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Need Software with Bones - Sugestions Please

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#1

After making my first 3000 pixol wide image I am convinced I need a better way to pose my textured models for Z-brush. Right now I am building charecters in parts and placing them together. (this takes to long and creates seems)
What I want to do is:

  1. make a full, textured charecter in Z-brush

  2. Export into a program where I can pose him

  3. Import him back into Z-Brush with the original texture intact. (I know the material info will be lost)

Since all I will be doing is posing charecters and not rendering or animating I don’t want to spend alot on a 2nd piece of soft ware.
So are there any sugestions on cheep software that will do what I want?

Thanks,

Shaun

#2

I would actually recommend waiting for the next version of ZBrush, which is a free upgrade to all registered users. As Pixolator has already posted, the new version will have many new features aimed at this kind of work.

More information about ZBrush features and release date will be posted as it becomes available.

#3

On the cheap side (a few hundred dollars) someone may recommend Animation:Master, but I am sending out a pre-emptive caution. A:M has been extremely buggy in the past, but it is currently fairly stable (ver. 10-10.5) compared to past versions (ver. 9 & 9.5). BUT, it is a very good bet it will be very buggy in a future released version due to their peculiar development cycle. Over the years, users have tended to skip one or two versions due to extreme instability in the software any time that they add significant new features, or do a code-overhaul. Because they stick to a strict development schedule, they only update a given version up until the release of the next version. If the previous version is still too buggy to actually run on your computer, then you will have no choice but to upgrade to the next version to get any new improvements to its stability. Additionally, the users are the beta testers, and A:M is never fully beta-tested on multiple systems in-house. They have and I bet they will continue to release software that simply will not run on the average user’s system. Complaints about this issue will simply result in the recommendation that the user does a fresh install of the latest OS with all the updates for the OS and hardware drivers, AND refrains from installing any other software on their system.

Another factor is that A:M is not very friendly to any other 3D application, since it completely eschews polygons. It uses a form of bezier patches, and has no native ability to import polygon models as patch models or export a patch model as a polygon model. A third-party add-in allows .obj import/export, and it works well, but patches are much ‘heavier’ than polygons, so a high-poly model is going to put a huge strain on your system if converted to patches in A:M. The boning and posing of models in A:M is probably one of its greatest strengths, and it might just be a viable solution if you are working with relatively low-poly modeling. I have used A:M to create patch models and successfully imported .obj exports from A:M into ZBrush. I have not tried to go full circle with a model from ZBrush imported into A:M, boned it, posed it, exported to .obj and imported back into ZBrush, but I am confident that it can be done. The resulting ZBrush model should retain its original UV mapping, and it should accept its original texture without an issue.

However, I’ve removed A:M from my computer so I can’t test this. (I’ve gone BACK to Lightwave!) There are several A:M/ZBrush users that frequent this forum, so maybe they can verify this.

In short, if money is an issue, I suggest you follow Aurick’s advice to wait (a short time, I hope) until the next version of ZBrush. He knows some stuff about the next version that he cannot divulge, but what he and Pixolator have so far told us on ZBCentral is that the next version will allow better re-posing of textured ZSphere-based models. Unfortunately, the specifics are still somewhat vague.

Maybe some Poser expert can speak to the viability of using Poser to bone and pose a ZBrush model. Poser is actually cheaper than A:M.

#4

I should have mentioned, I have AM 2003. I love the program but it can’t import poly’s with textures.

Thanks for the help

Shaun

#5

Do you know about Arthur Wasalek’s .obj importer? Does he have a version that works for A:M 2003? The most recent version I used keeps the UV mapping intact, but as with any .obj importer that I’ve ever heard of, you have to manually apply the separately saved texture in the application in which the .obj is imported. I know that it is possible to apply the texture from ZBrush in A:M, but it may not be readily apparent or intuitive.

To pose an .obj model exported from ZBrush, you probably wouldn’t need the texture in A:M, unless there was a critical adjustment that needed to be made to the pose based on the texture of the model. (?)

Normally, I would just pose the untextured model and then bring it back into ZBrush and apply the texture from the original ZBrush model.

#6

I don’t know anything about AM… but you can get Poser4 for around a hundred bucks and it will allow you to do exactly what you want to do!
Take care,
Michael

#7

I’m using Poser 5 and doing exactly the same thing. I love it :slight_smile:

#8

“Normally, I would just pose the untextured model and then bring it back into ZBrush and apply the texture from the original ZBrush model.”

So my workflow would go like this?

  1. Make and texture a model in Z-brush
  2. Export as DFX or OBJ and Import into AM and forget about the texture.
  3. Bone and Pose in AM, then export back to Zbrush
  4. then Zbrush will know how to apply the old texture even though the mesh has moved?

I don’t currently have AM installed but if you guys think it will work I will dig out my AM disk.

I guess the big question I have is if Zbrush will know how to re-apply a texture to a posed mesh as long as no new polys are added. IF that works then I could use any mesh editor to pose something right?

Sorry for all the questions but I’m trying to figure out the best work flow so I’m not wasting time.

As for Poser, I have never checked it out. Maybe I will download the demo this weekend.

Thanks again!

Shaun

#9

I loaded AM 9.5. I tried to import a low poly DFX and AM crashed every time. Even if there is a way to get it to work, AM is just to picky to be part of my work flow.

I also imported a DFX into Amorphium, deformed it (but didn’t ad or subtract polys), then loaded it back into Z-brush. The original texture got messed up.

Guess the next thing to try is poser.

#10

You have a choice. For about the same money, $100 or so, you can get Poser 4, or upgrade A:M to 10 or maybe 10.5, real soon now. I had the same experiences with 9.5 that you describe above. It is almost completely worthless crap, so I have sworn off of A:M completely. From what I hear, v10 is much better, but a ‘good’ A:M version is still buggier than any other three applications currently on the market, COMBINED, IMO. (The original Poser v5 probably came in a respectable second to A:M v9.5 for bugginess, from what I have read, but I understand that Poser v5 is much improved with the patches.)

OR, as mentioned above, wait for the next version of ZBrush to see if it will meet your needs.

Poser is made to work with .obj from the ground up, so that is a big plus, but with the 3rd-party plug-in for A:M, it will work very well with .obj. The downside to A:M is that it is not good with high-density polygon meshes, since each polygon is actually a resource-hungry Hash Patch in A:M. This is fine for true low-poly models, but, for example, I would not want to transfer the higher-quality poser human meshes into A:M. They will all have too many patches for my system, once they are in A:M.

With A:M or anything else for that matter, you do not really want to touch DXF, especially with trying to use ZBrush texturing, since DXF doesn’t maintain UV coordinates or any texturing info. So that is what happened to you with Amorphium. You lost the original UV coordinates when exporting as DXF. Don’t do that. Work in .obj only.

In 9.5, and I assume v10 of A:M, the .obj plug-in worked well with UV coordinates. Of course, when you go from one app to another, you may need to flip the texture to get it to work on an imported model. Every app has it’s own way of handling the texture, and texture flipping is sometimes necessary. I don’t remember that being necessary with A:M, but it’s been awhile.

So your steps outlined above for working with a ZBrush model are exactly correct EXCEPT that it doesn’t work for DXF – only OBJ – please forget DXF! And the steps are also correct for Poser as well. Of course, it is possible to create materials, assign textures, and get the model looking great within A:M or Poser, and then export the texture from A:M or Poser and use it in ZBrush. But if you already have it textured in ZBrush, you can completely ignore the texture in A:M or Poser and just do boning and posing in those apps. (And my preference is to work on texturing in ZBrush, not anything else.) And you can also use the texture from ZBrush to render the textured model in A:M or Poser, if you would like, though I don’t really like either A:M’s or Poser’s native renderers. It might be necessary for testing before exporting a posed model back into ZBrush.

#11

Well I am going to upgrade AM to 10.5 this weekend and get the OBJ plug in. I have not had luck with that plug-in in the past. If this doesn’t work I am done with AM for good.

As far as Poser, could some one maybe help me try before I buy? If I uploade a small textured model, could someone with Poser give it a simple new pose, and e-mail it back to me so I can load it in Z and see the result?

Sorry for all the questions but I have learned so much from this forum!

Thanks to everyone who posted.

Shaun

#12

I can do that for you. As long as the file is under 2 megs (under 1 is even better) you can email me at [email protected] and I’ll pose it for you. You can also grab demos of Poser at www.curiouslabs.com, btw.

#13

I will send the file this weekend. Thanks!

#14

Not a problem :slight_smile:

#15

Would Motionbuilder fall under this catagory? Right now they have a very good deal going for learning editions. I was costing something like $100 but they were also giving it away. I think that it’s available through some Magazines, like Digit this month. I know nothing about it, but the guys in Cinema have been talking alot about it…
D.T…
P.S. I think the Commercial version is something like $4,000 or so.

#16

I recieved poser a couple of days ago. Hopefuly I can bone some charecters this weekend.

Thanks for everyone’s input!

Shaun

#17

i cannot recomment animation master at all . it has in principle a lot of good features, but in reality they work in an erratic way only.
i had this before zbrush. i had version 8 and 9. 8 was told to be stable :frowning: i had 5 to 10 crashes every day. things worked one day the other not. very annoying. animation master, in the final days i had it on my harddisk destroyed in its last desastrous crash, a lot of data and the whole tree structure of the harddisk… well i lost quite a lot of my work. not to mention the days i needed to get the computer working again…

whoops - i just found the second page of the thread.
:rolleyes: but anyway, i leave this post as a warning…

#18

I must be missing something…but I thought that in the ZSphere tutorial the image of the dancer was posed! are we speaking of a different type of posing here? Just looking for information and trying to follow this thread.

#19

hi deevee, i think we are talking about modeling and texturing a character in "leonardo da vinci "pose (so using srong symmetrie) and then after this is finished, pose it to the liking.

#20

I highly recommend Motion Builder. It supports character rigging, and will even do some decent rendering. It also supports the major motion capture formats so if you have access to any libraries (free or otherwise) you’ll be able to use them in animating your character. It has one of the best auto rigging setups I’ve seen, rock solid ik and constraints, supports facial animation and lipsync, and it’s expression system is very intuitive and powerful - even for the novice. I use it at home and in a production environment. If you goto www.3dbuzz.com you can also download 4 large volumes of video tutorials for it as well, not to mention a couple for zbrush too if you’re interested ;]