Meddlesom opened this issue on Jun 16, 2003 ยท 20 posts
Meddlesom posted Mon, 16 June 2003 at 12:45 PM
Hopefully I can explain this well enough to be understood. What I am trying to accomplish is this, morph a body part, but I would like to select certain polygons in that body part that I can dial down on the morph. Example, say I have a full head morph for victoria that has elf ears and I would like to be able to unmorph only the ears to make her human again. Is it possible to select the polygons of the ears and use the graph to adjust the dial value of just the ears? If that is not possible, is there another solution? I've looked through the forums and haven't really found anything about this, and have gone through several group tool and morphing tutorials that don't really give any answers either. I am having great difficulty with this issue... any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!
ockham posted Mon, 16 June 2003 at 1:37 PM
If there isn't a more obvious method, I think this should be possible with Python. The script would have to create a new separate morph target that excludes the facets contained in any Groups that are active. The opposite should also be possible: morph -only- what's contained in Groups. Let me know if you haven't found any better method, and I'll try it.
Meddlesom posted Mon, 16 June 2003 at 4:46 PM
That sounds like a good idea, unfortunately I have no knowledge of python scripting. =(
ockham posted Mon, 16 June 2003 at 5:00 PM
I'll give it a try. Should be interesting. If you have either ProPack or P5, you can use the script without knowing anything special!
Meddlesom posted Mon, 16 June 2003 at 9:13 PM
I appreciate you trying, and I'm sure a script like this would be helpful to a lot of people.
ockham posted Mon, 16 June 2003 at 10:48 PM
I wish I had made this one a long time ago! I've always needed an easy way to make one-sided morphs, and this does it. Pick up the ZIP at the URL given in next message, and unzip into the same folder with POSER.EXE as usual. It will create a separate folder under Runtime:Python, and put the scripts and the Readme into that folder. You can then run either of the two scripts. The Poser manual discusses running scripts, or you can look at my one-picture tutorial at ockhamsbungalow.com/Python/manual.jpg See next few msgs for an intro.
ockham posted Mon, 16 June 2003 at 10:50 PM
Attached Link: http://ockhamsbungalow.com/Python/MTbyGroup.zip
Start by selecting the desired body part and forming your groups. (The URL on this message is the ZIP)ockham posted Mon, 16 June 2003 at 10:52 PM
ockham posted Mon, 16 June 2003 at 10:54 PM
Migal posted Tue, 17 June 2003 at 6:45 AM
This is interesting stuff, Ockham.
If it could generate deltas from selected polygons via the trans, scale and rotate, you'd have an original morph creation system inside Poser, and it might be easier to control than magnets.
Nice work!
ockham posted Tue, 17 June 2003 at 10:13 AM
Hmm.... Just thinking about the face morphs I've tried to create in Amapi (with far too much work)..... Seems like the relevant directions would be 1. Bulge out or in from center of head. (Move along the normals.) 2. Rotate the group around the center of the head, in any of the three axes. These would have to be controlled by sliders on the Python panel. Some kind of smoothing around edges should be optional, maybe with a choice of how many facets to interpolate. Would these 4 directions work for other body parts as well, or is there another direction?
Migal posted Tue, 17 June 2003 at 1:30 PM
You'd want to be able to rotate around the center of the selected area, if possible. That would give a sharper angle. Translate would be the same thing as moving just the selected area in a planar fashion. For instance, to make the nose longer, you'd select just the bridge (leading edge) of the nose, then apply negative z trans to the selection. You're exactly right about move along normals. That would give you a 3D expand/shrink. Are you thinking it's possible?
ockham posted Tue, 17 June 2003 at 2:05 PM
Certainly possible. Now that I've figured out how to distinguish grouped from ungrouped, moving one set is fairly easy. Rotating around center may not be easy, or at least I don't immediately see how to do it. I see your distinction between Z-trans and bulge. That helps to clarify things.
Migal posted Tue, 17 June 2003 at 5:16 PM
Wow. If you could pull it off, I think it'd be a pretty big deal. Even if it could only be done for the head. Doing it to selected polygons across welded actors would be much more complicated, but required for the body.
ockham posted Tue, 17 June 2003 at 5:49 PM
"Doing it to selected polygons across welded actors would be much more complicated, but required for the body." I'm about 3/4 done with the basics, and it's surprisingly straightforward. Working on several actors at once -wouldn't- be any harder. If you set up all desired groups in advance, the script can act on all groups at once regardless of body part. What might get tricky in this situation is symmetry...... when to make one group move oppositely to another.
Migal posted Tue, 17 June 2003 at 6:22 PM
On a human figure, wouldn't that be inversion of the X delta coordinates? This sounds neat, Ockham. It might also be a quick way to fix poke-through on clothes.
Little_Dragon posted Tue, 17 June 2003 at 8:07 PM
I thought that P5's morph putty feature was supposed to work like this, but I still haven't figured it out.
Meddlesom posted Tue, 17 June 2003 at 10:21 PM
Thanks, ockham! This solves my problem perfectly, well done!
ockham posted Wed, 18 June 2003 at 11:10 PM
You're right, there is a similarity. I had to go read the P5 help file to see what it said; I remembered trying the Morph Putty thing once and finding it impenetrable. But (I think!!!!) Migal's idea is the converse of Morph Putty. Putty takes existing morph targets and modifies them; you can't affect anything that isn't already part of a set of deltas. Migal's idea is to start with your own set of chosen polygons, manipulate them, and spawn a morph target from the moved result. If somebody actually understands the putty thing, please chime in and clarify!!!!!
Migal posted Thu, 19 June 2003 at 3:42 PM
I understand a python tool with sliders would be significantly easier and probably more powerful. :-)