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Full Body Morph Tutorials???

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#1

Hello–

Is there, anywhere, a tutorial or book that tells, STEP BY STEP AND IN DETAIL (emphasis on both those factors!) how to create full-body morphs for Poser figures? I’ve done multiple searches on the 'net and found very few tutorials, all of them either very, very skimpy (and usually written for doing clothing), or written on the assumption that the morphs are being made within Poser using the “magnet” feature. I haven’t been able to find ANYthing that tells how to do a full-body morph using a modeling program such as ZBrush or Carrara to do the modeling.

Thanks for your help!

#2

Not sure if this helps:
http://www.southerngfx.co.uk/general/tutorials/posertutorial/morphtargets.htm

#3

Thanks, Kaz, but it doesn’t-- it’s a great tutorial for making morph targets for individual body parts-- in fact, it’s the one from which I learned to do that-- but it doesn’t say a thing about full-body morphs.

Obviously, there’s a way to do them, because people do them… and I sure wish somebody who knows how to do them would write a good tutorial about it!

#4

It’s actually pretty simple. Here’s how:

  1. Export the model to be morphed from Poser. Be sure that the “No World Transformations” checkbox is on in the export dialogue box.

  2. Import the model into ZBrush.

  3. Sculpt your morph target. Be careful not to do anything that will change the model’s geometry (for example, Tool>Modifiers>Deformation>Divide is a no-no).

  4. When finished, use the XFlipExport ZScript found in Pixolator’s post.

  5. Start Poser and import the modified mesh.

  6. Use the grouping tool and press “Spawn Props” This creates a separate object for each of the groups in the model.

  7. Save each object

  8. Start a new document and load your unmodified mesh from the Library

  9. Select each group and apply the appropriate object to that group as a morph target. Give the morph a value of 1 before moving on to the next.

  10. Select the Body, then use Figure>Create Full Body Morph to create a FBM dial.

  11. Go back to each body part and set the individual dials to 0

  12. Back on the body, test your new morph dial. It should activate all of the morphs.

  13. Save your modified character.

As you can see, it’s very simple in practice. Just time consuming. Especially if you have a figure with lots of parts. However, you only need to create morph dials for the body parts that are actually changed by your modeling in ZBrush. For example, if you are creating something for Michael with a modified head, neck, chest and shoulders, but haven’t touched the rest of the body, then you can simply discard those unmodified parts in step 7, rather than saving them.

Hope that helps!

#5

Wow, thanks, Aurick!! I was trying that general method and couldn’t get it to work. If it’s not too much bother, I have some further questions about the following steps in your list:

Step 1: When exporting the model, do you export it as a morph target?

Step 5: When importing into Poser, there’s a dialogue box with a bunch of selections about figure size and so on. Which of these should be checked, if any, and what parameters should be set, f any?

Step 6: This is where I really can’t seem to “get it.” When I click on the “spawn prop,” nothing happens-- the prop doesn’t appear in the prop library, I don’t get any kind of option to save the prop, and it doesn’t appear that Poser saves it anywhere. I’m probably missing some little step, but have no idea what. The Poser manual is almost worse than useless-- the instructions for using the grouping tool are sketchy at best and don’t deal with this particular topic at all.

Thanks again for your help!

#6

just wondering , but dont the Daz3d guys use Zbrush for some of their models ?

#7

For Step 1, you don’t actually have to change any of the settings unless you have posed your character already. In that case, you would need to check the bottom box.

For Step 5, you probably don’t need to change anything, either. However, if you look at the imported model and see that its “inside out”, then check the box to flip normals on import. I’ve found Poser to be very unpredictable as to whether or not that is necessary, so you really won’t know until you import the model for the first time. The other stuff doesn’t matter, at all.

For Step 6, spawning props doesn’t create new figures or add anything to your library. It simply breaks your model up within the document into a separate prop for each group. You then go to File>Export. The export hierarchy will show each of the new props. You export them one at a time.

Hope that helps!

The Namek: I know that ZBrush was used for some of the morphs for Victoria 3. In fact, you can tell which ones by setting the morph to a value past 1. If the morph starts to get jagged and break apart, it was created with a points modeler. If it stays clean, it was created with ZBrush. The reason why this happens is that the ZBrush modeler affects several points at once with a smooth falloff. This interpolates the effect between the area of maximum effect and the areas of no effect. With a points modeler, it is all but impossible to move points in a similar manner. As a result, when the morph is at a value of 1 or less it looks like it was intended to. But when the morph is pushed past 1 you start seeing that the points are actually moving at different speeds, which causes the morph to break apart.

#8

Thanks a lot, Aurick! I really appreciate it-- I’ve gone nuts trying to find this info on my own!

#9

Take a look at this tutorial. It might help. Renderosity