I was wondering if it would not be possible to have a few blank JCM channels in a cr2? I know they are different than regular morphs because of the underlying erc.  But what happens to the channel when you save out a JCM as a inj for instance? Is there another way besides pmd to inject new JCM's?

One more question;

What about material zones, any way to add those after the fact?  I have never herd of a way, but I think I saw something about material layering, have to find the thread again, something like that might work.

For just the pants texture I can easily use the original material zones, if I use a little foresight and set them up properly, but I would still need to add some mats for things like buttons and things like that. (metal objects on the pants.)

It might be more resource efficient to add buttons, belts and loops, seams, pockets, etc. to the texture, and use a displacement map to give them their 3D quality. Especially so if you want to make dynamic clothing. I tried to drop some jeans to the floor in the cloth room to add a messy pile of cloths to a scene and the belt loops and buttons were left suspended in the air.

Is that what you were suggesting? Displacement maps are way under used, and normal maps are barely touched except by a few intrepid souls.

lmk

Yes I could do that but the copper buttons would never quite look like copper, being just part of the texture. But what the hell, I gues for my purpose they dont need be perfect. so I could use that method.

I would still like to find a way to add mat zones to the cr2 from a selectable file though. Always looking for further options, you know.  :)

I suppose this is idle curiosity, since I clearly do not have the skill set to actually answer the questions you are asking. However, as I understand what you are trying to accomplish with Brad, you want to introduce the base Brad figure without genitals, but include a pose that will insert an alternate and fully endowed (and rigged) hip geometry. This will save the resources, that the extra geometry requires, for those who do not need genitals, but allow genitals to be added without the problems that a conforming figure causes.

By extension, now that you have this insertion pose working very well, can the process be used to insert substitute geometry for clothing, saving the overhead of additional rigging and covered mesh, and avoiding the problems of conforming clothing? I see in the “Finally” thread that you have accomplished this with the added benefit that the alternate clothing mesh uses less polys than the original figure.

So, must the base figure, neutered Brad, have the genital’s material zones in order for them to be there when the alternate hip geometry is inserted and welded in place? Or, can those material zones be a part of the inserted and welded-in geometry, but not the original? If you can insert geometry for Brad’s genitals that has its own material zones, how is this different from adding pants with buttons that have their own material zone?

If the original figure must have the material zones to begin with, can material zones be included with the base figure that have no actual groups, but be assigned a group by the insertion pose? If this can be done, does it require a prohibitive amount of resource overhead in the CR2 to include multiple unassigned material zones? It almost seems like having extra channels in a figure into which morphs can be injected. The question would then become how many such material groups to add to the base figure?

Another thought, can python scripts be called from a pose? If they can, can python scripts insert/create material zones? Or, can a python script, run from the script menu, create material groups? Can that script call the insertion pose, or insert the geometry, and then group the needed polys to make the new material zones?

lmk

Quote - I was wondering if it would not be possible to have a few blank JCM channels in a cr2? I know they are different than regular morphs because of the underlying erc.  But what happens to the channel when you save out a JCM as a inj for instance? Is there another way besides pmd to inject new JCM's?

You can place the deltas directly in the inj pose, but that does require a blank morph slot.  I've never used a pmd for morph insertion.  Does that technique require a slot, or does use of the pmd also allow slot injection?  From the sole example I've seen, I can't determine quite what's going on.

But I don't see any reason why a cr2 wouldn't be able to carry around an empty morph slot which included JCM ERC code, already in place.  For that matter, ERC code can be inserted using a pose, so you'd really just need the empty slot.  Presumably an inj pose could include the ERC to be inserted.  A combination morph insertion and ERC insertion pose.

Quote - One more question;

What about material zones, any way to add those after the fact?  I have never herd of a way, but I think I saw something about material layering, have to find the thread again, something like that might work.

For just the pants texture I can easily use the original material zones, if I use a little foresight and set them up properly, but I would still need to add some mats for things like buttons and things like that. (metal objects on the pants.)

I routinely use objFileGeom with external body part geometries to allow a figure to have, for example, a head with all material zones sub-grouped for use with magnets.  I suspect you could work something similar to add a body part with new material zones, but I haven't tested it.  Such an insertion pose should presumably include the new material listing, from the "figure" section of the cr2.  I assume, without the material in the pose, that Poser would just add a new material of the correct name, read from the inserted obj file, but by including the material listing you could set the material with the pose.  So it would be a combination geom insertion and MAT pose.

The problem would be removing the material when you're not using it.  A pose can't do that, so you'd end up carrying around the extra materials in the cr2.  But if you're prepared to have that, you could just go ahead and create those unused materials in the cr2 and they'll be properly applied when the geometry switches.  (Come to think of it, I have done this before.  Check out the Multihair figure on my main Cage Page link, from my sigline.  The cr2 carries several materials for various different hair geometries, which are switched out using geom insertion poses.)

Hi lkendall.  I was assuming that all material zones must already be in the original cr2. However per Cages information, it looks like I may indeed be able to include new materials with the geometry insertion. This would solve many problems with geometry inserted clothing. For things like the copper buttons and rivets, it would be nice to be able to have a metal shader with reflection and so on.

Now I do not know alot about materials and shaders, but I know shaders for things like metal buttons need their own material. And a material I believe needs some geometry to be assigned to. So I was looking for a way to insert new material zones for the clothing.

I dont know anything at all about python scripts. I know rigging and a little about mesh building, other than that its all greek to me. But I am learning.  :)

Cage:  thank you once again for the information.  I'm gonna have to list you as Brads co creator. :)

That is great news, so I can insert new JCMs with the erc info into a blank slot. And I can insert new material zones with the geometry...............everything I ever wanted :) perfect.  Those two items were the two things I was worried about in creating the inserted clothing rather than conforming clothes. I will investigate these options, but I think this makes up my mind.  With the inserted clothing I dont have to worry about so many problems that come with the more traditional methods for clothing creation.

Cheers,
Mike.

Oh almost forgot,  a pmd is able to create its own chanels in the cr2. But you can only have one pmd loaded for the figure, as I understand it.

Oh my, I just barely, and thankfully, saved supper from burning. When this forum gets busy, and interesting, one really cannot cook a meal, and read and digest the posts at the same time.

This really is a matter of process. You are trying to push Poser beyond what the programmers intended. And you are doing an astounding job of it.

It sounds as if your insertion pose is almost like a CR2 file (geometry and rigging). Can a PMD be associated with (or embedded in) a PZ2 file?

I am not a Poser guru of any type, not even the material room. But, with blenders, masking maps, and nodes, one can mix materials on the same material zone. One can even blend or mix displacment (this takes a lot of trial and error). It sounds like Cage has better answers than I have questions or suggestions, but the material room still holds a lot of promise as a way to refine your end results even more.

lmk

What about the UV's ?

You should be able to use the old skin texture for the skin parts and new texture for the clothes.

Not sure about injecting jcms with the erc after loading the figure or clothing as the erc may be getting linked (ie the slave dial linked to its controlling joint) on load of the figure and injecting it after might no longer work as an erc, but only as a dumb dial like other morph dials. Do a simple erc of any morph (even one that just moves one vert) to test it out before you go too far :) 

I'm not sure I understand why you want to do this as I haven't followed your development so I can't suggest any alternatives, but goodluck! :)

As for alternative geometry to give alternative mat zones... aside from carrying extra materials in the figure section... each bodypart in a cr2 can have its own materials that do not have to be read from the figure section.  Look for the "customMaterial 0" line, turn this to 1 and then have your material channels under there.  This is how partial bodypart mats were treated at least since  Poser 4 (may have started way before, but this is when I saw them for the first time.) These have fallen out of use since people just over-ride the materials in the figure section only. One thing for you to check:  once you declare customMaterial for a bodypart I'm not sure you can remove it again to make the bodypart go back and obey the figure materials  without reloading the whole figure from scratch. 

You'd have to test this in all the poser versions you plan to support, maybe even other apps like ds. Not really the fun part lol 

This insertion pose idea is from Cage and lesbentleys work, they have a much better understanding of the process involved.  I dont know if a pmd file can be imbedded or linked. 

The pose files contain parts of a cr2 file, for the things you want to change. I am not sure how far you can go with Pose files changing the cr2. There is a whole lot of things that can be done with just this much though.

:)

I wonder though that somewhere back in the dark recesses of Posers mind, that those geometry pieces I replaced are not still loaded in memory. I will have to figure out how to check this.

AprilYSH: I had been wondering about the erc, since it is a special channel linked to the body part. I will have to test different methods of adding the JCM's  either with the erc added with the pz2 or loaded into an already linked channel.  Will Poser create the link correctly from a pz2. Maybe if things are loaded in the correct order.

I want to do this for a number of reasons, one because it does not add nearly as much to the figure as just putting clothes on top of the figures geometry. Also no poke through, cross talk, or conforming issues, and scales and bends perfectly with the figure.. Seems to solve a myriad little problems and irritations with conforming clothing.

Thanks for the tip, I need them.  :)

cheers,
Mike.

There shouldn't be any trouble with inserting ERC into a figure as long as that ERC points to that same figure.  I've done this when I've had my odd problem with a cr2 losing all of the ERC from the JCM's, applying the full channels section of the un-broken cr2 as a pose.  The ERC is correctly inserted and all is well.

I could see complications if you were to try to add ERC to a conformer's JCM's, which should be activated by the posing of the conforming parent figure.  In that case, you'd need to apply a pose specially-tailored for the conforming parent's figure number.  If you had to do that, I'd advise bringing Python into it, but I gather you're working on trying to integrate clothing into the main figure with geom swaps, rather than work with conformers.

Aww, I don't deserve any credit for anything.  Just so's I can get a copy of the final product, along with everyone else!  :D  I can't wait.  I stumbled upon an old build of Brad in my libraries the other day.  It looks like you've made amazing progress since then.  :thumbupboth:  :woot:

Cage: I'm sure it will all work fine.  I'm just tickled with the idea. :) Yes I want just to insert new geometry in place of the body parts. I am leaving part of the shin and part of the lower abdomen in the pants so that if you look up the leg you can see the shin dissappearing into the pant leg, and the same with the waist. Also that way it covers any connection corrected geometry and hides any texture mismatch..

Thanks, things are really starting to click for me, in understanding how to do the things I have wanted to do. The old versions of Brad were full of half formed and implemented ideas, and bad geometry. When I look back through some of the old attempts, things that looked good to me at the time were obviously flawed, it surprises me too how things have progressed.

Thanks for the py  :)

Just use an empty morph channel, like any other injection.  That's how I did Stephanie Max back in 2003.  All her JCM were injections (primarily because they needed to be optional for clothing compatibility).