of the clothing for each pose. I exported the clothing mesh as an object before the first simulation and did so after each simulation carried out in each of the different poses. I ended up with the original mesh with about fiften drapes - each an exported OBJ. These drapes were added to the original mesh as morphs - they had the same number of vertices.
It worked fairly well. The biggest shortcoming was that a long dress would sometimes fall and clash with itself between the legs. When the legs moved to the next pose (and the garment morphs changed, a leg would sometimes pass through the point where the clash had occurred.
Clearly this whole process is one I can't recommend because it is extremely tedious. BUT - if the steps involved in exporting a draped mesh as a morph to an existing mesh could be automated then it would be possible to use physics simulations to create a custom morphed garment - customised to the particular animation sequence.
There are a couple of other problems with this: simulations always start at the first frame of an animation. Each pose in the sequence would need to be done individually. Another shortcoming is that no 'twirling' effect would be possible if the figure was animated to turn quickly.
I showed a quick image of draping used for morphs here: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/37372/P60/
I think the video referred to in the same post showed it better but please seek around the middle to end rather than watch the whole thing! (I definitely don't commend my own videos!!)
I should add that the image I referred to above is in the final post (72)
Ah, but you can define a start frame for an animation that isn't frame 0.
Diomede, an object parented to the bone isn't really rigged, so maybe it would work.
@Marcus - thanks for the detailed response. This excerpt is enough to convince me that my idea is not feasible as currently implemented in Carrara. Because until a couple of weeks ago I had never dabbled with animations, I didn't fully appreciate the problems of having a softbody object collide with a moving object, even if not rigged. You idea of stringing together a series of static drapes with automated morphs is essentially what the plugin from Poser's cloth room to Carrara does, so it would seem to be something a plugin creator could automate.
@Headwax - I've been dabbling with Blender and will give that a go, but I'm comfortable with Poser's cloth room and I like the ability to save the pose and object to Poser's library and then load directly to Carrara from there.
@Evilproducer - If I understand Marcus correctly, what happened with the sleeves can be expected to occur more generally even if the objects are not rigged.