A Question for the Comics Creators

[Darryl]

Do any of you use the animation palette to create multiple panels on the same set? I've been trying to use it for a picture book that takes place in a two block city set and run into problems with ram usage, keyframing and other issues. Any thoughts on how to make it work... or whether I should try a different approach?

 

[Lyrra Madril]

I set up a pz3 for each panel, starting with the first one and editing as I go along. Takes less time to render and avoids the possibility of losing the whole set to a corrupt file

 

[3WC]

Which program? Poser? This animation palette is not something I know about.

 

[HaiGan]

It might make sense to use animation frames for sequential frames where the scene setup (scenery, lighting, camera angle, figures, clothing) for each is identical- for example, in the first frame two characters obliviously walk towards each other, in the second they bump into each other, in the third the characters react to their collision?

 

[Darryl]

For some some reason I got no alerts on this thread. Weird. @Lyrra Madril having everything in one vulnerable file is certainly a point of concern and a good reason to consider splitting the files up by scene. I could get a number of panels per scene and avoid overtaxing the system. @HaiGan I actually have a sequence very similar to your scenario. It's one of the reasons I've been working with the animation panel. @3wComics yes Poser's animation panel. I use it for dynamic clothing as well as saving variations of pose and camera angle in still shots.

 

[Lyrra Madril]

I've worked with some very unstable programs over the years (poser 5 anyone?) so I'm just a wee bit paranoid about keeping my data safe.

That being said ... I do all the scenery set up in one file and the character was made in another and saved to library. Then when I need to make a frame in a sequence I start with the scene and add my characters in, set up the poses, and render. Then to make the next frame I save as, alter the poses and camera and render again. Yes I do end up with gigantic stacks of files to burn off to DVD, but I'd rather have 8 files and not need them than 1 and lose it. I've played that game before and it's no fun I'm really dreading the giant ornithopter action scene in chapter 4. Poser is going to hate me very much. Chances of that file corrupting are going to be very good.

I have used the animation thing to get mixes of two expressions or two poses, or to tone down expressions that were too strong. Until you get into the dialog sections you don't really realize how few expression sets are around. I end up doing a lot of mixing and matching.

I'm actually stalled at the moment .... I ran out of male character clothing textures. So I'm taking a brief break from the book to make a few (dozen) sets for various outfits so I can dress my people uniquely. Then I need to make some older people faces, male and female. When I made a character breakdown of all the people I need I have a lot of old and middleaged men/women listed and I know have maybe 5 prebuilt.

LM

 

[mdbruffy]

I wish I had something to add to this. When I do my comics, I also set up the scene, render and save, make adjustments, render and save. Right now, I just finished my latest story and I have a folder with 689 scene files that have to be saved to DVD. But, on the positive side, I never lost a scene.

 

[spearcarrier]

One thing I do to speed things up is use backdrops like what is found with the cyclorama. This is also used in professional animation from time to time. I'll render the city scene and put it in the background. Helps with Bride because it happens in an entire university.

 

[English Bob]

I use the animation palette regularly. Even if the scene isn't for a sequential story line, I often generate several views and/or poses from the same set-up, as if it was a virtual photo session. I set the whole lot to render while I do something else (eat, sleep...) then pick and choose which shots I want to keep. You can also use this approach as a flexible undo system: when you think of tweaking a pose or something, do it on a new frame in case you change your mind once you see the render.

Memory usage has never been a problem for me, although I do have rather a lot of the stuff. But keyframes themselves don't take up very much memory at all. However if you're introducing lots of props or figures which appear in one frame each and then go off-stage, you may be better off splitting your scene up into several sub-scenes.

My advice:

1. Be careful with your keyframes. If in doubt, keyframe everything - it's better than going back a frame and finding your carefully crafted pose has been reduced to the average of the poses before and after it. Poser doesn't always seem to keyframe everything you think it should have; if in doubt, expand the figure hierarchy and check it.
2. Further to the above - if you really have keyframes on everything, this shouldn't matter, but I always set the entire palette to linear too. Spline interpolation can too easily fling everything all over the shop. If you do turn out to have a missing keyframe, it will make it easier to recover from, and sometimes the intermediate step might even be useful!
3. Separate your dynamic simulations from your 'photoshoot' timeline. Although it's possible to integrate the two, you'll get more control by having a separate scene file which is just for simulating dynamic cloth - it's what I do, anyway, although it initially seems like more work. Export the clothing for each frame, and apply it as a morph in your photoshoot scene.

Hope that helps!

 

[Darryl]

I use the animation palette regularly. Even if the scene isn't for a sequential story line, I often generate several views and/or poses from the same set-up, as if it was a virtual photo session. I set the whole lot to render while I do something else (eat, sleep...) then pick and choose which shots I want to keep. You can also use this approach as a flexible undo system: when you think of tweaking a pose or something, do it on a new frame in case you change your mind once you see the render.

Memory usage has never been a problem for me, although I do have rather a lot of the stuff. But keyframes themselves don't take up very much memory at all. However if you're introducing lots of props or figures which appear in one frame each and then go off-stage, you may be better off splitting your scene up into several sub-scenes.

My advice:

1. Be careful with your keyframes. If in doubt, keyframe everything - it's better than going back a frame and finding your carefully crafted pose has been reduced to the average of the poses before and after it. Poser doesn't always seem to keyframe everything you think it should have; if in doubt, expand the figure hierarchy and check it.
2. Further to the above - if you really have keyframes on everything, this shouldn't matter, but I always set the entire palette to linear too. Spline interpolation can too easily fling everything all over the shop. If you do turn out to have a missing keyframe, it will make it easier to recover from, and sometimes the intermediate step might even be useful!
3. Separate your dynamic simulations from your 'photoshoot' timeline. Although it's possible to integrate the two, you'll get more control by having a separate scene file which is just for simulating dynamic cloth - it's what I do, anyway, although it initially seems like more work. Export the clothing for each frame, and apply it as a morph in your photoshoot scene.

Hope that helps!

This is helpful Bob. I was looking for some thoughts on "best practices"from those that use the palette. Item number 3 is of particular interest. I have a couple of figures using dynamic clothes and am concerned about having to stretch out the timeline to accommodate the simulations. Not sure of the workflow though since I can only open one Poser file at a time. I guess I'd need to save each pose to the library, load the "posing" file, simulate, and export multiple copies of each clothing item to use as morph targets in the main scene.

By the end of the sequence of stills the clothing item will have multiple posing morphs. Sounds tedious but sounds like a plan as well.

Thanks

 

[English Bob]

I have a couple of figures using dynamic clothes and am concerned about having to stretch out the timeline to accommodate the simulations. Not sure of the workflow though since I can only open one Poser file at a time. I guess I'd need to save each pose to the library, load the "posing" file, simulate, and export multiple copies of each clothing item to use as morph targets in the main scene.

By the end of the sequence of stills the clothing item will have multiple posing morphs. Sounds tedious but sounds like a plan as well.

You've got it. It is tedious to maintain a separate scene file for each character, and to do all the dynamics work in separate sessions, but like all workflow related things it gets easier the more you do it. Another advantage is that when (not if) you want to change something, you can just add another frame to your main scene. Save the pose, simulate the cloth, and you're done. There's no need to do things in the order that they'll appear in the final comic.

The alternative, as you've noted, is to extend the timeline so that there are 'settling' frames between the ones you actually plan to render. However this approach can be problematic if your figure moves around the scene at random, or if you realise that you need an extra shot to fit in with a new idea. I've had instances where it ended up looking distinctly odd, because the figure had effectively run across the scene at supersonic speed. You then have to put so many extra frames in that the whole thing becomes painful to work with.

 

[Lyrra Madril]

you know .. you could probably approach one of the python coders like Netherworks and see if he can make a dynamic-morph-spawning thingy to take some of the more repetitive work out of it.

Is anyone else in here working on Victorian/ Steampunk stuff? I'm doing a huge batch of M4 clothing textures and I can add a few more sets if there are requests. Dressing all my extras is a pain and then some!

LM

 

[Darryl]

@English Bob Would I need a separate file for each figure? I think Poser has a "simulate all" option but I thought each sim ran separately if you didn't request that.

@Lyrra Madril I wonder if that new Injection Files option in PP11 would do the trick? If I could create an injection file without saving out an obj first it would save a lot of time.

 

[Lyrra Madril]

Darryl - it needs to be a morph and then you can export all the morphs as one PMD-INJ. Which means flipping though each frame and spawning each morph. I've had some weird results when exporting odd types on morphs with custom programming in them and suchlike, but a plain vanilla morph should be no trouble. The resulting INJ does work in poser 10

 

[English Bob]

you know .. you could probably approach one of the python coders like Netherworks and see if he can make a dynamic-morph-spawning thingy to take some of the more repetitive work out of it.

Applying the morphs can be time consuming, and I thought there used to be a script that would apply a folder full of OBJ files but I can't find it. It's not totally out of my own scripting abilities, but it's a 'nice to have' so I haven't put any effort into the project.

To be clear, my suggestion to Darryl is to simulate each frame separately, in which case there's no great opportunity for automation that I can see. For myself, I often do extra work on the exported cloth sims such as smoothing or adding thickness, so it isn't something I've really explored.

Would I need a separate file for each figure? I think Poser has a "simulate all" option but I thought each sim ran separately if you didn't request that.

My personal preference is to keep the simulation file as simple as possible - I strip out everything except for the figure itself, and any props that the cloth should collide against, so I'd probably opt for separate files for each figure. However that detail is down to your personal preference. If your figures are getting close enough that their clothes might need to collide against each other then you'd definitely need a multi-figure sim file.

 

[Lyrra Madril]

There are several utilities that let you load a bunch of obj as morphs all at once. I use Poser File Editor, which is the Swiss Army knife of poser tools.
LM

 

[English Bob]

I use Poser File Editor, which is the Swiss Army knife of poser tools.

I probably use PFE every day - it's associated with most of the Poser library files on my PC. I've used it to add a single morph off-line, but I never noticed it could do several at once. I probably should have read the manual, or something weird like that. Thanks for the tip!

 

[Lyrra Madril]

The manual for PFE, as far as I can tell, was written in German by a programmer and translated. Its just a wee bit tricky to figure out sometimes, partly the language issue but partly the difference in mindset between programmer and user. The poser manual is just as impenetrable for the same reason - I don't need to know how the tool works at a code level, I need to know what it DOES in plain language.

Example: the morph tighten brush compares the vertices of the subject to the target and adjusts according to a set distance. What it actually does .. moves the selected mesh polys to fit the target figure.

It might just be me .. but what I really need is a manual for PFE with a section titled "How to Do..." and broken into the kinds of things I need to do fairly often. Remove embedded geometries, reset the figure name, remove all morphs, convert cr2 to pose format, set morphs to crosstalk, and so forth. It can do all these things, but how isn't immediately obvious. And of course I forget if I haven't been using it for a while and I have to go back and read my cryptic notes to myself.

LM

 

[English Bob]

I've been a technical author in my time, and also a programmer, so I can be sympathetic with both sides. It can be very difficult for a lone developer who's been immersed in their work to get the detached viewpoint needed for a good manual - or indeed a good user interface, which is where the problem usually starts.

 

[Lyrra Madril]

Well if I get asked I'd be perfectly fine writing a manual / tutorial for some of these programs. I might do one for PFE just because I want one. Not sure how the maker would think about that

Favorite interface/ UI : Bryce
Least Favorite: DAZ Studio (WHY do they hide vital functions in a dropdown menu on a hidden tool, why?)

To nudge ourselves back on topic .....

What are your favorite and least favorite tools that you all use when working on comics?

LM