Sigh.

Well Ive got a great situation here. Ive never modelled clothing before so ive no idea what im doing wrong.

Im trying to clothe a custom char. Ive made a pair of pants in 3DSMax6. I had thought for a first time ever pants it was going well. Here is what I had in Max above. I then used scalar to do a 100 reduction, and quick conform to make the .cr2. I used the .cr2 of my saved custom figure as the donor and checked the character doner file selection....

Message edited on: 01/18/2005 01:17

and this is what I got in poser. Obviously this is not good. Do any experienced modellers understand why this has happened to my figure?

As you can see, it looks horrible.........

.........from ALL angles. Can anyone please help an aspiring newbie here? Thanks for reading, Logan

Looks like a cr2 problem to me. Try importing the mesh into poser and see if it looks normal. If it does, then the problem has something to do with your cr2. You could try making the cr2 from scratch and see if it comes out better. You could also try looking at your joint parameters. They may be fine for your dude but not good for his clothes.

using quick conform might not be the best way to make a cr2.

Message edited on: 01/18/2005 05:39

It may be the cr2 that is causing hte problem, but it looks like the normals for then blank sections have been reversed somewhere along the line. I've has that problem on a few items, though I use dynamic cloth rather than conforming. If you have P5 You might want to put your model through the clothroom first, you can drape it over your charecter first then export the draped mesh and use it in the conforming item. You can also use it to make custom morphs for your conforming item I think. John

Good Morning everyone,

Thank you for the replies. Ajax and xantor, you are right on the money, see above for the picture of the pants.obj imported directly into poser. John, I do have poser5 but was importing into PPP when testing.

So, my max work and scaler work isnt waisted and thats GREAT!!!! Ive a workable .obj but ive never used either the cloth room or hand composed a .cr2

Id probably do myself the best service by learning both techniques, but I would prefer to start with a PPP friendly task.

Before tackling the cloth room in P5, can anyone advise how to make my first ever hand composed .cr2? Is there a tutorial out there that im going to actually survive?

Thank you,

Logan

Attached Link: http://www.posernode.co.uk/main.htm

I am personally clueless about cr2's, I've tried with little success. If you want to have a go at dynamic cloth I have a tutorial on my site, which I think is pretty clear :) Good luck with the cr2, would be interested to see how its done myself :) John.

Hello John, Thank you for the link, I will follow the tute and let you know my progress :) Hopefully someone has the line on a great tute we can both employ for the .cr2 composition. Logan

If you have pro pack, you can use the set up room and the manual covers how it works fairly well. I prefer to use the older PHI based method myself, but you probably do need a tute for that. I keep meaning to write one, but I don't know of any around.

Where did the cr2 for the figure come from, BTW? Do it's joints work well?

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=1952219

Hello Ajax,

This figure is a hobbit im working on, his evolution is recorded in the thread at the supplied link :)

This is Michael 3.0 SR1, with the DAZ head and body morphs. The character was scaled, skrunched, and magnetized from 6' to 3' tall and given oversized head, hands, and feet.

The char can be moved and posed reasonably well as demonstrated in some of the last images in the thread, but ive horrible horrible joint falloff problems and skin flaps :(

After getting a "final" proportion, I created a custom subfolder in the figures library (!Logan's Chars) and used the + button to save the figure after deleting the hair and all props. This .cr2 is what was used as the donor file for quick conform. I doubt QC was designed with this kind of freakish custom .cr2 in mind :) Would it perhaps have been better to use the M3 .cr2 as a donor file?

Logan

OK, now I know why quickconform didn't work :-) Basically, the scaling from your hobit is being applied to your pants, which is why the pants are scrunched up. You could try using the cr2 from an unscaled Mike 3 but that won't work either since it won't conform properly to the hobit with the joint centres in different places. What are your longer term plans for this guy? Is he just for your own personal use or do you plan to share him with others? If he's just for you then probably the best thing to do would be to export his mesh and build a new cr2 for the exported mesh, then use that as a donor for your conformer.

I suspected I was standing on my own foot! I think that if its possible to work within the TOS, and I can raise my skills to meet the bar, then it would be wonderful to be able to contribute to the community! Id like to be able to create freebies as repayment of immeasurable help from the forums, and I think it would be just this side of heaven to be able to model well enough to have marketplace items as well! Ive already seen interest expressed in expanding this project to include a Frodo char, so I believe it would be best for me to learn the process of creating distributable files please. What do you suggest? Logan

I tried using the setup room to create a skeleton according to the PPP manual, but as soon as I left the setup room and returned to the pose room, the pants exploded, and conforming them made them explode worse. "export his mesh and build a new cr2 for the exported mesh, then use that as a donor for your conformer." How would I pull this off please? Logan

Hi. Sorry, I went out of town for a couple of days and forgot about this thread when I came back. While making freebies and marketplace items is an achievable and worthwhile goal, this particular project is pretty tough and not what I'd recommend as a first one, so let's just focus on getting it working rather than worrying about trying to make it distributable as well. Start by loading your hobit in the workspace with no props or clothes. Go to the figure menu and make sure Inverse Kinematics is turned off for all limbs. Go to the window menu and call up the joint editor. Press "Zero Figure". Now go to the file menu, choose export, then Wavefront Obj. Single frame in the first box, just press OK in the 2nd box, in the third make your own folder in the Runtime Geometries folder and then give the export file a name in your new folder, in the fourth box choose only "Include body part names..." and "Weld body part seams". You now have a mesh to work with. The next step is to build the cr2. There are quite a few different ways to do that but I'm only going to tell you the one I prefer. Go to this site: http://www.royriggs.com/poser.html Download PHI Builder Use it to make a PHI file for your obj (make sure you get the rotation order right for each body part). Save the PHI file in the same place as the obj and with the same name. Only the three letter extension should be different. For example, you could have hobbit.obj and hobbit.phi in ...RuntimeGeometrieslogan Now go back to Poser and go File->Convert Hier file... and open your PHI file. You should now have a new figure in your New Figures folder. Bring it into the workspace, open the joint editor and start fixing the joint parameters on one side. You can use the symmetry controls to copy across to the other side. When you're done, save the figure back to the library. You could also use the set-up room. The manual should cover that. The manual will also have detail on how the joint editor works and things like that I should think. The reason for going through all of this is that it's very hard to build conformers for figures that have scaled body parts. Also, the joint problems you are seeing in your hobbit are essentially caused by the body part scaling. You'll get much better joints by setting up the cr2 to fit the exported mesh.

Hello Ajax, Ive made it this far: Now go back to Poser and go File->Convert Hier file... and open your PHI file. You should now have a new figure in your New Figures folder. Bring it into the workspace, open the joint editor Ima here, but now I dunno how to complete the rest of this instruction: and start fixing the joint parameters on one side. You can use the symmetry controls to copy across to the other side. When you're done, save the figure back to the library. Ive gone to Windows>Joint editor and now im staring blankfaced at the pop up window.... Thanks, youve gotten me REALLY far :) Logan

whoa.

I entered the setup room with this new figure. I assume this is the problem you saw coming?

yeeeeeeeeeeesh!!!

I don't like the set-up room and don't use it so I'm not sure exactly what I'm seeing there, but my first reaction is to think that your PHI file must have both the hierarchy and the rotation orders wrong. Can you post a screenshot of what your PHI file looks like?

Here is the PHI.

Also, welcome back :)

OK, I won't list everything but hopefully enough for you to get the idea. The hierarchy needs a fair bit of work, but it's quick to do. Open the PHI in PHI Builder and shift to tree view then just drag and drop things to their proper places. In your screenshot, the chest is connected to the abdomen which is on the hip. That's all good, but then you need the neck on the chest, the head on the neck, the eyes on the head etc insead of having all of those things on the chest. The only things on the chest should be the collars and the neck. You can take a look at Mike in the hierarchy window in Poser to see how he's set up. Once you have the hierarchy right, start thinking about the rotation order. Sometimes it's easier to do this bit in a text editor where you can copy and paste easily. Rotation order goes twist, side-side, bend, so a body part that twists in the y axis and bends in the x axis will be yzx. The hip rotation order is usually yzx rather than yxz for example, since the hip twists around the y axis and bends around the x axis. Every single body part has to have the right rotation order. Once you get that all sorted out and convert the hierarchy file again to make a new cr2, we'll talk about the joint editor which is probably the hardest and most important part of the whole process. Hmmm....I wonder if Geep has a tutorial on it. That might make it easier.

Good Morning Ajax,

here is the edited heirarchy. Did I blow it with the feet and toes?

That looks good. Feet and toes are fine. Now you need to sort out the rotation order for each body part. In PHI builder, you can double click the body part while in tree view to bring up a dialogue box to pick the rotation order, or you can switch to text view and write the order in directly or copy and paste from one body part to another.

As this is a first time for me, im pretty concerned about erroring the step of rotation order. As the char is based on M3, is there any way to see the rotation order data for M3 from any of his files? If I used M3's .obj to make a PHI in builder, would it also come out scrambled and needing hand editing? Thanks Ajax :) Logan

I redid the Convert Hier file with the remade .phi and brought the figure into the setup room just to see if there was any difference. this bone setup seems a LOT less scrambled

Perhaps [ THIS?](http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12356&Form.ShowMessage=1977525) cheers, dr geep ;=]

Woo Hoo!! Any suggestions for getting the text output of the working M3's rotation settings? Logan

Um, ............... a text editor? ;=]

Ok, granted I led with my chin on that one, but seriously, would I open m3's .obj in the DAZ geometries folder with a text editor, or must I run that .ojb thru PHI builder then view with editor, or will running it though PHI builder created a file with scrambled settings? Logan

M3's obj will look just the same if you bring it into PHI builder. No hierarchy or rotation information is stored in the obj. It's all specified for the first time in the PHI and then stored in the cr2 at the end. To see Mike's rotation orders, you can load him up in poser and open the joint editor. When you select one of his body parts, you'll see the rotation order for that body part at the bottom of the joint editor. You can actually change the rotation order here in the joint editor if you want, but it will work better if you do it in the PHI. That way you won't have to change the other joint parameters so much. A lot of people feel confused by rotation order the first time they have to deal with it, but it's actually really simple. You just have to mess with a little until it "clicks" and you see what it's all about. There are three ways a joint can rotate. If you imagine each of the x y and z axes as a spear passing through the joint then twisting each spear will rotate the model in a different way. The rotation order goes twist, side-side, bend, so we do twist first. Which spear do you have to twist to make the body part twist? With the forearm for example, it would be the x spear, so the first axis in the rotation order of the forearm is x. Now imagine bending the forearm. Which spear do you need to twist to do that? It's the vertical one, y, so the last letter in the rotation order is y. That leaves z for the middle, so the rotation order for the forearm is xzy.

"To see Mike's rotation orders, you can load him up in poser and open the joint editor. When you select one of his body parts, you'll see the rotation order for that body part at the bottom of the joint editor." Theres the golden info! Ive been noodling around in the Setup room for a bit, moving and dragging the bones into better alignment. It seems this is going to take forever!! Will setting the rotation properly in the PHI file make this bone adjustment unnecessary or are both steps going to have to be done? Thanks, Logan

"Use it to make a PHI file for your obj (make sure you get the rotation order right for each body part). Save the PHI file in the same place as the obj and with the same name. Only the three letter extension should be different. For example, you could have hobbit.obj and hobbit.phi in ...RuntimeGeometrieslogan" this step is now properly complete, and ive got a PHI with correct rotation order. "Now go back to Poser and go File->Convert Hier file... and open your PHI file. You should now have a new figure in your New Figures folder. Bring it into the workspace" This step has been redone with proper PHI :) "open the joint editor and start fixing the joint parameters on one side. You can use the symmetry controls to copy across to the other side. When you're done, save the figure back to the library." Here at this step, I again need guidance with the Joint editor please. Thanks MUCH :) Logan

Getting the rotation order right will get your bones aligned correctly, but not quite perfectly. You'll probably find you don't have to adjust the bones at all for most of the fingers once the rotation order is right (mind you, they're xyz so you probably have them right already) but some joints will need a little tweaking to get them how you want them. It'll be less than you have to do if the rotation order is wrong though. Joint set-up is more art than science, so there's a lot of playing around until the joint seems to be working how you want it. One thing I really like about the PHI method is that it gets the joint centres pretty close to right on the first try so it takes me a lot less time to get to the final skeleton.

WOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOW!!!!!!

I just brought the new figure of the converted heir file of fixed .PHI into poser and entered the setup room and LOOKIT DIS!!!!!!

woohoo!!!!!!!

That looks more like it :-) OK, the joint editor is the hardest part of this process. For each body part, there's a series of steps you need to go through. You only need to do them for one side of the body. Then you can mirror them to the other side using symmetry under the figure menu. Select a body part and try moving it. Twist it and see how it goes then set twist back to 0 and try side-side (the dials are probably labelled xrot, yrot and zrot in your figure - it doesn't matter what they're called). Then try bending it. If there are no problems you can see then move on to the next body part. If you see a problem, then what is it? Does it look like the joint centre is in the wrong place? If so, select center in the top dropdown of the joint editor window and then take a look at where the axes are drawn. You can move them around by making small adjustments to the three numbers under the "Center Point" heading. These are the x, y and z coordinates of the joint centre. Once you have it where you want it, try the dials again. Does one of the rotation dials cause a problem? Is it the twist dial? Select twist from the dropdown at the top of the joint editor. Now you can see a white line with a green end and a red end. This line controls how the body part twists. Try moving the red and green ends around and see whether you can fix the problem. Sometimes it may be caused by the orientation of the axes back at the joint centre and you may have to go back to the joint centre and use the three rotation dials at the bottom of the joint editor to adjust the orientation of the local joint axes. You want the twist axis to be as close as possible to the direction a real bone in the body part would have. Is it the bend or side-side dial? These two work pretty much the same way so fixing them is done the same way. Choose the dial in the dropdown at the top of the joint editor. You'll see two green lines and two red lines. You can move these lines around by grabbing their ends and dragging them. Anything between the green lines moves when the joint moves. Anything between the red lines stays still. The area between the green and red is called the falloff zone and things in there are partially moved depending on how close they are to the green zone or the red zone. The closer they are to the green zone, the more movement they get. Adjusting the zones by dragging the lines may fix your problem. Try setting the dial to a place where the problem happens and then move the lines until it goes away. Sometime you can't fix the problem using the standard falloff zones and you need to use spherical falloff zones. On Mike 3 you'll see them used on pretty much everything from the thighs to the collars and also on the bases of the fingers. Spherical falloff uses a red sphere and a green sphere. Everything inside the green sphere gets moved by the joint. Everything between the green and the red gets partly moved. The closer it is to the red, the less it gets moved. Setting these up takes quite a lot of mucking about. You adjust the spheres by selecting them and rotating, scaling and translating just like normal props. Test your joint movement once you think the spheres are in the right place and then adjust them as necessary. Check how Mike is set up to compare. You can have Mike and the hobbit in the workspace at the same time and the joint editor will show you the settings for whichever body part of whichever figure you have selected. Be aware that Poser can crash while you're doing this, so save your file frequently. Once you're done, save the hobbit back to the library.