I guess it's possible to create weight maps for older figures, so, would they - when combined with VSS - hold up against current figures?

I wondered if perhaps V2, Steph et al may be ripe for dusting down.

Yer thoughts? 

that is the question is it not?

Oh I think they would and combined with new textures very nice.

There appears to be a trend towards looking at what we already have in terms of content - I'd guess most of us have an embarrassment of riches, whether bought or freebies - to tweak and massage and otherwise breathe new life into. That trend (for me) started with getting a grip on the cloth room, and realising with some dismay that that massive collection of conforming clothing I had in my runtime wardrobe was all going to be ignored unless... which started me down the path of converting conforming to dynamic. Now, with weight-mapping, even conforming cloth might look a bit better than it did, but to be honest, nothing seems to make clothing look really natural as running it through a sim... clothing that will let you, of course.

I do feel for the vendors as the obsession with buying-buying is likely to be affected with this technology, but on the other hand I feel like the Poser artist is going back to Poser's roots as a means of being creative more than just a way to dress up dollies in new clothes every now and then.

One point that was brought up on the forum discussing this weight-mapping thing and other features at great length was that perhaps there needs to be some form of standardisation for weight-mapping figures, or the accessories may not work as well. Which would affect vendors, since their products won't necessarily fit all varieties of weight-mapping of figures.

Which, hey!, to me, that's not a bad thing either: it simply means that people will either start to glom on to a specific artist, their figure, their weight-mapping, and clothing designed for that figure (a bit like what Pretty 3D and Blackhearted have with their morphed V4s) or people will quite naturally take the extra time to tailor a set of clothing to work with their favourite figure. Moving away from the Make-Art button... always a good thing!

Absolutely, but the results depend greatly on how much work is put into redoing the rig and how well it's done.  It isn't like you press a button and it's done in 2 minutes.  Plus there's some fairly technical cleanup required to get all the JCM out (and magnets in the case of V4 or Sydney).

Oh! I didn't realise this, Paul. Looks like I have a lot of studying to do... good job I've got a couple of weeks off to sort-of get a head start on it!

I have sort of missed Posette and the Dork.  If they could bend at the hip, I could use all of the old freebies I collected between 1999 and 2002.

Standardized weight mapping. That is one way to do it. Another would be to be able to ship the figure weight map in a pose file along with the clothing being purchased. Something to this effect is being worked on now. The figure could then be saved or not. But to be able to ship the weight map would reduce the problems of various weight mapped figures.

A lot of users of Poser, I mean A LOT, want to load and render without any other effort on their own part. Whenever any one suggests that users should learn how to do some things for themselves, the whining starts. I think that there will always be vendor dependent Poser users.

lmk

Quote - A lot of users of Poser, I mean A LOT, want to load and render without any other effort on their own part. Whenever any one suggests that users should learn how to do some things for themselves, the whining starts. I think that there will always be vendor dependent Poser users.

lmk

True, and that's even more the case with new adoptees.  But, I'm also getting a sense that many of the older users are growing weary of dressing digital barbies and tweaking this & that to get marginally better renders.  Weight mapping, being as widely implemented as it is in more professional apps, offers an interesting opportunity to learn something truly useful.

Notice the progression of people from poser to zbrush, wings, and blender in the last few years.  It started out with people wanting to create face and body morphs.  Now, more and more are interested in modeling, texturing, and even cough "rigging" cough.  Thats' how it began with me as I'm now learning max in my spare time and loving it.

Perhaps more people within the poser community exploring weight mapping will have the same effect, as the basic principles to weight map a figure are essentially the same among various lower and higher end apps (poser, maya, max, etc.)

Well there's the potential for the new weight mapping features to benefit EVERYONE, because you don't have to know anything about rigging to actually use a weightmapped figure or conformer.  As Diogenes is saying, if people can agree on a standard for any given figure (that's going to be the hard part) then it's not any harder to use than the old style rigging, the process of conforming works exactly the same way - but the potential quality is much better.  Emphasis on potential, though.

Anyone can use the weight mapped tools to get some results, but not just anyone can produce the best possible results with a combination of weight maps and the Poser 8 rigging system of bones, spheres, and capsules.

Diogenes is also exploring using extra bones for muscle and tendon shaping and movement. He and several others have been experimenting with injecting alternate geometries, and making figures with a second-skin controlled by the same rig as the rest of the figure (if I remember and understand correctly).

Figure creation will have an interesting and promising future. Especially so if S/M will follow the lead of the brightest content creators and modelers.

I will be interested to hear what variables, functions, and procedures that the new Posers will expose to Python, and what new capabilities the newer version of Python will bring to the table. Cage may be able to make an alternate Hair Room, with the right access to Poser's internal workings.

lmk

Quote - Cage may be able to make an alternate Hair Room, with the right access to Poser's internal workings.

Sadly, I lack the math training to be able to do much more than I have with dynamic hair.  The effort would seemingly require one well-versed in spline mathematics and various other things which are well beyond my skill level.    :lol:

That said, with more Poser internals exposed to Python, good things would be sure to develop.  :laugh:

Cage:

You always say something like that just before you go out and learn something new, and do something amazing. But, I'm not picky and I am ever so willing to be amazed. So, pick anything you would like to do with Poser's updated Python and I will certainly applaud.

lmk

Thanks for the feedback, gang.  It's good to know the idea is at least feasible.  I like the idea of recycling older figures, if they are up to the job.

I'd like to experiment with the older figures someday but first I need to get an updated system that's capable of running newer versions of Poser.

Forgive a dumb question from someone who's never seen weight mapping in action, but is it an actual map in the way 3D artists traditionally understand the term? I.e. a 2D image like a texture / bump / displacement map?

Hi EnglishBob

No it is a list of vert data stored in the cr2. It basically says where a vertice moves and how far. But in Poser you can see it represented by the colors ranging from green to yellow to red. You can paint it on using a brush to get the desired bend results.

One more post :)

I know that explanationis not really correct but its the best I can do.

 One of the cool things about weight mapping is it does not change with morphing. With the old spheres and capsules if you morphed something outside of the spheres then it would get left behind and not move with the bone. With weight mapping that does not happen.

The forum ate my reply. :P

Thanks!

Eeep.....shame on me.

Quote - A lot of users of Poser, I mean A LOT, want to load and render without any other effort on their own part. Whenever any one suggests that users should learn how to do some things for themselves, the whining starts. I think that there will always be vendor dependent Poser users.

lmk

Quote - There appears to be a trend towards looking at what we already have in terms of content - I'd guess most of us have an embarrassment of riches, whether bought or freebies - to tweak and massage and otherwise breathe new life into. 

I am certainly part of that trend but, in truth it has little to do with the arrival of Genesis or decisions made by Daz3d.   It really started for me when I purchased one of  *Fugazi1968's *Digiltal Tailor tutorials in an attempt to understand clothing a bit more.  That and threads here on using dynamic clothing on this forum.

I have since purchased a copy of Silo as it looked good in the tutorials and I am beginning to find my way around that.  I will still purchase some items from my favorite vendors but I expect to be buying a lot less over the coming months.  I have even cancelled my Platinum Club memebership as I found I had not used it much since the start of the year.

Quote - Absolutely, but the results depend greatly on how much work is put into redoing the rig and how well it's done.  It isn't like you press a button and it's done in 2 minutes.  Plus there's some fairly technical cleanup required to get all the JCM out (and magnets in the case of V4 or Sydney).

I've not tried it yet but I would think that there is a fairly quick way to get rid of the JCMs and magnets. Just import the obj and take it into the set-up room. Now use the original cr2 to donate its rig - but only the bones and zones will be transferred, the morphs and mags will be left behind. Next step will be to save out the new cr2.

Of course, the morphs you want, along with the morph channels will be left behind as well but there should be other ways of transferring them. Morph Manager should do the job just fine.

re: weight map data

Quote - It basically says where a vertice moves and how far.

To expand on this a little bit, the raw data is really just a number that ranges from zero to one, and zero values are not recorded (if a vertex has no listing in the weight map table of data, it's just assumed to be zero).

An actual entry looks like this:

v 130 0.990181

where "v 130" is the vertex ID, much the same as OBJ format, and the last number is the actual weight value.  Zero means "no weight" (bone won't bend this vertex) and one means "full weight" (bone will apply full deformation to this vertex).

That was brilliantly explained, Paul - even I get it now. So traditional rigging and weight-mapping can perfectly complement each other. Best I get a really good handle on rigging, then. Been putting it off long enough.

Quote - Best I get a really good handle on rigging, then.

Was that pun intentional? :-)

It seems to me that weight mapping should be more efficient than other methods of joint parameterisation, as well as more flexible. Rather than having to work out the fall-off zone's effect on every vertex for every transformation, you just look up each vertex's weight map value and you're done. Your machine would need to do less thinking on behalf of each figure in a scene. (Is that true?)

Yes I believe so, because as you say the value is set. Poser no longer has to recalculate continuously for the geometry falling in and out of the zones.

Quote:-

"

I think that there will always be vendor dependent Poser users.

lmk"

esther keeps very quiet, then slowly raises her hand and admits the awful truth.

raises her hand along with Esther

And I am sure the vendors thank you. :)

lmk

oh they do.  renderosity just sent me a 15% off voucher because they are so happy with me.

Love esther

I am semi vendor dependent. I struggle to model from scratch anything other then a parking lot!  But pull somebody elses creation into an older version of C4D using riptide and for personal use I can destroy things pretty quickly :) Toss in a few Dr. Geep tuts and I can really make a mess after bringing something back into Poser. Mostly on buildings and landscape stuff thou. Clothes and Hair I am totally vendor dependant for creation other then texturing them or converting clothes from conforming to dynamic. Mainly I help illustrate some stories as part of a private group. So a lot of times I need something quick or something I can set up (think soap opera set) when scene 1 has M4 talking to V4, then the next scene is two V4's in the same set-up arguing and then the next day the same set-up, the same two V4's dressed differently sitting at a table sharing a pot of coffee...you get the idea.

sounds good grichter!

Yeah, making messes is fun... I can do some structural building and texturing.  Clothing and figure modeling makes me hide in my corner.  My figures look worse than what a kindergartener could do with plahdoh on his/her first day at school.  :)

Sounds like an interesting group you help, Grichter.  The story must be very involved!

Teque

There are so many aspects of poser that for a lot of things we use in our artform, we are going to find ourselves dependent on other artists. I hate to think in terms of being dependent on "vendors" per se, because, to be honest, some of the best Poser has to offer came as a gift from people who happened to have a talent in that area and who were generous, besides. I dabble in a lot of things, but it will be a long time before I can do anything as useful as Ockham or MarkSchum or Cage or Diogenes or ODF or Bagginsbill - let's not forget Bagginsbill. So really, the best of the best I've gotten from people for free. Which is what I really like to think this community is really all about, really.

I've got artists favourited on ShareCG who produce clothing and morphs and props that rival in terms of quality and detail comparable stuff we see available here in the marketplace. In today's hard economic times, there are those of us who would love to buy content but can't afford $12.95 for a morph set, so we are forced to "DIY" - necessity is the mother of developing some skills you didn't realise you had. Oh, I make a right-royal mess of textures, even though I have CS3 and Stitch-Witch and all that: I just don't have that gift. So, I don't blame you-all for thinking that we sort-of "need" vendors to make stuff for us that we otherwise wouldn't be able to have access to.

But to be solely dependent on vendors? I think not.