Hi,

I have never rigged a figure before, and now that there is weightmapping, I feel a bit more encouraged to actually learn it. So my first question would be wether we have a reverse weight map functionality. Say, I place my joint center at position ABC and bend my actor 45 degrees. Can I directly sculpt the deformed actor and Poser makes a reverse calculation to create the weight map as necessary or is it only possible to do it the "forward" way, by painting the map and seeing the effect?

I'm on the go so I do not have access to the manual :/

Thanks,

col

Can I directly sculpt the deformed actor and Poser makes a reverse calculation to create the weight map as necessary or is it only possible to do it the "forward" way, by painting the map and seeing the effect?

If I'm understanding your question correctly, the answer is Yes. If you bend a limb you can create the weight map while the limb is bent. Its effect will be phased out to zero as the limb rotates to the default.

Good job on MorphLoader by the way. It is working perfectly.

Thanks, thats nice to hear.

Yes, I understand one can paint the weightmap while the actor is bent.

But this means that "morph brush" and "weightmap brush" are seperate things? There is no "morphweightmap brush" that does both together?

I had the thought that one could "split" a morph into a weight map plus another morph that would capture whatever the weight map couldn't do. And this in a way that the weight map would do as much as possible and the morph doing the "rest", so that one had a morph which as flyweight as possible.

Do I make any sense?

The morph brush and weight map brush are separate. There is no "morph weight brush." I wish there was. Sometimes a weight map will only move the vertices relative to the other vertices instead of inward or outward, which might be the needed deformation. As far as I know, morphs and weights are distinct in Poser.

Quote - Do I make any sense?

I think you make sense.  But Poser doesn't have any kind of automated or built-in features which could do that, currently.  Possibly something could be scripted?

Quote - I had the thought that one could "split" a morph into a weight map plus another morph that would capture whatever the weight map couldn't do. And this in a way that the weight map would do as much as possible and the morph doing the "rest", so that one had a morph which as flyweight as possible.

Technically I think you could do this, as joint and bulge deformations are restricted to one axis ("in" and "out", in relation to the joint axis); you could examine the position of each vert and only split out the "in/out" part of the delta.  On the other hand, I dunno how valuable that would be, as you'd still need the morph target, and the resulting morph target alone would (I think) very likely be something impossible to modify without trashing it.

e: hmm, the resulting morph target would really just be the verts' sliding around along the normals' placement after the joint deformation is done wouldn't it?  Ask Mike/Diogenes/Phantom3d, he'd probably find that useful for easing texture stretching.

Thereis no api to set weightmap weights, is there?  I didnt know the bulge can be weightmapped too. Interesting indeed.

I know at least part of weight mapping can be handled via script, e.g. look in the PoserPython Methods Manual:

Quote - JointVertexWeights Explanation

Get a list of vertex weights for the specified joint axis on this actor.

Arguments

The axis argument should be ‘x’, ‘y’, or ‘z’. If no such joint is present, the method will return None.

Syntax

JointVertexWeights( axis)

Example

actor.JointVertexWeight(X)

e: I don't see a corresponding "set" function, unfortunately

Yes. I wonder, why on earth a read api if there is no write api.

I kinda think it's there, but not documented.  Mail Phil Cooke about it, he'd know for sure (updated wardrobe wizard).

http://www.philc.net/contact_details.php