Any idea when we will see some more hats and or head dress type props? Also the socks and shorts you used for your last unit.
Sorry, I know I am late with a lot of this stuff. I will try and get to it soon. I am asking for some time off, if I get it I will try to use some of that time modeling and rigging.
Thanks Bjorn, and thanks for the tutorial, Plotinus, I tried my hand at it.
HOLY HAND GRENADE, you're not kidding when you said it sucks trying to get all of the facets in the right group! I tried working on the Janissary coat I mentioned earlier (which is a lot more complicated than some models) and I keep missing things in the tail. I've tried changing to wireframe view, as well as looking at it from every angle, but it's still funny.
On the other hand, the model is already broken up into groups (you can separate them in Bryce). Is it possible to take advantage of this and not have to use the Auto Grouping tool? What about importing one body part at a time, and then linking them into one figure? I this what the IK chains do?
Have you every done this? And also, how do you group more than one prop together? I've read through the help section and I can't find it mentioned anywhere.
Bryce rigging can be adapted to Poser, but it is not a good idea with clothing. You need to have the clothing bend and twist a little.
You can link props several different ways depending on what you are trying to do.
1. Dirt simple method. Load both Props, export them together and re-import that OBJ. It will now be a single prop.
2. Parenting. Load both props, make 1 the parent to the other. The child will follow the parent around.
3. Parenting variation. Load both props. Make a tiny mesh or primitive and place it at the point where mesh 1 and mesh 2 meet. This can be used as an animation controller. You parent the ball to mesh 1 and parent mesh 2 to the ball. This is bryce style rigging which I have used on a lot of stuff. The benifits of this are that they more or less stay together and you can move the mesh two in any direction by just rolling around the ball in different rotations. The downside is that they are not a single object but 3 and you can to keep track of 'em. For example, you have a tank you parent the Animation Controller 1(AC1) to the chassis, turret to the AC1, AC2 to the turrent, the barrel to AC2, AC3 to the turret and the hatch to AC3. Kinda messy real quick. Since to rotate the gun, and raise the barrel, you have to find and rotate ac1, then find and elevate ac2. But it works flawlessly. And, it is a simple wayt to make distortion free movement along the whole range of movement with out the weirdness of the setup room possibly messing it up.
4. Morphing object. (variation of dirt simple method, but with movement). Load prop1 & 2. Postion them in the neutral arrangement (usually the base/starting position). Export as BaseOBJ.obj. Move Mesh 2 to the 2nd position. Export as Morph1.obj. clear the scene. Import BaseOBJ.obj. Important, do not move anything do not scale anything. Now load a Morph Target. Navigate to where you saved Morph1.obj, rename the morph from the name of the file to something more useful. This will give you a morphing object. The 0 setting will be the baseobj setting, the 1 on the dial will be the Morph1.obj setting. The advantages are many. Easy to control. Single object (faster render, less ram used). It is not as messy... to move something you just go in to prop and spin the dial. The disadvantages are distortion and such along the range of movement. And, limited range of movement. There is no doubt some clever way to limit the distortion in between position 0 and 1, but I do not know it.
5. Yucky method. Load both props. export them together. Reimport that obj. Go to the setup room. Make a skeleton. Do the grouping. Do the joint parameters. Advantages as many. They include single object with minimal memory use. relatively Distorition movement if you do your Joint Parameter edits right. Simple operation, etc... the disadvantages are the most difficult and convoluted of the methods. Some minor mesh deformations near the point of movement is almost always there.
