The improvements to the useability of the Poser Morph Brush are great news I reckon

Can anyone confirm whether there is a general problem with the conflict with Queue Manager? I don't want to install SR3 if this is going to be a problem.

Quote - Can anyone confirm whether there is a general problem with the conflict with Queue Manager? I don't want to install SR3 if this is going to be a problem.

I don't seem to have an issue here.

Although note that I installed SR3 and then I installed the separate QM SR3, on the one machine... I didn't realise the QM install was bundled with the main installer... I've always run the separate QM installer after installing Poser Pro 2012.

I'm on a mac, by the way, too... which may make a difference, relative to any new or old bugs that may or may not be present, I guess?

Quote - Bug solved, alleluia now we can use real blurr reflect on skin

This is a great fix!

Quote - Can anyone confirm whether there is a general problem with the conflict with Queue Manager? I don't want to install SR3 if this is going to be a problem.

 

Here is the answer from SM:

"You need to uninstall the Queue Manager that is outside of Poser Pro. This can lead to issues with Rendering to the Queue Locally. I recommend you uninstall and then remove the Program Files Folder. Also remove the Queue Manager Folder in the ProgramData Folder of your system. Then reboot before you launch Poser and Render to Queue to reactivate the correct Queue Manager.

John Csaky | Customer/Tech Support"

Once this was done, everything worked great, so no worries! Get SR3, it's worth it!

It is possible that you installed SR3 while QM was still running. That might explain why it was not updated.

Quote - > Quote - My download came from an Amazon fullfilment site. Anyone else notice that?

I keep getting that as well but it's just a long name with no file suffix on the ensand when I go to save it, nothing happens can anyone help?  

Ok, just tried again. This time got a SmithMicro page saying that Poser sr3 was not available. I think I should get suppost. Remember the good old days when you could just download updates from your account page? :)  ...

GRRR! And now the support link that they gave in the email is down. Updating the website etc just before a big software update, probably not a great idea. Will wait till tomorrow and try again.

Well after waiting a day and still no luck with either the file link or the customer service link provided in the email, I decided to just go to content paradise, add the update to my cart there. No problems at all, file downloaded in 5 minutes :) SM I'd ditch the middle men if I were you ;)

Quote - It is possible that you installed SR3 while QM was still running. That might explain why it was not updated.

 

Don't remember for sure...but it's extremely possible,  highly probable, and most likely. :-)

Anyway problem solved.

Quote - > Quote - Can anyone confirm whether there is a general problem with the conflict with Queue Manager? I don't want to install SR3 if this is going to be a problem.

 

Here is the answer from SM:

"You need to uninstall the Queue Manager that is outside of Poser Pro. This can lead to issues with Rendering to the Queue Locally. I recommend you uninstall and then remove the Program Files Folder. Also remove the Queue Manager Folder in the ProgramData Folder of your system. Then reboot before you launch Poser and Render to Queue to reactivate the correct Queue Manager.

John Csaky | Customer/Tech Support"

Once this was done, everything worked great, so no worries! Get SR3, it's worth it!

Thanks for the info! Looks like I'll go ahead with the update then.

Quote -   Thanks for the info! Looks like I'll go ahead with the update then.

 

No problem. :) It's a worthy update!

Quote - > Quote - > Quote - There's definitely something going on with Freak4......not sure what.  Perhaps a re-install is necessary?

 

 

Nope I see the same thing here, and only in that one same spot. Will file it ...

But this is now fixable. Use SnarlyGribbly's scene fixer script, the 'dials' option, reveal XYZ scale dials for all body parts.

Check the scale on Freak's collar (114%) and now apply that to the shoulder. 

Hey presto - sorted!

There seems to be an issue with all the Gen4 figures - if you use the chest scale dial on any of them (not just Freak 4 or Kids 4, but straight V4 and M4 have the same issue), you get a dud join where the shoulders join the collar. It can be fixed by scaling the shoulders in each case. It isn't insurmountable, but altering the scales for the shoulders will also have an impact on poses previously created for the scaled figures.

noone can answer whether or not the GoZ implementation still suffers from the Poser import/export rounding errors?

SR3 breaks PML, so if i cant transition smoothly from PML to GoZ without having my models lose symmetry then i either need to hold off on SR3, or run two separate versions of Poser:  one for work/morphing, and one for rendering.

i should also mention that this shouldnt freak anyone out: this 'issue' doesnt really affect 95% of morphing and only really comes into play when youre making full body morphs and JCMs on a commercial level.

We're wondering if the solution lies in applying fall off zones to the Collar_SmooX parameter. We're very much feeling our way with this - perhaps someone a bit more skilled with Poser can make something of this, and also indicate if there is any way of distributing a solution on this basis.

We've attached a screenshot which we hope makes a bit more sense - it looks very much to us as though most parts of the Gen4 figures have fall-off zones, but the Collar_SmooX parameters don't. Put the fall-off zone onto it and it improves. If we could get the zones right, it might be okay.

Thoughts gratefully welcomed!

Quote - noone can answer whether or not the GoZ implementation still suffers from the Poser import/export rounding errors?

SR3 breaks PML, so if i cant transition smoothly from PML to GoZ without having my models lose symmetry then i either need to hold off on SR3, or run two separate versions of Poser:  one for work/morphing, and one for rendering.

PML seems to be working fine for me in SR3 .. what issues are you seeing?

Quote - noone can answer whether or not the GoZ implementation still suffers from the Poser import/export rounding errors?

I'm not quite sure how to validate it ... it pops it directly into ZBrush and then pops it back out again to Poser. It's a direct round trip. There is no saving a file to your hard drive or anything, so the only way to verify it would be to export it out from Poser and into a modeling app.

^hmm, a couple of people told me its not working in SR3.  what version of PML are you using?

regardless whether or not PML works i still need to know if the GoZ implementation somehow circumvents the import/export rounding errors or still suffers from them.  on casual morphs it doesnt really matter but when making a commercial morph pack its pretty important.

Quote - ^hmm, a couple of people told me its not working in SR3.  what version of PML are you using?

regardless whether or not PML works i still need to know if the GoZ implementation somehow circumvents the import/export rounding errors or still suffers from them.  on casual morphs it doesnt really matter but when making a commercial morph pack its pretty important.

I'm using the same copy of PML that I got in December 2011, as far as I know there hasn't been an update since. If there has been, I haven't heard about one.

I take it there is still this original, noted import / export rounding error present in the obj export routine for SR3? Do you know that it is still there?

Cheers

Quote - noone can answer whether or not the GoZ implementation still suffers from the Poser import/export rounding errors?

SR3 breaks PML, so if i cant transition smoothly from PML to GoZ without having my models lose symmetry then i either need to hold off on SR3, or run two separate versions of Poser:  one for work/morphing, and one for rendering.

i should also mention that this shouldnt freak anyone out: this 'issue' doesnt really affect 95% of morphing and only really comes into play when youre making full body morphs and JCMs on a commercial level.

I have not had any issues with GoZ breaking symmetry, if I'm understanding your question correctly. 

The only issue I have with GoZ is that the morphs you create in zb compound on each other in poser, so if you adjust something, go back to poser and test, go back to zbrush and do more adjusting, and then back to poser, poser seems to recognize each instance as a separate morph dependant all previous morphs, so your 2nd (and 3rd, 4th etc) morphs will not work properly without your first. This is good in some situations, but overall I think it's a hassle. You have to manually delete all morphs from the model if you determine you don't want them, but deleting them will make your most recent morph not function properly. I haven't figured out another way of doing this so far, maybe I'm just missing something.

~Shane

Based on the fact there is a new option in the export menu to export to a ZBrush binary file, I'm guessing the whole ZBrush integration, including GoZ is quite possibly not touching any of the code involved in the obj export routine...

...but just a guess there...

...the GoZ SDK that Pixologic supply probably provides its own methods around this stuff...??

I think rather than manually deleting them, you dial them to zero and then export out again ... yes?

In other words, let's say you are creating some face morphs. Export the head out to ZBrush with GoZ ... make a "Nose Puffy" morph ... export that back into Poser. Dial that morph to test it in Poser. OK, so far so good.  Set the dial back to Zero.

Go back into ZBrush. Zero out the morph you previously made so that all traces of "Nose Puffy" is gone.  Now make a "Cheeks Puffy" morph in ZBrush.  GoZ that one back into Poser.  Dial it in to test it, then dial it back to Zero in Poser.

Now you have two morphs, each working independently of each other in Poser. The Nose Puffy morph, and the Cheeks Puffy morph.

Would this be a solution for what you're doing?  I can see that the only gocha that it might have is if you have more than 64 undo's to undo in Zbrush (heh, I don't even know if that setting is adjustable).  But when working on one piece at a time and sending them back into Poser ... to combine them in Poser ... then it works quite well.

Quote - I have not had any issues with GoZ breaking symmetry, if I'm understanding your question correctly. 

The only issue I have with GoZ is that the morphs you create in zb compound on each other in poser, so if you adjust something, go back to poser and test, go back to zbrush and do more adjusting, and then back to poser, poser seems to recognize each instance as a separate morph dependant all previous morphs, so your 2nd (and 3rd, 4th etc) morphs will not work properly without your first. This is good in some situations, but overall I think it's a hassle. You have to manually delete all morphs from the model if you determine you don't want them, but deleting them will make your most recent morph not function properly. I haven't figured out another way of doing this so far, maybe I'm just missing something.

 

~Shane

Quote - I think rather than manually deleting them, you dial them to zero and then export out again ... yes?

In other words, let's say you are creating some face morphs. Export the head out to ZBrush with GoZ ... make a "Nose Puffy" morph ... export that back into Poser. Dial that morph to test it in Poser. OK, so far so good.  Set the dial back to Zero.

Go back into ZBrush. Zero out the morph you previously made so that all traces of "Nose Puffy" is gone.  Now make a "Cheeks Puffy" morph in ZBrush.  GoZ that one back into Poser.  Dial it in to test it, then dial it back to Zero in Poser.

Now you have two morphs, each working independently of each other in Poser. The Nose Puffy morph, and the Cheeks Puffy morph.

Would this be a solution for what you're doing?  I can see that the only gocha that it might have is if you have more than 64 undo's to undo in Zbrush (heh, I don't even know if that setting is adjustable).  But when working on one piece at a time and sending them back into Poser ... to combine them in Poser ... then it works quite well.

Tha'ts how it SHOULD work, but that's not how it actually works, as far as I can tell. 

So going with your example, the first 'nose puffy' morph in poser is still required to be set at 1, for any additional morphing you make to it. 

If you set it to 0, and goZ back to ZB, your model will be zero'd out in zb, so you have to start all over. Not intuitive at all.

This is because zb updates your model with the most recent changes, so it's going to see the zero-morph pose as the most recent version. Clearing the GoZ cache destroys the link between your poser model and your zb model, so trying to go back to Poser, poser doesn't recognize that it's a morph of the same model anymore and instead only gives you the option to import as a prop. Very frustrating. 

I will have to experiment with it more to see where the actual problem is or if its just an issue with my workflow.

*Edit - Sorry, correction. I was mis-reading what you said. 

That scenario does work. 

The issue comes when you're doing things like expression morphs, or JCMs.

~Shane

Yes I've seen the bit with the "disconnect" if you  break the handshake.

The only other thing I can think of is this ...

After you bring your morph into Poser and test it, and then decide that it needs more work ... keep the morph dialed in. See what happens if you export it as a POSED figure back into a new ZBrush document. This way, you have your previous work, and can pick it up from there.

Hopefully, the only thing that will be sent back into Poser will be the changes that you made in the second trip.

Worth a try.

That's what I've done, and is what causes the issue.

When you come back from zbrush a 2nd time, the new morph is only the changes that you've made since the first morph. It doesn't include the info from the first morph, so it requires the first morph to be dialed to 1 in order to work correctly. If you dial the first morph to zero and then dial the 2nd morph to 1, the 2nd morph will only be what you changed from morph 1 to morph 2, and does not include morph 1. 

I'll try to get some screen grabs to demonstrate, so maybe its a bit easier. Not sure if I'm explaining it the right way.

~Shane

Creating a new FBM or MT from the menu, with all morphs set to 1, should combine all the morphs into one, then delete all the previous morphs. Maybe that will correct the issue I'm having. 

Seems rather redundant to have to do it that way, but in some ways it kind of allows for more control actually. I have to experiment with it. Maybe I'm just thinking it should be working a different way.

~Shane

Shane:  for as long as i can remember Poser has had rounding errors on import/export.

so say i export Vicky, make a full body morph for her, and import her back again. she will have subtly shifted -- usually she rotates a bit on her Y axis but its totally random. we are talking very small movement, but it happens EVERY time. so by the time youre finished a figure, all these cumulative translations add up and it will no longer be symmetrical. this is not really detectable if youre making some major morph like working on the torso or legs -- but start morphing the fingernails or toes and all of a sudden you realize that its not in perfect symmetry anymore.

you cant really test this with the SM figures because none are symmetrical -- i assume because during periods of their development they were imported/exported from Poser. fixing the symmetry on both Alyson and Ryan was the biggest PITA when working with them. and no, its not so simple as hitting 'restore symmetry' in zbrush - it was actually a pretty tedious process :(

RDNA's michelle is perfectly symmetrical, so if anyone wanted to test if the rounding errors are still there with GoZ all theyd have to do is go through the GoZ export/import several times with her, then take her back into zbrush and try and morph her fingernails using symmetry.

I didnt  know something broke. Noone told me, and noone replies to my Pml mails anymore anyway :)

If GOZ morphs in posed geometry, then they might have solved that problem. I am not 100% sure but I remember that using old poser export included morph targets when you export, even if asmorphtarget is enabled, and even in zero position it could happen that some JCMs were slightly active, e.g.  Because of IK dependency or such, and upon loading the morph target that would accumulate, yes.

no idea about goz. Eitherway, I think symmetry is always a pain, especially if the figure you work on is not symmetrical in the beginning. For daz4, i think they load with a small rotation of the hip, and morphing them posed might be difficult in a modeller.

during testing, I used the wireframe view and loaded the morphed obj and the morphed figure to see if they overlap or have differences. Its quite useful for testing.

Blackhearted,

I think scaling up on import and back down on export helps resolve the rounding issue?  Not from poser but when the obj is brought in and back out of an external app.

I'm sure you discovered this but other than scaling, you can reverse the exported .obj (as a -1.000 Morph Target) and it should subtract the shift effect from the morphed obj.

Quote - Shane:  for as long as i can remember Poser has had rounding errors on import/export.

so say i export Vicky, make a full body morph for her, and import her back again. she will have subtly shifted -- usually she rotates a bit on her Y axis but its totally random. we are talking very small movement, but it happens EVERY time. so by the time youre finished a figure, all these cumulative translations add up and it will no longer be symmetrical. this is not really detectable if youre making some major morph like working on the torso or legs -- but start morphing the fingernails or toes and all of a sudden you realize that its not in perfect symmetry anymore.

you cant really test this with the SM figures because none are symmetrical -- i assume because during periods of their development they were imported/exported from Poser. fixing the symmetry on both Alyson and Ryan was the biggest PITA when working with them. and no, its not so simple as hitting 'restore symmetry' in zbrush - it was actually a pretty tedious process :(

RDNA's michelle is perfectly symmetrical, so if anyone wanted to test if the rounding errors are still there with GoZ all theyd have to do is go through the GoZ export/import several times with her, then take her back into zbrush and try and morph her fingernails using symmetry.

Oh bloody heck, you just answered my old issues with mirroring full body morphs work in Cinema 4D 8.0 some years ago. I had a plug in for Cinema 4D that recognized symmetry and mirrored morphs made in one side of symmetrical meshes. Every time I passed the object file back and forth between Poser and Cinema it would fail to see the obj as symmetrical anymore until I added more slack into the plugins tollerance settings. After the 3rd-4th time it would always fail to see the obj as symmetrical anymore no matter what I did to it's tollerance settings and would not let me mirror anything from left to right. It completely stopped me from doing any of my own full body morphs so I just gave up. From what you are saying I get the impression I may have been banging my head up against that rounding error and didn't even know it.

I'm going to be working with GoZ today doing some correction morphs. I will post as to wether there are any rounding issues or other problems

Quote - I didnt  know something broke. Noone told me, and noone replies to my Pml mails anymore anyway :)

If GOZ morphs in posed geometry, then they might have solved that problem. I am not 100% sure but I remember that using old poser export included morph targets when you export, even if asmorphtarget is enabled, and even in zero position it could happen that some JCMs were slightly active, e.g.  Because of IK dependency or such, and upon loading the morph target that would accumulate, yes.

no idea about goz. Eitherway, I think symmetry is always a pain, especially if the figure you work on is not symmetrical in the beginning. For daz4, i think they load with a small rotation of the hip, and morphing them posed might be difficult in a modeller.

during testing, I used the wireframe view and loaded the morphed obj and the morphed figure to see if they overlap or have differences. Its quite useful for testing.

It's OK CC, it (PML that is) works fine with the final SR3 build.  I helped someone figure out what the problem was, and it's all set. 

Well right off the bat one thing that is great with GoZ is that the figure no longer comes apart at the seams when subdividing, smoothing and inflating in ZB. That alone is fabulous!

Quote - Well right off the bat one thing that is great with GoZ is that the figure no longer comes apart at the seams when subdividing, smoothing and inflating in ZB. That alone is fabulous!

^PML has done that for years :)

Never used it!

Had I known that I would have gotten it a long time ago. Ive been using the v4milwom obj file and remapping the entire figure onto 1 8192 px map

Quote - Had I known that I would have gotten it a long time ago. Ive been using the v4milwom obj file and remapping the entire figure onto 1 8192 px map

It's hard to tell which post you're replying to, but I'm not sure that having V4 on one texture map would affect a model that is coming apart at the seams. That is more to do with welding at the groups. Is it possible that you are exporting V4 from Poser instead of using the default OBJ that is located in the Geometries folder?

Deecey, we're the only ones that bothered to re-weld our meshes after the figure was initially created, so even if they used the OBJ from the runtime, chances are that unlike our models, it would have broken apart anyway.  I'm not sure when we started doing that but it's something we've been doing for years....you'd have thought other people would have caught on too. Oh well, PML and our GoZ feature is there for any model that's not welded.

I was replying to blackhearted, I used the default obj v4milwom from geo folder because it stayed intact during sculpting. I remapped it to 1 map so I could get seamless color and displacement maps. I found it almost impossible to get seamless disp maps unless I did this. Plus I inflate against the texture map converted to a mask to take on texture details. I have found it best to do this for the entire body all at once

Quote - I was replying to blackhearted, I used the default obj v4milwom from geo folder because it stayed intact during sculpting. I remapped it to 1 map so I could get seamless color and displacement maps. I found it almost impossible to get seamless disp maps unless I did this. Plus I inflate against the texture map converted to a mask to take on texture details. I have found it best to do this for the entire body all at once

OK that makes sense. Yes. 8-)

Perfect!

Also just did a test on a finger using symmetry, lengthened the nail and inflated the last knuckle. It came back into poser perfectly with no issues, also tested a grasp with the hand and it worked just fine with the morph applied.

Ah, another single texture map 8192x8192 believer. :-)

Thanks, now I feel less alone. :-)

Works great doesnt it, I put the face, body, and limbs each in their own quadrant on the map so you end up with maps of 4096 when you dissasemble it back to Poser.

Gives absolutely perfect seams

Quote - Works great doesnt it, I put the face, body, and limbs each in their own quadrant on the map so you end up with maps of 4096 when you dissasemble it back to Poser.

Gives absolutely perfect seams

Sorry, at the risk of going off topic a bit, can I ask if you're doing this part within ZBrush, Chris?

I'm just curious, single-texture-loving-believers, are you making sure apparently symmetrical things like eyes are seperate on the texture (so no single part of the texture covers both eyes, for instance)? I bring that up an an example because that's one obvious place where "optimizing the texture" fails spectacularly.

Ah, just saw in the other thread... looks good.

Unfortunately its another UV mapper / unwrapper that's off limits to me on the mac.

I've now got UV Master with ZBrush though... so I'm hoping that will be mostly all I'll need??

EDIT: Oh yeah... and have access to Photoshop CS5 Extended too, for that matter...

I dont know if you can control UV master to the degree so that it still matches the poser v4 maps. I have used UV master for clothing items, but never V4