SKYLAB CHAT

[Miss B]

Ohhhhhhh, interesting concept. Hmmmmmm . . . I'm not sure if 15 would be enough. Then again, since it's NOT for clothing or something Poser would call default usage, I'd think trial and error would be the way to go.

Try 15, and if that doesn't work, move it back to 20, and if THAT doesn't work, move it to 25. It's very possible you might even need all 30 frames. Since it's not a piece of clothing to fit over a posed character, I'm not sure if it's really "draping", but it should be interesting to see.

I don't see why the cloth room can't be used for a simple animation such as that. I've never done animation with Poser, but since the frames are available in the regular Pose Room, and not restricted to just the Cloth Room, I don't see why you couldn't use the Cloth Room just to simplify the process.

Now you've got me interested to see what you come up with. Unfortunately, I just finished downloading and installing the SR3 update for my PoserPro 11 and content, and I'm headed to bed. I'll definitely be watching to see how this works out.

 

[skylab]

Here's my first contribution to "show and tell"...Andy's deflating vollyball...haha

 

[skylab]

And here's the Superfly rendered version, heavier in size, so had to resize a bit, but it shows the obvious difference in mat quality. Lights and everything else is the same, just Superfly this time....which this is, by the way, a first Superfly animation too.

I'll be back online later today...probably around noon. Have a good morning everyone

 

[Terre]

Good job Sky.

 

[Terre]

I'd like to make a request mam. Do the same thing with a human figure in both renderers and lets see what the skin looks like. In reality and such you have to let it cook a long time to get something that doesn't look grainy. That's one of Jim's problems with that system is the hard surfaces look great but people don't look as good as he can get them to look in Firefly without long render times.

 

[Gadget Girl]

Here's my first contribution to "show and tell"...Andy's deflating vollyball...haha

So the cloth room can definitely be used for animations, just like you showed. So can bullet physics. I've known some people you find the cloth room confusing precisely because you have to 'animate' it. I find that often the best results in the cloth room don't really start from a zero pose, but from a pose that the figure moves 'out of'.

I'd like to make a request mam. Do the same thing with a human figure in both renderers and lets see what the skin looks like. In reality and such you have to let it cook a long time to get something that doesn't look grainy. That's one of Jim's problems with that system is the hard surfaces look great but people don't look as good as he can get them to look in Firefly without long render times.

You're right. It's with skin textures that it takes a long time, and the default settings rarely give you good renders of skin. As long as I don't have stuff that is too shiny I find that setting the pixel samples from 3 to 6 usually gets a good result. This scene however took a lot of time and a lot of fiddling to get rid of all the white pixels. Wasn't just on the skin however, there was a lot of render noise on the walls too, especially where they meet the floor.

View media item 1112

 

[skylab]

Good morning Here's the Firefly human model, and Superfly is rendering now.

 

[Miss B]

You got it to work, congrats.

Obviously, my next question is, how did you get the deflated version, or did you just set a piece of cloth as the deflated version? Oh, and how many frames did you eventually use? I would've added a few more, as it happens kinda quickly, and I don't think basket/soccer balls deflate that fast.

 

[skylab]

Hey Miss B I'll answer the last question first...it happens fast because I reduced the 30 frame animation to 15. I'm trying to keep the file sizes down as I'm really adding up the kb on my image allowance ...that's why I don't do many animations now. Okay...the question what did I use...the DAZ volley ball, and it's still the DAZ volley ball when it hits the floor....I used the regular sim settings we've been using, with a cloth density setting of 0.0500 so that it would not be too crimpy when it was done. That's all I did to the volleyball....I just placed it in the hand, and the sim did the rest, including the trip downward to the floor.

Now, about the second Superfly animation (by the way they are heavier in weight, so the kb's add up, more like a hi def image), it had rendered through 7 frames and I realized that I intended to cut it back by rendering every 2nd frame (you can do that, cull the image to keep the size down), so I attempted to cancel the animation render and it stalled out Poser and lost the file since I hadn't saved the human animation. It wasn't until I finished closing Poser that I realized what happened....I use Animation Shop (that goes with Paint Shop Pro 9) to tweak and re-size animations for posting on the forum and had forgotten to close it...and it is notorious for holding a lot of information in the memory and needs to be cleared after every run...it actually says that in the prompt box...and there it was, waiting for me to clear the ram and I hadn't done it, so Poser had very little juice to work with. Older programs can have issues with this, but I've never found an animation editing program that equals Animation Shop, so I live with its age and temperamental performance. All that to say, Terre, I'm really the wrong one to ask to render something as a lighting demonstration, since lighting is not my thing. GG's image looked great by the way. Here's a saved file that I grabbed quickly to do a Superfly render, and it rendered in the time it took me to almost wash a sink of dishes, which is not long. I think rendering time will depend on the speed of your processor, how much stuff you have loaded on the drive (that is, does it have enough room to process...like what happened to my animation that I tried to cancel), and how much stuff is in the scene. Anyway, here's the Superfly render...not the animation you asked for, but nevertheless a render

 

[Miss B]

Oh, so the sim did the deflation automatically. I guess that makes sense, because if it isn't draping around anything but air, it's going to land on the floor. I had that happen a couple of times in MD3 when I forgot to sew a couple of seams together. :headdesk:

That render is nice. I like the pose.

 

[skylab]

GG, your Superfly render was really well done...and considering you had a lot of reflective surfaces surrounding the figure, it was even more challenging, and consequently, well done. Thanks for showing folks how it's really done...something I would not be able to do

 

[skylab]

Thanks Miss B...not in GG's league, but I got a render, and it didn't take very long.

What would be interesting for an animation now would be something like having a cloth falling and draping over a primitive perhaps. The question yet in my mind is how to get the clothified object to follow a side-to-side path, or going upward. It may be a dual function between the cloth sim settings and regular animation settings, maybe possibly a tweak after the sim is run....now that's and idea...I can try that with the Andy version which I did have sense enough to save...haha. I'll play with that same scene and see what happens.

 

[skylab]

The second animation is rendering now...it's kinda funny....the ball deflates and flies all around the way a balloon would do, and Andy's head follows the path of the deflating volley ball. Haha. It's easier to use andy for test animations like this because you don't have to deal with fingers and clothing...it's just easier.

Here's the volleyball that I used...once upon a time it was a DAZ freebie.

 

[Miss B]

Yeah I have that volleyball, but totally forgot about it.

Don't know how you could use the clothify settings to do a side-to-side, or upwards, animation. The only thing I can think of with a parented object, is to move the parent to a different location in the final frame, or at least the frame where you would have the final movement. How you would do that with an object that isn't parented, I have no clue.

 

[skylab]

Okay, here's Andy animation two...this Firefly animation is half the weight of the Superfly, even though it's the same number of frames....it was created as 30 frames, then culled down to 15. The path of the volleyball was done entirely as an animation path with the sim settings the same as the first animation.

 

[skylab]

I had to make Andy kneel this time to give the volleyball enough room to have a path over his head to the other side. The animation path is determined by advancing the timeline a frame at a time, move the ball a little, advance a few more frames, repeat. Some people would say let Poser determine the path, but that's easier said than done...that's when you can get weird, slow motion animations that are not very realistic...I'm sure you've seen them before. Presets work fine for flying a spaceship or having a car run across the screen, but I like to do all other types of animation by hand...frame by frame. The slightly choppy appearance is due to culling out every other frame...if it were all 30 frames, it would have the smoothness of the original...but then it would be nearly a meg in weight...wouldn't take very many of those before I'd be out of image space.

 

[Miss B]

OK, that doesn't look too bad considering it's only 15 frames. Of course, the longer the animation, the smoother the path.

 

[skylab]

Miss B...here's my simple PDF tutorial on Poser animation, which is enough for a project like this.

It's done in my typically simple style, mostly pictures with arrows

 

[Miss B]

Thanks for the link Sky, I'll check it out. I haven't done much as far as animation since I stopped working with Macromedia's Flash app, and not while working with Poser or any other 3D app. I like watching animations, I'm just not into creating them myself.

 

[skylab]

New on DS ShareCG...a sweater for Genesis 3 male, a dining set, and a church.

Had to clean up the mess Jo made this morning....when he's happy, he tends to swim around a lot, sometimes doing what appears to be figure 8's . Well, in his happy little swimming this morning he managed to knock the top off of his filter. While I was working on the animations earlier I happened to look over at him and saw everything floating on the top of the water....so I had to cut the animation project short in order to deal with him. His tank water is now changed and the filter is back together, and the mess cleaned up. He's giving me a workout today...the little rascal At least things are back to normal...I can't concentrate on what I'm doing if I know he needs help.