Quote - ....so I though that directly manipulating the CR2 might be the answer...... the CR2 seems the most preceise tool available.

I'm quite sure that you are right, the CR2 is the best (only) way to acheive total control over the parameters.

If you change a value of a parameter dial, say, yRotate to 27 degrees. It doesn't actually use that value but comes back at you with 26.92189 degrees.

This means that all this Rotate and Scale stuff is just for us poor humans who can't seem to think in terms of a three by three matrix (shame on us) and have to be spoon-fed by Poser breaking it up into separate chunks.

This also indicates that Poser's runtime internal representation is (probably) exactly the same matrix that is written in the CR2. If that is so (and I'm not sure that it is) then yes tweaking the values in the CR2 would help you acheive total control (..tomorrow, the world! :sneaky: ).

Rô

It works like this:

Lets give the numbers in the 4 lines some names...

x1 y1 z1 0
x2 y2 z2 0
x3 y3 z3 0
x4 y4 z4 1

The easy one is the last. x4 y4 z4 are the xTran, yTran and zTran values.
By the labelling I did, you can see that lines 1,2 and 3 are coordintes, although the correct name is "transformation matrix". This is a combination of the x /y/zRotate and x/y/zScale information on the dials.

Suppose, just to mke things easy, that all rotations are zero and all scales are 1 (100%)
The matrix will be:

1 0 0
0 1 0
0 0 1

Considering another start point at 0,0,0 and these represent the three axes of the "bounding box".
Setting the scale to 25%, 50%, and 75% respectively for x,y and z this becomes.

0.25 0 0
0 0.5 0
0 0 0.75

Things get  more difficult  with  rotations, consider an easy one, yRotate = 90%.
With 100% scale that gives:

0 0 -1
0 1 0
1 0 0

Drawing some pictures with little arrows you'll see that this fits in.

• The y axis hasn't changed - this was the rotation axis.
• The old x axis is now lying in the opposite direction of the old z axis.
• The old z axis is now where the old x axis was.

Combining scale and rotation information at the same time, things get pretty complex and that's where all those funny numbers in the CR file come from.

As for the 0,0,0,1 at the end of each line - beats me!

Well, that's how it works (and I'm pretty sure you're sorry you asked), so I'll shut up now.

Rô

Quote - ..  Can this be done manually..

Yes, it's not so difficult.

Open up the file in your text editor.
Find the present name of the node that you see on screen.
It will  be something like...

node "math_functions" "Mul_3"

a couple of lines down you'll see:

name "Mul_3"

Change this to whatever name you want to appear on the screen

name "My magic node"

Save and you're done.

Rô

(back on topic, just for a moment OK?)

I did a search for "uncanny valley", and although it has been mentioned a few times on the site nothing showed up in the Poser forums.

For those not familiar with the idea a quick search should explain all, but in principle it goes like this...

With the advance of digital soft / hardware it has become possible to generate images that look very like humans. Problem is that the closer you get to realism, they seem worse instead of better - until someday you finally climb up the other side of the "valley" and have an acceptable photorealistic image.

So those folks using Poser 4 are standing safely on the "non-realistic" side of the valley, and those who push Poser 5/6 to it's limits can often just find themselves slap bang in the middle of the "valley". Which in it's "uncanny" way makes P4 better than P6 - because all of the new bell's and whistles don't ensure a more pleasing result.
Until the node magicians can turn out an all-purpose all-lighting procedural skin (and all the rest) the climb up the far side still goes on.

Now maybe Poser 7 will be the "killer" app that turns things around - though I'm not betting on that.

Rô

Quote - Note: Painter and Poser were once brother and sister owned by the same company.

Well that explains it - Never had understood why this reference to Painter was here.

I had got the basics working already, but thanks anyway.
What I wanted to know was if someone has really worked on this.

I do have some ideas such as:
Rendering the Background, outline and figure in separate scripts, maybe even separating the figures material.....
..but in the lack of shared experience maybe I'll just have to wade on alone. (sniff, sniff)

Quote - A caveat (for me) is the dimension of the playback sketch is limited to the size of Poser’s preview window.

That is not a problem.
Before running the script in Painter, open up a new file (canvas) with the final dimensions you want for the "render". Keep the proportions of the Poser render to avoid distortion (like what happened here). :blushing:
Select All () and run the script.
I'm not sure how big you can go , but I pumped a render from 840px wide to 3000 and it came out fine (takes a pretty long time though).

I had to cut the image down to fit in the forum - you'll just have to believe me that it was 3000px - honest.

Rô

Quote - ....anim8tor..

Works fine - a bit tricky to manipulate the figures (or I couldn't get the hang of it).

Quote - ......and there is no way I'm spending that kind of money for just a simple Modeler.

... and it's free. :-)

Rô

Quote - ropeypopey: Actually there are a number of ways that poser cameras can be adjusted: Focal length,  Focus distance,  "F" stop,  Shutter open,  Shutter close, Yon and Hither

Agreed. But, and please correct me if I'm wrong, none of these will allow you to adjust for the lights.
My candidate would have been "F" stop but this doesn't lighten / darken anything.

    Focal length,  Focus distance,  "F" stop: -> Depth of Field;
    Shutter open,  Shutter close: -> Motion blur;
    Yon and Hither: -> Far and near cut-off planes in preview.

I just use a couple of tiny Python scripts that I wrote (Lights 10% up / down)

Rô

Couple of things...

• As has been said: The forearm, hand, and any parts of the fingers before the string should be completely in line with the force they are exerting. It takes a lot of muscle to bend a hand while supported something very heavy (I used to bowl a lot) - and in this case (different to bowling) there would be no advantage in doing so.

• Lighting: Very dramatic but, unfortunately, not very realistic. Even after all the blurring, the "forest" behind her is being lit from behind, somewhere from the top left corner. The young lady however is being lit, very strongly from right upper front, and the parts facing the forest light are in deep shadow.  Just doesn't fit in.
  I'm sure the you want to keep the light on our young heroine - so maybe you could darken the background. Also, as she seems to be in the middle of a forest then you could consider giving the light a shade of green.

Besides that - nice work!

Rô

Quote - Many of the photography referances on lighting will apply more or less to poser .

Except photographers adjust the camera to the lighting, Posers can only adjust the lighting.

Always seems a bit wrong - don't you think?

Rô

The "hither" problem is different. See image - it cuts through the figure, but it doesn't cause any distortion.

This looks more like some bits of the head have been parented to the camera - which is a neat trick that I wouldn't know how to do!!

Rô

It makes no difference at all to the render where you position the light.
However, if your IBL lighting has a direction to it - as is the case with Aiko above, then you should put the light at an angle corresponding to the "Key" light in your IBL to get the preview to look right.

Important: IBL is based on world coordinates. The lights will work as expected only if your camera is straight on from the front.  Shoot from behind and they get reversed.

Well, that's all I remember for now - just hope I cleared some things up, and didn't just add to the general confusion that seems to surround this topic.

Rô

Well, most of us are used to using a three light set-up.
I've got six here so I can do that (or better?).
What we need to do is to forget those wonderful psychodelic globes and do something more down-to-earth.
Let's put in a warmish Key light from the Right (upper),  a colder fill from the Left and a White profile light from behind. (I set up a shader tree in the material room to make this easy)

Here is a render of out-of-the-box Aiko - for "no" lights that's not too bad. A little dark maybe, but that's my fault, not the light's.
(Ambiente Occlusion is ON, so we get some shadows).

Seeing as the IBL map is just a material, I applied it to a one-sided square so you can see the map in the render.

(* of course it works - or I wouldn't be posting it)

Olivier's excellent tutorial at RDNA got me thinking, so I set up a "flexible" IBL material using bagginsbill's matmatic and rolled my sleeves up:

No Lights - or 6 Lights
Folks often refer to the IBL as if it wasn't a "real" light.
However, the IBL map is often divided up into 6 areas, or directions (in fact they are infinite - but 6 is easier a lot to think of) from which the light is coming..
What people don't always get is that they can be considered as 6 seperate lights, where the area in the map defines the colour and the intensity of each.
The image posted shows the 6 areas (the outer part is all the "behind" llight) in the IBL map and the corresponding render.

This is where folks say, "That's cute" and stop, but let's go further.....

Sorry about the delay....

Quote - Is this yet another Matmatic script that you have written?

Yep, though it gave me a lot more work than I thought it would.
Even so, the "base" of the screw is a left-over end of the cylinder - looked cute so I left it there.

Quote - Also, "How" did you get the "Rope" on the far right in your first post?

It's the same three-layered displacment, but used on a longer cylinder.

Cheers,

Rô