offering a 100GC for a convert rigging script in carrara

Mistara

hi,  i'm so sick of opening the ds to convert clothing and hair pieces and creatures.

scraping up my quid on behalf of the community,
i can offer a hundred dollar gc for a (python?) script to either

fix the general rigging skinning to work in Carrara,
the product page says carrara supports general weight, think they forgot to turn it on.

or convert rigging to triax or blended weight

or convert to carrara native rigging and weightmapping.

Thanks.

Philemo_Carrara

Hi Misty,

My 2 cents:

Rigging can be indeed done in two ways:

• implementing dual quaternion weightmapping in Carrara.It could be done  (rhe maths are described here). The problem is that it should result in a Carrara animation group and not a figure.
• Converting DQS to LBS as a figure. That also could be done.

I think the main issue in both cases is not so much weighmapping but autofit. This part I haven't figured out yet...

Philemo_Carrara

I forgot.

In Triax weightmapping, you have a weight map per axis (bend, twist..). In Dual quaternion, by construction, you have a single weightmap for the 3 axis. That's why in G7-G8, they have split some bones in bend and twist, to add an additional map when necessary.

When you convert from triax to dual quaternion, you have to average the 3 weight map (the method you use to average makes the difference in quality). The other way round is easier, you just have to duplicate.

Mistara

thank you.  gave me a lil gleam of hope.

before the rigging convesion, the daz studio json script. 
the general rig has 1 array of verts and weight numbers.
after, the script is run
there are 5 arrays of verts and numbers.  identical numbers

i experimented with rounding off the 4 point decimal places to see if it speeds up anything.
didnt seem to make a difference.

the parameter for the skinning type changes.  dual quat, general
the blended weight has an additional array.  
the arrays are boken down under each bone.
its 5 arrays times the number of bones.

autofit is a nice feature.

when i save the clothing item to carrara,
it embeds all the morphs.  a 20mb shirt for genesis becomes over 200mbs

the morph stripper is invaluable.

SileneUK

Morph Stripper?  I vaguely recall this... where can I find it?  (Sorry, not doing much, waiting on cataract op).   Silene

Mistara

SileneUK said:

Morph Stripper?  I vaguely recall this... where can I find it?  (Sorry, not doing much, waiting on cataract op).   Silene

can sommiserate the vision problems.  

i'm playing with the hdr light domes,
i can see only big contrasts, not seeing the subtleties
cant see light fonts on light background

Philemo_Carrara

You can find it on ShareCG : https://sharecg.com/v/92883/browse/9/Plug-in/Genesis-Morphs-Eraser

SileneUK said:

Morph Stripper?  I vaguely recall this... where can I find it?  (Sorry, not doing much, waiting on cataract op).   Silene

SileneUK

Philemo_Carrara said:

You can find it on ShareCG : https://sharecg.com/v/92883/browse/9/Plug-in/Genesis-Morphs-Eraser

SileneUK said:

Morph Stripper?  I vaguely recall this... where can I find it?  (Sorry, not doing much, waiting on cataract op).   Silene

Merci!!!  And I made a donation.  Silene

Stezza

Philemo_Carrara said:

I forgot.

In Triax weightmapping, you have a weight map per axis (bend, twist..). In Dual quaternion, by construction, you have a single weightmap for the 3 axis. That's why in G7-G8, they have split some bones in bend and twist, to add an additional map when necessary.

When you convert from triax to dual quaternion, you have to average the 3 weight map (the method you use to average makes the difference in quality). The other way round is easier, you just have to duplicate.

I have no idea what you are talking about but it sounds promising 

can a Carrara script be made just to call the conversion utility used in DS to do the job?  

Philemo_Carrara

Mimicking  the conversion to General Weight is simple enough. But, without autofit, the cloth will only fit G8 base. If you change to, for instance, to Vicky 8, you'll have some poke-through.

I'll have to look a bit more into the matter

Mystiarra said:

thank you.  gave me a lil gleam of hope.

before the rigging convesion, the daz studio json script. 
the general rig has 1 array of verts and weight numbers.
after, the script is run
there are 5 arrays of verts and numbers.  identical numbers

i experimented with rounding off the 4 point decimal places to see if it speeds up anything.
didnt seem to make a difference.

the parameter for the skinning type changes.  dual quat, general
the blended weight has an additional array.  
the arrays are boken down under each bone.
its 5 arrays times the number of bones.

autofit is a nice feature.

when i save the clothing item to carrara,
it embeds all the morphs.  a 20mb shirt for genesis becomes over 200mbs

the morph stripper is invaluable.

Vyusur

Dual Quaternion would be very nice in Carrara. I'm not so interested in Genesis 8 because now I mostly use my own figures. I wonder how the auto-fit feature will work with standalone figures?

Philemo_Carrara

Stezza said:

I have no idea what you are talking about but it sounds promising 

can a Carrara script be made just to call the conversion utility used in DS to do the job?  

A Carrara script, no.

A Daz script, yes, but there is only a very slight gain and you still need Studio. 

Philemo_Carrara

Vyusur said:

Dual Quaternion would be very nice in Carrara. I'm not so interested in Genesis 8 because now I mostly use my own figures. I wonder how the auto-fit feature will work with standalone figures?

I've no idea. Actually, I don't use autofit that often. I don't like it because it distorts the UV maps and is not very natural in places like breast or  buttocks. 

Usually, I fit clothes using VWD which doesn't have those drawbacks. If I were to write a plugin on the subject of autofit, it would be using the result of the VWD static simulation to create a morph for the cloth.

And yes, dual quaternion would be nice, even if it would be only for rigging created in Carrara.

Philemo_Carrara

Double posting

Mistara

Vyusur said:

Dual Quaternion would be very nice in Carrara. I'm not so interested in Genesis 8 because now I mostly use my own figures. I wonder how the auto-fit feature will work with standalone figures?

i think it goes by if you have the clone.  and you need smoothing iterations

often bikini strings dont sit right in carrara.  i go back into ds, save the autofit as morph asset and then dial it in carrara. or slider it  

Vyusur

Mystiarra said:

Vyusur said:

Dual Quaternion would be very nice in Carrara. I'm not so interested in Genesis 8 because now I mostly use my own figures. I wonder how the auto-fit feature will work with standalone figures?

i think it goes by if you have the clone.  and you need smoothing iterations

often bikini strings dont sit right in carrara.  i go back into ds, save the autofit as morph asset and then dial it in carrara. or slider it  

I meant, how it will work with dual quaternion.

For now the autofit feature works with my figures like a charm. No need for any additional efforts.

Alberto

SileneUK said:

Philemo_Carrara said:

You can find it on ShareCG : https://sharecg.com/v/92883/browse/9/Plug-in/Genesis-Morphs-Eraser

SileneUK said:

Morph Stripper?  I vaguely recall this... where can I find it?  (Sorry, not doing much, waiting on cataract op).   Silene

Merci!!!  And I made a donation.  Silene

Thank you!  

Mistara

i psyched.  and hopeful. 

i've started culling my content, should solve some of the overhead of converting.

theres a few steps i do to prep clothing for carrara.  some of it is easier to do thru editing the text in the file.
in dsf file I delete the rigid groups.  the geograft group if there is one.

in ds, i unparent figires from figures.  for example, hair tails from the hair cap.
convert rigging on each piece, save character preset.  put it back together in carrara.

to prep shader for alpha masks, i select the surfaces, use the dzdefault preset.  manually load the opacity maps.  create support morphs if needed, by saving autofits as morph assets. 
its gotten better.  in g3 the eyebrows had no supporty morphs.  eyelashes need support morphs for some heads.

and then g8f had that rediculous toe bug.  turned out to be because not all of her verts were in the 'actor' region group.
tried a few times to inject the missing verts with a cbr.  i think there is a lot more potential for cbr files, like visibility settings.
ig a pz2 can do it, dont see why a cbr cant.  mebbe even swap uvs.

morph groups, geografts, rigid groups can't be modified by a character preset. 
can't see how to skip over parts of the geometry secction .dsf.  i fix it by writing over the default dsf.

and the way they mix up the name id and the internal id.  tongue doesn't work in carrara without the extra preset work.  the scene nodes go tongue01 thru 04, but the nodes in the joint groups are gontuebase, 01 thru 03
the g3/g9 tongue in carrara goes straight up into infinity.  remembers those infinity verts in old poser, lol

Mistara

i want to render catoon on a throne, but is killing me to have to open ds first.

Mistara

my faeries are naked and cold.

when i save a duf or cr2 to carrara, its converting to carrara rigging? 
or is like, the figure running in a shell.dll of the original format?

for simplifying studyng, brought in the basic wear shorts.

Mistara

this script wouldnt just be for clothes and hairs.  need it for some vehicles and dinosaurs too.

Mistara

is there a possible workflow to use the vwd on dforce clothes?

Mistara

i dont understand why we see the 'bones' moving?  They rotate, its like the skeleton isn't attached.

Mistara

do i really hazta open ds?   its worse than a tooth ache

Dartanbeck

Daz 3d did get dual quaternion working in their latest development of Carrara, but never released it because it still didn't work with G8 dual quaternion - according to the post made by Daz years ago.

 

If When they do start development on Carrara again (), I'd also like to see them implement that wonderful auto collision they use in Studio that auto-corrects for poke through.

I guess we already have that, which I use - VWD Cloth and Hair.

Mistara

i'm happy with triax cuz it works.

its the having to open ds to prep it is tedious

Mistara

detaching the skeleton and re attaching it loses all the morphs.

 

mebbe the bones arent parented to the mesh?  cuz we see the bones moving.
trying to read the .car file to compare an attached skeleton

Mistara

trying to compare the general basic wear shorts to blended weight basic wear shorts,
highlighting actor, motion and constrait are greyed out.
after detaching the skeleon, motion on general says still, other says keyframed.
dunno if that means anything for the skinning.

it also unlocked the littl save icon.

 

Mistara

whadda kicker

the poser import has a convert skinning

Mistara

Silver Dolphin

I like Carrara too, but have you tried the Blender bridge? I know DS is a pain and too slow to boot, but the bridge works ok and the rendering tools in Blender are great considering how expensive GPU's are right now.