SimonWM opened this issue on Dec 29, 2003 ยท 27 posts
SimonWM posted Mon, 29 December 2003 at 3:54 AM
One of the things that made me pre-order Poser 5 as soon as it was available was the promise for free third party plugins. Now Curious Labs has talked about them thinking about ways to redeem themselves specially with us people who pre-ordered the software and ended up beta-testing. If you want to make us happy, implement an FBX plugin in your Service Pack 4. I'm willing to wait months for this service pak instead of the tentative January date. You would be making something a lot better than what we had for Poser 4 since the stability of our files would depend on the high end application plus we get to directly manipulate our scenes not just host them. A host application is always more limited and unstable than a full import/export solution. For anybody that doesn't knows what FBX is, its the standard for importing a 3D figure with bones and vertex weight into high end 3D applications. It is supported by 3D Studio Max, Maya, Lightwave, Cinema 4D and a few others.
stewer posted Mon, 29 December 2003 at 4:24 AM
"Curious Labs please read" - may I ask why you're posting this in a web forum then instead of sending an email to CL?
markdc posted Mon, 29 December 2003 at 5:50 AM
I won't answer for him, but maybe because it's hard to get them to answer email but they seem to read these forums and respond on occasion. I would like for them to do this as well, but since there's a licensing fee involved with FBX I won't count on it. -Mark
markdc posted Mon, 29 December 2003 at 6:05 AM
Also, I sent them an email requesting the same On Jan 2, 2003. Mark
SimonWM posted Mon, 29 December 2003 at 6:19 AM
What Mark said Stewer. Thanks for your support Mark.
stewer posted Mon, 29 December 2003 at 6:33 AM
Even though you may not always get replies, I think emailing CL directly is more reliable than posting in a web forum. You might also want to send an email to Reiss-Studio asking for such a plugin, they might be able to write such a thing too.
Mazak posted Mon, 29 December 2003 at 6:56 AM
The only what help is massive pressure in public forums, if you want something from CL. E-mails are wasted time. The most of us have negative experience with the CL support over years. Mazak
Dave-So posted Mon, 29 December 2003 at 7:42 AM
how about a "real" letter to them.... now that might work....
Humankind has not
woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound
together.
All things connect......Chief Seattle,
1854
SimonWM posted Mon, 29 December 2003 at 7:54 AM
Stewar, I wrote a long letter outlining everything that wasn't working on Poser 5 and asking for everything that wasn't delivered yet. In that letter I asked for the promised 3rd party plugins too and received a standard reply from them that said that they were working hard to adress all these issues. I did this after leaving many messages on the Poser 5 beta forum. I'm sure I wasn't the only one doing it based on all the people agreeing with me on the Poser 5 beta forum. To this day the hair collision doesn't works as it should and the promised 3rd party plugins are still that, a promise. Its sad but I might have to pay Reiss Studio for something that was promissed to me for free. Now I know Curious Labs was going thru a transition period but it looks like they have arrived with a company that can push them forward so I think the best thing they can do to regain their customers faith is hang on to old promises and deliver.
SimonWM posted Mon, 29 December 2003 at 7:57 AM
Sorry, I meant to say e-mail not letter. Writing a letter might be something to try but usually in this age an e-mail SHOULD have been as effective.
thedoctor posted Mon, 29 December 2003 at 9:51 AM
I, too, would kill to get CL working on FBX support. I also know there are many other Poser afficianados who have or will be migrating away because of the bottlenecks that prevent incorporating Poser into real world production. There are a LOT of us out here who would use an FBX option and it would solidify Poser in the pro community.
tjs61822 posted Mon, 29 December 2003 at 10:02 AM
I would like to see FBX support too, but I'm not expecting to see it from CL. My hope is DAZ Studio will include it at some point.
wolf359 posted Mon, 29 December 2003 at 10:50 AM
Attached Link: 65 walkers
SimonWM posted Mon, 29 December 2003 at 11:20 AM
the reasons I say this are rather Obvious in my view after all why would a MAX LW Or C4D user buy poser as his character app and endure working in a non hardware acceleratedapp like poser just to get access to the vicky/mikeys of DAZ??.>> If that is so why does ReissStudio and all the other developers of plugins for Max, Lightwave, Maya exist. Right now Poser offers an incredible library of ready to animate humans, creatures, animals with more free resources than ANY 3D application. I cannot talk for the others but I have been a 3D Studio Max user for a long time (rel4DOS,NT version 1,3 and now 6) and a Poser (3,4 & 5) user too and I've just bought MotionBuilder. If Poser would implement FBX support I have already a whole zoo of realistic animal models I don't need to bone and skin weight to animate, lots of very decent human models that can compete in realism with Final Fantasy and that already have tons of clothing, textures and hairdoos modeled. I already direct my own static stories with my Poser assests, FBX is the ingredient to get all this power into animation too. See this thread if you want to hear more statements from high end 3D app. users that value Poser as a tool. http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=1586000
SimonWM posted Mon, 29 December 2003 at 11:28 AM
I should add that Poser is extensively used by studios to create animatics and storyboards why try to limit a tool? The more advances it gets the better. Wolf359, I would think you as a Poser animator would be happy of any advances in your own toolset.
stewer posted Mon, 29 December 2003 at 11:59 AM
I would Love to hear from an experienced developer about attempting FBX with posers current Ascii format and "fall off zone"based rigging system. From what I hear, FBX is using weight maps - one weight map per joint, which means any rotation of that joint will affect the very same vertices. Bending the forearm will therefore affect the same vertices as twisting the forearm. Poser on the other hand is using separate joint parameters for each rotation direction, allowing a forearm bend to deform the ellbow region only while a twist is still able to bend the skin between wrist and ellbow. Translating Poser's joint parameters to a single weight map or vice versa will always be a compromise, I have tried in the Shockwave3D exporter, and a number of other developers have tried too. It's not that one of the two systems were better, it's just that they're too different to be compatible.
SimonWM posted Mon, 29 December 2003 at 12:51 PM
It's not that one of the two systems were better, it's just that they're too different to be compatible.>> Stewer, then how is that Poser CR2s are currently being ported inside Lightwave and Truespace with 3rd party software? It cannot be such an impossible feat to do an FBX export.
stewer posted Mon, 29 December 2003 at 12:58 PM
Sure they can be converted (sorry if that came out wrong), but it's a compromise and the joints will look different than in Poser (from what I gather, this is what's true for D|S too). The only way I could think of you could translate Poser joints in its full glory to a regular skeleton system is to use three bones per Poser joint, one for each axis.
SimonWM posted Mon, 29 December 2003 at 1:03 PM
Attached Link: http://www.greenbriarstudio.com/3D/C4cr2load.htm
This is from the GreenBriar Studio Cinema4D page: >>What this plugin does NOT do in the 1.0 release: Created a completed weight map set. Joints still have to be edited (but hopefully not for much longer). The plugin does create a weight map set, so the characters are animatable as is, but the joints need to be smoother. Read Poser pose type files. Note - pz3 / pzz support is currently the same as cr2 / crz - figures and props, we are not currently importing the animation data from the pz3 / pzz files. I make emphasis on this part: >>Created a completed weight map set. Joints still have to be edited (but hopefully not for much longer).>> Seems like almost seemless translation is possible.
stewer posted Mon, 29 December 2003 at 1:24 PM
Would you call it seamless when it still says "joints still have to be edited"? Getting some weight map from Poser's joints is easy, I wrote such code myself more than once. But it's impossible to build a single weight map that acts exactly like Poser's joint system, trust me. quote: "The plugin does create a weight map set, so the characters are animatable as is, but the joints need to be smoother." If Greenbriar's plugin were able to perfectly reproduce Poser's joints, why are all the figures shown in their screenshots in reference pose?
bijouchat posted Mon, 29 December 2003 at 1:29 PM
Give it up Simon. You're arguing with someone that believes that all your work should be done in Poser and not with any other application. ;)
SimonWM posted Mon, 29 December 2003 at 1:30 PM
Joints still have to be edited (but hopefully not for much longer).>> The part that says HOPEFULLY NOT FOR MUCH LONGER is what is making me think it may get to be seamless with a future version. >>If Greenbriar's plugin were able to perfectly reproduce Poser's joints, why are all the figures shown in their screenshots in reference pose? >> Not all, there is a screenshot of the Freak posed.
stewer posted Mon, 29 December 2003 at 1:37 PM
stewer posted Mon, 29 December 2003 at 1:49 PM
Taking a second look at my riddle, yes, there is a way: Encode it in a RGB map, using the three channels for xyz rotations. But I haven't seen any app that'd do that, so far I have only seen grayscale/single-channel weight maps. Can I claim a patent on that now? g
SimonWM posted Mon, 29 December 2003 at 2:04 PM
I have skinned 3D humans in 3D Studio Max with Character Studio version 1 Physique modifyer. Actually it was the Zygote muscleman in 1996 before DAZ branched out of Zygote. Making the muscleman skin behave realistically as a 1 piece mesh in animations without any morphs available took me awhile but I got it to a level where it worked with many of the BIP files(motion files like BVH) available in Character Studio. I have never skinned a Poser human but the tutorials I've read from Dr. Geep and this same thread makes me think the way Poser handles vertex deformation is more sophisticated than the way other higher end 3D applications deal with it since it splits the three possible deformations and creates groups of vertices for each one. As you can see I'm by no means an expert on skinning characters but I can say I have been exposed to it.
markdc posted Mon, 29 December 2003 at 4:07 PM
How would you make a single weight map from this? I don't >know, tell me if you do. Obviously you have to compromise--doesn't mean that the plugin wouldn't be useful. Of course the ultimate solution would be for Daz to rig their figures in LW (maybe they already have) and release them in the FBX format. -Mark
wolf359 posted Mon, 29 December 2003 at 6:34 PM
"Of course the ultimate solution would be for Daz to rig their figures in LW (maybe they already have) and release them in the FBX format." --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Daz has already stated that they are going to a "traditional" weight mapping system of rigging for native DAZ Studio figures and some of the DAZ peopl are former newtek employess so Iwould put my money on seeing an FBX export option from DAZ studio before E-frontier even come close to hacking patching and Duct taping one out of poser. :-) if the paid version of D/S has a proper Dope sheet&graph editor and user definable constraints then I will buy it for sure.