well, I've done some tests, and I've decided not to bust my hump trying to de-triangulate him. I made a couple of simple "figures" and tested them in poser, and I didn't find any problems with the triangulated mesh from carrara. I had problems long ago with the triangulated mesh from ray dream, but it triangulated differently than carrara... I did however, eliminate the creases after I converted to an .obj file. leaving the creases in during the conversion helped though. the creases are much more natural looking now... I'll post another pick as soon as I've got his skeleton set up...

I would really like him to be all quads, but I fear that in order to do that, I'll have to go in and pick off vertices one by one..... I'm going to see what I can do though.... perhaps I'll play around with the decimation.....
Thanks for the comments, though...

Message edited on: 08/16/2004 09:08

OOH! My turn to guess! Set the toon effect slider to zero, and set the line effect to 50%. Set both the line widths to 1. Do I win the Constantini Bread?

This is a really cartoony style, I love it! I wish I could play around with these models, I'd love to animate them!

Uh.... that pretty much is the final outfit..... Except for some sandals, and a sash.... He's a Tokugawa-era samurai, so he wouldn't really have worn armor. (it's possible he wouldn't have even had a real sword!) Question: is there anything else (besides C4d?) that will detriangulate the polygons after subdivision? I try not to use sub-D for that reason only, it makes it harder for me to slice up the mesh....

okay, I don't have time to exlain this completely, but it should help. Start by making orthogonic wireframe views of the figure you wish to clothe (fig. 1,2,3, of P4 Nude Male) Using an image editor, make sure they are lined up. (centerlines should be center, heads in 2 + 3 should be at same level, figures should be same height, etc.) Save these images separately. The reason for the wireframe is so you can compare the mesh density of your clothing to the density of the original figure. As you can see in figure 3, I outlined the basic outfit I wanted, using different colors, and BRIGHT colors,to differentiate.(the finished outfit is actually three separate figures.) For this outfit I only sketched on the front view, but feel free to draw on all three views, just don't save over the blank views, in case you want to make other clothes for the same figure. In the vertex modeler, you can use these images as rotoscopes (under the Global tab in the Drawer-thingy on the right -> { If you open them but they don't show up, there's a setting you have to change in preferences, but I can't remember exactly which setting at the moment.}) You'll be able to use these images to model from(Fig. 4), without having the original model sitting in the middle of everything, which is a pain. However, you'll still want to import the figure's obj file (or even better, a mannequin like the hadless, footless one I used) so that you can do fittings in the Assembly Room (figure 5). You MUST use the figure's .obj file, or preferably a copy of it (found in the Runtime directory), and NOT an imported .pz3 file, or it won't conform correctly. I used the Compose utility to open up the obj file, delete the hands and feet, and save the copy as "mannequin.obj" in the same runtime folder as the original mesh. And remember, use the drawings only as a guideline, make the clothing fit the mannequin. That's about it for now, I don't have time to go into the actual modelling and UV mapping, I'm already up an hour past bedtime.... BTW, Figure 6 is my completed outfit rendered in Poser....

Try saving the boned object alone as a .car file, then import it into a new file as many times as you need it.... I don't know for sure if it'll work, just a hunch....

Man oh man did I screw up. I thought I would offer to help someone out who maybe wanted to get started in 3D animation but couldn't afford full price for Carrara 3.0. um, the only mistake I can see that you made would be trying to sell carrara to a bunch of people who already have it.... ;) You might want to list it on ebay?

but it's not just the left arm that looks unnatural. Stand up and try the pose yourself. Nobody's going to stand like that and hold a gun straight out from the center of their chest. Especially not if the gun has any kick, or they'll most likely break their solar plexus, for starters.... The angle between the gun and shoulder line should be about 45 degrees at most. The back end of the gun sould in this case point at his right bicep, and when it kicks, it should slide past the chest on the right side. My most basic advice on planning an animation: Get up out of your chair, and do the action yourself. Several times. Try to put thought and emotion into it. Use a stopwatch to time yourself.

Message edited on: 06/02/2004 22:09

Ok, having looked at the film, I have a suggestion: The final pose that you have him in is unnatural. The gun shouldn't end up exactly perpendicular to his shoulder line. There are several ways you can fix this, the easiest of which would be to twist his chest so that HIS right shoulder goes back a bit and his left shoulder comes foreward. that should eliminate the need to overextend his left arm, making the elbow lock up like that. you've definitely got to twist the chest, at the very least.(of course, twisting the chest is going to mean repositioning the final keyframe for the gun, so that it still points where you want it.) For something a bit more dramatic, instead of twisting the chest, twist the hip, spread the legs a bit, drag the right foot back, and lower the hip a bit to bend the knees. And make sure his head still points foreward... If you want, I'll tweak the file you uploaded, and send it back to you, so you'll see what I was talking about.

I'm not sure I can help, but I wanted to say that thatis a rather ingenious workaround you've got there, parenting the gun to his chest, and the hands onto the gu... I'll have to try it with a sword....

much power in the vertex modeler there is.... sometimes difficult to wield, but much power, yes.... That is a very cool.. uh, something-a-hedron. very nice work!

You know, it's funny. The other sites have been up for almost a week now, with all the regular OT 'ers posting, and I haven't even seen any animosity at all..... let alone personal attacks..... but for some reason, here, every time OT is mentioned somebody invariable gets in your face about how evil everyone in OT was......

Get vue 4, don't get vue 4 pro yet. (It seems they haven't yet worked out all the bugs in Pro...) You'll be able to import still poser scenes into vue, and if you get the Mover plug-in, you can import animated poser scenes into vue. You'll also be able to render 360 degree views that you can use in poser as a cyclorama, (with the right cyclorama prop).

I don't have Vue Pro, just Vue 4 with Mover 5. It runs pretty stable on my machine. But I do know the frustrations of using crashy programs. RDS 5 on my old computer would crash at least once per session under Win98. At least once every time I sat down to do something! So I eventually broke down and bought Animation:Master 2000, because Hash Inc. swore up and down that A:M was highly stable, and guess what? It crashed all the time too. They both run a lot more stable under XP, but I worked with both these crashy programs for years before I got XP. How Did I live with it? 2 things: I kept reminding myself that I spent a decent amount of money on these products, and that just shelving them and not using them at all was the best way to ensure that I wasted that money (Actually, my mom kept reminding me. Both were Xmas presents), and 2, I always remember a tip from the user manual for the first Leisure Suit Larry game. This piece of sage advice has been with me through every program I've used, and every video game I've played, and it's saved my butt too many times to count, so I'll pass it on to you: Jesus Saves. (He saves as often as he can, because, in his infinite wisdom, he knows that if he doesn't, sooner or later he's going to have to do a heck of a lot of stuff all over again.) So I got into the habit of saving very often. every time I stopped for a smoke, or just stopped to think for a second. It's a good habit to get into, even if your software isn't crash prone. That's it for now, except for this: "It is not possible to get good results without the proper respect for one's tools or one's weapons." -Miyamoto Musashi, from his treatise, 'The Book of Five Rings'