What if THEY mapped out different hardness levels to the different areas of a Poser character's mesh. When an area of a Poser figure came in contact with with another Poser object the softness map would tell it how far it was allowed to compress. Boney areas would have a softness rateing of 2. A stomach area has a rating of 5. A table would have a rating of 1. Now when Vickey sat on the table her butt would compress in the right way. When she crossed her arms across her chest all part would compress in a realistic manner. Make sence? Make it so. (please)

A chink in your armor-clad idea: I think the difficulty, except for noncompressible/nondeformable objects like tables, is that compression is variable upon force, pressure, or tension - think of a spring. When a person sits down, it's not only the compression rating of the two contacting surfaces, but also the resistance in potential and regular force. Still, your idea has merit for a simple sort of soft-body dynamics (in collision, obviously). Let's see what others can bring to the table (eh hem, sorry) as I just cursorily thought about this.

The other problem is the mesh density. If the surface of the table was made on one polygon, and had a softness of 5, it would not be able to bend, but if it was made of 100 polygons, it would be able to be deformed. This is already possible with a Python script called Eureka. The only thing is that you have to assign the parts to be deformed manually in the python script. What could be done is to have some sort of identifier in the object group or possibly material name, that would tell python what the deformation level of this object was. This is an excellent idea. I will place a link in the python forum and maybe one of the guru's will think of something.

What you want here is already possible to one degree or another in other applications, where the process is known as 'softbody dynamics' or 'flex dynamics'. You define the softbody areas by selecting vertices or polygons on the mesh, and set their softness parameter, etc. The problem with this is that it requires you to run a dynamic calculation each time you want an object to react with another object (or with it's environment). In the same manner as running a dynamic cloth simulation in P5/P6, for instance.

So it would be process-intensive to say the least, and most people wouldn't bother using it if it took longer than a nano-second to calculate. LOL.

Personally, I'd love to see some advanced physical dynamics such as rigid bodies, soft bodies, rope, and so on..., but I wouldn't look for it as a feature in Poser for a long time. ;-)

Message edited on: 05/18/2005 19:09

me too! another thought would be you could define a dummy morph to hold your softness value. This could be set to 2 or 5 for example depending on your body part. A python script could read this dummy value as the softness level. I think i would like gravity to be a big factor as well. So two forces really, gravity and the other object. Seems doable to a limited degree. But it also seems a simulation setting is unavoidable. just my 2 measly cents.

The problem with using a dummy morph is that if you did the entire human body, you would be doubling the size of the obj file. Using a combination of Python scripts I can do most of this already in Poser without a morph. Eureka does the deformation, Naturalizer and Jiggles do the gravity, inertia, momentum, etc, and the simulation is only the normal Poser collision detection simulation.
(PS. You still need some morphs though, for the soft body parts, such as breasts, to be affected by gravity).

Message edited on: 05/18/2005 19:26

I think people might underestimate the usefulness of magnets, which can also be used to duplicate things like this, with some effort.

Hmmmm...

Let's pretend for a second that a future version of Poser did have things like true softbody dynamics integrated (which required running a calculation sim), but the price of the software then increased to mid-range level (Say $550 to $650), and the learning curve was a made bit steeper. I wonder how many current users would pay the extra bucks, and how many would refuse - or be unable - to upgrade.

I think eventually e-Frontier will have to split Poser into possibly several different user-level platforms, like Shade has, or even Vue for that matter, in order to please the various dynamic of their user base. ;-)

Message edited on: 05/18/2005 19:45

I like do things with magnets but with three elements each and selection clutter sometimes they just make me nuts. I wish at least the base and magnet were subsets or some how otherwise on zone dials panel. I wish deformers could be hidden on the pull down selection menus as well as in the preview window.

That might be the way to go you know, Maxxx. If the underlying code could support it, you could have add-ons like the softbody dynamics....and the penalty there could be overcome with another pack that permitted network rendering.

Well if we can't do it now, how 'bout tomorrow night?) I imageine it well be something that will have to wait till we're running Pentium 6s at 8 ghz with Longhorn 2. But we can start thinking about it now. Even collision detection make the computer grumpy. I just hope Poser or DAZ3d go that way. While were at it I want voice commands! I want to tell Vicky 6 to squat and by God she squats. Or to tell Mike 6 to jump and the Poser fiqure says how high. Seriouly I wonder if at some times voice commands could be used to help pose the figures.

http://www.projectmessiah.com/ Check this out. Years ago when I'd first seen it in development it was shown with soft body dynamics in motion and I was extremely impressed. :)

wow! i am impressed.

But bones don't need to be linked to a root. They only need to be linked to a group. IK is what requires a path, not the bones themselves. And IK can be manually altered, as well.

Just listening in. Tom

Thanks Stewer. This was next on my list of adding to the test rig to see if it will work.

BM for a good read after some sleep.

Bookmarked

notefinger: While were at it I want voice commands! I have voice commands on my machine. :D >I want to tell Vicky 6 to squat and by God she squats. Or to tell Mike 6 to jump and the Poser fiqure says how high. ok, so its not quite that good. :) thought it might work if i navigated the pose library with it. unfortunatly current voice command programs are not all that fast for navigation. >Seriouly I wonder if at some times voice commands could be used to help pose the figures. It would be an interesting "next step" that has actually been around for a while. With the proper applications, voice commands could be done now if Poser would behave consistantly. Likewise you could use other macro based programs and hardware like a Nostromo or RemoteKeys.

~bookmark

AAaarrggghh. [crushed finger bookmark]