Ok, I've done the "model the shoe around an unposed foot" and make it conform, and now I wanna conform a shoe modeled around a posed foot, yet still have it conform as normal without having the end user have to apply a pose before conforming, etc. Can it be done?

Come on pjz99...this one's for you....lol.

Laurie

Yes it can be done (and still can be done in the newest versions even, we checked that too).  You're already familiar with the occasional need to adjust the falloff zones I'm sure, that kind of thing was already necessary anyway.  Basically, pose the foot as you like it and model around that, and then when you get to the rigging stage, you adjust the endpoints of foot and toe bone until they give the deformation that you want.  It's difficult to get your head around until you do it a couple of times, then you'll get used to it.

Now, with weight mapping, this may be quite a bit more difficult if you're trying to rig a conformer for a weight mapped foot/toe. There'll be some manual adjustment of weighting needed, and probably that will sometimes be rather painful, but traditional falloff type rigging of a shoe this way is pretty easy to do once you get the hang of it.

I'll give it a shot. I'm certain I'll have questions...lol :P  Thank you. I don't have Poser 2012 (yet) but needing to do it the old fashioned way ;)

I'm assuming you use the dials to move the endpoints so that you don't drag them too far out of line?

Laurie

Nope, I conform them on the character and drag the endpoints around visually, I've never done that via dials.  Not even sure you can.  When you're done and they bend pretty well, un-conform the shoes and do Figure -> Symmetry -> Left to Right (assuming you did the left foot) and save the shoes.

Always add any fitting morphs as the final step once everything else is done, if you're worrying about Superconforming.  When you save the figure to library it will trash the ERC trickery going on that makes superconforming work.  I'll be abandoning this from now on since Poser 8+ supports it natively, but keep that in mind if you're working with earlier versions.

Which figure are the shoes for?

Laurie, I applaud you for trying to get it right. Feet seem to present a problem for some authors when it comes to conforming. I have run across a couple vendors who gave it up as too much trouble to solve and instead included a .pp2 to make V4's feet and toes invisible.

I especially admire vendors who not only get the conforming thing right, but also include both shoes or boots as body parts in one .CR2, rather than a separate .CR2 for each shoe.

Quote - Which figure are the shoes for?

Antonia, when I actually make them...lol. I'm gonna practice on a pair of pumps I made for V4 about a year or so ago tho with a high heel that I never made conformers. If I can get those right, all the better for shoes for Antonia ;).

Laurie

Quote - I especially admire vendors who not only get the conforming thing right, but also include both shoes or boots as body parts in one .CR2, rather than a separate .CR2 for each shoe.

Ach...I hate it when the shoes are separate....lol.

Laurie

I'm going to watch this thread passionately, since I'm involved in precisely the same project... extremely slowly! :blink: Speed? Think glacial.

Quote - I'm going to watch this thread passionately, since I'm involved in precisely the same project... extremely slowly! :blink: Speed? Think glacial.

I'm glacialer than you....lol. Is that a word? Is now :P

Laurie

I'm excited to see some "work in process" pics.. make sure to post some! :)

Quote - I'm excited to see some "work in process" pics.. make sure to post some! :)

Sheesh, Laurie... pressure's ON! :m_letdown: :m_hot:

do I have to beg to make you fit them to v4 too. I love your shoes and want them. :)

Quote - do I have to beg to make you fit them to v4 too. I love your shoes and want them. :)

Yes, those darn boots....lol.

Laurie

Quote - > Quote - I'm excited to see some "work in process" pics.. make sure to post some! :)

Sheesh, Laurie... pressure's ON! :m_letdown: :m_hot:

:lol: no pressure. :)

Another thing you can try is to model it as a foot and no seperate toe in the .obj.  That's what I did for the sandals I was working on, anyways.  Worked well enough.

Quote - Another thing you can try is to model it as a foot and no seperate toe in the .obj.....

Huh? I don't know what that means. I model one solid shoe around the foot. I don't add groups until the setup room.

Laurie

Setup room's grouping tools suck so bad :(  Although I think what Winterclaw means is, don't make a separate group for the toe - I don't do that, the foot and toe are all one group, the bone for the toe will deform the foot anyway without the separate group.

Quote - I don't do that, the foot and toe are all one group, the bone for the toe will deform the foot anyway without the separate group.

I wonder if that applies to Antonia? Antonia has an extra group "Instep" between the Foot and the Toe, which may complicate things.

Quote - > Quote - I don't do that, the foot and toe are all one group, the bone for the toe will deform the foot anyway without the separate group.

I wonder if that applies to Antonia? Antonia has an extra group "Instep" between the Foot and the Toe, which may complicate things.

Oh, I love a challenge! :woot:

LOL! :lol:
 
How does this look? It's a WIP, and a bit of an experiment :scared:. It may come to nothing in the end, but initial results seem promising. The method is super-conforming joints. The "shoe" is only partially rigged at the moment, only xrot is rigged, and no falloff zones have not been set yet. The biggest problem so far is some bad scrunching when the foot bends up.

The red outline is Antonia. The solid figure is the "shoe" (just a bent version of Antonia's foot geometry). The bent geometry has the foot at xrot = 30, and the toe at xrot = -30.

Quote - > Quote - I don't do that, the foot and toe are all one group, the bone for the toe will deform the foot anyway without the separate group.

I wonder if that applies to Antonia? Antonia has an extra group "Instep" between the Foot and the Toe, which may complicate things.

I'd guess it's pretty much the same, if the Instep group is just a selection of polys between the ankle and the toes.

Okay, I'm having an issue with Conforming shoes for Alyson. I'm not exactly what's going wrong though. I conformed the shoes in the Setup room as I'm supposed to. Grouped the shoes accordingly and exited the setup Room with no problems. but when I try to conform the shoes to Alyson... problem. The shoes attach themselves to her ankles in stead of her feet.

Can anyone explain what I did wrong?

did you model the shoes around a completely zeroed, un-morphed and especially un-SCALED character? Except maybe the toes can be bent.  It sounds like either you had scaled a bone on the reference character, which is very bad, or maybe there is some junk in various initValues channels, which is not a big deal.

As far as I know the figure was unmorphed, zeroed and unscaled. However, I will check again and confirm.

Quote - I wonder if that applies to Antonia? Antonia has an extra group "Instep" between the Foot and the Toe, which may complicate things.

I had to include the instep in order to get boots to conform to Antonia.  I think I set up the boot as one geometry, all foot, as suggested above.  Then the instep was included as in Antonia, but with its "joint" and "twist" references removed, so it doesn't deform anything.  The toe had its parenting and deformation settings changed, to deform the foot and ignore the instep.  This seems to work (for my purposes, at least).  The instep was necessary to stabilize the boot as a conformer, IIRC, but it doesn't do anything beyond that.  The toe isn't actually conformed to the figure toe in my case, however.  I named it "bootToe" or something, and it has to be posed separately.

There's probably a better way to set it up.  :unsure:  The instep did seem to be necessary, however.

What would really be helpful is a donor CR2 for use in Poser's setup room. Unfortunately, I know that's not really practical, especially for a figure like Alyson.

I know you can make a donor cr2, but I have no idea what to get rid of and what to keep. Or how to do it either for that matter...lol.

Laurie

Essentially, delete all the morph data (not necessarily the empty channels, although depending on how you add fitting morphs they may not be useful if left in) and any material data in the CR2.  Any other dial information is also probably useless to leave in, e.g. the V4/M4 "MorphForm" ERC dials, those should be deleted from the donor as well.

Hmm, maybe I can simply convert some of V4's shoes to fit the figure (Alyson or Antonia) I'm modeling for, then use that as a donor cr2 file?

You can, but unless all of your shoe models have the exact same degree of bend built into them (unlikely) you might as well just do a blank CR2 for the entire rig.  What if you rig something besides a shoe?  It's not a big deal to delete unnecessary bones when rigging a new conformer, but if the bones aren't there (e.g. no arm bones) then the donor is useless.

Do you have a good "how-to-make-a-donor-rig" tute, pjz99?

Re-phrazing that: would you know of a link to a good "how-to-make-a-donor-rig" tutorial... ???

Quote - Do you have a good "how-to-make-a-donor-rig" tute, pjz99?

Re-phrazing that: would you know of a link to a good "how-to-make-a-donor-rig" tutorial... ???

For shoes all you need is from the hip down on both legs. I use the base figure as the donor when I first make shoes into conformers. I tweak the shoes to fit and then save to library. I open the cr2 in zPad and delete the unwanted rigging.. then save the file with a new name in case you mess up... which can happen lol.

For me the longest process is cleaning up the cr2. I've found though much trial and error it worked better for me to use the base figure as the donor. As far as grouping, it depends on the style of the shoe what body parts you need. I found on most heels I could get away with just the foot unless they had an ankle strap or wrapped up the leg. I also found that I had to make sure the IK chains in the cr2 were stripped out also.

I don't think I've heard of any tutorial on how to make a proper donor CR2, and tbh it isn't a task I'd recommend anyway to anyone who is not COMPLETELY comfortable with the guts of a CR2 file (in which case, you probably wouldn't need such a tutorial anyway).  There is so much minutiae involved, literally a hundred steps or more.

Quote - ... For shoes all you need is from the hip down on both legs. I use the base figure as the donor when I first make shoes into conformers. I tweak the shoes to fit and then save to library. I open the cr2 in zPad and delete the unwanted rigging.. then save the file with a new name in case you mess up... which can happen lol.

For me the longest process is cleaning up the cr2. I've found though much trial and error it worked better for me to use the base figure as the donor. As far as grouping, it depends on the style of the shoe what body parts you need. I found on most heels I could get away with just the foot unless they had an ankle strap or wrapped up the leg. I also found that I had to make sure the IK chains in the cr2 were stripped out also.

So, would a tool like PFE make the task slightly less arduous? And yes, I can see how an intimate knowledge of a cr2 would be indispensible: one would have to start with one's study on the process there.

Yes... PFE is like zPad... they are both for editing poser files. PFE does show the hierachy better which would make cleaning up the cr2 easier.

Cool!! One more big tick for Poser File Editor!! :biggrin:

I always had such a hard time keeping track of the open-close curly-brackets. :glare:

Frankly the first time I started working with Poser File Editor, I kicked myself about a hundred times for all the wasted time and work trying to do anything Poser-related in a plain text editor.  It's the single biggest and most useful tool outside of Poser itself, if someone took it away from me I'd pretty much quit trying to develop Poser content at all.

To be fair, PFE had two similar (and free) predecessors in the area of specialized Poser file editors with collapsible nodes, which in some cases actually offer useful functionality not present in PFE.  But generally PFE is easier to use and it is a wonderful utililty.  :woot:  Its ability to process compressed Poser files, alone, is a huge time saver.

Quote - Ach...I hate it when the shoes are separate....lol. Laurie

I prefer shoes to be separate, makes it easier to use them on figures they were not created for. Even if I have to parent them to their feet rather than conform them.

Quote - To be fair, PFE had two similar (and free) predecessors in the area of specialized Poser file editors with collapsible nodes, which in some cases actually offer useful functionality not present in PFE.  But generally PFE is easier to use and it is a wonderful utililty.  :woot:  Its ability to process compressed Poser files, alone, is a huge time saver.

Which are they, Cage? Just curious...

All the practice I did on making clothes for Alyson has finally paid off.  I made a pair of shoes for Antonia. Now trying to figure out whether to conform them or parent them.

If they are props, they won't bend with the toes...

Granted, but as they're only meant to be worn one way anyhow, is that a "bad" thing?

Might be more of an issue if they were boots.

I've always rigged them as figures, I've never liked prop shoes.  Users expect this as well, if you're planning to distribute your model.

Well, to rig it as  figure I have to first figure out how to rig it, period.

http://www.nerd3d.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=11

http://www.runtimedna.com/forum/showthread.php?63383-Make-any-clothes-fit-any-figure-in-Poser-2012

http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?p=2399590&flatnum=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBYugBlmVQw (creating a blank CR2, Robyn was asking about this also)

Has anyone tried making hi heels for Olivia and G2 ladies?

I've been trying to figure out how to bend Olivia's foot for a hi heel.  had to settle for making a not so hi heel (smart prop). still looks more like a slipper at this point. lol

There's no flexibility between the top of her ankle to the base of her toes.  She has no injection channels for a morph.  she has a flat feet morph, tried it in reverse, her foot arches but the other side bubbles out.

Quote - http://www.nerd3d.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=11

http://www.runtimedna.com/forum/showthread.php?63383-Make-any-clothes-fit-any-figure-in-Poser-2012

http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?p=2399590&flatnum=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBYugBlmVQw (creating a blank CR2, Robyn was asking about this also)

YAY!!! Thanks for those, Pjz99 - you're a champion!!!

Oh, and for rigging, let's not forget Diogenes... come to think of it, a link to this was in that DNA thread...

Quote - Has anyone tried making hi heels for Olivia and G2 ladies?

I've been trying to figure out how to bend Olivia's foot for a hi heel.  had to settle for making a not so hi heel (smart prop). still looks more like a slipper at this point. lol

There's no flexibility between the top of her ankle to the base of her toes.  She has no injection channels for a morph.  she has a flat feet morph, tried it in reverse, her foot arches but the other side bubbles out.

Someone's probably going to want to slap me, but one could always bring Olivia into PP2012 and re-rig and weight-map her! Then, she'll bend the way you want her to.

Quote - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBYugBlmVQw (creating a blank CR2, Robyn was asking about this also)

YAY!!! Thanks for those, Pjz99 - you're a champion!!!

Oh, and for rigging, let's not forget Diogenes... come to think of it, a link to this was in that DNA thread...

Note, it's a good tutorial for what it covers, but there are a couple of fairly important steps (important to me, anyhow) not covered in that tutorial:

• Removing the original CR2's material settings (these will be written into your conformer if this step isn't done)
• Ensuring that any initValue settings are zero (this may or may not require action depending on the original CR2, or if you're willing to do it manually for every item you rig if those values are not zero)