Request(s) For Fenric and a Question.

Headwax

Heya Fenric, haven't seen you round hope you are ;)
I was working away today and I realised that having a short cut key to select the next bone down in a skeleton (up or down for that matter)
would make posing figures a lot easier.
Any chance of magicking something like that up in your next package?
Or does it already exist?

My question:

I use Tree duplicator stacks but I have noticed that it tends to put the figure hotpoint off centre.
Which means that, for example, if I want t0 duplicate the same figure over and over then give them different clothes etc - the clothes come in all wonky, courtesy of the misaligned hot point of the skeleton ?
and I can't get them to sit.
Any way around this apart from getting them organised before I duplicate them?

thanks in advance

anyone else reading this, if you have a suggestion for Fenric feel free to post it here

WendyLuvsCatz

I have posted a few, but he is MIA
getting Carrara animation inc trees, ocean primitives and Carrara rigged figures into Daz studio and Poser via morph target sequences being one
I HAVE done it manually one obj at a time and used dynamic cloth on the figure but a nice little sequenced morph plugin would be so nifty
(if only studio IMPORTED mdd!!! I would just use that ofcourse)

Roygee

The best favour anyone, especially Fenric, could do for me regarding animation is to change those blasted bones from dotted lines to solids and to force the selection to stay selected. So annoying when you have a bone selected, try to move it and the selection jumps to an underlying or nearby bone.

Headwax

Roygee said:

snip.... So annoying when you have a bone selected, try to move it and the selection jumps to an underlying or nearby bone.

Gah I hate that :(

Headwax

wendy♥catz said:

I have posted a few, but he is MIA

yes, I hope he didn't fall over board :(

Fenric

Hi! Yes, I'm back.

So... let's see...

Select up/down command: Yep, easy. I'll try to get that in.

Hotpoint: Carrara is re-calculating it for me. It's the main group that's screwing things up - you'll have to do "HP->Obj" right after duplicating to fix it. You might also need to zero any clothing that got duplicated, too: the duplication often copies the transforms and that causes things to double up. It seems to depend on how the clothing was rigged, because not everything suffers the problem.

Morph-object series: Yes, it's a variation of the MDD exporter that writes each frame out as a separate OBJ. I'll try to get this in the next one.

Fix the "Select somthing and have Carrara select something else and simultaneously move it, and Undo doesn't work" - nope, sorry.

Change the bone display? No, I can't.

Headwax

Fenric said:

Hi! Yes, I'm back.

So... let's see...

Select up/down command: Yep, easy. I'll try to get that in.

Hotpoint: Carrara is re-calculating it for me. It's the main group that's screwing things up - you'll have to do "HP->Obj" right after duplicating to fix it. You might also need to zero any clothing that got duplicated, too: the duplication often copies the transforms and that causes things to double up. It seems to depend on how the clothing was rigged, because not everything suffers the problem.

thanks Fenric! Glad you are back :)
People like yourself and a few others have made Carrara a way better tool than it is straight out of the box.

I use Duplicate Tree so often it's not funny - well it is actually - it saves so much time!

I think we should invent a Carrara medal actually :)

I'll try that fix for the hotpoint issue next time I have the problem.

cheers from Oz !

Mosk the Scribe

hey head wax -

I feel like Fenric's tools offer this vast potential for Carrara, but I haven't gotten facile enough with them to take full advantage.

Can you explain how / why you use the tree replicator so much (or point me to some documentation if it's already out there)?

Is this for duplicating figures (as opposed to just objects)?

Does it save on memory by using a clone, or is it simply faster than reloading the figure from the browser?

Thanks for any info.

Fenric

Mosk the Scribe said:

hey head wax -

I feel like Fenric's tools offer this vast potential for Carrara, but I haven't gotten facile enough with them to take full advantage.

Can you explain how / why you use the tree replicator so much (or point me to some documentation if it's already out there)?

Is this for duplicating figures (as opposed to just objects)?

Does it save on memory by using a clone, or is it simply faster than reloading the figure from the browser?

Thanks for any info.

It duplicates any arbitrary tree of items. It is functionally equivalent to dragging to the browser and back again, except it is a LOT faster.

Headwax

Mosk the Scribe said:

hey head wax -

I feel like Fenric's tools offer this vast potential for Carrara, but I haven't gotten facile enough with them to take full advantage.

Can you explain how / why you use the tree replicator so much (or point me to some documentation if it's already out there)?

Is this for duplicating figures (as opposed to just objects)?

Does it save on memory by using a clone, or is it simply faster than reloading the figure from the browser?

Thanks for any info.

Hey Mosk the Scribe,

The main use is for duplicating figures - as the inbuilt command in Carrara will not.
A typical example for me might be putting a lot of plant figures close to each other in a scene.

Without Fenric's plug in work flow is :

Drop plant in scene. If scene is complicated then it can take a while to get plant in right place, making the right size etc,
I then drop another plant in, then select the first plant, then the second plant, then use ctrl/k to bring up the align window, alihgn it with the first plant, then change the size of the new plant....

If I am dropping a whole lot of plants in this can get boring.

(Alternatively I can debone the plant but this will lose any morphs or posing you might have done - debone via select figure 'model' then smooth it, then detach skeleton. This will give you a mesh that you can then duplicate with the inbuilt Carrara Duplicate command.)

With Fenric plug in I drop my plant figure in, get it set up, then select it, then use Edit>Fenric>Tree Duplicate - and I have another copy of my Figure just where I want it.

Of course this works as Fenric said, for anything in the Tree structure.

If you are wondering why I don't use replicate command it's because I find doing this is quicker and gives me Figures etc where I want them

Presto :)

Mosk the Scribe

head wax & fenric -

Thanks. That definitely sounds like something I need to work into my workflow. Should be very useful for animations where an exact duplicate is needed in the same location as the first, where one copy is parented to a figure, and the other copy is not. By toggling visibility, can then have someone drop a glass, throw a football, or whatever is needed.

Any other tips on using Fenric's products would be welcome, especially simple ones for ERC.

Fenric

MDD was the most annoying plugin, but ERC is the most awkward because that is the request I get the most:

Why don't I just make better examples and tutorials?

Um... well...

I don't use it.

Thing is, I don't do animations. I wrote it according to Faba's design and requirements, and so I don't really know exactly what you would want to do with it... I can tell you what the various knobs and switches do, but I really can't tell you why you would want to (at least, not in anything other than generic terms.)

Mosk the Scribe

Hey Fenric -

I have a rather specific question you might be able to answer.

Right now, Mimic for Carrara creates a bunch of NLA clips (one for each phoneme) and this can't be combined as one big clip - thus there's no way to capture all the data, save it as a single NLA, add it to the browser and then use the lip synch later at your convenience.

Would your BVH/PZ2 Exporter capture this data? (thus making it possible to simple export all the lip synch data as an animated pz2 which could then be reimported and captured as a single NLA clip?)

Thanks

Fenric

It should to be able to capture any movement regardless of source. The plugin works by playing the scene frame by frame and reading the actual position of the object. Morphs end up more hit and miss because the names don't always match. You'll end up with a pz2 that has data, but won't reapply because the channel names are wrong. I haven't ever tried mimic (don't do animations), so I don't know for certain whether the viseme morphs line up or not. I'll have a look later and see - I'm not at home right now.

Mosk the Scribe

Hey Fenric -

I'll try capturing the lip synch data later and report back on how it works.

I have another question about the ERC Chain.

I'm using it to wag a dog's tail.

Ideally, I'd crate several basic motions and save those into NLA clips for reuse later.

I've added the ERC's successfully with a 1 frame delay.

First I made a side to side wag by moving the tail root only on the z axis. I deleted the x and y rotation keyframes. And saved as an NLA clip.

I then cleared the figure's pose and repeated the process with rotation on the x axis only, deleted other keys, and saved as new NLA clip.

The NLA clips work fine individually.

When I combine them, however, they don't give an exact combination of the left right and up and down motion. They kind of do for part of the time, but not completely.

I'm not sure if this result has to do with NLA problem or if I need to do something slightly different with the ERC chain. (When adding the chain, I set it up for "ALL" rotation as opposed to going through the whole process twice and creating just one chain with x rotation and another with z.

Should this combination of motions work in theory?

Thanks.

Fenric

Once you have made your NLA clips, I assume you removed or disabled ERC? Did you make sure to set the NLA Mode to add instead if replace? Maybe shoot 3dage a pm and see if he has any ideas- he seems to use NLA clips quite a bit.

Mosk the Scribe

Fenric said:

Once you have made your NLA clips, I assume you removed or disabled ERC? Did you make sure to set the NLA Mode to add instead if replace? Maybe shoot 3dage a pm and see if he has any ideas- he seems to use NLA clips quite a bit.

Hey Fenric - I'd tried to reply to this a couple of hours ago, but guess the post didn't go through right.

1) As for removing or disabling ERC . . . uh, no, I hadn't done that. How do you disable ERC? And is there a way to do it for all 10 sections of the tail at once or do I need to do each part one at a time?

2) When you say set the 'NLA Mode to add instead of replace' - where do you do that? Or are you talking about setting the global tab of ERC to Relative Mode instead of Absolute?

3) 3dage is always incredibly helpful. I'll fiddle around with this a bit more and read through what I can find on NLA in the old manual. If I'm still stuck after all that (and hopefully hearing back on my questions above), I'll send out the Bat signal.

:cheese:

Mosk the Scribe

I'm trying to figure out how to use 1 controller object (a cylinder) to control all the wheels on a truck, so I can rotate the cylinder and make all the wheels rotate at the same time & speed. (I know this can be done with the spin modifier, but I'm trying to learn how to use ERC).

The Wheels are grouped something like
truck>body>back wheels>far back>left
truck>body>back wheels>far back>right
truck>body>back wheels>near back>left
truck>body>back wheels>near back>right
truck>body>frontwheels>left
truck>body>frontwheels>right

I've read through the different tutorials but am still running into problems setting this up.
I've set the motion to angles instead of quaternion and constraints are at none or full.

I've also tried using an ERC chain creating Group instead of chain and just adding individual ERC modifiers but can't get this to work.

faba

Hello Mosk,

I can't tell you what's wrong with your scene without having a look at it.
but I have created an ERC example scene for you which has
a control for the spin of the wheel and another control for the steer.

As as side note, when transforming the controllers the controlled objects will show the effect after releasing the mouse.

http://www.sharecg.com/v/64911/view/5/3D-Model/Carrara-ERC-controlled-wheels

https://vimeo.com/50468605

Mosk the Scribe

Faba - thanks so much for making that. I think this will help me (and hopefully others) get a better handle on ERC.
Below are some specific places where I'm running into trouble.

1) I noticed you had an ERC Modifier on the Chassis and that its Controller was called Wheel_Noise_Chassis, and that it used Basic Options, with Transformations checked off on the Z axis. Assumedly this is for moving the chassis up and down and making things look like a bumpy ride. I added a cube to the scene and named it Wheel_Noise_Chassis, and parented that cube to the truck as you'd done with Wheel_Roll and Wheel_Steer.

Moving the Wheel_Noise_Chassis up and down on the z axis indeed produced the bumpy ride as expected - so far so good.

Now for the problems:
On the ERC, I checked off the X box as well under transformations and tried moving my controller on both the x and z axis - but no side to side (X axis) movement shows up on the chassis.

Similarly, I checked off Rotation All (instead of None) and tried rotating my Wheel_Noise_Chassis - but I don't get any rotational movement on the cassis.

Since I wasn't sure if you could make this change after the fact, I created a new controller, a primitive cone named Wheel_Noise_Rotate and added a second ERC Modifier to the Chassis - Using Basic Options, None for Transformation, All for Rotation, Use FRA Checked and selected my Wheel_Noise_Chassis which was parented to the Truck like your Wheel_Roll and Wheel_Steer controllers.

I still don't get any rotational movement showing up on the chassis when I rotate the controller.

If you could explain what I'm doing wrong here, I think I'd understand how to work things much better.

Thanks so much for taking the time to create that file and post the video, and any explanation as to where I'm messing up would be appreciated.

EDIT - just realized I hadn't set the Motion to ANGLES (instead of Quaternion) on my controllers. Fixing this lets the truck respond to rotation one one axis. Still haven't figured out why it won't rotate on other axes (and why I can't translate from side to side) - trying to see if any of these things are locked.

faba

1) I noticed you had an ERC Modifier on the Chassis and that its Controller was called Wheel_Noise_Chassis, and that it used Basic Options, with Transformations checked off on the Z axis. Assumedly this is for moving the chassis up and down and making things look like a bumpy ride. I added a cube to the scene and named it Wheel_Noise_Chassis, and parented that cube to the truck as you’d done with Wheel_Roll and Wheel_Steer.

I had some experiments with additional noise movement for chassis, front and rear axle, but thought it was too confusing for a simple example, so I removed the controllers, but forgot to remove the modifier*blush*

Moving the Wheel_Noise_Chassis up and down on the z axis indeed produced the bumpy ride as expected - so far so good.

Now for the problems:
On the ERC, I checked off the X box as well under transformations and tried moving my controller on both the x and z axis - but no side to side (X axis) movement shows up on the chassis.

Similarly, I checked off Rotation All (instead of None) and tried rotating my Wheel_Noise_Chassis - but I don’t get any rotational movement on the cassis.

Since I wasn’t sure if you could make this change after the fact, I created a new controller, a primitive cone named Wheel_Noise_Rotate and added a second ERC Modifier to the Chassis - Using Basic Options, None for Transformation, All for Rotation, Use FRA Checked and selected my Wheel_Noise_Chassis which was parented to the Truck like your Wheel_Roll and Wheel_Steer controllers.

I still don’t get any rotational movement showing up on the chassis when I rotate the controller.

If you could explain what I’m doing wrong here, I think I’d understand how to work things much better.

Try to check the constraint setting in the Chassis motion tab. I locked most of the transformation against modification.
If a channel is locked it won't react to an ERC controller Removing the locks should make it wrok as you expect it.

Thanks so much for taking the time to create that file and post the video, and any explanation as to where I’m messing up would be appreciated.
Still working my way through your file (for wheel control) but will save questions on that for another post.

You are welcome, I am always glad to help out :)

Mosk the Scribe

Hey Faba -

Thanks. I'd just finished updating my post and had thought it already went through, but it seems like I'm having to submit many things twice to get it to work. And yes, it was the constraints that were blocking my efforts. Shutting those off (and setting quaternion to angles) got those parts working as expected.

I left my updated post with the Edits so others can see where I went off course and how to fix it.

I'm looking at how you set up your other modifiers now (to steer and spin wheels).
Was initially confused that you applied some ERC modifiers directly to the Wheel_Model and others to Wheels_Rear as a group - but now see that the group one was another noise modifier, and that each wheel model had the steer and roll ERC modifiers directly applied. (And I now have a good appreciation for how important it is to NAME your ERC modifiers - like ERC_Steer, ERC_Roll - instread of leaving them all ERC.

Question: Is there way to apply the ERC_Roll and ERC_Steer modifiers all at once via an ERC chain with the Group option selected, or given this type of hierarchy, must they be applied individually to each Wheel_Model one at a time?

Or if the Wheel_Models are all duplicates of one another, is there a way to go back and apply it to the base Wheel_Model itself and have it show up on all the wheels automatically?

How do you name your ERCs like Roll, Steer? I tried saving the modifier into my presets with a new name, and it loads properly, but I can't get the new name to show up and don't see any options to assign name elsewhere.

I remember the ERC documentation tellin use to use EDIT>FENRIC> Add ERC Modifier to add ERC Modifiers as opposed to simply adding them via the top right portion of the interface where regular modifiers are generally added. If I want to save some ERC Modifiers for reuse in other scenes as a preset, would I just add an ERC Modifier in the usual manner (via the EDIT Menu) and then load my ERC Preset over that?

Thanks

faba

Question: Is there way to apply the ERC_Roll and ERC_Steer modifiers all at once via an ERC chain with the Group option selected, or given this type of hierarchy, must they be applied individually to each Wheel_Model one at a time?

Or if the Wheel_Models are all duplicates of one another, is there a way to go back and apply it to the base Wheel_Model itself and have it show up on all the wheels automatically?

I did set the ERC spin and steer modifier up at one wheel and just duplicated it together with the modifier. Then I deleted the steer modifier from the back wheels.

How do you name your ERCs like Roll, Steer? I tried saving the modifier into my presets with a new name, and it loads properly, but I can’t get the new name to show up and don’t see any options to assign name elsewhere.

In the bottom section of the ERC modifier "Global" there is a button that lets you change the title.

I remember the ERC documentation tellin use to use EDIT>FENRIC> Add ERC Modifier to add ERC Modifiers as opposed to simply adding them via the top right portion of the interface where regular modifiers are generally added.

As far as I know (Fenric might correct me) the ERC in edit and the one in modifiers is the same.
Just not all object types show the ERC modifier in the available list (I think only geometry does show it) . But that doesn't matter,
using the edit menu, or a shortcut, or using the preset way, you can load it on any object type.

If I want to save some ERC Modifiers for reuse in other scenes as a preset, would I just add an ERC Modifier in the usual manner (via the EDIT Menu) and then load my ERC Preset over that?

Yes, that's a good way to save a modifier preset.
Actually you can create ANY modifier (even bounce or whatever) and apply the ERC preset on it.
The old modifier will turn completely into the one, that is saved within the preset.

Another way to save a modifier presets is to drag and drop it to the content browser> misc>modifiers and also reuse it via drag and drop.

Mosk the Scribe

faba said:

Question: Is there way to apply the ERC_Roll and ERC_Steer modifiers all at once via an ERC chain with the Group option selected, or given this type of hierarchy, must they be applied individually to each Wheel_Model one at a time?

Or if the Wheel_Models are all duplicates of one another, is there a way to go back and apply it to the base Wheel_Model itself and have it show up on all the wheels automatically?

I did set the ERC spin and steer modifier up at one wheel and just duplicated it together with the modifier. Then I deleted the steer modifier from the back wheels.

OK. That makes sense.

If I'm using a model that's already built, however (like a car or truck with wheels), is there a way to apply the ERC modifier in bulk (using ERC Chain with GROUP selected I would guess), or would it have to be applied manually? If the model isn't locked, I guess a compromise would be to delete all wheels save one, add the necessary modifiers, then duplicate and reposition the wheels.

Thanks for the thorough answers you gave earlier and for the videos - everything makes much more sense now.

(And is anyone else having problems with the forums? I have to save all my posts right now, because when I hit Submit the first time, the post just disappears without going through - then have to paste back in, submit again, and usually goes through ???)

faba

If I’m using a model that’s already built, however (like a car or truck with wheels), is there a way to apply the ERC modifier in bulk (using ERC Chain with GROUP selected I would guess), or would it have to be applied manually? If the model isn’t locked, I guess a compromise would be to delete all wheels save one, add the necessary modifiers, then duplicate and reposition the wheels.

Assuming this is only for the spin my personal workflow would be this:

-build a single ERC modifier (no chain) for a right wheel, and drag/ save it to the content browser.
- drag this modifier back to one of the wheels on the left side, to check if this works in the right direction, or if the wheels are mirrored.
if the wheel spins into the wrong direction i would change the modifier and save this as left side preset to the content browser.
- then i would drag and drop my presets to each wheel (right side preset to right side, left side preset to left side)

tsarist

Fenric

I have your ERC and Pose Helper.
The problem is I have no idea what they do.
The description was vague and the instructions weren't very helpful.

When I used the Pose Helper, all it did was freeze up Carrara, but not actually help with the Pose.

I was going to buy Pose and Shading Tools 2, because it was on sale and looks like it could be useful, but I'm not really sure what it does, so I'm going to hold off.

Could you tell me what these 3 tools do and point me to a tutorial or something?

I'm not that technically minded, so please forgive me if the answer seems obvious, because it isn't to me.

Thanks

Headwax

Hi tsarist

buy it an d take it back if yo aren't happy ;)

Something I use all the time: change the darkness, lightmess, saturation of any texture with:

Color Balance Shader Is that texture map just a tad on the green side? Colors too vibrant? Have a great prodecural stack that's just a bit too dim? This simple shader lets you adjust R, G, B, H, S, V values of the color result of a sub-shader.

i don't do animation but if i did this would be a boon because often you delete keyframes but you can't delete everything unless you expand the tree

Clear Timeline Command I gave you a "deep" delete with ERC, now here's its brother: Select a keyframe or tweener, and this command will clear out the entire timeline that it is sitting on. THERE IS NO UNDO!

also for animation the stack tweener command is self evident?

Stack Tweener Ever wish you could oscillate along the bezier spline? This will let you! Stack up to six different sub-tweeners with configurable percentage weight for blending. Need more than six? Just stack in another stack!

I use the colour balance shader most

Fenric

tsarist said:

Fenric
I have your ERC and Pose Helper.
The problem is I have no idea what they do.
The description was vague and the instructions weren't very helpful.

I'm sorry about that. Pose Helper's main purpose in life is just to mirror poses, like the main promo shows. ERC is a anmiation helper tool, and that is a much more difficult one for me to help you with.

tsarist said:

When I used the Pose Helper, all it did was freeze up Carrara, but not actually help with the Pose.

Yes, I do remember that you have had a lot of trouble with it. I really don't know why your system doesn't like it, as that is one of the simpler and more stable plugins. It doesn't use external libraries, and honestly doesn't do anything all that complicated.

I was going to buy Pose and Shading Tools 2, because it was on sale and looks like it could be useful, but I'm not really sure what it does, so I'm going to hold off.

Pose Tranfer Command is just like the PZ2 exporter, but instead of writing to a file it goes directly from one figure to another. Best results are if the two are the same (two A3's, two V4's, whatever). The same issues that hinder the exporter hinder this: morphs don't often work the way you'd like - it is best for Poses.

Stack Tweener lets you put more than one tweener in the same "slot"

Clear Timeline does exactly that - blasts out all of the keyframes (except key 0) for one timeline.

TowardAway is a shader that detects which side of a polygon is which, and lets you shade them differently. This is meant for "one sided" items, and doesn't really work on closed figures. (Think a plane, or a cylinder with no caps - not a cube)

ColorBalance lets you tweak the color component of a subshader. It does greyscaling, but also lets you tweak other color channels - I use the Hue (H) channel often to change the color of an existing texture map. (I personally use this one a LOT)

ColorSeparation lets you take one individual color channel out of a sub-shader, optionally making it greyscale. I use it to get better looking bump maps out of a texture. Very often, one channel is better than the others.

ColorMerge lets you build a color from multiple sub-shaders. This one was by request - don't remember who, exactly.

Mosk the Scribe

How do you use the toward away shader to make a plane or grid different on each side?

Headwax

Mosk the Scribe said:

How do you use the toward away shader to make a plane or grid different on each side?

hi try it in blender channel with the mixer operator

Fenric

Yep, like he said: It is a black/white shader meant for use in the Blender channel of the Mixer.