I don't know how feasible this would be, hence the "Discussion" bit.

With a lot of my models I've made extensive use of geometry switching and, in several threads regarding modelling humans I've seen several variations on default arm positions, each with their own pros and cons.  So, how about this idea?

Model the figure with the arms in the most common position, ie, down by the sides.  Make separate versions for raised and bent arms, then use geometry switching to bring them in when needed.  Same for legs.  No more weird stretching, no more ballooning buttocks, no more strange looking shoulders and no more need for hosts of morphs, magnets and other workarounds.  Clothes would have to be made to match, of course.

Although I know it's doable, the real question is, would people consider it worthwhile?  

At first blush.. my concern would be how much more of a pain it would be to model clothes with arms down by the sides and legs closer together.  And you'd have extra stretching and 'possibly' deformation when the arms were raised or legs spread

Yeah, I agree with meatSim...modeling clothes around arms that are straight down and legs that are close together is a real bitch (getting the cloth into the armpit and the crotch...ugh). LOL. The best I've found is arms straight out to the sides and legs spread apart. Easy then ;). They should all be set up that way. One of the reasons I don't like making clothes for Mike4 - his arms are fine, but it's a real pain to get up into his crotch because his legs are together.

Ok, that sounds awful, but yanno what I mean. LOL

Laurie

Can you set up joint controlled geometry switching in Poser? I'm not clear on how this would work. You might need to re-optimize the rigging (weight maps/falloff zones) for each posed version of the figure and for the figure's conforming clothes.

When you create a JCM, you are making a corrected model of the posed figure. I'm not sure what the advantage of geometry switching would be. Would there be a change in the vertex count? What would this mean for FBMs? There might be something useful in this method, but I think there would be a lot of frustration on the way to finding it.

@LaurieA - dunno about wings but in blender just select one leg an hide it an disable mirror mod 'till you got leg done

IMHO, most of those issues come from using spherical joints.  Using WM would relieve macaroni elbows, puffy shoulders, puffy knees, mesh tearing into itself and so on.

A Geom Switching solution would be complex.  What about one arm up, one down? "Here Taxi!".  Then its working up multiple versions for clothing?

Do you use the existing morphs ?  I noticed that there were arm raised morphs which I had never used.

Quote - Model the figure with the arms in the most common position, ie, down by the sides.  Make separate versions for raised and bent arms, then use geometry switching to bring them in when needed.

The same thought has crossed my mind at times. To play the Devil's advocate, I can see some arguments against it.

If you wanted to keep compatibility with character morphs, each new arm geometry would need to be a morphed version of the same geometry, with the same winding order and vertex count, and this would seem to negate some of the reasons for using geom switching. The geom switching would, in effect, be just a different way of applying morphs to the arms, but with the disadvantage that the change between geometries is a sudden discontinuity (not good for animations), where as a JCM can be applied smoothly as the arm bends. Also, if the arm is being rotated on two axes it can be affected by two JCMs, but you can't switch in two geometries at the same time.

As to Paloth's question "Can you set up joint controlled geometry switching in Poser?", yes it can be done. Switching is implemented via a 'geomChan' channel, and that channel can be slaved to a rotation channel in any of the usual ways, including using some intermediate channels to attain more control.  I'm less certain about the interaction between the rigging and the different geometries, but I suspect that it could cause big problems.

I don't want to pour too much cold water on the idea. Perhaps it does have something to offer in some cases.

And while we're at it, it would also be nice to have multiple texture maps (at least for for the bendy bits) to fix the horrible texture stretching in skins and clothing textures around the shoulders, knees, elbows etc.

It sounds sort of like a revisitation of the Poser 2 hands. 

Quote - Although I know it's doable, the real question is, would people consider it worthwhile?

No.

Hello Sam,
I have been thingking a LOT about the best Poser default figure and the way to model it.

I came to this conclusion : Model in the standard "T" Pose.

Why?
Clothing making, Props making, Industry standard, are the major reasons.
YES. you will get texture stretching on the collars-shoulders when you lower the arms. But a good texture maker can overcome those.

The only thing I will not model in a "T" Pose are the breasts.

I model the breasts in a "arms-down" pose.
When a woman lowers her arms, the breasts drop 1 to 2".

99% of the poses are arm down poses. So 99% of the time they (and the texture for them) are flawless.

Modeling that way gives the least problems and is the most "end user friendly" way.

Quote - YES. you will get texture stretching on the collars-shoulders when you lower the arms.

I don't know much about modelling or UV mapping, but it seems to me that just because you model the mesh in a t-pose it does not mean that you have to UV map the mesh whilst the figure is in a t-pose. As I understand it the mapping is tied to the vertices, no to any spatial coordinates. You should be able to rig the figure, export the mesh in any desired pose, map that posed mesh, then apply the mapping to the t-pose version of the mesh. I'll stand to be corrected on this by someone who understands more than I do about it, but that's how it seems to me.

You could for example pose the figure with the eye lids half closed, the mouth part open, the arms down 45°, and the knees slightly bent. Export and map that, then apply the map to the base mesh. No?

This is how things are done in CGSociety land.  The Poser figure modelers prefer otherwise it seems.  V3 is 10 years old.  That is around the time bent arms and legs were coming into style.  DAZ tried to fix things by making a default pose for V3 with bent joints in Poser.  But the original mesh was still a T pose.

Quote - > Quote - YES. you will get texture stretching on the collars-shoulders when you lower the arms.

I don't know much about modelling or UV mapping, but it seems to me that just because you model the mesh in a t-pose it does not mean that you have to UV map the mesh whilst the figure is in a t-pose. As I understand it the mapping is tied to the vertices, no to any spatial coordinates. You should be able to rig the figure, export the mesh in any desired pose, map that posed mesh, then apply the mapping to the t-pose version of the mesh. I'll stand to be corrected on this by someone who understands more than I do about it, but that's how it seems to me.

You could for example pose the figure with the eye lids half closed, the mouth part open, the arms down 45°, and the knees slightly bent. Export and map that, then apply the map to the base mesh. No?

Great thoughts here

Geometry switching for streached textures should be easy and all morphs could still work fine

I think people are thinking about geometry switching the wrong way.

You could set up geometry switching to use the exact same geometry but with different UV maps to deal with the UV stretching.

The only problem with that is setting it all up, and the size increase issue that it creates.

It isn't that hard to set up geometry switching on a traditional character. Weight mapped characters would be a lot more complex to set up, and could make for some rather large cr2's as well. To complicate matters even more, any injections would also have to be injected into the additional geometry as well. You can inject 100's of megs of morphs into some characters already, if you duplicated a most of the character it would bloat it even more. 32 bit users could have issues using just one clothed character set up this way.

Weight mapping can drastically cut down on UV stretching by evening out the stretching across a lot more of the limb. For instance, on the leg bend it would pull all of the skin covering the quads and shins torwards the knee when bending the leg. I have mapped quite a few characters that way and it works great on nude characters that have somewhat of an even skin tone. It doesn't work so well if the character has tattoos or a second skin applied. The same maps do not work on most clothes  either. The clothes will have to be mapped independently from the character if it is mapped this way. Shorts over the leg mapped that way would pull down in the front when bending the knee, which would look very odd and introduce UV issues to the clothes.

What we really need is a way to use multiple UV maps on the same character and morphable UV maps.

Multiple UV maps would not bloat the character that much. This can be done now by conforming two characters together that have different UVing (or modded textures to correct for the stretching, but that requires very large textures for it to work right), then adjusting displacement to select which parts show, where.

There are a few different versions of Morphable UV Mapping, but not in Poser. The most common way of doing it offsets the center of the map and would require many of the characters we have now to be remapped occordingly to use it effectively.

Another we have now of dealing with it, is to add a procedural setup to the shader that hides the stretching. This can be done with spots-turbulence-etc using a mix of standard (UV) and globally applied shaders, then blended that with the texture you want to use. Doing it this way works for stills and for animations, but may require some filter work to all the frames to get it to look right in an animation. Globally applied shaders can cause issues in animations depending on the strength of the effect and how much the character moves or rotates, and may not be worth the trouble.

Maybe we can still push for something like .uvs support (the uvs file the UVMapper supports).  You know, done in a way like PMD injection but UV injection.  That would be kind of cool.

I thought V3 came into the scene bent to facilitate Poser's IK at the time.  Figure's had to be bent so the IK would know which direction to better move in.

"Weight mapping can drastically cut down on UV stretching by evening out the stretching across a lot more of the limb."

Yep!  That's one thing I was thinking of.  Anything that moves the vertices could adjust the maps.

Quote - I don't know how feasible this would be, hence the "Discussion" bit.

With a lot of my models I've made extensive use of geometry switching and, in several threads regarding modelling humans I've seen several variations on default arm positions, each with their own pros and cons.  So, how about this idea?

Model the figure with the arms in the most common position, ie, down by the sides.  Make separate versions for raised and bent arms, then use geometry switching to bring them in when needed.  Same for legs.  No more weird stretching, no more ballooning buttocks, no more strange looking shoulders and no more need for hosts of morphs, magnets and other workarounds.  Clothes would have to be made to match, of course.

Although I know it's doable, the real question is, would people consider it worthwhile

DAZ has copyrights on all the Vicky's
Only DAZ could replace meshes for V3,V4.
V5 does have Geo's.

Morphs are your only prayer for V3,V4.
Zev0 & some others have some fix it morphs.
Poser has GoZ.
V5 does have Geo's.

OK now I am going to ramble on about what most don't care about but maybe some one will.
way before GoZ around 1998 I made different poses meshes for a truespace4 character.
Like your talking about.
Even thought about doing what your talking about to M3,V3.just for personal use.
Thought about M3,V3 morphs also.
Ended up with Lightwave.

There's a lot of CGI App's out there .each one has there uses.
If one App does not have what I need then I'll get the App that does.
I want it all.So I'll use them all.
That was the answer to all my CGI questions.

Quote - There's a lot of CGI App's out there .each one has there uses. If one App does not have what I need then I'll get the App that does.
I want it all.So I'll use them all.
That was the answer to all my CGI questions.

I have 20 apps and use 5% of each.  That way I'm getting 100% done.

Quote - > Quote - There's a lot of CGI App's out there .each one has there uses.If one App does not have what I need then I'll get the App that does.

I want it all.So I'll use them all.
That was the answer to all my CGI questions.

I have 20 apps and use 5% of each.  That way I'm getting 100% done.

In the Poser Webinar for Experience Anomaly.
EA's list was Poser ,zBrush ,AutoDesk ,Vue & Adobe.

Quote - Maybe we can still push for something like .uvs support (the uvs file the UVMapper supports).  You know, done in a way like PMD injection but UV injection.  That would be kind of cool.

Python should be able to do that by pulling the TexVerices list the applying the uvs info using the SetU and SetV commands occordingly to update them.

Somewhere I saw a script to do UV rewriting but I do not remember if it was for Poser or not.

Someone that is familiar with Python and the addon support could write one to do just that....

Hint, Hint.... :woot:

I don't use many programs in my pipeline. I have a lot of them, but rarely fire some of them up for Poser stuff.

Poser and Blender cover most of the 3D part. Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro for the 2D part.

Quote - You could set up geometry switching to use the exact same geometry but with different UV maps to deal with the UV stretching.

Yes that makes a lot of sense, though discontinuity might still be a problem in animations.

Quote - Weight mapped characters would be a lot more complex to set up, and could make for some rather large cr2's as well.

If you are using the exact same geometry it would use the the same weight map. The weight map is in the cr2 not the obj, so geom switching would not cause increase in size due to the weight map.

Quote - To complicate matters even more, any injections would also have to be injected into the additional geometry as well.

Not so! If only swapping the UVs, whilst keeping the same vertex count and winding order, no extra deltas are required. Same as with the weight map, the deltas live in the cr2, not in the obj, with the same winding order and vertex count all switched geometries would use exactly the same morphs.

I experimented with weightmapping the Dork and when I switched between the genital hip and the non-genital hip, the weightmap did not transfer.

That means every individual geometry file needs it's own set of weightmaps.

That means every individual geometry file needs it's own set of weightmaps.

*Well, Dork with dong has more polygons than Dork standard so the vertex count differs. Naturally, you need two sets of weightmaps. If the vertex count and vertex order of the figures switched didn't differ, maybe you wouldn't.

Quote - Hello Sam,
I have been thingking a LOT about the best Poser default figure and the way to model it.

I came to this conclusion : Model in the standard "T" Pose.

Why?
Clothing making, Props making, Industry standard, are the major reasons.

 

T-pose is NOT an industry standard and hasn't been for over 10 years now. An A-frame pose is industry standard - arms and legs at approx. 45 degrees. Its the most natural pose for modeling humans and prevents most stretching in geometry and textures, and makes rigging much less of a hassle. 

Just sayin.

~Shane

Quote - If you are using the exact same geometry it would use the the same weight map. The weight map is in the cr2 not the obj, so geom switching would not cause increase in size due to the weight map.

Not so! If only swapping the UVs, whilst keeping the same vertex count and winding order, no extra deltas are required. Same as with the weight map, the deltas live in the cr2, not in the obj, with the same winding order and vertex count all switched geometries would use exactly the same morphs.

I tried it and they had to be listed within each part in the cr2 (IE repeated). Repeating the info bloats the tar out of the cr2. You are not using the exact geometry if the UV info is different between them. The winding order can still be the same - etc, but I had trouble getting it to work no matter what I tried. Even  more so with weight mapping and animated joint centers on the same joint.

If you do it with layered characters, there is no way that I can figure out on how to share info between them unless the character is called per body part obj wise. And doing it that way requires each part to be mapped and the maps can not share naming.

If there is a shortcut I could not get it to work right in either case.

I used the P2 man as an example on how to set it up, if you are curious.

I may be missing the obvious thou... We have to jump thru a lot of hoops to do things in Poser that are just a few clicks away in other software. I also have a tendency to do things the harder way, which doesn't work so well... lol...

You have me very curious on how you got it to work with different obj names for one body part that is weight mapped and has animated joint centers. When I tried to get that to work it just crashed Poser when switching the geometry using all of the above. When it sort of worked all sorts of things went bonkers with it. (Map flipping, etc) That may have been caused by the version of Poser I was trying it in as well.

There are two alternate geometries, three geometries in all including the default. Each geometry is mapped differently.

The default geometry has one material zone "mat-01" and has planar mapping.

The first alternateGeom has three material zones "mat-01" through "mat-03" and uses box mapping. Under this map each actor has a different material zone.

The second alternateGeom uses cylindrical mapping, it also has the same three material zones, but each actor uses all three zones.

In the first alternateGeom, one vertex on the front center line has been (intentionally) displaced downwards, and on the second alternateGeom the same vertex has been displaced upwards.

The figure has four FBMs. In the animation the B and C actors were posed and the FBM "Morph-003" was applied. The animation was then made. The only difference in the three frames of the animation was that the AltGeom dial in the BODY was advanced in each frame. You will notice that the mapping changes whilst the same morph and weight mapping continues to work the same as for the default geometry.

I think this demonstrates conclusively that using alternate geometries does not add to the bloat of the cr2, beyond the very few lines necessary to implement the geom switching.

The figure does not use animated joint centers, but you can try that on the figure if you like. I see no obvious reason why animated joint centers would not be compatible with geom switching.

Awesome Les. Thankyou for this.  

I will check it out and what I did wrong.

Quote - You have me very curious on how you got it to work with different obj names for one body part that is weight mapped and has animated joint centers.

Quote - I will check it out and what I did wrong.

The obj names don't matter, but I think the group names within the obj do matter, at least in respect of the morphs, and probably for the weight map as well. The group names need to be the same in each version of the geometry. I'm wondering if group names might be the cause of some of your problems.

Quote - The obj names don't matter, but I think the group names within the obj do matter, at least in respect of the morphs, and probably for the weight map as well. The group names need to be the same in each version of the geometry. I'm wondering if group names might be the cause of some of your problems.

Geometry-switching and weight maps don't seem to play well together.  Unless the latest SR changes things, there's no mechanism to vary the weights along with the geometry, which leads to incompatible weighted bending.  Jaggies all over the place, with the weights still being applied to the same vertex indices but no longer designed for them.  I suspect that this is an area where they won't bother to update things.  Geometry-switching being a novelty, disused in the main figures since Poser 2, I doubt they'll modify the weight map handling to accommodate it.  But I could be wrong.  :unsure:

Don't think ur wrong Cage...heh.

Laurie