Best way to set up JCM's in conforming clothing.

[Gadget Girl]

So, my version of Poser is having some issues with freezing especially when I'm working on morphs and weight mapping. I've got a case open with SM about it, but in the mean time, I've having a hard time figuring out if some related issues I have are because Poser is freezing while I'm trying to set things up, or if it's because there's a better way to do things.

First off naming. I know that it's important that bones are named to match the figure you are conforming to. That's what let's them conform. Does it matter what I call my JCM's? For instance, I have one called lCollarTwist. Is Poser trying to be smart and set things up for me? Or is the name irrelevant from the stand point of conforming. The reason I ask, is that when I'm teaching to set up the JCMs, sometimes it won't let me change their value, as if they are already being controlled.

Which leads me to question number two. Is it better to have the master parameter on the clothing item, or on the figure it will conform to. So for the lCollarTwist, should Dusk's left collar be controlling it, or the clothing item's left collar?

 

[Ken1171]

There is a general rule for naming morphs, to include JCMs. If you look at the HW figures, JCMs are prefixed with "JCM", which makes sense. So your morph would be called "JCMlCollarTwist" - BUT you have to be careful if the figure doesn't already have a morph with that name, because if it does, that will be driving YOUR morph, no matter what you do. There are 2 possibilities:

1. The JCM morph exists in the base figure with the exact same name: it will drive your morph automatically when conformed, which may or may not be what you want. Always check what morphs the figure has before creating your own, to know if they will be driven automatically, or if you have to hook them up yourself.

2. The JCM morph does not exist in the base figure. In this case you will have to drive it yourself, by attaching it to some dial that is driven by the figure.

For example, Dawn has a JCMlThighSideOut and JCMrThighSideOut JCMs that control the thigh shape when extended to the sides. If you want to create your own, or fix an existing one imported from Dawn (the most common case), just use the Morphing Tool (if you are in Poser) to fix the morph shape instead of creating a new one. If you create a new one, make sure you delete the existing one FIRST, or else you might end up with the morph applying TWICE because it's driven by 2 morphs on the clothing.

As for your 2nd question, you will NEVER create a master parameter on the base figure that will drive a morph on the clothing. Instead, if the param doesn't exist, you have to find a dial that is driven by the figure on your outfit, and use that to drive your morph by hooking it to that dial. For example, if Dawn didn't already have a JCMlThighSideOut JCM to reshape the left thigh when extended to the side, you could simply hook your JCM to the "Side-Side" dial on the outfit's left thigh. That will have the same effect as being driven by a morph that exists on the figure.

But be advised that there are some unresolved issues with fixing or creating JCMs with the Morphing Tool in Poser. I have described the details on my "Superhero for Dawn" thread because I was being unable to finish the JCMs because Poser 11.0.3 had issues that made it impossible to use the Morphing Tool when the figure was posed - which is what happens when working with JCMs. SMS has included some instructions to work around this issue on the 11.0.4 documentation.

Hope it helps.

 

[Gadget Girl]

Thanks Ken. Knowing for sure that if I name my JCM the same as an existing one, it will get driven with that is a huge help. I kind of suspected that was happening, but I wasn't sure. Actually figures crossed I may have finally resolved my Poser issues (by which I means the ones specific to my computer). I think another issue I created for myself was trying to use the rigging from the clothing resource for Dusk. When I started using Dusk's skeleton in the setup room instead, a lot of my issues went away.

If your curious, the reason I wasn't using the fitting room is because there's been something really buggy in my fitting room where the figure I get has no geometry. I'm going to be experimenting in a bit, to see if I got that part fixed too, because it's been really annoying (and didn't used to happen).

 

[Ken1171]

The Fitting Room simplified the rigging process quite a bit comparing to the Setup Room. Nowadays I reserve the SR only for when I need to add new bones for the rigging, or when I need to edit the groupings. Everything else can be done in the FR with a couple of mouse clicks.

If parts of the geometry disappear when you rig it, it means something is wrong with the mesh. If it's the mesh, you have to go back to the modeling program and check it for issues like duplicated verts, duplicated faces, inverted face normals (common issue depending on how its modeled), etc. Those issues may not be blatantly visible because previews don't bother to show them, but in many cases they will show "artifacts" in renders. Those can be black smudges or parts that disappear or looks odd.

If you rig a mesh with issues, crazy things may happen, like holes that appear when the clothing is posed, parts that disappear after grouped, black smudges that show in renders, and so on.

 

[Gadget Girl]

If parts of the geometry disappear when you rig it, it means something is wrong with the mesh.

That's probably true most of the time. In this case the problem with the mesh, was not in the geometry, but in the permissions on my computer. I've been having lots of Poser issues, and SM finally seems to have helped me figure it out. Now that I've fixed the permissions on my Runtimes, the very same mesh goes through the fitting room just fine.

 

[Ken1171]

Wow, I didn't know permissions could do such things. Good to know.^^

 

[Gadget Girl]

Yeah, I had no idea either. We figured it out, because at one point they had me running the collect scene inventory script, and when I did I got an error that Poser was missing. Which was funny since I was running the script inside of Poser.

 

[Pendraia]

Interesting...how do you check the permissions and what should it be on?

 

[Ken1171]

Quite so often SMS has been asking people NOT to install things in the same drive as the operating system because of the permission restrictions. Even if we login as administrators, and even if we have an admin account, Windows will *still* deny write access to the system folders in drive C. I have seen this causing Poser to malfunction, but never to cause meshes to display incorrectly. My Poser is installed on its own separate drive, so I have no issues with that, but I remember not being able to save personal configurations in the past, where Poser would give me errors when trying to set some options. Windows would not allow Poser to save its own configuration to disk, or have full access to its cached data. It was not enough to run Poser with admin credentials, since some folders were protected by Windows at system level. Keeping Poser off the OS drive can avoid all of that, though Poser 11 has fixed much of this by moving user data to a roaming folder in Windows 8 and 10 nowadays.

 

[Pendraia]

Mine is installed on my D: drive not my C: drive I install most programs there. So if I've read your post correctly Ken this shouldn't be an issue for me?

 

[RAMWolff]

I'm running Windows 10, installed the Poser main Runtime in the C:\Users\Public\Documents\Poser 11 Content\Runtime folder which is the default I guess for this version.. no issues with permissions that I've seen so far. My MAIN MAIN Runtime folder, of course, is inside of the DAZ Studio, My Library folder which is on my D drive.

 

[Ken1171]

No matter in what drive we install Poser, the program and user configuration will always be saved on drive C. I think this cannot be changed. I am not sure, but I think Windows has changed how it handles program data between Win7 and Win8, introducing the roaming and local profiles. I have stopped having permission denied issues after upgrading from Win7 to 10 - I have skipped Win8 altogether. But I have disabled UAC, so that reduces this kind of issue by a great deal. We can't really disable UAC in Win10 as we could in Win7, though. We can only make it less annoying.

 

[Gadget Girl]

In my case, I'm on a Mac. By default Poser likes runtimes in the Shared folder, so that's where I keep them, because everything there should have read/write access. However something went wrong with my permissions for that folder. For another mac person, what I did was to choose the shared folder (the one in Macintosh HD/Users/Shared, not the one in Macintosh HD/Users/myaccount/Shared) Get Info and at the very bottom there's a place to change permissions to Read/Wirte for everyone. Then I chose the little gear and told it to Apply to Enclosed Items so that it would do the same for all sub-folders.

 

[Ken1171]

I did the same thing in Windows 10, by giving the Poser runtime my user account Read/Write/Delete/Create/etc credentials, which forced Poser to recognize me as an administrator in spite of what UAC may think about it. If it's ME logged in, Windows will give me full access to the Poser contents. End of problem.

The combination of Windows 10 local policy + my anti-virus security have basically locked everything up, so I need to grand myself special access to any folders I need *individually*. Windows 10 will NOT allow me to grand myself "God mode" everywhere, like it was possible in Win7. Believe me, that is a good thing.

 

[Pendraia]

After battling with my mum's laptop yesterday I'm not upgrading to Win 10 it's a horrible program. It wouldn't allow me to set up Chrome to load Gmail and facebook for her automatically until I ran it as administrator and then had to log off and log back on for it show up. I logged off to do something else for her, then logged on and it was fixed. It was driving me batty. Not to mention all the crap on the desktop that only confuses her. She's in her 80's...

 

[Ken1171]

You can configure if you want to boot up to the start menu or to the desktop.

 

[Pendraia]

How? Sorry I don't know Win 10 at all and so far I'm not impressed with it.

 

[Ken1171]

You can either set Win10 to run in "Tablet mode", or set the start menu to show in full screen. To set the start menu to always use full screen mode without switching to tablet mode, click the Windows button and type "Start Menu", click the "Start Settings" and check the "Use Start full screen" option. Now whenever you click the Start button, it will open in full screen. This should look just like it used to be in Windows 8, which I personally hated on a desktop. If you, instead, want everything to always open in full screen, enable "tablet mode" instead. You can do this by clicking the "Notifications" icon on the system tray, and clicking the "Tablet Mode" button to toggle it on.

I personally LOVE everything about Win10, but you got to know it first. Almost everything is highly configurable. It's not perfect, but I think it's the best thing MS has done so far. In the upcoming "Anniversary" update, Win10 will expand Cortana's abilities to find files anywhere on disk and do much more than just setting appointments or checking the weather. I would find it more useful if Cortana would instead read web pages and my emails, but maybe MS will add that in later updates.

MS has announced that Win10 will be the last Windows version. From now on, they will add functionality to it as demanded by the public, instead of making new versions. This means there won't be a Win11, but instead a Win10 that will keep evolving constantly with every update. We will be getting new features every now and then without having to buy a new version. If you join the "Insiders Club", you can even try and test the new features months before the rest of the world. Win10 comes with a customer feedback feature built-in, where you can submit your suggestions, and if enough people share the same ideas, they will add it to Windows.

So Win10 is not just another version, but a whole new approach and concept.

 

[Pendraia]

How do I get it to not show tablet mode at all? Just the old fashioned Win7 format? If there are no more versions then I may need to investigate Linux...

 

[Ken1171]

First of all, open Settings --> Tablet Mode, and uncheck tablet mode. On the next option below it, set "When I sign in" --> "Go to the desktop". This should make Win10 start exactly like it was in Win7. You can also remove all app tiles from the Start Menu, and make it look like the older Windows versions. You never have to see apps if you don't want to, though I think you might be missing some good stuff if you do. As opposed to how it was in Win8, Win10 will not force you to use apps, and you can make it look like it was in Win7 if you like it. That's how I actually use it here, though I do preserve a few apps in my start menu. ^^