No probs dude!

Konan

My suggestion is two fold...

1) Practice the expressions that you want in the mirror. Make sure that you are by yourself (so people don't think your are crazy), and try to act out the expressions that you want. This is a time honored animator's technique.

2) Take pictures of your expressions and use them as photo references. A little more modern than 1) given the benefits of digital photography. Try to match the 3D character to your pictures as much as possible. Learn to use the auto timer on your digital camera. Some cameras will even take a quick 10 pictures in a row so you can simply pick out the best one. This works great for facial expressions with movement, like laughing, etc.

The same techniques work great for body poses.

As for all of the characters looking the same, you should look at these models as "starting points", and then morph/texture the heck out of them so they look nothing like the originals. You can get some great photo-references from http://www.3d.sk, however be prepared to see your share of naked old guys doing life poses :S. Personally, I just go for the head shots.

Hope this helps!
Konan

You can use them for whatever you like, but just don't redistribute them "as they are".

Enjoy!
Konan

Quote - The newer Mac s will dual boot to either the Mac OS or windows xp so you can have it all.   I believe freebies need a utility called MacConverter but I have never understood just what it does.

I'm not sure that it is relevant to the newer versions of Poser and OS X, but the MacConverter adds what is called a "resource fork" to the files so it has extended information. In older versions of the Macintosh operating systems, files had two parts. A data fork (which contains all of the "stuff' in the file) and a resource fork which contains the file type and other information including the file's icon. This is why copying files back and forth from Mac and PC would ruin the mac files, since the resource fork would be lost in the process. However, OS X has moved away from using the resource fork and files are more "windows like", using extensions (e.g. *.jpg) to determine the file type, etc. Poser now uses PNG files for the icons that are displayed in the library, rather than storing the icon in the resource fork (or RSR files for windows, Poser 4).

I haven't used Poser 6 or 7 on a Mac lately and I am not sure if the MacConverter is still relevant. Perhaps someone else can comment on that?

As for performance, etc. (and I hope that this doesn't may start a flame war), on the exact same computer, if you install Windows XP via Boot Camp and OS X, Windows programs will be significantly faster than their Mac counterparts. As for my own software, Blacksmith3D, 99% of the code for the Windows and the Mac version is absolutely identical, but the Windows version runs significantly faster (on the same hardware).  

I don't have a specific recommendation , but one thing to consider when choosing your model is not necessarily going for a high polygon count, as most renderers provide you with a "smooth polygons" or "subdivison" option when rendering, so the polygons are only smoothed when you render, leaving you with a lighter model to work with in the mean time. A well designed lower polygon model (which subdivides nicely) can be better than a super high resolution model. Just something to consider when making your decision.

Konan

Quote - konan, there is somewhat of a discussion about optimal mapping for a figure skin in the Antonia thread here. Is there a way to explain in principal how the Blacksmith-auto mapping reduces distortion? Could it be used to create a regular and consistent standard UV for a figure?

Great question! Ok, here's the deal...

You see, the problem comes from the simple fact that in general, you cannot create a 2D mapping of a generic 3D surface without creating seams. Traditionally, textures are painted in a 2D program such as Photoshop. To paint textures in Photoshop, one would like as few UV seams as possible and preferably hidden away where they are not that noticeable. This much you all know I'm sure.

Now, in the process of minimizing our seam count, we end up distorting a good number of the UV's, so the shape of a polygon in the UV space becomes significantly different than the shape in XYZ space. This causes the texture to appear stretched in these areas. Think of the poles in a spherical mapping (a map of the earth vs. a globe of the earth.) and how the land around the north pole looks as wide as the circumference of the earth at the equator (on the map) while it is actually much smaller (on the globe).

Now, with Blacksmit3D-Paint, the goal was to be able to UV map any object with the click of a button, so the user could simply "just paint on it". There are of course special cases where the user needs to manually UV map the object, but we won't get into them now. The only way to achieve this, in general, for 99% of 3D models, was to simply give up on seam reduction, and simply make the software paint across these UV seams as "perfectly" as possible.

So, when Blacksmith3D-Paint auto-UV maps an object, it takes chunks of the surface that are relatively flat  in relation to each other, and UV maps them to a plane. It takes all of these chunks and packs them tight in the UV mapping space, while leaving a bit of space between the chunks (for technical reasons). Since each of these chunks is a simple planar mapping, where the shape of the polygon in UV space is very similar to that in XYZ space, there is little to no texture distortion.

So, the moral of the story is this...

Less Texture Seams = More Texture Distortion

... and if the sections are planar mapped as described above then

More Texture Seams = Less Texture Distortion

That pretty much sums it up,
Konan

Quote - > Quote - Speaking of alternative UVs, I was wondering if it was possible to change texture coordinates on an actor from within Poser. If so, it should be quite easy to write a script that could hot-plug an alternative UV mapping. I'd be happy to write that script if someone could give me some pointers. Mostly, whether Poser Python can do it, and whether the .uvs format used by UVMapper is free to use and well-documented. If not, I'd have to come up with my own format and a tool to extract the UVs from an .obj file. No biggie, but of course using an existing format is usually preferable.

Actually it is possible to do this entirely in Poser's material room- no scripts needed. Basically, for any given point in map A, you need to know where to go in map B to get your pixel value. This requires two coordinates for each point in the UV map. Such information can be encoded in two channels of an RGB image, for example red and green.

Let's call this the texture converter map, or TCM. Using a Comp(onent) node, you can extract the RED value from the TCM and plug that into your texture map U_Offset. Similarly, you Comp the GREEN value from the TCM and plug that into your texture map V_Offset.

All that remains is to produce the TCM. I've been thinking about how to do this, but I haven't done any coding for it. I'm imagining a tool that shows you two image maps. You click on a reference point in A, and the corresponding point in B. If you do this for enough points, the tool could then interpolate all the coordinate transformations and generate the TCM.

Sounds like a good idea, but numeric resolution will no doubt stifle the attempt. You see, the red, green or blue channels can only have a value between 0 and 255. If we are attempting to use these color values as UV coordinates, then we will essentially divide the color channel (red) by 255 to get a value between 0 and 1. Now, with that being said, our values will be like 0, 1/255,  2/255, ... 254/255, 255/255. Therefore, the in values between will get snapped to the closest integer (divided by 255).  In other words, 1.4/255 would be the same as 1/255.

Now, if you used an RGBA image, you could RG for your U coordinate and BA for your V coordinate, hence increasing your resolution since it will be like 1/65535, 2/65535, etc.

eeek, math! ;)

Now for our purposes here, this would definitely be the 'hard way' of doing things, but I do like the idea. I could have other useful applications.

Konan

Quote - DPH, could you show a side by side and a screenshot of the materials room?

konan, that looks like a KILLER texture... I would love a character like that. Can you isolate your texture modifications to a transparent overlay?
...
You are working with James? Cool.

Thanks man. Yes, it is James. That was just a quick once over to test the concept. I'll be doing a good version as soon as I decide on whether to use the existing UV mapping or use the auto-UV mapper in Blacksmith3D-Paint. The existing UV mapping has a few places where it is not so good (around the nostrils and on the ears). The auto-Mapping makes all of those nooks and crannies look much better since texture stretching/overlap is dramatically reduced.  However, if I want to distribute the item as a free item, then the issues we are discussing above come into play.

In the end, I shouldn't be such a perfectionist and just deal with the existing UV mapping. I dunno. We'll see :D

Konan

Hehe. I seriously doubt that shaders can replace texture maps. There are of course a time and place for shaders, and a time and place for textures. Try doing this with shaders. I dare ya! ;)

Konan

Quote - Welcome back Konan, the standards are still the same. :)

Thanks buddy.

Hmmm, so at this time, the use would have to download and install RTEncoder and do the whole song and dance. Hmmm. They mention that there is now a python script for doing it on OS X, which requires a python installation on the user's side.

I'm asking this since I'm getting ready for a free stuff giveaway spree, and I'm thinking of making stuff based on Poser's own characters. However, I would like to have the freedom to re-UV map the objects, and perhaps create maps that are "painted over" the existing maps, where elements of the existing maps are still there. The reasoning for the latter is so that I could paint a head texture with a seamless transition to the body. An perhaps the existing body texture would be tinted to match the hue of the new head.

Also, I would like the user to be able to simply download the package, run something like an installer, and have everything set up and ready to go. I could do something like this myself, but I figured it is best to see if a solution exists already.

Now, if I do use RTEncoder or a similar method, can I assume that it would be fair game to use the OBJ file as the seed, even if the package includes the textures (this is of course for Poser's own models, where the textures are not sold separately)? I'd assume as much.

Doesn anybody know if there is a small decoder for RTEncoder that can be redistributed with a package?

Konan

Heya EnglishBob!

It would be best to simply remove 3.1.0.0 completely from your computer and uninstall/resintall 3.1.1.0 . Not sure what went wrong there (perhaps shortcuts are getting confused).

Please let me know if that helps,
Konan

Correct you are Chris :D. Glad you like the software. Please feel free to post any questions you might have.

Quote - whait a minute.
is this a free 3d painting software?

Yes, there is a freeware version and a registered version. The freeware version was designed to be very useful to the 3D artist, while not giving away too much of course ;)

Konan

Quote - Do this have something like a "projection mode" just like in Deep Paint?

I'm not sure how similar it is to deep paint, but after you load a brush texture, you can press SHIFT-V to setup how the brush image gets tiled. By default, it tiles in the plane of the viewport, but you can set "fixed plane" (available in freeware), spherical and cylindrical mappings. You can also disable tiling to simply "stamp" the texture wherever the mouse is clicked.

Hey everyone!

Sorry about that issue with the missing DLL. If you revisit the download page, there is a file you can download to correct the problem. Please let me know if this works for you.

Konan