Wow, this is the least talked about figure *ever*.

And she's so nice.

Same morph, imported into DS:

This is a morph I'm working on for Dawn 2.  The morph was done in Poser AND Blender.  The end result is a Blender Object "Dawn 2" with a shape key "muscle" (other morphs are other shape keys).  I export the finished shape from Blender as an OBJ and imported it into both Poser and DS.  

(It's a work in progress, not done.  Just started.)

The point is, I can take a shape back and forth between Poser and Blender and, from Blender, produce a morph that can be used in Poser *and* DS.

Of course, if I want to distribute that morph for Poser, then I *do* have to edit files.  But, for creators, that's only a last step.  Being able to move the morph between apps easily is all I've done.  And, if it's something you're just using yourself, you don't have to make it "distributable" :)

@ unrealblue, last time I had a character morph come with an OBJ was probably Posette. Dawn 1 didn't have INJection channels and I'm betting Dawn 2 doesn't either, DS needs channels in the Poser figure otherwise you can't use INJ/REM PZ2's, and PMDs only load when called from a CR2, so if a DS user doesn't have a copy of at least P9 then they have a headache getting an OBJ of the morph to use on the DS version of Dawn 2.

It can still be done, but you need to know your way around the inside of a CR2, as you will need to create a "loader" CR2, one that loads the figure, any PMD's as well as add in every valueParm and targetGeom channel the morph has. All that just to get the morph into the Poser version in DS, just so you can export an OBJ to use on the DS version.

Now I've lost count how many "loaders" I've made since my Poser 4 days, so I have the knowledge and skills to do that, there aren't many that can say the same, especially not on the DS side of the fence.

Oh and btw I also explained how to do this over on the old Hivewire site (before they got hacked) for Dawn 1.

What's needed is:

- the original unimesh OBJ file.  This is referred to in the CR2.  It's in the geometries folder.  With few exceptions (none of the major figures) it is "unimesh".  That is, a single mesh with face groups named for the eventual actors.  But the mesh is not split; there are no co-located verts.

- a Poser (non welded) but zero'd OBJ export of the same figure.  This produces a Poser vert ordered OBJ, with the same face groups, *but* co-located verts (duplicated verts that are shared verts when Poser splits the mesh, effectively making a new one).

If you create a dict of verts (keyed on a tuple of xyz ) for each mesh, with an array of indexes at the vert, the keys of one mesh will == the keys of the other.  The only difference is, the Poser split mesh will have different indexes for each key, and some keys will have multiple indexes (the split verts: two or more  verts at the same xyz).  This is why I save the indexes as a list keyed on the vert XYZ.  To make it faster, the XYZ are converted to INTs (multiplied by 10^6, which in controlled with a precision slider).  a dict keyed on a tuple of INTs is very faster lookup.

This creates a map between indexes.  You can use the second (Poser vert dict) index, get the key, use that key for the first mesh (original vert dict) and grab it's index.  Set that vert in the original OBJ to the position of the vert in the second OBJ.  Do this for all the verts.  The result, the first OBJ (original) is now shaped like the second (Poser).  The mapping *and* setting of verts for meshes of "figure vert count" takes under a second.

Using this script, I can take a figure morphed in Poser, export that as a Poser OBJ, "convert" the Poser OBJ back to an original OBJ format (but shaped like the Poser morph).  Then use that in DS or Poser.

In it's simplest form, you apply a specific morph in Poser, take it through Blender into an OBJ you can use to load that same morph in DS.  No file editing.  Entire process takes under a minute (if you've setup the map and know the process).

The entire script is not very long.  It just iterates through the verts.  For a figure like Dawn 2 this is well under 50k verts.  Blender's python can do than in a small fraction of a second.

Anyway, I'm about to setup a pair of scripts to batch this.  Batch export the morphs from a figure, then Blender batch import them as shape keys, then Blender, batch export a dir of morph OBJs.  Which I think can be batch imported in DS.

More to come :)

I wrote this to make it easy to Blender-sculpt morphs for Poser.  But the same technique produces OBJs suitable for using to load a morph in DS.  And it also allows exporting a figure's morphs from Poser to DS without having to edit files or using anything other than FREE Blender and Add-on script.  That seems like something to *me* :D

Cheers!

I know from personal experience that getting a Poser only morph into the DS4 version of Dawn 1 was a lot of work, I have the knowledge and skills to do it, but a good 99% of the DS user base doesn't, especially if they don't have a copy of P9+.

If so, then it's easy, no?  Export the morphed mesh in either app as an OBJ then apply/import it in the other.

Also, when creating custom morphs on an un-morphed figure, wouldn't you just import that OBJ into (say) Blender, sculpt it, then export the OBJ back out and import that?  Blender keeps the vert order so long as you don't change the vert count (split or weld).  

According to my testing, this seems to work because poser splits the same OBJ the same way every time.  If you bring in a poser ordered OBJ, it's already in the order poser needs so it works.  If you bring in a OBJ with original order, then it splits it the same way it did when creating the figure which produces the same poser order, so it works.

The difference is outside: sculpting a split mesh es no bueno.  It tears.

Anyway...

If you want to *further* morph a Poser morphed figure, you can export that OBJ and use a script (I have one) in Blender that applies the Poser vert ordered OBJ exported shape back onto an original vert ordered shape.  Takes about 1 second.  I can either make a new OBJ from that Poser exported mesh, or APPLY that shape as a shape key to an existing blender OBJ (imported original OBJ mesh).  Then export whatever shape keys (combined or otherwise) are applied to that mesh as an OBJ suitable to apply as a FBM.  I do it all the time.

Here's a sculpt I'm working on for Dawn 2, in Blender.  It's a shape key on the original Dawn 2 OBJ in a stack with a bunch of other "morphs".  I export that object in OBJ form with whatever morph(s) I want, and it just loads as a FBM.

The panel I wrote looks like this:

It takes 2 meshes (to calculate the mapping between the original vert order and Poser's vert order).  Then there's the 2 working meshes.  They are the morphed meshes.  One is poser vert order, the other is original vert order.  "Cast unimesh" applies the shape of a morphed original mesh to a poser ordered mesh.  (Not typically useful, but I needed it for something).  "Make unimesh"  applies the poser vert ordered mesh shape to a copy of the original mesh.  If the mesh is chosen, it either makes its shape the same as the Poser mesh OR adds a shape key with those vert positions (super convenient).  If the shape isn't chosen, it copies the original then applies the Poser vert positions to the correct verts (as determined from the map it calculates from the first two meshes).

Here is Dawn 2, with multiple shape keys (ie: "morphs") some of which are selected, all at a value of 1 (doesn't have to be, the value is also a slider 0-1).  When I sculpt, whichever shape key is selected is where the vert values being affected.  This helps me tune morphs so they work well together.  I can apply multiples, but select which ONE I'm modifying when I sculpt.

When I want that (or those) morphs in Poser as a single morph, I export the Blender Object in OBJ format, then I can load that as a FBM.

I'm thinking about putting two script together.  One in Poser, one In blender.  In poser, you'd select all the morphs you want to export and it exports each as an OBJ into a single directory.  In Blender, it imports those OBJs as Shape keys on a single Object.

Maybe two more parts: import that directory as a bunch of FBMs in poser, and export those shape keys as a bunch of OBJs from Blender.

Then I could bring a figure into Blender, with all the morphs I like, tweak/tune those morphs, maybe adding some.  And setup that figure with all those morphs, back in Poser.

At this point, it's just some scripting.  The essentials already work :)

Dawn 2.  Just the character and muscle morphs (made in Blender).  One click each, applied as FBM in Poser.  10 minutes to make those shorts and top.  roughed in blender, using the "fit brush" in poser, back in blender for quad remesh, solidifying edges, import into Poser, one click setup applied Dawn 2 as Donor rig.  one button copied character and muscle morphs.  In Poser I only had to use the smooth brush at the joints as the WM from Dawn 2 will not produce the correct movement for leg and arm openings.

No correction morphs.  And she's not bent to her limits (and she works best with limits.  They are really well setup.)

This is a v4 pose with only a few degrees of correction in the legs.  LF hair.  No corrections beyond Y and Z.

Single HDRI.  Ground as shadow catcher.  One button click (Ken's script) with a couple of checkboxes.  Superfly (ie: CyclesX) on MBP M3max (128GB RAM) 40GPU cores.  Took under 2 minutes, for 1200x1200px.

I have found Dawn 2 to be the easiest figure to work with (in Poser) and sculpt in Blender and Poser.  Her rig bends very well.  Probably the second best I've seen, but with waaaaay less complexity.  Which is what makes her so easy to work with.

I can't answer how easy for DS.  But if DS can import a shaped OBJ as a morph, then, when sculpting in Blender, it should be as easy as Poser, which is literally 2 clicks: export Object as OBJ from blender, load FBM from file in Poser.

One very simple feature, easy to implement:

It's trivial to map between Poser's vert order and the original OBJ vert order. 

When exporting OBJ, a checkbox for "export original OBJ with current shape" would be easy using that map.

I do this right now as a blender add-on.  It takes a split second.  There are 3 meshes needed: original, zero'd poser ordered (used to map the vert map), morphed poser ordered (vert positions in poser order).  The add-on takes those and produces a copy of the original but with vert positions from the 3rd (using the vert map).

I use the trick of being able to dict key using the vert x,y,z.  I even allow a precision, but thankfully Poser doesn't mess with that during figure creation.  The poser ordered verts have the same xyz as the original, just a different index.

Since poser has access to all of that, it's just a matter of calculating the map and using it during export.

I was going to keep the map inside the Object (as a property) since it only needs to be calculated once.  But it's actually nearly as fast to calculate as it is to read the property. And being "calculated on use" keeps it real :)

By being able to export a morphed original OBJ (usually unimesh), a lot of what people want unimesh for would be achieved.  Without any changes to the underlying figure system and with an amount of code that could be written by a single person in a single day. :)

HartyBart posted at 5:41 AM Wed, 3 January 2024 - #4479927

Stable Diffusion is Python, Poser is Python. So, let the Poser and SD talk to each other. By simply allowing any third-party script to be plugged into Poser's PostFX. That's the obvious choice, and then after that the Poser developers don't have to wrangle with AI. I'm sure they have enough to do, and don't want to be 'chasing the tail' of AI.

For instance... I plug a script into PostFX to let me send my basic Poser render to Stable Diffusion Controlnets (Canny, Depth and Openpose), with one click, for the "SD render". Someone more Python-y than me could probably rig up a normal script to do that anyway, once the SD UI's can also be officially scripted ('take renders from Poser, slot them in here, here and here, set SD sliders to my 'Poser preset', then generate an image'). Of course that can be done manually, but it's a of fiddly pixel-size input, clicks and dragging. It would be nice to have it done automatically via PostFX.

Another option might be to add the equivalent of PostFX to Poser's Comic Book Preview panel. In the form of a simple radio button... "And make it look Pro!", by sending the real-time render over to be re-generated in a special comics-art SD model. Again, one can do that already manually, but it would be nice to have a one-click option.

Your idea of adding textured primitives to the scene, via a simple SD text prompt, is a good one. Though bear in mind that SD itself will be able to do that. There's already one special SD model in which you can basically say "keep the scene the same, but just add a glowing blue 3D orb above the head of the figure". And it just changes that one thing.

As I've mentioned before, Renderosity could consider buying out Ken's Openpose plugin and making it free with Poser 14. It would get the AI crowd thinking about using Poser, especially if it was also bundled free with the $50 Poser 13 (I assume another perma-deal on the earlier version of Poser, as before). The buyout might be in the form of giving Ken $2 on every sale of the $50 Poser 13, so there might be no up-front buyout cost.

Along those lines, it might be nice to improve the performance and reach of the Python API.  Then things like this would be simple.

I have Ken's plugin.  I'm waiting for my new Mac so I can run odyssey which gives me a nice node based AI workflow tool.  Into which I can plug Ken's output.  Poser makes it quick to pose, which is the essential of keyframing.  I've talked to Odyssey and external nodes are on their roadmap.  That is, node that can be attached to via an API to accept input and deliver output.  

Ala, my poor 18 core iMac Pro is not optimal for AI.  An m3Pro gives me the ML silicon I need for AI stuff :)

The title has been changed.

It certainly seems possible (in general) to do the things that those Blender add-ons do.  Might be time to play/code

Keep in mind that if the textures are named right, you can drag them into Poser and they hook themselves up. Details on the file names recognized are in the room help, within the material room, under the Recognized Texture Names in the help box that poops up. So in affect, the material room has already been updated in Poser to make using and hooking up lots of textures even easier. I am not sure if many people even know that feature is there truthfully. If anyone sees where this can be improved more, please put a ticket in on it.

Did not know that.  Cool.

I wonder how many helpful features like that are tucked away o.O

As far as a way to simply add external engines. I have asked for that since Poser 8.

Wow!  ahead of the curve, there :)

I have asked for a bridge to Blender too. Now that Zbrush is rent to never own, it makes even more sense to bridge to free software that is opensource. Something that Poser was founded on, is using opensource. But that seems to be ignored when it comes to a bridge to Blender LTS. I guess more people need to request it. Now that Blender has LTS versions, there is no reason not to add a bridge to a program with long term support.

Considering that Poser uses a version of cycles rendering engine.

As far as Poser integrating AI like Stable Diffusion into Poser, that brings up the long term support issue. Stable Diffusion has been replaced every few months with a new version.

Just to support that would have required multiple updates from August of 23 to today. Version 3 will be released soon as well, but there are same legal catches with 3 that could cause some issues. One being you may have to submit your copyrighted art to have it removed from the model, just to even tell if it is in there and giving it to them at the same time............. I wish I was joking about that...........

Different topic, that.  Worm can, for sure O.O

shvrdavid posted at 12:35 PM Tue, 2 January 2024 - #4479888

You can already use these in Poser.

Just as an example, I will use AI Texture mentioned...

Go to Polycams site (the creator of AI texture), to their AI texture generator page under free tools, type in what you want. Poof, download the 4 textures it creates. Plug them in and set them up how you want them.....

So why do you need a plugin for it? It is already free and available............ There is zero need to buy a plugin......

These textures are free to use, with no rights taken the moment you run it......

Which is completely different than what was going on in the other thread.......................

dt2db bridge is a bit cooler in that it's integrated into the node editor.

And I've always wished Poser had a way to integrate external render engines.  Back in the luxrender days.  Paolo's plugin did a great job of exporting a poser scene into something lux could understand.  It would be interesting if there was a way for poser to "give a native window" that an external renderer could direct it's output.  Then people could write an export to external render, and call it in such a way that Poser can display the results.  Workflow would be a bit more seamless.  And Poser could support other renderers (and post render, like AI post render processing) in a "without leaving poser native-feeling" way.  Does that make sense?

Then it would be possible to export to eevee and get *that* render back.  Or luxrender.  Or (and this is the point) a stable diffusion render.

I think hborre nailed the title a bit more with "integration".  It's about not interrupting the poser workflow.  Or, at least bridging things, where the other interface is a bit more complex.  Stable Difussion has such an easy inerface, it's easy to integrate it directly in blender.  It's some text boxes, sliders, and drop downs.

But bridging...

Consider, I can go back and forth between Poser morph tool and Blender Sculpting.  I wrote a Blender add-on that "repairs" the out of order verts Poser exports.  In real time.  But it's not a perfect bridge.  I still have to export import export import.  A better bridge would might let me keep the meshes "in sync", automatically.  Then I could have both apps open and work with the mesh in both apps at the same time.  Necessary?  No.  Cool?  maybe.  For me, certainly :)

But that's a different topic (although the tech probably underlies easier future integrations.

Anyway, integration.  Integrating various "AI" things into Poser to enhance the ability to "make images we want"

IMHO, the thread should be entitled 'Integration of AI with Poser' and not generically AI features in Poser.  The problem with the last thread was it became a 'ram-it-down-your-throat' approach in defense of AI, either you conform or be left behind.  That did not go well with a lot of users and understandably so.  The shotgun approach of 'doom-and-gloom' is not a selling point and turns users off.  I can understand the interest in integrative AI use and how it can facilitate workflow. However, I still see individuals posting AI-created works in the gallery that are tweaked in third-party applications.  Still no originality there.

Hopefully, this thread will evolve into something productive, however, given how the last thread devolved so quickly, time will only tell.

You're right.  Much more accurate of a title.  Is there any way to change a thread title? o.O

One thing I've found is cross runtime issues.  I normally have about two dozen runtimes.  I keep each character generation in it's own runtime.  eg: a gen4, LF, LF2, Dawn...

I generally only have open the runtimes relevant to whatever I'm working on.  For instance, I usually don't have LF open when I'm working on toon stuff.  

Of course, installing only takes place in one runtime.  But Poser will look for files in all the runtimes you have open.  (It would be nice if the "remove from the GUI library" didn't also remove it from Poser's awareness.  But baby steps :)

 This really comes into play when I open scenes.  i have to make sure the runtimes used for everything in the scene is open.  For instance, let's day I used a LF, V4, a building (in another runtime).  I have to have all those runtimes open when I load that scene.  That's why I settled on generations.  I commonly used a4 textures on v4 body.  Or morphs as well.

I ran into the same thing when I was deduplicating to hard links (saves heaps of file space).  Have to dedupe only within a runtime.  Otherwise, things can break when you close one.  

You might get that error if the runtime where the texture is in not in Poser's library list.  But then it should notify you that some content was missing.

All sorts of issues are why I keep runtimes very separate.  From P8 on.  Everything in it's own.  And nothing is added to the default that came with the poser version.  This keeps the installation (and its content) clean.  If i have to reinstall, it touches nothing I installed after.  Decades of painful experience led to current setup :)

blackbonner posted at 5:19 AM Sun, 22 October 2023 - #4476630

I would recommend watching the YouTube from a fellow named Tony Vilters.

He described in great detail how to handle poser geometry, exporting it from Poser to Blender, sculpting HD morphs and backe them onto the original geometry in Poser by using the morph brush tool. Very informative stuff, unfortunately the guy has vanished, but he was kind enough not to delete his videos or pull his channel entirely. The channel name is Tony Vilters.

He's working with original meshes (ie: those that have not been manipulated in Poser, thus have not had vert order changed).  I wrote a Blender add-on that corrects Poser's exported vert order back to the original vert order.  Takes a split second to run :)  This way you can work with meshes that have been morphed in Poser.

The technique he describes is what I use.  It seems to be the only way.  It's a brutally manual process.  I was hoping for something I can automate.

Afrodite-Ohki posted at 7:32 AM Wed, 4 October 2023 - #4475816

Thoennes, you're making me blush - though I don't take credit for most of what you're hyping there, all that easy clothing fitting is on the dev team for the improvements in P13 :D They've done a great job with that, I've been loving it too. And also Nerd3d for a lot of rigging magic and cleanup that makes LF2 easier to use!

Can't wait to see what else you come up with for LF2!

The render issue It's likely because I'm not setting things correctly.  The render engine changed consequently on mac.  It's not the hardware.  I have an insanely powerful mac (18 Xeon cores, 128GB RAM, ATI Radeon Pro Vega 64).  Apple does not use Nvidia and that's the current graphics darling of the non-Apple PC world.  So I'm the redheaded love child at the family reunion.  Maybe when Ghostship releases a bunch more render settings :D

I sure wish Poser had a way to import HD morphs.  I would sculpt *such* details ^.^

I haven't tried any of the auto tools for porting clothing.  But so far my experience with manual processes is that LF is so drama free that good automatic tools (scripts) are a distinct possibility.  The hair fit tool just plain works.  Saves heaps of time.

One last one for the day.  Top and bottom made for LF1 in her early days.  My first attempt at form fitting clothing  I didn't understand how to make a mesh that bent well at the hip and shoulders so it's really a suboptimal mesh.  I never could get it to work well with LF.  The JCMs threw me for a loop.  Same mesh, no changes, but with LF2.

A bit trickier pose but still very workable.  Whole lotta stuff happening at tricky joints.

Some correction morphing but not much.  LF2: love!