I read a lot of mentions about weight mapped V4.

How is it better than plain V4 or V4.2? 

Can I use it with existing morphs and clothes?

If I have a dialed V4 or V4.2 character can that be applied to a weight mapped V4?

Is it easy to use?

For any weight-mapped figure, you will need Poser 9 or PP2012.

For the rest of those questions, follow the link in my signature to PoserPlace. V4WM isn't just a weight-mapped version of V4, but a total re-rig as well. Which means she is much more light-weight (not magnet-dependent) and bends infinitely more naturally.

Trying her is painless: she's a free download. So is the Outfitter tool to convert V4-conforming clothing to V4WM conforming.

There are threads on here that discuss this at length...

Quote - I read a lot of mentions about weight mapped V4.

How is it better than plain V4 or V4.2? 

Can I use it with existing morphs and clothes?

If I have a dialed V4 or V4.2 character can that be applied to a weight mapped V4?

Is it easy to use?

First, weightmapped V4 bends much more naturally.  Especially without all those add-in morphs and magnets. 

It's better because everything about the model is more like a natural human being.

All existing morphs and characters work with V4WM the same as V4.2 - nothing is different.

Clothing will need to be converted using the FREE Outfitter from PoserPlace so that it is weightmapped.  The conversion process is simple and easy and transfers morphs, movement bones and everything else to weight mapping.

Shoes and hair are sometimes iffy and will simply need the Edit>Copy Joints from Figure to allow for a better fit on a weightmapped V4. Those are both hit and miss and will simply require you to test and determine which is the best solution.

I believe you can weightmap your morphed & saved V4, but I'm not certain.  Since both scripts are free and easy to use, with lots of documentation and help here and at Poser Place, I'd suggest trying it and asking questions if you have any problems.

You may have to weight map a"plain" V4, then put your morphs back in, then save with your morphs applied.

To use V4WM you need to run your original V4/V4.2 through a script. Once that is done you can save the converted V4WM to you library. All morph and character packages work with V4WM.

V4WM has extra helper bones to make her bend better. That means that you need to run you original clothing through a conversion script as well.  It works really fast and is quite easy to use. The script keeps all morphs in the clothing you can use all your texture packages etc. with the converted clothing.

I realise there is some preparation needed to use V4WM but the good news is that she's free as well as the Outfitter (used to convert clothing)

The greatest advantage of V4WM is better bending due to the weight mapping and extra helper bones as well as being able to use all your legacy content.

You can get V4WM here:
http://poserplace.phantom3d.net/V4.2WM/V4.2WM.html

And the Outifitter here:
http://poserplace.phantom3d.net/PP_Outfitter/pp_outfitter.html

There's also a huge thread about V4WM here:
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2843300&page=1

Hope this helps. 

Edit: Oops, crossposted there...

They done a great job to convert V4 to WM, but there is too many problems with the shoes IMO, and i dont want to take the time to tweak more and more ...

I have run various morphs on V4WM ranging from different sizes through scales and she retains her natural bending abilities. 

Yeah I've noticed the problem with the shoes too. Excluding the toes when converting does help a bit, but you inevitably have to make a lot of tweeks to make it work like the original.

The figure bends SO much better however, that I'm willing to go through the trouble, as much as I try, I cannot go back to the original V4 after trying the WM version, I simple can't...

It's an opinion ...

I took more time to match shoes than creating scene and rendering, i dont use her since  ~2 mounth.

Quote - It's an opinion ... I took more time to match shoes than creating scene and rendering, i dont use her since  ~2 month.

This is what I mean about "consumers" and "products". Typical consumer mentality. Desole, mon vieux, c'est un peux ca.

Did you post about your concerns at PoserPlace?

Mon vieux ? Je ne crois pas que l'on ait élevé quoi que ce soit ensemble ...

First i dont launch negative critical, read all my post ...

"They done a great job to convert V4 to WM"

Second it's my opinion, free to share it ... I dont have time to loose about these details.

People are happy like this ? Well done, i'm not

Third, the "bug" is already at poserplace and fallen into oblivion since M4WM and no real solution.

That's all folks

So, you brought it up at PoserPlace?

Quote - Mon vieux ? Je ne crois pas que l'on ait élevé quoi que ce soit ensemble ...

Un peux sensible, tu n' croix pas? > Quote - First i dont launch negative critical, read all my post ...

What exactly then was the point of "I haven't used xxx for 2+ mounths"? > Quote - Second it's my opinion, free to share it ... I dont have time to lose about these details.

I'm no longer involved in that project, so I have nil emotional attachment to it. The reason I responded to this at all is because once again, instead of contributing to a solution, people offer purely negative "opinions"... a quoi bon? No purpose at all.

Quote - People are happy like this ? Well done, i'm not. Third, the "bug" is already at poserplace and fallen into oblivion since M4WM and no real solution.

Which is the MAIN reason I've abdicated from this sad little society that demands and demands even from freebie developers instead of jumping in and trying to help. It's so easy to criticise. It's quite a different thing to try to help.

This is a FREEBIE, folks. It's ours. Make it better. Don't slam it.

I drop ...

Welcome to an issue us DS4 users have had since autofit was launched.

The shoes themselves are the problem, many of them were not built around V4's zero'd foot pose, so changing the rig to V4WM (or Genesis) means they will never conform properly. You either need to create a new .OBJ after posing the shoe so it fits V4's zero'd pose and then rig that mesh, or turn them into props and lose the rigging.

i so much prefer smart prop shoes :wub: 

if the conforming shoes load separately, figure parent is an option.

Quote - Welcome to an issue us DS4 users have had since autofit was launched.

The shoes themselves are the problem, many of them were not built around V4's zero'd foot pose, so changing the rig to V4WM (or Genesis) means they will never conform properly. You either need to create a new .OBJ after posing the shoe so it fits V4's zero'd pose and then rig that mesh, or turn them into props and lose the rigging.

Indeed.  Also some shoes are only rigged with foot and toe actors, so the conversion messes up the shoes' alignment at the ankle joints, since there is no ankle joint in the shoe to convert...

I have been using V4WM from the first week she was available and would not go back.  The only problem I have had with shoes I have been able to solve using toe bend, but then I sometimes had to do this with V4.  Maybe I have been lucky with the shoes I have chosen.

When using Outfitter I do exclude the left and right toe when converting footware.  I have found outfitter to be easy to use and it has worked well with everything I have tried, with the exception of something that produced for V3 converted to V4 (Xdresser) and then V4WM .  Not really surprised that it did not work as it was asking a lot but you don't know if you don't try. If I purchase new content the first thing I do is run it through outfitter.

I would be more than happy to have paid for both V4WM and outfitter and I have had more problems with content and scripts I have purchased than either of these freebies. 

The Poser team did a great job and then gave it to the community for free.  It may not suit everyone's way of working or be to everyone's taste it is free to try and decide for yourself.  Much better to find out if it suits you than just take the word of someone who dislikes it for whatever reason.  Mind you, that is not restricted to Poser, I would have missed so many good films if I had listened to others or relied purely on the reviews.

Finally I have no connection with the Poser Team other than forever being in their debt for bringing new life to V4. 

Quote - I have been using V4WM from the first week she was available and would not go back.  The only problem I have had with shoes I have been able to solve using toe bend, but then I sometimes had to do this with V4.  Maybe I have been lucky with the shoes I have chosen.

When using Outfitter I do exclude the left and right toe when converting footware.  I have found outfitter to be easy to use and it has worked well with everything I have tried, with the exception of something that produced for V3 converted to V4 (Xdresser) and then V4WM .  Not really surprised that it did not work as it was asking a lot but you don't know if you don't try. If I purchase new content the first thing I do is run it through outfitter.

I would be more than happy to have paid for both V4WM and outfitter and I have had more problems with content and scripts I have purchased than either of these freebies. 

The Poser team did a great job and then gave it to the community for free.  It may not suit everyone's way of working or be to everyone's taste it is free to try and decide for yourself.  Much better to find out if it suits you than just take the word of someone who dislikes it for whatever reason.  Mind you, that is not restricted to Poser, I would have missed so many good films if I had listened to others or relied purely on the reviews.

Finally I have no connection with the Poser Team other than forever being in their debt for bringing new life to V4. 

 

I'm sure you mean the Poser Place team, right?  Poser certainly provided the capability to weight map a figure, but it was all Poser Place who made the WM figures (V4 & Antonia) available, as well as Outfitter to convert clothing. 

Quote - This is a FREEBIE, folks. It's ours. Make it better. Don't slam it.

What this sounds like is:  If you don't have the technical skills to fix a problem ("make it better"), then don't offer any critique ("don't slam it").

To say, this item has a flaw, so I don't use it, is not slamming it.

If one were to say, just as an example, "It sucks, the bending is awful, and the figure looks like a blow-up doll!" -- THAT is slamming it.

Yes, the item is free.  DS4 and Genesis are free too, and yet we're encouraged to "slam" them.  Why?  Free or not, when something is marketed that hard, it raises expectations, and if those expectations are not met, people respond vocally, as is their right.

There is a fix for the shoe issues that have toe joints and that do not transfer properly. It was addressed, looked at, experimented with, and a fix for it was posted. The thread appears to have been archived.

It is not something that could be included with the conversion simply because there are just to many differences in the sizes of the zones needed to do all of the shoes that are out there.

The problem is that the joint zone on V4 toes are not large enough to reach all of the shoe.

Here is what you need to do to shoes with toe joints that do not convert properly.

1. Select the V4's foot, bend it until the joint shows a problem. 40 degrees up should cover most of the problem.

2. Select the shoes toe joint.

3. Open the joint editor, tweak the zones a little bit.

3a. Depending on the shoe, it depends on what you have to do to the joint to correct for it. Sometimes simply scaling the inner and out zones will do it, other times you have to do a little more to it and move the affect angles a little bit, move the center a bit, etc. I all just comes down to the shape of the shoe, and how much of it is outside of the original toe joint zone.

1. Repeat this on the other shoe, do not use the mirror symmetry command to do the other side.

2. Resave the shoes.

It would have been nice if there was one fix for all the shoes, but there is not one.

The same process can be used on gloves as well.

Hope this helps...

On step one, select the toe, edit timer expired....

Corrections and upbraiding taken aboard. Good point, Moriador. Please accept my apologies, Anthanasius.

I'm sure you mean the Poser Place team, right?  Poser certainly provided the capability to weight map a figure, but it was all Poser Place who made the WM figures (V4 & Antonia) available, as well as Outfitter to convert clothing. 

Thanks Glitterati3D,

I do, of course, mean the Poser Place team.  Serves me right for responding without letting my knee jerk reaction subside.  When anyone puts in so much work and then gives it away for free I feel that peple should be grateful.  If it is not for them, so be it, we all want different things from life, but we should also encourage others to use it and see if it is for them.  To me that is at least a way of making sure that all the hard work gets maximum exposure, something I am sure the Poser Team would want also.

"DS4 and Genesis are free too, and yet we're encouraged to "slam" them."

Not sure where this encouragement came from but I wish they would stop.  I would much rather read a theard that helps me improve my use of Poser than have to pull the odd useful post from the reams of all the ones slamming either Poser or Daz.

I absolutely have no clue why anybody would want to "rig" shoes/boots.

Take a shoe, boot, position it over the foot/toe, and save it as a "smart" prop of the foot with inherit bends checked ON.

The shoe/boot will follow all movements of the shin, foot, and toe's.

A "smart" prop will follow all movements one group up and one group down.

Same for "smart' propping hair.
Smart prop it to the neck, and it will follow all movement of the head, neck and collars.

The group it is parented to plus; One group up, and one group down.

Why make simple things so complicated?????
KISS never fails. :-)

Quote - I absolutely have no clue why anybody would want to "rig" shoes/boots.

Take a shoe, boot, position it over the foot/toe, and save it as a "smart" prop of the foot with inherit bends checked ON.

The shoe/boot will follow all movements of the shin, foot, and toe's.

A "smart" prop will follow all movements one group up and one group down.

 

Same for "smart' propping hair.
Smart prop it to the neck, and it will follow all movement of the head, neck and collars.

The group it is parented to plus; One group up, and one group down.

Why make simple things so complicated?????
KISS never fails. :-)

Now, isn't that funny?  Because I hate, hate, hate prop shoes.  You know why?  Because there's 2.  2 feet.  2 shoes.  2 loads.  2 texture changes.  2 morph the foot in the the correct position.  Double the work.  PITA for a stupid pair of shoes.

Quote - I'm sure you mean the Poser Place team, right?  Poser certainly provided the capability to weight map a figure, but it was all Poser Place who made the WM figures (V4 & Antonia) available, as well as Outfitter to convert clothing. 

Quote - Thanks Glitterati3D, I do, of course, mean the Poser Place team.  Serves me right for responding without letting my knee jerk reaction subside.  When anyone puts in so much work and then gives it away for free I feel that peple should be grateful.  If it is not for them, so be it, we all want different things from life, but we should also encourage others to use it and see if it is for them.  To me that is at least a way of making sure that all the hard work gets maximum exposure, something I am sure the Poser Team would want also.

You're welcome. I don't even use the non-weight mapped figures anymore.  Weight mapping adds so much to a figure, it's a waste of time to fight with a figure rigged the old way.

Regardless of free or not, we OWE those creators the respect and kudos for stepping up and going the extra mile. 

Off Topic but, that didn't work for me.. at least not with hair.  Any movement of the head sent verts all over the place

 >>Edit<<  seems to be an issue with weightmapping.  What you suggest works fine with standard rigging but on antonia WM it turns into a big mess of spikes.   I imagine the weights all spanning across different actors confuses the inherit bends feature.

That being said I have to agree.  the smart prop method works really well for shoes on standard rigging. Aside from the problem that Antonia has that extra instep group which means that if you have a boot that covers the shin as well you will not get any toe bend from the figure

Quote - I absolutely have no clue why anybody would want to "rig" shoes/boots.

Take a shoe, boot, position it over the foot/toe, and save it as a "smart" prop of the foot with inherit bends checked ON.

The shoe/boot will follow all movements of the shin, foot, and toe's.

A "smart" prop will follow all movements one group up and one group down.

 

Same for "smart' propping hair.
Smart prop it to the neck, and it will follow all movement of the head, neck and collars.

The group it is parented to plus; One group up, and one group down.

Why make simple things so complicated?????
KISS never fails. :-)

Using the copy joint zones from command tranfers the joint center and the weight maps to the hair, which is not what you want.

To convert the hair, all you want is the joint info (without the maps) to transfer.

For conforming hair.

Load and conform the hair onto V4WM, then run the attached pose file on the conforming hair to change just the joint info on the hip, abs, chest, collars, neck, and head of the hair.

Your done.

Thanks for this lil pose file, shvrdavid, very use ful.

Even tho, since using V4WM almost entirely nowadays, I used to just parent the hair figures to the head or neck of V4WM, which is/was a good method for me as well.

So now I can conform again =)

Bonjour

I am a beginner using V4 WM and discover the excellent poserplaceoutfiuier this week end

I have some poses for WM version

Are regular poses for v4 fits for V4WM version?

Thanks

Quote - Bonjour

I am a beginner using V4 WM and discover the excellent poserplaceoutfiuier this week end

I have some poses for WM version

Are regular poses for v4 fits for V4WM version?

Thanks

I find almost all my poses for the standard V4 work with V4WM.  I have had to tweak the odd one a bit but nothing major.

Thanks hornet3d for your quick reply

Quote - Thanks hornet3d for your quick reply

Your welcome, I hope you enjoy using V4WM, I have used nothing else since this version was available.

Quote - There is a fix for the shoe issues that have toe joints and that do not transfer properly. It was addressed, looked at, experimented with, and a fix for it was posted. The thread appears to have been archived.

It is not something that could be included with the conversion simply because there are just to many differences in the sizes of the zones needed to do all of the shoes that are out there.

The problem is that the joint zone on V4 toes are not large enough to reach all of the shoe.

Here is what you need to do to shoes with toe joints that do not convert properly.

1. Select the V4's foot, bend it until the joint shows a problem. 40 degrees up should cover most of the problem.

2. Select the shoes toe joint.

3. Open the joint editor, tweak the zones a little bit.

3a. Depending on the shoe, it depends on what you have to do to the joint to correct for it. Sometimes simply scaling the inner and out zones will do it, other times you have to do a little more to it and move the affect angles a little bit, move the center a bit, etc. I all just comes down to the shape of the shoe, and how much of it is outside of the original toe joint zone.

1. Repeat this on the other shoe, do not use the mirror symmetry command to do the other side.

2. Resave the shoes.

It would have been nice if there was one fix for all the shoes, but there is not one.

The same process can be used on gloves as well.

Hope this helps...

Cool thank you for this as I few shoe sets I have are a major pain in the rear even after converting. 

Quote - Now, isn't that funny?  Because I hate, hate, hate prop shoes.  You know why?  Because there's 2.  2 feet.  2 shoes.  2 loads.  2 texture changes.  2 morph the foot in the the correct position.  Double the work.  PITA for a stupid pair of shoes.

But the work you have to do is still far less time consuming than would be required to rig a stupid pair of shoes.

What if you want one shoe on and one shoe off?

Quote - What if you want one shoe on and one shoe off?

Make one invisible...

I find that inherit bends only works if the prop is modeled to fit the figure's zeroed toe postion, but I'd love to be proven wrong...

Non conforming shoes also have the advantage of working on figures besides just those they share rigging with.

I have always wished for a type fo clothing that could conform without rigging, just by following the underlying mesh.  I don't collect figures and wardrobes, so it was always annoying to find that I had the right article of clothing, but which was not designed for the figure I wished to put it on...

Quote - > Quote - Now, isn't that funny?  Because I hate, hate, hate prop shoes.  You know why?  Because there's 2.  2 feet.  2 shoes.  2 loads.  2 texture changes.  2 morph the foot in the the correct position.  Double the work.  PITA for a stupid pair of shoes.

 

But the work you have to do is still far less time consuming than would be required to rig a stupid pair of shoes.

What if you want one shoe on and one shoe off?

I don't find it any less time consuming to rig prop shoes over conforming.  And, the time savings for the end user is worth every second.  To me, anyway.

As for the one shoe on, the reply above covers it.

Quote - I don't find it any less time consuming to rig prop shoes over conforming.  And, the time savings for the end user is worth every second.  To me, anyway.

As for the one shoe on, the reply above covers it.

Just thinking of the times I had to turn conforming shoes into prop shoes because they were designed to conform to a different figure than the one I was trying to use them with...

As far as one shoe goes, aside from being in jest, it really isn't much harder to copy/paste materials from one to another than to hide one shoe in the heirarchy, but then I have to remember that we might not all use the same approach or know every feature to the same degree.  I am always forgetting the whole vendor/user aspect of things...  If I were selling content I would always try to consider what the majority of my market preferred using.  Just didn't see the time lost in using one method over the other because I was thinking of my own usage and not that of customers. 

I would more likely buy an item that worked with all of my figures than one that only worked with V4 (or whoever is popular this week) just to save a step or two when using.  But I don't buy much anyway, so of course I prefer things that are versatile enough to work however after some tweaking.  I suppose if I were buying an item I would just want it to work immediately.

Everybody has their own workflow.

I prefer to the foot Smart propped shoes ha-ha-ha-, as I hate rigging. :-(

For loading just you can select them both at once in Poser9/PP2012 for drag drop on a figure.

For the new folks out there using V4-WM, I am bumping this thread to the top to help you all out! thank you ShvrDAvid!

there is another weightmapped V4 at ourRenderforever website that doesn't require special outfitter to make the clothes fit.

Have both, use both. Each has their merits and drawbacks. I'm grateful to all involved in their creation.

I think the elbow bends shape of the tip are a drawback in both versions sadly.

I was away from Poser when RDNA shut down. Does anyone know if the Poser Place V4~WM, Outfitter, and other projects are currently available anywhere? If they aren't, those of us from the team who are still in the community should figure out where we can post them.

PoserPlace's Outfitter is here:

https://www.adh3d.com/PoserPlaceOutfitter.html

Found no other V4/M4 WMs unless estherau's suggestion.

Henning

I've gone ahead and uploaded V4~WM to my site at Morphography:

http://www.morphography.uk.vu/~cagepage/poserplace/poserplace.html

This page is not yet available from the index in my sigline.

If anyone needs a place to put their freebies, just tell me, I will store the files and will do a page in my site for it.

Here are the Poser Place V4WM, Outfitter, a hair reffitter pose and Cage's Weight Pose Maker script that I had grabbed from the old Poser Place site...

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B9_I3V6UTuuXcGlDMkdYVVhtd3c

If anyone wants to host them in a more visible location, please do!