Digital Art Zone

When the jiggle is applied in Pro8.1…after application, the next thing that happens is the software [Carrara] simply goes blank [character disappears] and then is locked, no buttons work…dead…CTRL-ALT-DELETE to rectify the problem. 

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2nMQ9HfBps is from last year…and refers to 8, not 8.1 and there have been some changes, I’m sure you’re probably aware, so I’m wondering exactly what version you’ve used the jiggle in successfully?  8 or 8.1?  Could this be an 8 to 8.1 issue?

I’m running Win7-64bit on an i7 Intel processor with 12GB RAM and 2GB Radeon card.  Not sure that would have any bearing.  Carrara never crashes on me…except when I use the jiggle plugin.  So I’m pretty confident the problem is with the jiggle itself.  Also using a V4.2 basic figure.

Quite honestly if the use of the plugin is this complicated and problematic, it’s just simpler to stick with magnets and morphs in Poser.  If you have some advice or instructions, please let me know in detail.  Perhaps a detailed walkthrough of loading a figure from Pz3 to completion of adding the jiggles and animating.  I’ve read through the manual for the plugin and gotten nowhere.

Incidently there is no Carrara 8 manual.  The manual comes from version 7…and has as of yet, not been updated.  Trust me, I bug DAZ on this constantly [two weeks ago last time].  Senseless to sell software with no up-to-date manuals…but they do.

3DAGE - 20 November 2012 02:43 PM

and can’t find any tutorials on how to use the MODIFIERS>BOUNCE

this should be covered in the existing user manual which comes built into carrara ( Help / Carrara help) that should open up the PDF manual. it’s not a new feature or part of the physics.

the way the Bounce modifier works is as an animateable helper,.
It animates the motion of the object on the Z axis (up and down), based on the settings,. without the user having to create key-frames,. (See pic) you can animate the X/Y motion of the object to make the bounce seem more realistic,.

but ,.. since carrara has “Bullet” physics, which can more accurately create a bouncing object,.
this modifier may become less used in the future.

but,.. this “Bounce modifier” is not what you’re looking for.

Jiggle would be my choice right now,. we just need to help you get it up and running.

Q: What happens when it crashes,.?
Any error messages ?

Also, info about What system, and OS, may help.

Meanwhile,..

Here’s a couple of pages of introduction / explanation, and simple tutorials for the Bullet Physics in Carrara 8,
It’s not as up to date a it should be but it should cover the basics.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/7907045/First_step_Physics_C8.pdf

Hope it helps

For what it’s worth I was able to get fun results with Jiggle in C7. One of the biggest issues I discovered is the use of the painted maps. As you would expect they are the same as the UV maps for the figure, and where your figure uses multiple maps (like head and body, etc) the plugin will move the wrong areas because of these overlapping maps.

The plugin has a solution where you define an area of Jiggle with another object (like a sphere), so for instance each breast might be painted to jiggle and then you add one or two spheres over the breasts to make sure only they move… Only the parts of your mesh that are inside the defining spheres will jiggle…. Add another sphere for a heavy belly, etc… The modifier has a panel for selecting this object…

The Manual for Jiggle was very complex, but keep at it. Once it makes sense it was very easy and actually quite fast to calculate. Very small settings were best because the mesh tears with too much jiggle. When painting the map, try gradients to create falloff zones to transition between Jiggle and non-Jiggle areas…. But you may be correct about Poser morphs or using magnets. Jiggle was never intended to be a full-fledged plugin, that’s why it was free, I believe.

Jiggle did not work in the rendernodes as I recall…. I have not tried it in C8.

You also had to change the preview interface to show every frame when playing the timeline…. I believe that is true with all modifiers as they don’t have keyframes, they calculate based on the previous frame.

HI Irony 3D

One question,.. Are you loading the V4 figure from your poser runtime folder, using the Carrara browser ?

or,. are you saving a poser file and then opening that in Carrara.

One of the first parts if Sparrowhawke’s PDF tutorial, mentions that figures Need to be loaded using the carrara native content browser.
Imported figures will not work.

Other than that,. I’ve no idea why it would crash carrara like that.

I’m Using Carrara 8.1.1.12 (last official update )  and I believe that was also the version I used to render the test animation.
I’m on PC, Win7 Pro 64bit with an Nvidia card,.

Using Jiggle for the first time can seem like a complex task, but once you’ve read through it, and followed the text to make a test scene, then you’ll realise that it’s pretty simple to set up a figure and get jiggle working, just using a target helper object, and the Weight maps supplied.

When you compare this to a full (physics based) solution, to calculate bounce and recoil then you;‘re looking at a different level of calculation time, and a completely different set of parameters and options.

Jiggle is an elegant and simple solution which works instantly, without calculation time

Of course,.. as an animator , you have the option to manually animate the jiggle using the figure morphs,. or magnets, if this plugin isn;t working on your system for some reason,

Have a look at Ska-motion’s animation (for sale) which are created using the figure Morphs, 

http://www.skamotion.com/home.php

As for the points about the Manual not including any information about Bullet Physics,...

Bullet is Still in development, and it has changed (how it works) and where the components and options are located within the GUI.
If you’ve looked at the PDF document I posted earlier,. you;ll notice that there are (amendments and additions) to the information, which have been added to update the document, to reflect those changes,. I’ve updated that document several times.

So,. Bearing that in mind,...

Any information about physics, which was included in the manual for C8,. would have been out of date, and would be confusing, very quickly after it was added.

This is Still the main reason that new features of Carrara, which are Still in development, are difficult to add to the manual, and that makes releasing a manual harder to do.

If you have any issues with using physics simulations in Carrara, I’d be happy to help, and there are several other users here who have explored physics, and, I’m sure,  will be happy to help.

Hope it helps

I am loading from a Pz3 imported into an empty scene.  Perhaps this might be the cause of the problem.  I will try it without importing and see if that helps.  Also, a question, once the jiggle is added, shouldn’t it be visible when the animation timeline control is set to play?  Or is it something that only shows up once rendered?

I’ll let you know how the runtime load works…or not.  Thanks!

HI

once the jiggle is added, shouldn’t it be visible when the animation time-line control is set to play?

Yes, it shows up instantly, once you’ve gone to the end of your animation, and set the Jiggle progress slider to 100%

If you go back to the start, and scrub through the time-line, you’ll see the deformation instantly on screen. then you can adjust the strength, scrub the time-line, and see how it looks, and repeat until you’re happy.

What goes in the option:  Jiggle>Params>ANIMATE MASS?????  The manual explains everything else, but not that…at least not that I can find.  It goes on about the target mass, which I get, set up, attached to chest bone…anyway, I’m wondering if this might be my problem.  I tried selecting CHEST there and still get the crash.  And still, nothing jiggles.

HI

You don’t need to have any animate mass object selected,. it’s an option,  like Zones, unless you’re using zones, you don’t need them set up.

Once you set the Target Mass,.  and you set a key-frame for the progress at the end 100% , it should be animated and visible as deformation when you scrub the time-line,

In a real simple set up,. you would load V4 into the scene,. then add a target helper object , positioned in front of the chest area, then you parent that target, to the figure’s chest,.. and select this target is the “Target Mass”.

You would add the Weight map for the figure,... or ... forget the weight map,.. and add a sphere which you can use to define the area that should Jiggle.

once you’ve done that,. you can add an animation to the figure,. which will move the figure and the (target Mass) helper, which will give the Jiggle modifier, some motion info to to work on.

The last part should be setting a Keyframe at the end of your time-line where the Jiggle process is set to 100, on the last frame,..
and 0 on the first frame.

at that point , you should have Jiggle set up and working on the figure, and deformation should be visible when you scrub the time-line.

You can Move the Target mass helper, so that it’s in front of the figure,. which will give it more movement relative to the figure,.
the closer it is to the figure, the less movement it will have.

Hope it helps

Ah, I finally got it to work.  Thank you for the more direct instructions.  The manual was blowing my mind.  So the Animate Mass, as it turns out, is what was locking Carrara up on me.  I was assuming CHEST would go there or the target mass again.  Couldn’t conceive why there would be an option left unused…and it wasn’t explained in the manual very well.  But yeah, that was the problem.  I am getting jiggle and flop now, but also it seems to be affecting the bottom of the right arm…not the left…just the right.  I tried using a better and more accurate weight map, but that only helped a tiny bit.  And also, the breasts seem to move together in relation to the single target mass, I’m supposing.  So can or will they move separately in their own physical manner…or are they forever linked to the one target?  I’m just wondering if this is the animation I’m using or not.

HI Irony3D:)

You can add another Jiggle modifier to the stack, , and set up another target helper, so that you have two targets.
you can move the target helpers to Each side, to give it each jiggle more effect.

You can also add a Sphere, or a couple of them, and use those sphere’s as Zones,.

If you’re getting distortion in other parts of the body,. ..try using a Zone object ,. (anything inside the “zone” should jiggle)
use the Zone fall-off to soften the zone effect.

You can also use “Zones” without the need for a Weight map,. so you could place zones wherever you want jiggle,
as long as you add another Jiggle modifier , and a target helper, for each zone.

THANKS!  I did not know if that would work or not.  I had thought of it, but didn’t know if the plugin would support multiple items.  I appreciate your help with all this.  Hope you write the next manual for the jiggle plugin!

:0)

Have a great weekend my friend!