Saving poses
Vandalay
Posts: 17
Ok, so I'm slowly getting the hang of Carrara basics and really enjoying it.
I'm after some insight on the protocols of posing. I have started up with a few charcaters (to make things easier to experiment with they are all Genesis but morphed to M5/V5/M4/V4).
I've then changed facial features, but thinking retaining the same body shape will make poses / animation more transferable. So, when it comes to transferring a pose, I would create an NLA master pose then save it to my clips in the browser.
When I drop that pose back on another character, it transfers the facial morphs also. I know there's a way to uncheck this in the master pose creation options - but how exactly is that done?
Presmuably the same principle as creating a specific pose (eg upper body only) - just there's a lot of checkboxes and dropdowns I'm not yet sure of - "Motion method" and the like....
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What seems to be working is unchecking the "Actor" level of the dropdown tree on pose creation and/or NLA track parameters... looking for confirmation that this is standard practice! Makes sense as that reflects the hierarchy of where you make the changes in the instances tab.
So in principle I'm transferring all the information from the *Genesis* except any changes made at Actor level... so, all skeletal body positioning from the hip down, right?
I note however that in my pose transfer test, once detail comes out not quite the same. It's a simple handgrasp I set via the sliders while a hand was selected. This doesn't seem to have translated accurately even to a same body shape figure. Changing sliders on the face eg mouth open works fine.
Any tidbits I should be aware of here? :D
Motion Method is the translation, rotation and/or scaling of joints along the x, y and z axis... so that's what you want to store - none of the things that deal with morphs.
So... yes... we need to scroll through that long list of check boxes and find the ones that are used for Morphs, and deselect them.
Selecting only those is a handy way to store the morph tweaks for transferring from one figure to a fresh one of the same type. For example, when we save a Genesis figure to our Carrara browser, and then later we buy another morph product for Genesis, unlike in DS, our saved Genesis in Carrara will NOT automatically adopt those new morph dials - we'd have to load in a fresh one from the DS library. A clip (Master Pose) of the original CAR version will allow us to quickly transfer all of the work we put into making the character just right onto the fresh figure.
For Genesis (it's been a little while for me...) I believe it's a simple, single check box called Body Morphs. Just deselect that one when storing a pose to clip.
Also, the M4 and V4 shapes applied to a Genesis figure won't really help it to accept M4 or V4 pose collections any easier or better, because it's the actual Genesis rigging that holds the differences between the two figure versions - pose wise. Especially noticeable in the lower half, from the hip down, Genesis' legs and feet are moddeled in a different pose at its default shape. Genesis is improved compared to Generation 4, whose feet are modeled to point downward. Both ways work great, but the difference causes data from one rig to look a bit wierd on the other.
That's not to say that they don't help, though. We can still use poses for M4 and/or V4 on Genesis... we just need to correct a few things if we want them to look natural.
If we're using animated poses, like aniBlocks, Carrara's graph editor makes short work towards correcting these things along the entire animation! That's where we go into Mothion Method, rotation, and then tweak the x axis (commonly most noticeable problem on feet) to appear more proper where we're currently looking along the timeline (but we have all keyframes selected) by dragging up or down along the graph, and our correction will be applied across all keyframes! Then go back and correct the y axis - a much more subtle correction. Next we'd likely want to checkout the thighs and see if those need some tweaking along various axis... it's likely that at least a little tweak will make everything look much better!
That is an an exceptional reponse, I thank you. I can tell the best way to learn the software is to roll up your sleeves and have a play, I just occasionally get nervous that I might be straying from the right path! But it's getting to the point now where I can trace through forum discussions and understand the rudiments of what folk are talking about. :)
In short, this forum rules!
Hey how might a person change his Daz3D forum username? :D
colin_b8d208270a is a good name, but I'd like to customise it at least a little bit...
Oh, and actually I have a follow up - is there a way to translate a static pose clip onto a figure, the same way you would load a pose from the content library?
I know you can edit a clip, and I have seen talk of "converting to keyframes" - but would a static pose have keyframes?
If there way to load a master pose onto the NLA track, but then instead absorb the parameters of that pose into the character, well that would be swell...?
https://www.daz3d.com/customer/account/edit/
If we need to save "Pose" files (static or even animated) back into a runtime library, like those we'd buy from Daz3d, we CAN do that with Generation 4 and earlier figures - figures which use the older Poser CR2 format - and that's by using Fenric's BVH/PZ2 Exporter, which works really, Really well! But again, it won't work for Genesis 1 or newer Daz3d figures.
If you're looking for a way to Save a Static Pose for Genesis or Genesis 2 in Carrara, you'll need to use the NLA tab and use the button: Create Master Pose. When doing so, it's always a good idea to examine the list of check boxes, and deselect anything that doesn't need to be included in the Pose file.
Now this will create an NLA clip... the animated NLA clips and the NLA Master Poses both look the same in the tray, so we need to use proper organization and naming conventions to be able to tell them apart in the future.
For example, in My Documents > DAZ 3D > Carrara xxx > My Presets, I use the folder My Clips, which then shows up in the browser under the Clips tab.
Inside My Clips, I create a folder like "Genesis", inside which I would create "Static Poses" and "Animated". Inside Animated I'd add "Walk" "Jump" "Head and Arm Only" sorts of folders, depending upon what I'm creating for my animation controllability. I often save head and arm animations separately from many other animations, because they combine so easily afterwards.
Okay, but the last half of what you've said seems like you might be insterested in saving poses Directly Onto the Figure, so tht we can aply the pose via a morph dial on the figure. This is very possible, and is best explained by my good pal, Josh Darling:
There is also Puppeteer,..
Personally,. for working on animations, or just messing around with poses,. I prefer to click in puppeteer to create a quick "pose dot",. then re-pose the figure and click again, to create another pose dot,.
It may not work as slickly as it seems to in DS, but,... its fast and simple,. and if you get to a point where you've created something you want to save in the browser,. you can either use Fenrics BVH /Pz2 plugin to export the pose or animaton. or use Carrara's NLA clips or poses, and save to the browser.
You can also save out the entire Puppeteer grid of pose dots,. EG: G2 Run - V4 Dance ,. etc...
this allows you to save a bunch of poses in a single re-loadable component
My only issue with NLA in carrara is the file size of saved NLA poses,.
for some reason,. these files are generally larger than a saved NLA animation. which should be impossible since an animaton is a set of multiple saved poses. more information should mean a larger file,. and a single pose should be small, since there shouldn't be a lot of info being saved