Soo, I was weightmapping David to pass time until the DSON exporter works good enough to do some character development and of course once I had most of the rigging done, I wanted to compare David-WM with Genesis.

But once I loaded David and default Genesis, I noticed how similar both meshes were.

Ok, so David is pretty much the most "neutral" of all the 3rd gen meshes so no wonder he looks somewhat similar to default Genesis, but the similarity was really remarkable.

So as I already had created some new characters for my weightmapped David, I was curious if i could make him also look like Mike-5

And lo and behold, the result you see here is just 30minutes of dial spinning the default David body morphs and a tiny bit of scaling.

Basically it is muscularity with some added leg muscle, smaller feet, longer legs, a shorter torso and a bigger head.

While the shape is not absolutely perfect, I have no doubt that that's pretty much the way Mike-5 was created.

Which dissapoints me a bit as I had thought Mike-5's shape would be a little more "original" than just a quick dialspin of David.

Holy cow...that's really close. LOL.

Laurie

How disappointing!!  They went with a younger man.

I think the same artist did both morphs and I think they were going for a "type" but I am not sure.

Nice work on David!

The weightmapping went quite well, so I admit the urge to finally use Genesis gets lesser and lesser by the minute.

Heck, I was even able to fix the broken back that so far haunted all pre-Genesis figures without a JCM or additional bodyparts.

Lol.

:-)

Quote - I think the same artist did both morphs and I think they were going for a "type" but I am not sure.

Yeah, I believe M5 takes from both M4 and D3, that's why it's so popular. (Though I wish there was a D5 like a Steph 5). Don't see the problem with that. Then add in the fact that you can go beyond the dials and custom sculpt bodies without losing the ability of clothes fitting, then you've gone beyond this weightmapping experiment.

Interesting, but I'll keep my M5 ;).

That is looking seriously good!

Quote - Yeah, I believe M5 takes from both M4 and D3, that's why it's so popular. (Though I wish there was a D5 like a Steph 5). Don't see the problem with that. Then add in the fact that you can go beyond the dials and custom sculpt bodies without losing the ability of clothes fitting, then you've gone beyond this weightmapping experiment.

Interesting, but I'll keep my M5 ;).

  Except, in Poser M5 currently has a much larger memory overhead and is unusable in the Queue Manager. So one could say that JoePublic's work has gone way beyond this Genesis experiment...

D3 was always my favorite. The hands were nice, especially. Definately the figure to evolve from.

Quote - > Quote - Yeah, I believe M5 takes from both M4 and D3, that's why it's so popular. (Though I wish there was a D5 like a Steph 5). Don't see the problem with that. Then add in the fact that you can go beyond the dials and custom sculpt bodies without losing the ability of clothes fitting, then you've gone beyond this weightmapping experiment.

Interesting, but I'll keep my M5 ;).

  Except, in Poser M5 currently has a much larger memory overhead and is unusable in the Queue Manager. So one could say that JoePublic's work has gone way beyond this Genesis experiment...

No, if you've worked with it like I have, it's limited. Nice for your personal use though.

David is probably still my favorite.  I still use him.  Heck, I still use the Gen 3 figures a lot.  I have so much stuff for them.

Always liked Steph and David more than Vicky and Mike.

Nice rigging, JP!  Did you add any helper bones?

Quote -
No, if you've worked with it like I have, it's limited. Nice for your personal use though.

No. Hahaha.

Or rather, yes. The point I am making is that they are both limited (in fact all figures are limited), but in different ways.

Genesis, despite its undoubtedly exciting features, is as yet unfortunately totally useless  for my requirements. I hope its problems will one day be resolved.

JoePublic's work on D3 is exciting because it looks great and will actually work just fine with all the advantages that weightmapping brings, so from my point of view it is far more advanced than M5.

A quick clothing test:

I left David's joint centers alone, so "un-Weightmapped" clothing should still fit.

Which it does.

A little pokethrough at the inner thighs, but nothing serious. Of course skin tight clothing and extreme bends will be a bit more problematic, but those can be easily re-rigged in the set-up room with the weightmapped rig or fixed with the morphbrush.

Thanks for the comments. :-)

While the DSON importer works pretty well on my machine, my main Problem is that I have no full control over the mesh.

The scaling is broken and so are the animateable joint centers. I can create morphs, but saving a modified Genesis cr2 to Poser breaks several things. Rigging work has to be done in Studio and then there is the problem with the lo res mesh. It's "ok", but not as detailed as the 3rd gen mesh, and the SubD tends to freeze Poser when switched on and off. And with SubD permanently on, the OpenGL preview gets pretty sluggish.

No, I see no other figure that currently could be a real "threat" to Genesis, but I would like to have a solution that better suits my needs, that's why I started David-WM.

David has quite a bit of content and can be easily modified. Lots of morphs and textures and his joints are almost identical to SP3, so I can reuse the rigging for her, too.

Enough polygons for lots of detail and no need for SubD smoothing. He doesn't have to constantly carry all his morphs around like Genesis, nor does he need channel "activation" like M4.

And while I still happily admit that Genesis has the best "out of the box" rigging, I discovered that the awkward "waist" and "pelvis" parts are actually not needed to do realistic bending.

Can't tell how often I already clicked on "pelvis" while I actually wanted to pose the 'hip" actor.

Finally, the fact that M5 is just a (quick) dial spin of David while DAZ advertises Genesis as derived from real body scans also doesn't sit too well with me. I sometimes spend months on a custom sculpt before I'm happy, and DAZ couldn't be bothered ?

I'll put it this way: Once Genesis is fully integrated into Poser without any performance loss or other problems, I'm sure I find some use for it.

But I won't wait for it anymore .

Once I'm finished with David-WM and his "extended family", I'll pretty much have all what I need.

:-)

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

@WandW: No, no helper bones.

Just made good use of the bulge functionality.

There is a (small) JCM  for the buttocks and crotch for the extreme front bends as the weightmap brush still has some problems to properly relax the mesh.

I must learn to do all this soon. LOL. 

I have so many figures I'd love to get a second wind, like Miki 1, Ali's Angela, Elle, etc. And of course, all my beloved Gen 3 figures ;). Seems no one else is working on transfering those older figures to weight mapping anymore for the rest of us.

I know we've had our differences in the past JP, but I would LOVE to be able to sit at your feet and watch how you do what you do. LOL

Laurie

Quote -  

A quick clothing test:

I left David's joint centers alone, so "un-Weightmapped" clothing should still fit.

Which it does.

A little pokethrough at the inner thighs, but nothing serious. Of course skin tight clothing and extreme bends will be a bit more problematic, but those can be easily re-rigged in the set-up room with the weightmapped rig or fixed with the morphbrush.

If there are no additional bones, Figure>Copy Joint Zones will transfer the weight maps from D3WM.  However, this will likey cause issues with footwear and some skirts (if Dave goes that way) , so Poser Place's outfitter will do the job whilst allowing you to exclude the toes or skirt leg bones from the transfer....

http://poserplace.phantom3d.net/PP_Outfitter/pp_outfitter.html

JoePublic:

Great work! :)

And, a great incentive for others to begin working with weight maps.

lmk

Very nice work indeed Joe ;-)

Another test: As Luke and Laura were directly derived from David, it's pretty easy to recreate them with a bit of scaling and morphing. (I mostly copied the Dylan freebie morph)

The neck needed an extra fix morph though, as shortening it to 75% turned out a little too much for Poser despite the new scaling map I made.

I think I'll create another version of David-WM with a natively shorter neck and a bigger head for younger characters so I don't need the fix morph anymore.

I have no real need to dial men, women and children from a single mesh like you can do with Genesis. Three separate "base" meshes will be convenient enough.

I just want them to be able to share clothing without problems.

Stephanie and David were always my favorite figures.

lmk

Careful, M5 almost took over the Enterprise!

The problem is, I can only give the technicalities, but you have to find "the right shape" on your own.

But if you ever used the morphbrush to fix pokethrough, you should be perfectly capeable of weightmapping, too !  :-)

I choose V3RR for this and I show you how to improve her shoulders.

This is how she looks with collars bend 10° and shoulders bend 70°.

Turn on weightmaps for the bulges, too.

Woot!

Use "substract" and "add" at low settings and "smooth" at higher settings, untill you are happy with the shape. Don't forget the backside and move the arm up and down to see hw it looks in all positions.

Switch to the four bulges and find the one that moves the vertices in her armpit downward. (It's left pos !)

By default the setting is very low, but as we can now fully control it with a weightmap, crank it up a bit.

And don't worry, you will have to do this many, many times. ;-)

The bulge and the main weightmap work like a team. You change one of them, you have to change the other, too.

The picture shows the main weightmap after some improvements.

You have to work in small steps to get closer and closer to the shape you want.

Always smooth, switch between main and bulge map, and fix up the parts that you smoothed too much.

Baby steps, but eventually you'll get this:

The general shape of the shoulder is now much better and the crease is smoother and starts lower.

I also worked on the bulge map again to bring the crease even lower.

I also extended the main map over the outer third of the collarbone to remove the dent that is caused by V3RR's default rigging, making it straighter.

Once you're happy, just click "FIGURE->Symmetrie->Right Arm to Left Arm" and the new weightmaps will be transferred over to the other side, too.

And don't forget to make BACKUPS between every step, so if you really mess up, you don't have to start over again.

Some tips for weightmapping thighs:

Simply ignore the buttock bones. Rig you figure so that it looks good with just the thigh bones used when posed. (You can still use the buttocks to refine a pose by a few degrees)

Old rigging needed bends spread evenly across thigh and buttocks, weightmapping can do it with mainly the thigh bones.

Weightmap first the "bend" map until it looks good to you. Create a strong bulge map to remedy the "exploding buttocks" disease. ;-)

Then do "side-side", which by then will be pretty messed up. The trick is to find a good compromise between bend and side-side the doesn't mess up the crotch area too much.

Pose the thigh halfway between both extremes and then smooth, smooth, smooth. And then refine the detail you smoothed away. And smooth again. Lol.

Don't worry if the results won't get 100% perfect. Weightmaps can do a lot, but they are no miracle medicine.

If you're 95% "there", do the rest with a JCM.

:-)

Here is David-WM with his thigh-bend bulge-weightmaps disabled.

Ouch !

You really can't properly rig without the bulge maps, so use them !

Most poses use "some" thigh bend and "some" side movement, so bend -90° and side-side -45° should look as good as possible just by using weightmaps.

It is easier to fix the more extreme settings with a JCM than fixing the "middle" pose.

AWESOME!! Thanks JP!....now to find out how to create a joint controlled morph...lol

Laurie

That is easy. You do need ColorCurvators MorphLoader, though, to create a morph from a posed figure.

Let's bring V3RR's arm creases even lower with a JCM.

Step One:

Pose V3RR the way you want the JCM to be at 100%.

Step Two:

Export her via MorphLoader. Call the exported object V3RR-RAW.

Step Three:

Hide V3RR. (DO NOT MOVE OR RE-POSE HER !!!)

Load the V3RR-RAW object. (DO NOT MOVE OR RE-SIZE IT DURING THE IMPORT OR LATER !!!)

V3RR-RAW is welded so you can easily morph it with the morphbrush. Move the armpits lower and smooth them.

Don't forget the backside.

BUT DO NOT MOVE V3RR-RAW !!!

Great stuff JP!....I will definitely be trying all of this.

hopes Colorcurvatures Morph Loader is still available

Laurie

Export the morphed V3RR-RAW-object.

Rename her V3RR-SMOOTH.

Step Six:

Unhide V3RR

Start the MorphLoader part of ColorCurvators script:

Choose a name for the new morph.

It will ask for two object files: the original and the modified one.

Select V3RR-RAW for the original and V3RR-SMOOTH for the modified one.

The final fix morph. Now all you have to do is link the morph to the shoulder-bend dial with Posers dependency editor.

You can of course also modify the V3RR-RAW object in any modeller of your choice, but for such a minor fix, the morphbrush works fine.