I read from a Renderosity news item about the 112 free avatars which Microsoft has made available under the MIT license.

I downloaded the HUGE zip archive from GitHub and organised the unzipped Avatar folders under a new external Poser runtime. I placed the avatar folders into the Textures folder of the new external runtime. This way, Poser can spend less time hunting down the related textures for each FBX file I import.

Out of the box, the imported FBX avatar has its default Diffuse and Specular surfaces set to use Black (in Poser Default Root node). Simply change these to white. I added subsurface scattering to the entire avatar as well.

The XYZ controls are different, so just ignore what your brain tells you and pose the figure using the XYZ dials without caring which direction they are moving the body parts, so long as the dials get you the pose you want. (Or, if you're so fussy, change all the control dial names in all the body parts to suit the positions they are moving in - a lot of work !)

I managed to use the avatar figure quite easily in Poser 12.

Here I show the Male-21 avatar

VERY IMPORTANT: When the FBX file imports into Poser, the TOPMOST figure controls the rest of the figures (it is the way the hierarchies are organised and interpreted by Poser). For example, if the Teeth are the topmost figure, you pose the avatar using that figure's body parts.

I am seeing them as .max files..where do you find the fbx files??

Digitell posted at 11:49AM Sat, 20 February 2021 - #4413442

I am seeing them as .max files..where do you find the fbx files??

Download the ZIP archive from GitHub. It is more than 5 GB so it is huge. Unzip and there will be a sub folder of avatars - adult, child, and professions.

here

Thank you!!

Thanks, this looks really interesting. Downloading now...

I keep downloading the zip and it finishes at 1GB but the zip file cannot be opened or extracted. I'm clicking on the Download zip link as shown above. Is there any other link to download?

It should be 7 Gb. For some reason you're not getting the whole file. Maybe just try again later?

I tried over and over several times and it comes up empty after telling access has been denied and either I dont have access or the file is corrupt.

Huh. I just tried again, and it works fine for me. Though it takes awhile, the file being so huge.

Maybe try a different browser? Or a download manager. I'm using Pale Moon, FWIW, just because that's the browser I always use, unless there's some reason to use a different one. (I did have to allow scripts for Github to get it to download.)

I was using Edge, which is Microsoft..I will try Chrome and see how goes it! Thanks for the suggestions!

I like these figures...

Well I keep trying and I don't think it times out because if that were the case it would time out at different sizes right? I always get just 1GB and the zip is called Microsoft_Rocketbox_master.zip so it looks like it might be part of a multi-zip archive. I'm trying to download from this page: https://github.com/microsoft/Microsoft-Rocketbox I click on the green button that says Code and click on Download zip. Am I missing something? Is there another way I'm supposed to download it? This is really getting ridiculous as I've tried it on Edge, Mozilla firefox and Chrome. I'm running out of browsers :)
Any help will be greatly appreciated!

The filename I got is the same as yours, Microsoft_Rocketbox_master.zip, but it's 7 Gb (7,359,432 kb). It does not appear to be a multizip archive so far as I can tell.

Googling suggests there can be a lot of different reasons downloads can fail from Github. Everything from aggressive antivirus software to hardware issues. It looks like trying from a different computer, or using a different network, or using wifi instead of the ethernet card, often works.

Thanks! I will keep trying with your suggestions.

Tried two different machines and a total of four different browsers. At least a dozen downloads. Always stops at 250 meg. Kalypso you;re doing better than me.

parkdalegardener posted at 5:48AM Tue, 23 February 2021 - #4413635

Tried two different machines and a total of four different browsers. At least a dozen downloads. Always stops at 250 meg. Kalypso you;re doing better than me.

At different hours of the day? I noticed that it downloaded quite slowly...

Interesting that so many people have problems, but they're different problems. Digetell is getting "access denied." Kalypso is crapping out at 1 Gb. Parkdalegardener is crapping out at 250 Mb.

Actually I tried 3 times today and I got 1.1GB, 1.2GB and 1.3GB :) So how many attempts left till it climbs to 7GB?

I'll try again later on another pc but it's still on the same wifi network so I don't know. The thing is the download is super fast for me. I get that file in about 5 minutes which is why I'm stumped as to why it's timing out. The only thing I haven't tried is using GetRight which I will attempt as soon as I get back from work and let you know if that works!

I believe I've found what the problem is. If you check azvampyre's 3rd comment here they give the url where the file they couldn't download was stored. There in the download code there is a 300 second expiration. So, that could be the time allotted by github for certain file downloads. This explains why I always finish the download in 5 minutes whether it's 1.1 1.2 or 1.3 GB.

The solution according to azvampyre was to change this number to 999999 and re-download. However, I am not sure how to get this detailed url for the download. Is there a tool that tracks it or let's you see the whole url from the storage space?

Tangential, may I suggest that infinity10's careful comment about what I'd call 'multiple sub-rigs' flags a major, major bug in Poser's FBX import ??

I download a lot of free and budget models from various legitimate sources, see three FBX types of 'okay', 'multiple sub-rigs' and 'SPLAT !!'.

Reading authors' notes, I reckon that Blender's rigging + FBX I/O usually gives 'multiple sub-rigs', while Blender plus Maya rigging + FBX I/O is usually okay. There are enough exceptions to give me migraines. Sadly, as there is no 'Maya lite' or affordable stand-alone rigging app, Poser's I/O may need a nimble update to accommodate the Blender FBX variant. And, hopefully, the 'Make Human' FBX variant, too...

'Plan_B' would be a stand-alone utility that could automatically re-arrange FBX rig trees to an acceptable format. FWIW, if such utility could grow to slurping XPS & PMX rigs, that would be real-neat, and off-load the Poser core...

Maybe using some kind of download manager would be easier? Something that lets you resume downloads.

Pale Moon does let you resume downloads, but I just tried it with Chrome and it worked for me, downloading the entire file. Curious that only some people are having problems.

which download manager are you using? I did a search for addons and pale moon has several products. I've tried Firefox, chrome, and edge and none worked, nor did the download manager I have on firefox. I'm currently trying on a different computer but that's failed twice now. I don't have much faith that it will work this time either.

I'm not actually using a download manager. Pale Moon allows you to resume downloads "out of the box." I don't have a download manager in Chrome, either, and could download the whole file with that, too.

There are some suggested in the link Kalypso posted.

Hi all, it is very interesting.

The data seems to be available through github. So you can browse and download one by one the fbx that interests you. Or you can get all the repo using git itself.

https://github.com/microsoft/Microsoft-Rocketbox

git clone https://github.com/microsoft/Microsoft-Rocketbox will do the trick for dowloading all.

Well the download came through with blinding speed just now. It's mid afternoon Eastern Time and all previous attempts have been pre dawn so as to beat net congestion. Speeds were a few k at a pop till the download consistently failed at 250 meg. I figured I'd give it a try while I perused the web for a bit and the whole download of just over 7 Gig came through in less than 10 minutes. Archive opened fine. I'm off to have a play with them now.

parkdalegardener posted at 1:53PM Tue, 23 February 2021 - #4413684

Well the download came through with blinding speed just now. It's mid afternoon Eastern Time and all previous attempts have been pre dawn so as to beat net congestion. Speeds were a few k at a pop till the download consistently failed at 250 meg. I figured I'd give it a try while I perused the web for a bit and the whole download of just over 7 Gig came through in less than 10 minutes. Archive opened fine. I'm off to have a play with them now.

Cool! ?

I was finally able to get these files although not by downloading the zip. If anyone is still having trouble get the git utility https://git-scm.com/ and install it ( I believe I left everything at default) and then in the git command window type the following: git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/microsoft/Microsoft-Rocketbox.git

It will clone it to your root directory and then you can move it anywhere you like. This is not a zip file so it's not compressed - it's 23+GB. The .fbx assets themselves are 10GB so if you don't need the rest just toss them out.

I think they came out pretty good when rendered with an .hdr and one light. I didn't do anything special in the material room except what the OP said in the first posting.

Managed to load, pose and render the FemaleAdult01. I did not want to load that many gigs so I took the .fbx file and the texture files from the master list

Indeed the color chips need to be turned to white and the dial names are not as we are used to.

I posed using the 'Direct Manipulation Tool' (?? WHAT? Does Poser have that? Yes! ) so need not bother about the names.

If these joint names are standard and there is serious interest for these figures we could consider making a simple script to rename the dials to Poser custom ('up-Down, Fore-Aft') etc. when someone provides a dictionary.

I think that's what I did. It's how i usually pose, anyway. I just click on the body part I want to move and use the dials to pose it. I only use the names when it's not easy to click on the body part for some reason. Like, it's behind another figure or something.

@randym77: I assume that by 'dials' you mean the gimbal. To use the dials in the parameters palette you need to know which one to spin.

I see no requests for a dials naming script so conclude there is no interest.

I mean that if you click on a body part with the mouse, the parameter dials show the dials for that body part. That's how I posed the children in the image I posted. You don't need to know the name of the body part.

Names of body parts are easily recognized. What is less clear is whether you need to spin xRot, yRot or zRot if you want to bend the elbow.

Okay, sorry, I misunderstood what you meant. I thought you wanted to rename the body parts.

The dial labels really don't bother me much, because so often, they don't move things the way you would expect. I'm used to trial and error with the parameter dials.

NikKelly posted at 11:47PM Sun, 07 March 2021 - #4413646

Tangential, may I suggest that infinity10's careful comment about what I'd call 'multiple sub-rigs' flags a major, major bug in Poser's FBX import ??

I download a lot of free and budget models from various legitimate sources, see three FBX types of 'okay', 'multiple sub-rigs' and 'SPLAT !!'.

Reading authors' notes, I reckon that Blender's rigging + FBX I/O usually gives 'multiple sub-rigs', while Blender plus Maya rigging + FBX I/O is usually okay. There are enough exceptions to give me migraines. Sadly, as there is no 'Maya lite' or affordable stand-alone rigging app, Poser's I/O may need a nimble update to accommodate the Blender FBX variant. And, hopefully, the 'Make Human' FBX variant, too...

'Plan_B' would be a stand-alone utility that could automatically re-arrange FBX rig trees to an acceptable format. FWIW, if such utility could grow to slurping XPS & PMX rigs, that would be real-neat, and off-load the Poser core...

This needs more attention, yes.

infinity10 posted at 6:56PM Mon, 08 March 2021 - #4413441

VERY IMPORTANT: When the FBX file imports into Poser, the TOPMOST figure controls the rest of the figures (it is the way the hierarchies are organised and interpreted by Poser). For example, if the Teeth are the topmost figure, you pose the avatar using that figure's body parts.

Sadly, that's an FBX import problem that really, really needs resolving. A few 'floating' sub-rigs is not too bad, provided you can find and parent to a 'handle', but I've had some 3rd party figures come apart into dozens. Also hamstrings the Poser hierarchy window, as ill equipped to handle such.

What's more annoying is that some FBX v7.5 etc models are utterly and completely well-behaved: One (1) rig, readily posed. FWIW, Maya seems to rig more reliably than Blender. I suspect ($$$) Maya has licensed FBX support, while (0$) Blender is but reverse-engineered...

randym77 posted at 11:23PM Mon, 08 March 2021 - #4413533

I like these figures...

NICE !!

I have some recent renders of various avatars from this series:

I used morph brush to get some action on the girl's ponytail.

I had to make some adjustments in Material Room - eg, hair transparency, diffuse default colour, specular default colour...

I rendered all these using Superfly engine.

There is no postwork.

Nicely done !!

FWIW, how many sub-rigs arrive per figure instead of original one ??

NikKelly posted at 11:14PM Fri, 12 March 2021 - #4414620

Nicely done !!

FWIW, how many sub-rigs arrive per figure instead of original one ??

For these, I notice only one. Very clean models from Microsoft.

These Guys are Fun!

@RoseHawk - good one !