My rather infrequent, and possibly apocryphal, 'books project'.

[3dcheapskate]

I couldn't help it, just corrected the alt geoms for flat hardbacks 5-8 - I'd inadvertantly nudged them all up by 0.00009 in Blender.
Once that was done I added the MT related ERC and... well, it's all done ! And the bit I put in the scripts to be able to cope with different sized stack figures seems to work too ! Three 24 book stacks each consisting of 3 BookStack8 figures, randomized with the existing scripts

 

[3dcheapskate]

One more thing I didn't do - set the limits and hide most of the parameters. I've just written a script to do it, but I thought it best to record the values I used in the 4 book stack

The reduced limits on the xRotate, zRotate are to stop accidental click-drags in the preview pane (or intentional use of the twist/rotate tools) from totally screwing things up, and on the yTran to prevent opening up gaps in the stack.
The proportions, size, and thickness were mainly to keep all the books around the same order of size and prevent ridiculous stacks with huge books on top of tiny books

 

[3dcheapskate]

...I forgot that the yTran of book 1 is different as it doesn't have to react to a 'Plump' of the book below. The yTran limits for all the other books are:

Min = -0.0024
Max = 0.01

 

[3dcheapskate]

A zip with the should-be-all-done-now CR2 (plus the script I used to set the parameter limits, initial values, visibility, etc), just as a backup...

 

[3dcheapskate]

Another couple of backup zips - bookstack8 is ready I think, but I'd like to release it along with the 16, 32, and 64 book ones, which aren't.
- The bookstack8 zip contains a proper runtime with the CR2, base OBJ, and alternate OBJs in the correct locations (it only includes alternate OBJs for books 5-8, and picks up the ones for books 1-4 from the BookStack4 installation). The Randomize/Reset scripts should work with it.
- The bookstack16 zip contains just a CR2 and OBJ in a character library subfolder. Books 1-8 are fully working, but for books 9-16 only the UV mapping, bones, and joint parameters are set up, but that's it - no alternate geometries or morphs. The Randomize/reset scripts will crash because when they get to book 9 they're trying to access parameters that don't yet exist.

I also have bookstack32 and bookstack64 base OBJs that I've imported into PP2014, taken into the setup room, applied the BookStack16 and BookStack32 skeletons respectively, added the extra bones for the new books and assigned each mesh to the appropriate bone, and started setting the joint parameters... but found that in Blender I had, yet again, inadvertently nudged book 17 and everything after it. No big problem, just a few more days of tedium.

And then I'll have to add the altgeoms and MTs for books 9-64 which is a lot of work, so I reckon this'll be a background task after I've got the 32 and 64 book stacks with their bones and joint parameters all done.

I've also added a zip of my Blender file for the 64 book stack. It's only got the base mesh for all 64 books - MTs and altgeoms still for books 1-4 only so far.

 

[3dcheapskate]

Slow but sure now - another backup zip containing just the new stuff for the BookStack16, i.e. a CR2, a base OBJ, and the altgeom OBJs for books 9-16 (It picks up the book 1-4 altgeom OBJs from the BookStack4 location, and the 5-8 OBJs from the BookStack8 location).

Zip also contains the Blender file for my 64 book base geometry, 16 book altgeoms, and 8book MTs

 

[3dcheapskate]

Oh dear, it's happened yet again - but it happened several steps back and I didn't notice !

This time the cause doesn't (at least on a quick initial shufti) appear to be a problem with numbDeltas.

The problem occurred somewhere between test02 and test03.

Test02: I'd exported the 16 book base mesh from Blender as an OBJ, imported that into PP2014, taken it into the setup room, applied the BookStack8 skeleton (UNchecking morphs and autogroup because I know they screw things up for my bookstack - I don't need that as I can screw things up just as well myself without any help thank you very much! ), and saved the new figure - remember that this is JUST to get an OBJ with the bones in the correct order, the CR2 is not used. Obviously the problem doesn't exist here as there are no morphs.

Test03: I edited a copy of the BookStack8 CR2 to pick up the 16 book stack OBJ that was created by test02, loaded that in PP2014 (books 9-16 will not be visible as they're not attached to any bone, so it should appear as just an 8 book stack), took it into the setup room, added bones for books 9-16, grouped the book 9-16 meshes to the relevant bones, maybe did some setup of the joint parameters for bones 9-16, and saved a new CR2. Unfortunately I didn't spot the fact that the morphs for books 1-8 were already screwed up.

(Note: I've just checked and BookStack8editFor16.cr2 in the zip wasn't edited at all - it's identical to BookStack8.cr2. So I can ignore that)

 

[3dcheapskate]

So it's back to what I did between test02 and test03. First thing, correct that BookStack8 editFor16.cr2 file (corrected CR2 and associated OBJ in attached zip). Just three edits to make - change the OBJ file it picks up (two lines to edit) and add a temporary geometry handler for top_of_stack

BookStack test02 edit1.obj is identical to BookStack16 test02.obj except for the group names

And when loaded into PP2014 it works exactly as it should

 

[3dcheapskate]

Thankfully it was the same old numbDeltas problem as before - all targetGeom MT PB xxx and targetGeom MT HBF xxx blocks had numbDeltas 88 when it should have been 60 and 64 respectively.

The problem was in the test03 CR2, so it's something to do with saving the CR2 after messing around in the setup room.

And of course there is a warning when you do that...

... but I'd assumed that because I wasn't touching the grouping of books 1-8 the warning didn't apply (I took the wording literally).

It would appear that I was wrong. But it's good to know that the fix is easy.

I'm only fixing the latest CR2, the one with all the altGeoms and HBC MTs (not PB or HBF yet) for books 9-16. Zip of the fixed CR2 and the OBJ it uses attached. Here's a screenshot of the CR2 from the zip with morphs applied correctly (books 9+ don't have the ERC yet)

 

[3dcheapskate]

But of course it happens yet again when I save the CR2 after loading MTs.

Note to self: when doing the 32 and 64 book stacks: don't bother trying to correct the numbDeltas for the books that are already set up correctly until you've got all the altGeoms and MTs for the extra books you're adding done.

 

[3dcheapskate]

Fixed the numbDeltas.

Next - add the master dials (Splay, Oblique, Plump, etc) and ERC for books 9-16

 

[3dcheapskate]

Master dials are all set up now, so it's just the ERC for 9-16 left to add now...

(and tidying up hidden/visible para,meters)

 

[3dcheapskate]

Doing the ERC would have been too tedious and error prone by hand so I wrote a ropey python script that worked like magic ! (script included in the zip mainly to see the looks of horror on the faces of any "real programmers" when they look at it ! )
I loaded my previous version of the bookstack (test12 from the previous post), ran the script, saved a new CR2 (test13), reloaded from the new CR2 and ran randomize several times - everything looked fine with all the morphs and adjustments. Zip attached (still just a backup) containing the following four files

Screenshot of preview pane after one of the many 'Randomize' runs I did to check

And the one (small) fly in the ointment is that the textures for books 1-8 repeat on books 9-16... it looks as if I forgot to change the UV mapping for books 9-16 in Blender after I'd copied the base meshes for books 1-8 and moved them up to the book 9-16 positions. I think that should be quite easy to fix.

 

[3dcheapskate]

It turns out that I did the UV mapping change for the base geometry, but forgot for all the alternate geometries. So it's just a case of fixing that in Blender and re-exporting all the book 9-16 alternate geometries - that's 40 in all. A bit tedious, but straightforward.

 

[3dcheapskate]

Just doing the final tidy-up and testing for the BookStack8 and BookStack16 single figures.

Should be ready for a proper upload to Renderosity and ShareCG very soon.

(I've decided not to wait until I've got the 32 and 64 book ones sorted out - they're going to take quite a while... a tedious quite a while ! )

 

[3dcheapskate]

...and while doing the tidy-up and testing I realized that it's quite easy to simply edit the 16 book CR2 and OBJ to create a 12 book one. Just to avoid forgetting what I need to do...

Creating bookstack12 from bookstack16

Copy CR2 and edit
- removed declaration/definition blocks for books 13-16
- in figure block remove addChild lines for books 13-16 (top_of_stack should be made child of book_12)
- in figure block remove weld lines for books 13-16 (top_of_stack should be welded to book_12) - PROBABLY SHOULDN'T WELD ANYTHING ?
- in 'book_12' def block change 'book_13' in twistY/jointZ/jointX/smoothScaleY to 'top_of_stack'
- in 'top_of_stack' def block change all 'book_16' to 'book_12'
- in figure block change name to 'BookStack12 - books 1-12' (this is important as the scripts use the ## in BookStack## to decide how many bones to iterate through)
- in 'stack' and 'top_of_stack' change name to Stack1-12'

This works in Poser using the 16 book OBJ, but I should remove books 9-16 from the OBJ too.

Copy OBJ
- Delete the book 13+ face data, from (and including) these two lines to the end of file
usemtl BookMap64Cover
g book_12
- Delete the v and vt lines for books 13-16. Since there aren't any markers in the v and vt blocks it just needs a bit of maths and a bit of care.
= 1408 vertices /16 = 88 per book. 4x88=352 so delete the last 352 v lines
= 2112 texture vertices /16 = 132 per book. a32x4=528

 

[3dcheapskate]

Second release now uploaded

Multi-figure bookstacks for Poser (release 2) (renderosity.com)

Multi-figure bookstacks for Poser (release 2) - Poser - ShareCG

 

[3dcheapskate]

Already found a small error - corrected BookStack12.cr2 file in attached zip. It's only in the one file, and only shows up (as far as I can tell) if you parent another bookstack to it and use Splay on book 12. It's because I didn't change the 'Center' joint parameter for the 'top_of_stack' bone, so it still has the values from the 16 book stack (start 0.112, end 0.116) - should be 0.084 and 0.088. I spotted this when I checked in the setup room...

Did a manual edit of the CR2 because it was less hassle than using the setup room, which would cause the MT numbDeltas problem again.