LightWave's ChronoSculpt and Carrara
Dartanbeck
Posts: 21,522
Okay here is the descriptive text of one of the only Fenric plugins that I still do not own, MDD Format for Carrara:
DescriptionLightwave Motion Designer Data (MDD) File Format Filter for Carrara
Bring Carrara fully into your animation work-flow!
This plugin provides both import and export support for the Lightwave Motion Designer/Point Oven (MDD) file format. MDD is rapidly emerging as an industry standard for animation data exchange between 3D applications by pairing a standard wavefront Object (OBJ) file with a frame-based description of the animation for that object.
This plugin opens the doors to animation by enabling Carrara to both import and export the OBJ/MDD file pairing.
Now here is a link to LightWave's ChronoSculpt stand alone application, which is a powerful sculpting app, but can do much, Much more than just sculpt. This thing can take your MDD cache and edit, in very powerful, useful ways, your physics simulations and much more. It looks like part of its main purpose is to help to correct problems that arise in physics calculations. Like poke through, portions of the animation not behaving as you'd like, while the rest is perfect - so you can now fix what's wrong, and keep what's right.
I've also seen some (but not much yet) mention of using it, even if you don't already have a cache file. I'm thinking along the lines of using its powerful sculpt shaping capabilities to animate things that are otherwise rather static. Like adding real-time movements to conformed clothing and hair and expressions, etc.,
But I'm also interested in seeing if this would help as a solution to get dynamic clothing working using Carrara's Bullet Physics' soft body simulations. Even if this part of it has to wait for the release of Carrara 9, I'd really like to get into the mindset of putting these two apps together.
Has anyone tried this workflow already? ChronoSculpt is only 399, less if you're a student - much less.
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Comments
It feels like it will be forever before my bank account recovers from having had a girlfriend. One day, it will be a happy place again with numbers bigger than my I.Q. On that day, I can buy ChronoSculpt.
I watched the video on that ChronoSculpt link above that demonstrates it being used on the fractured window, and now I'm wondering if the MDD format for Carrara actually makes Cache files that they're talking about. I'd imagine that's what it is - an MDD cache file. Wouldn't you think? I'll have to ask Fenric if he thinks it would work in such a workflow.
Another format that ChronoSculpt works with is Alembic, and DAZ 3D just released an Alembic output plugin for DAZ Studio, just today. Funny how that happened, right on a day that I'm looking at ChronoSculpt, eh?
Aside from its intended uses, I want to also use the app for some thinking out-of-the-box ideas I have floating around in my brain-pan.
MDD I believe is object geometry (OBJ) written frame by frame to a single file.
I believe the ChronoSculpt format encodes much more info than geometry alone. I think it would be up to Daz to adopt this format since it would have to integrate with every animateable function or object in Carrara. Daz got Bullet Physics into Carrara, so they could probably handle this, given some time.
Errrrr...kinda... :down: ;)
Sorry, I was being optimistic. If I hit "rose colored glasses" optimistic, let me know. I'll be sure to cut it back a notch or two next time. :)
With that, I looked again at Fenric's description. It really seems to me that this would work. In the video, he went to the same spot and loaded his obj and then his MDD, just as Fenric explains. Either way, If it does or doesn't, I certainly want to bring this up to Mr. Spooky. Perhaps also contact Newtec and see what they say about it. If it works in either 8.5 or 9 Pro, once it comes out - even if that's more than a year away, I'd still love to have this. I could sculpt away in it and get used to the brushes while I wait.
I won't be getting it anytime too soon in any case... but I certainly am interested in it.
Race ya? :lol:
I need to replace my driveway first (damnable HOA!), so you'll probably whip me in a race.
Race ya? :lol:
I need to replace my driveway first (damnable HOA!), so you'll probably whip me in a race.LOL!!!
Yeah right! You'll take me on this one, for sure! How I get all caught up in my projects and all... I'll forget to buy it before you do! LOL
We'll see... ;)
Just a speculative ask.
I noticed Lightwave is on sale at the moment. Do any of you regular Wavers know when this might end? I have not frequented the world of LW for years.
I'm surfing on the LightWave these days. The sale started just before the x-mas holidays, so it might end soon but I have not heard any specific dates mentioned. Here is some extra info:
https://www.lightwave3d.com/news/article/special-995-holiday-pricing-for-lightwave-116-software/
If it has been years, then I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by LW11.6! I have seen LW9 in some of the training videos that I have bought and I really like what the 11.x series has brought to the table.
I've been doing a stupid amount of work for the day job lately...I think I'm going to "catch a cold" by Monday and just kick back with LW and Carrara (really need to fire her up again). ;)
Thanks.
I last used LW6! where I used to work.
I have just made enquiries to the company if they still have it and want to sell. If the planets align maybe I could get it cheap and upgrade.
Well I can say I use MDD right now to keep Daz studio deformers on Genesis when importing into Poser and it works very well, but I have yet to use my Carrara MDD plugin yet. MDD is very valid between those 2. DSON imports into Poser suck because the joints are no longer Triax. But I am still in the trial stages yet (need clothes)...lol
I think both Dart and I would be very interested in hearing more about your experience here. I'm right on the edge of getting ChronoSculpt ... and being able to use with Carrara would probably make me take the leap.
Well give me a bit to get some clothes on an animation that has been moved around in the MDD format (sometime this weekend I hope). Work makes these things take forever for me but with that pipeline tested I should be able to come up with something and explain it. if you like check out this link to my first animation I used MDD inside poser to retain Genesis shapes as exported from Daz Studio. Going back into Studio requires some scripts which I need to get the names. Sequence morphs but with Carrara The MDD importer should work.
Heres the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnc9b4M3ku0
BTW I was also thinking of investing in Chronosculpt myself but need to work up the funds right now (While keeping up with Studio Carrara Poser Vue updates...lol
According to what I've read so far, you should now have the ability to open that MDD file from Studio (the one you brought into Poser) and edit the file within ChronoSculpt. How much of this can be done on figures such as Genesis I haven't a clue. If it doesn't really work on 'content' like that, its (ChronoSculpt's) use to me would be less and less beneficial - at least at this point in my life.
I think the biggest problem is for me at this "point". . . is I know that using the softwares for what they do the best I want the Triax "Look" the Daz Studio has, the cloth that Poser has, the raytrace that Reality has, and the scenery that Vue has. I know point animation can make this possible but its work figuring out the pipelines. (Due to the time I have its hard) I export Genesis as OBJ (MDD into Poser and try to do a cloth sim on pants on that OBJ...lol...doesn't work due to my lack of knowledge the constraints don't work on the obj.....but.....I use the DSON export of the same figure into Poser and It works (knowing that the poser version of the figure may have issues with the bends do to lack of Triax) so I export the OBJ sequence of the pants back out of Poser. I import into Daz the pants sequence with a OBJ sequence plugin "Animorph" onto my already imported OBJ sequence Genesis figure file (All of which has a 30 frame drape to animation pose. It doesn't line up right at first for some reason. I use Keymate to advance the Genesis a step up and ....The pants now have a Cloth look inside of Daz Studio. I look at this for a while in Daz as it plays. It looks ok but the pants texture I know has issues inside of Daz so I save it and Dson it. open up Poser and load it up (this is now OBJ sequence inside poser as morph targets load the texture on the pant, that works, then play and look for a while....Darn .....Poser exported the pants morphs wrong...lol .....2 frames are out of sinc or didn't drape right...now I have to go back and figure out where it was or...Chronosculpt it? I don't have Chrono scult yet to know if this will workI know that poser imports the MDD's via a plugin I use but This point animation thing will work its just figuring out a good pipeline.......BTW imported some of these into Vue as test via the OBJ morph sequence from DAz to poser to Vue and those work )
I don't have Xstream...lol so I cant import MDD into Vue but I can cheat and import point animations from poser that way.
Question on my end since I havn't messed with it yet is....Have any of you used MDD with Carrara iin this way or for similar situations? Maybe clothes or hair or water? I see these kind of test being done from other softwares like realflow, Maya, and C4D. I don't have any of them yet but I am learning from watching those on youtube and some of those people are using Point animation in neat ways.
I might add that even though I use the cloth sim in poser I know that Carrara has that ability as well as a good render. How is its Triax since Daz updated it? how does Genesis look in it. When I tried to run Carrara on my laptop I had issues with memory using Carrara that Daz Studio and Poser do not. So I kinda gave up on it for now. But I do have it on the back burner.