Puppeteer

Hi

I'm Neewbie interested in posing facial expressions.

I'm looking at Puppeteer and I see that it also requires head and face morphs.

Does Puppeteer create facial expressions. Or does it just adjust the size, proprotions and poisions of a static face.

Do I need Face morphs to create truly expressive faces?

How do Face morphs and puppeteer work together?

Thanks

Tigerwomble

Comments

  • McGyverMcGyver Posts: 6,995

    Sorry, I thought you were looking for one of these guys...

    In general the mods like it if you are more descriptive in the title.

    It also helps people who might have an answer notice your post easier.

    I'm not being a jerk (although I generally am), I genuinely thought you were looking for a Pierson's Puppeteer as featured in Larry Niven's Known Space timeline.

  • puppeteer is just a pose interpolation animation tool

    it's actually not limited to morphs but rather everything changed on the figure saved as a dot on a grid

    you can then interpolate between those dots by moving the pointer and record it as an animation 

  • CybersoxCybersox Posts: 8,745

    tigerwomble said:

    Hi

    I'm Neewbie interested in posing facial expressions.

    I'm looking at Puppeteer and I see that it also requires head and face morphs.

    Does Puppeteer create facial expressions. Or does it just adjust the size, proprotions and poisions of a static face.

    Do I need Face morphs to create truly expressive faces?

    How do Face morphs and puppeteer work together?

    Thanks

    Tigerwomble

    Puppeteer doesn't create any morphs, poses or expressions on it's own. 

    What Puppeteer does do is let you memorize one pose or expression, then memorize another (or more) and transition between them as points on a grid.

    By moving the mouse between the saved points, the figure is moved between the memorized positions in a smooth progression, so the mouse is effectively puppeteering the figure in real time.  This does not require a premade expression, as you could dial everything, but the expressions that can be acheived with just the base figures tend to be very limited.  I strongly advise getting at least one very good expression pack that comes the dials in addition to the base set sold by DAZ.  SimonWM's sets are a good recomendation for this as they cover all of the basic expressions with dials, give you aniblocks as well as poses, and are constantly on sale at good prices (his Gen 8 bundle for both G8F and G8M, for example, is at $10.48 in the store as I type this.)  At the same time, DO NOT buy and install a large selection of expressions all at once, and be wary of products that include a lot of expressions along with poses.  Why?  Because most expressions include special morphs and every morph you add to your figure base has to re-load every time you load that figure.  Add too many morphs and your loading times atart to slow down really badly.

    So, why use Puppeteer rather simply doing everything yourself or just using preset packs?  The advantages are many - first and most obviously, if you want a pose that's somewhere between two poses you already have, it lets you wiggle around until you get something close to what you want. This can be especially useful if you have pose packs that have settings just for an arm, leg, head, etc. as you can save the same base pose twice with only the one limb or the expression changed, allowing you to tweek just that one aspect with the fluidity of a dial.  Likewise, if there are two memorized positions and one of them is a neutral zeroed pose/expression, it can be used to create more subtle or more extreme variations of the same because not only does puppeteer let you move between the two saved points, but it also lets you go past the saved points and amplify the effect beyond the default 100% level.  That's really useful as often you may want to use a slight application of an expression while at other times you want to go all Marvel comics and really exagerate to get the effect you want.  And there's more.  Because Puppeteer allows you to move between multiple saved positions, you can put down three or more poses or expressions in a triangular formation and create different poses that mix all three by moving the mouse at different points between them.  And yes, this can also be used to create new "random" body shapes simply by putting different characters that use the same base in the different positions.  Finally, you can also line up multiple poses in a straight line to create the key frames for animated sequences by moving the mouse position slowly down the line of saved points. While much the same thing can be done using the timeline pane, doing it with Puppeteer allows you to experiment with different speed progressions and see the results as you're performing them.  A few bugs to be aware of though - because puppeteer saves all aspects of the figure and preset poses often change the scale, the physical position, or some element of the expressions of the item that they're affecting, this can cause unexpected effects and jitter, so it's usually better to zero the expressions completely while refining motion.  Also, you can save puppeteer setups, but it has to be done in a puppeteer preset format that only puppeteer can read, so make sure you save those before stopping work.     

    If that's all a bit much, DAZ actually has a quite good video on puppeteer in the help section 

    https://youtu.be/xRNX6wSxIwo       

  • marblemarble Posts: 7,449

    I'm only now discovering what I have been missing with Puppeteer. I'm using it to save poses but I have hit a snag. If I save the pose as a Puppeteer Preset and then load it in a new scene in which I happen to be animating the figure, I often get the age-old problem of the figure spinning on it's Y axis (like a chicken on a spit) as soon as I scrub along the timeline. If I save the same pose as a Pose or Properties Preset, this spinning doesn't happen. This has become a major drawback for me and it revives the frustration I have that the hip-spinning issues have never been addressed by DAZ.

  • takezo_3001takezo_3001 Posts: 1,914

    WendyLuvsCatz said:

    puppeteer is just a pose interpolation animation tool

    it's actually not limited to morphs but rather everything changed on the figure saved as a dot on a grid

    you can then interpolate between those dots by moving the pointer and record it as an animation 

    Posting to add that you can use nearly every scene element to store the poses/translation/figure/prop states into puppeteer, in fact, you can store an entire scene's worth of items, props and figures it's the most incredible tool that no one uses!

     

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 37,711
    edited February 2023

    takezo_3001 said:

    WendyLuvsCatz said:

    puppeteer is just a pose interpolation animation tool

    it's actually not limited to morphs but rather everything changed on the figure saved as a dot on a grid

    you can then interpolate between those dots by moving the pointer and record it as an animation 

    Posting to add that you can use nearly every scene element to store the poses/translation/figure/prop states into puppeteer, in fact, you can store an entire scene's worth of items, props and figures it's the most incredible tool that no one uses!

     

    pity it cannot read Dforce, it can frozen Optitex morphs

    yes I use it for many things 

    not all aspects of lights sadly read either

    Post edited by WendyLuvsCatz on
  • takezo_3001takezo_3001 Posts: 1,914

    WendyLuvsCatz said:

    pity it cannot read Dforce, it can frozen Optitex morphs

    yes I use it for many things 

    not all aspects of lights sadly read either

    I built plenty of light sets with parented props so I may position them in various translations to add to puppeteer, as far as dforce is concerned I can store the morphs and translation info as long as I'm using them in conjunction with riversoft's dForce2Morph, I never tried without it though...

    Looking forward to Puppeteer in DS5, hopefully, they'll expand on it as it's an incredibly useful feature!

  • takezo_3001 said:

    WendyLuvsCatz said:

    pity it cannot read Dforce, it can frozen Optitex morphs

    yes I use it for many things 

    not all aspects of lights sadly read either

    I built plenty of light sets with parented props so I may position them in various translations to add to puppeteer, as far as dforce is concerned I can store the morphs and translation info as long as I'm using them in conjunction with riversoft's dForce2Morph, I never tried without it though...

    Looking forward to Puppeteer in DS5, hopefully, they'll expand on it as it's an incredibly useful feature!

    I meant the functions of the lights themselves not the translations

    some work not all, things like falloff, intensity colour etc, I forget which ones do and don't but some things have keyframes and I had to manually copy paste them as puppeteer wouldn't animate them

    I make things like fires, flickering candles etc

  • takezo_3001takezo_3001 Posts: 1,914

    WendyLuvsCatz said:

    I meant the functions of the lights themselves not the translations

    some work not all, things like falloff, intensity colour etc, I forget which ones do and don't but some things have keyframes and I had to manually copy paste them as puppeteer wouldn't animate them

    I make things like fires, flickering candles etc

    Ahh, I see, yeah, here's to hoping that DS5 can support animated materials/shaders out of the box. 

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