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Poser - OFFICIAL F.A.Q (Last Updated: 2024 Nov 27 5:12 pm)



Subject: A poser to mimic to poser question: can I make a prop into a figure (cr2)?


eyeorderchaos ( ) posted Fri, 20 March 2009 at 6:46 PM · edited Thu, 28 November 2024 at 6:07 AM

I would like to take a prop I have, which is only a HEAD with expression and phoneme morph targets, and turn it into a figure, because I hope to use the Cr2 file in Mimic 3.1 to do my head's lip sync work. Is this possible? I'll be very happy if it is...The program I would need if it isn't possible costs $250usd (Magpie Pro).   Or, I would need an xml  viseme map for the head, which I don't think is doable but I'll look into it if the prop to figure scheme doesn't work out.  The 250 smackers won't work for me right now, if you know what I mean.
Thanks in advance!   
=E


ockham ( ) posted Fri, 20 March 2009 at 9:18 PM

You can certainly turn a prop into a figure.  Select the head, open the
hierarchy window, and hit the Create New Figure button.   This will
make a figure in the New Figures folder.

You'll need to copy the morphs over into the head actor, and probably
copy the materials as well.   Those are straightforward copy-paste actions.....

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ockham ( ) posted Fri, 20 March 2009 at 9:19 PM

Edit: if you only need the figure to use Mimic, you wouldn't need the materials.

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eyeorderchaos ( ) posted Sat, 21 March 2009 at 10:12 AM

! Thanks once again, O

That was easy...especially now that I'm hip to your Locate Loader script! 

So far so good, next I will try the mimic part. After I loaded all the morphs into the new figure, I saved it to the library again as a new version (new name). Now, hopefully I will be able to load the cr2 from the New Figures folder, and it will have all the morphs needed. 
And yes, you are right, materials are not a concern, only need vertex info, as it's all headed for a pose anyway. 


eyeorderchaos ( ) posted Wed, 25 March 2009 at 4:12 PM

Urp, I seem to have run into a hiccup. (and I was too quick to say "so far so good" in my last post).

What's happening is, after I create the figure from the prop, and then load all the morphs into the figure, when I press "create new figure" button in the hierarchy window, nothing happens.

The Hierarchy window shows: Figure 1 , > Body,  > Old Prop Name. 

All of the morphs are applied to the Old Prop Name, so that's what I'm clicking on to make the new figure.

Now, I confess, Dave, I have no idea what you meant by "straightforward copy paste action", so maybe that's where I missed the boat. I'm using your loader to load the morphs into the figure after I save it to the library and reload it from there. Any suggestions?  


ockham ( ) posted Wed, 25 March 2009 at 4:34 PM

What I meant was an editing operation between the original CR2 and your
head-only CR2. 

The head in the original would start something like this:

actor head
    {
    name    head
    on
    bend 0
    dynamicsLock        0
    hidden      0
    addToMenu   1
    castsShadow     1
    includeInDepthCue       1
    useZBuffer      1
    parent neck
    creaseAngle 80
    channels
        {
        targetGeom midbrow              
            {
            name midbrow
            initValue 0
            hidden 0
            forceLimits 1
            min -100000
            max 100000
            trackingScale 0.02
            keys
                {
                static  0
                k  0  0
                }
            interpStyleLocked 0
            indexes 60
            numbDeltas 850
            deltas
                {
                d 384 0 0.003724712 0
                d 385 0 0.005840383 0
                d 386 0 0.008395069 0
                d 387 0 0.009484353 0
                d 388 0 0.009754301 0
-------------------------------------------------------------- and so on.....

The head in your newly made head-only CR2 would start like this:

actor head:3
    {
    name    head
    on
    bend 0
    dynamicsLock        0
    hidden      0
    addToMenu   1
    castsShadow     1
    includeInDepthCue       1
    useZBuffer      1
    parent neck:3
    creaseAngle 80
    channels
        {
        taperY taper
            {
            name taper
            initValue 0
            hidden 0
            forceLimits 0
            min -100000
            max 100000
            trackingScale 0.04
            keys
                {
                static  0
                k  0  0
                }
            interpStyleLocked 0
            }
        smoothScaleY neck_smooY
            {
            name neck_scaleY
            initValue 0
------------------------------------------------------------- and so on......

You'd select all the morph paragraphs in the original, starting with
the first "targetGeom" line, and paste them into the new CR2 starting
just before the first non-morph parameter channel.  In this case it's "taperY"
but it could be something else like maybe an "offset" channel.

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eyeorderchaos ( ) posted Wed, 25 March 2009 at 5:41 PM

Okay, wow thanks but I'm lost.
Just to clarify... I only want a head. IOW, I'm not trying to create, in any way, a complete figure. 
It works fine for me to just have a head on it's own, and just get rid of the head of any figure that I stick the custom head on.  Does this nullify what you are trying to show me?

So, essentially I'm trying to make a head prop with morphs into a standalone figure, and obtain a cr2 that works in Mimic...maybe I'm totally wrong in my expectation? Maybe I need to go the route of creating a whole new complete figure before it will work in Mimic? 
thanks!


eyeorderchaos ( ) posted Wed, 25 March 2009 at 5:46 PM

Also to clarify, you are saying that my approach, to create a figure from the prop, then load the morphs into the new figure (since morphs won't carry over from a prop to figure operation) and then create a NEW figure from that...won't work?
Darn, it seems so close to working! It seems like, if only the "create new figure" button would actually work the second time in the process, that I would have success.


ockham ( ) posted Wed, 25 March 2009 at 5:56 PM

Right.  The problem, as you already found, is that Poser creates a fresh figure
without the morphs.  So the morphs have to be transferred from the original
to the new "morphless" figure.   

Editing is the easiest way to transfer them.  It takes only a minute or so. 

The only tricky part is recognizing the proper paragraphs in the CR2 file.

Start on the first "targetGeom" line in the original, and select down until
you include the last closing bracket } of the last "targetGeom" paragraph. 

Then Ctrl-C to copy .....  then find the start of the first parameter in your
Head-only CR2 ...  maybe add a blank line or two for safety... and then
Ctrl-V to paste.

These editing operations are not always easy in the default Windows Notepad,
which has size limits.  Better to use a more powerful editor like Wordpad,
or a "programming type editor" if you have one.

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eyeorderchaos ( ) posted Wed, 25 March 2009 at 6:08 PM

Okay, now I'm totally confused. Obviously, if I had a cr2 with morph data to copy, I wouldn't need to copy!
My only morph data in a saved file would be all the original obj files, (or a prop file...but they don't save morphs, right?) or perhaps the Poser scene file. See what I'm saying? 
Sorry for my density!


eyeorderchaos ( ) posted Wed, 25 March 2009 at 6:10 PM

I'm assuming, when I load all the morphs into the figure, that all that info is not made into a Cr2 until you actually create or save something.


ockham ( ) posted Wed, 25 March 2009 at 6:26 PM

Maybe this is the problem:

"What's happening is, after I create the figure from the prop, and then load all the morphs into the figure, when I press "create new figure" button in the hierarchy window, nothing happens. "

At this stage, you wouldn't hit the "create new figure" button, you'd just save
it to the figures library with the plus sign.

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eyeorderchaos ( ) posted Wed, 25 March 2009 at 6:31 PM

Yes, you are right, that's all it was. Jeez!   I'm so lame, at times! 
Thanks, so much!
Well, actually I don't feel too bad, because except for the brain fart, my lazy-easy approach worked nicely!
duh...library creates cr2...I'll never forget that now!


ockham ( ) posted Wed, 25 March 2009 at 6:34 PM

Great!  Poser has a half-dozen ways to do everything, and they are
all a little different, and all poorly documented. 

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eyeorderchaos ( ) posted Wed, 25 March 2009 at 6:39 PM

touche!
 


eyeorderchaos ( ) posted Thu, 26 March 2009 at 8:49 AM

Arg... one final hurdle, it seems.  I'm getting an error message in Mimic that "the OBJ has polygons referencing multiple groups and so may not work in Mimic"
Well, there's no maybe about it, it doesn't work. 
Another curious thing I noticed is that the Cr2 of the neutral head is 631 kb in size, while the Cr2 of the head with morphs is only 86 kb in size.  THAT makes no sense to me at all.
Yet, they load and work as expected from the Poser library.

 


eyeorderchaos ( ) posted Fri, 27 March 2009 at 7:45 PM

aarrgg! ha ha ha, you know what? to heck with it, I'll happily hand keyframe the lip syncing !  I'm just happy I've gotten this far.  It will be great fun to manually keyframe these facial movements. I don't need no fancy automatic gadgets. I'm a winner, and I love everyone here, and the stuff we do is cool. :)    


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