Hi All, I have been asked to create an animation which would involve an animated skeleton with muscles. As the skeleton moves from pose to pose, the muscles in use need to highlight. Can Poser do this? If so, how? Can it be done with the base package or do extra elements need to be built/purchased? Is there a built in character or pre-built character for Poser which consists of the skeleton and muscles? Any help would be greatly appreciated as I have never used Poser. Thanks in advance. Glen

Poser comes with a male and a female skeleton. There are no skeletal figures with muscles attached included with the program. There's a texture by Preston in Free Stuff for the default Poser man that shows all the muscles, but the figure will have the Poser man's head, feet and hands. I know of no skeleton/muscle figure for Poser, but I'm not the expert as to what all is out there. You can animate figures in Poser, though I'm not sure offhand how you would get muscles to highlight. Mike

There is alo a really good muscle texture map for Mike and Vick a DAZ. Nice and detailed, but you have to pay for it. :-)

that was at DAZ!

Most of the limb muscles can be built using Poser's internal props like Balls and Cylinders, scaled and stretched. The 'sheet' muscles of the thorax and abdomen will need to be built using some other modeler like Anim8or, imported as separate OBJ files, and then stretched to match the pose. Highlighting is the easy part: after setting up the animation, just switch the colors on certain muscles during the times when that agonist-antagonist pair is the major contractor.

Attached Link: http://store.daz3d.com/store/merchant.mv?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=ZP1&Category_Code=ps_Michael

Tim

First of all thanks for the prompt responses! If I was to use a texture map as suggested, is there a way in poser to animate/dissolve between texture maps? For example, if the bicep is in action, can I transition between a texture map with no highlighting to one with the bicep highlighted? The texture map be adequate as I don't think they need to see the skeleton, just the muscles. Thanks again. Glen

You can create the illusion of highlighting muscles by using the percentage dial for opacity in a program like Photoshop. 1) Create an opaque highlight overlay of the muscle in question. 2) Save the texture map as a series of highlight gradients from 0% to 75% (in increments of 5% to 10% should be sufficient). 3) Assign each incremental texture map to the figure as needed throughout the flexing motion. That should do it for you. Keep it simple and you'll be happy.

You can not animate textures in poser. But you could animate the calf movement with a "calf highlighted texture" then animate the thigh movement with a "thigh highlighted texture. Then in another program stitch them together. smerc

I have no idea if this would work, because I have never tried, but if you can hide body parts during an animation, could you not have two figures, a skeleton and a muscle mapped figure animated in sync (no reference to the "musical" group :) Then hide the parts you want to ignore? Just a suggestion, which I am far too lazy to try out tonight (have never really played with the animation part) The biggest problem I could see, if this is even possible, is that the mike figure from daz and the skeleton probably wouldn't match very well (I suspect the poser 4 guy might, if you could find a good mat file for him) eric

Glen, It might be better to have two Michael's animated in sync and occupying the same space anyway. One can be normal, and the other "bulked up" in the pertinant muscle group, and perhaps even color-tinted. Dissolving each so that they fade into each other should work. I'd probably test this with something simple and obvious like a bicep flex. If it works, put the whole character through his paces. Carolly

I have one sad thing to say, working with multimedia for medical and anatomical companies and that is that if you want moivies of how the muscles works then the the texture maps wont realy do it cause thay are laying on a complete figure with skin and everything, therefor will the muscles not move like the do without skin but like how the skin moves when you flex a muscle. So if wan't realy detailed movies you going to have a hard time making it in poser I guess, but if it is the function of the muscle more then the exact apperence of the mucle working that you like to do, it may work anyway. So if you will do it in poser I would go with Michael 2 and the texture map at DAZ then make mike realy muscular(the muscles on the texture should fit with Mikes)and add the effects later in photoshop Excuse me for my english and I hope this helps some Magnus