TheWanderer opened this issue on Apr 17, 2003 ยท 53 posts
Odiemanc posted Thu, 17 April 2003 at 4:36 PM
If all you want is to make a new character face try loading all your V3 Head MTs onto a default V3.cr2, to be know from here on as V3 Default.cr2. Morph Manager is really good for this. Soon it wiil be able to load several characters MTs onto a single Master.cr2 all at once, but for now you need to do this one character part(Head) at a time. Then load that V3 Master.cr2 into a scene, and run ockham's Zero MTs.py Python Script. Now all of the new MTs will be reset to zero, and you won't be working with a hideous monster. Right about now saving and making a compressed backup archive of this file, on a removable drive, is propbable a good idea. Ok, enlarge the size of the document window as big as your UI will allow, and plop an attractive hairpiece on her. After that, get her face centered with the Face Cam, and that cam's Focal Length dial right where you want it. I find super face closeups unattractive, and usually set her face back a bit and a nudge. Then comes the meat of this technique, you just shimmy down the Head dials one at a time adjusting each just a smidge, posotive, negative, or not at all. Be sure to really put an effort on here, this is just cause for serious consentration and FocUs! If you hap hazardly approach it you're results will reflect that...I would'nt try doing it all at once either. Somewhere after about 750 MTs you'll start to have an attractive new character, but that has taken me weeks! I usually do about an hour a day or so., whenver I feel up to it. When you save your progress use a different name like V3 Master Beta.cr2(No Pun inteneded...) I usually wait on giving it a real name until I've gone through all the MTs. Once you've done that Spawn a new Head MT and give it a name like "V3 New Figure" Next, make a save to the Figures Library as "V3 New Figure Master.cr2." Break out Morph Mananger again, load your V3 New Figure Master.cr2, and your V3 Default.cr2. Then just copy over that one new V3 New Figure Head Spawn MT, from your V3 New Figure Master.cr2 to your V3 Default.cr2, and save the V3 Default.cr2 as "V3 New Figure.cr2!" Now you can animate your new character without processing/transfering a 100MB.cr2. It may...and I stress may...be a good idea to actually use that 100MB file, for ERC, and surface roundness' sake, but I lean toward doubting that. ERC is like Kinematics, it changes the value of morph when certain others are changed. But where most of you're morphs are coming from different areas of the community I don't see this posing a problem. The more head MTs you have in a .cr2's head the more polygons you'l have also. This makes for more curve surface, but most figures, especially the Mil' Family, already ahve enough at default. It'll definately be a good idea to now copy compressed versions of these .cr2s to CD-R again!
Things get a bit tricky when you have a large V3 Master New Figure.cr2 with a whole bunch of set dials an you've acuired enough new MTs to warrant working on that character again. You'll need to check my pattented Flip Flop Mirror Technique! First make sure you have all your backups, as the margin for error here is large! Then load your V3 Master.cr2 into Morph Manager, add your new MTs, save, open it in Poser, apply ockham's ZeroMTs.py, and resave as V3 Master.cr2 again. Open Morph manager again, load your new V3 Master.cr2 and your V3 New Figure Master.cr2. Then copy over all of the head MTs from your V3 New Character Master to your V3 Master.cr2. When you do this all of the zero values of the V3 Master.cr MTs will be replaced by the incoming MT values. Now save the V3 Master.cr2 column as your V3 New Figure Master.cr2. There is no way, that I know of, to conveniently insure the new MTs end up at the top or the bottom of the Head Dials list, so you may be going over any dials you left at zero before twice, but I think its better to keep them in your V3 Master.cr2 than have deleted them for non-use with just one or two characters.
Of course, for distributions sake it may be a good idea to suppliment copyrighted MTs you've added with a percentage of your own origionally modeled(Be it with Poser's Magnet, Carrara or some other modeler) MTs. But, this should only be done only marginaly. Your concern gathering, and painstakingly grooming said collection need be recognized by the community at large for cherry!
I'll be making a tutorial with for this one of these days...
Anyone want to trade MT collections?