Hello, and here's a WIP I'm trying

[edembowski]

Hello all,

I'm one of the many unwashed masses who picked up Carrara and Hexagon for an unreasonably low price. I've been reading the tutorials and forums for a while now, and I've kept quiet since I really didn't have anything worth saying (not sure I do now though !).

I know that this really isn't the place to show what's done with off-the-shelf content, but I've never really been able to get the whole modeling thing until getting hex and carrara. Thanks to this forum, I think I have a start.

This is my first try at anything like this so I thought I'd start simple. This is a robot I made using primitives in Hex, and I brought it into Carrara. It's not so much to make a cool model, I really did it as a learning exercise. In the past, I've tried bringing models from Makehuman into Poser and rigging there. I really can't believe how much easier it is to do this in Carrara, and how easy it is to animate. Here's what I learned:

- Basic modeling tools in Hex
- export to Carrara
- fixup some defects in Carrara (I didn't do a good job on the joints)
- Rigging in Carrara
- cutting up the model into shading domains

Now, I have a few questions about what I've done here. I think I understand how the rigging process works, but one thing I'd like to be able to do is to have a "ball joint" for the robots arms. What I'm thinking is something that will move freely without deforming the surrounding geometry. If you look at the shoulders of the render, there's deformation on the chest that I don't know how to get rid of. For flesh, this would be normal since the muscles all connect, but for a mechanical object, that's not really desirable.

I also don't understand how to make morphs. I'd like to be able to have the mouth move, but aside from adding bones, I don't know how to do that. Pre-rigged models that I've seen have morphs already applied, how do they do that?

Any feedback at all would be greatly appreciated. I know it's not a good-looking model, but like I said, it's really just to start learning the basics of the tools.

Thanks,

Ed

[markbremmer]

Hi Ed,

Morphs are pretty simple to do but kind of complex to explain. Essentially, when you are in the Carrara Vertex Room, you select polygons you wish to apply the morph to and then create a new morph from the Morph tab. After that you create the changes you want the morph dial to control. Then you're done - you have a deformation that is controlled by a dial.

The manual gives a good intro to it if you want open the resources the ship with Carrara. ;-) I've also got an example in my tutorials if you're so inclined.

Mark

[edembowski]

Thanks, I'll definetly look at the tutorials there. Any pointers on how to limit the deformation of the character when posing?

I've ordered a printed copy of the Carrara manual back in January during the sale, but each time I call DAZ, they tell me to wait 2 weeks. Not too happy with that, but I don't have many options there. A printed manual is so much better that reading a PDF.

Thanks,

Ed

[markbremmer]

Hi Ed,

That's a function of Weight Map Painting - it's where you adjust the influence of bone bending on the mesh surrounding it. WMP is different than creating morphs. Simply put, WMP controls mesh behaviour when bending, Morphs are specific mesh deformations independent of bending parameters.

So, WMP is just a let's-try-this-and-see-how-it-works process.

I think you know that, but since we kind of have two topics going, I just wanted to clarify what we have going on here.

Mark

[whkguamusa]

One way to avoid any deformation is to use the bone system but do not skin (attach) the skeleton to your robot.
Instead parent each seperate part of your robot to the corresponding bone.
Then you can pose your bot by rotating or moving the bones with each part following along but not deforming.
In theory you could do this without the bones at all by setting up your bot parts in a logical hierarchy but if you try to get fancy with IK (that does work on more than just bones) there are some bugs and it gets messy.

wayne k
guam usa

Originally Posted by edembowski

Thanks, I'll definetly look at the tutorials there. Any pointers on how to limit the deformation of the character when posing?

I've ordered a printed copy of the Carrara manual back in January during the sale, but each time I call DAZ, they tell me to wait 2 weeks. Not too happy with that, but I don't have many options there. A printed manual is so much better that reading a PDF.

Thanks,

Ed

[edembowski]

Originally Posted by whkguamusa

...Instead parent each seperate part of your robot to the corresponding bone.

OK, so with this method, I wouldn't weld each of the discreet primitives together, I'd keep them independent and parent each one piece by piece?

Then you can pose your bot by rotating or moving the bones with each part following along but not deforming.

I'll give this a try.

In theory you could do this without the bones at all by setting up your bot parts in a logical hierarchy but if you try to get fancy with IK (that does work on more than just bones) there are some bugs and it gets messy.

I'll give that a shot. I did the modeling in Hex, when I try this should I just model it in Carrara? This is a rather primitive example, if it's something more sophisticated like a hatch on a ship, would I leave the hatch and ship as separate objects in Hex?

I'm going to try Mark's suggestion also and look at the weight map painting. I must confess that I suffer from the engineer's problem of not reading documentation.

- Ed

[whkguamusa]

Right, just bring it in as a pile of parts so that each piece can be assigned to a bone.
It does not matter if you did the work in Hex or Carrara.
good luck
wayne k
guam usa

Originally Posted by edembowski

OK, so with this method, I wouldn't weld each of the discreet primitives together, I'd keep them independent and parent each one piece by piece?

I'll give this a try.

I'll give that a shot. I did the modeling in Hex, when I try this should I just model it in Carrara? This is a rather primitive example, if it's something more sophisticated like a hatch on a ship, would I leave the hatch and ship as separate objects in Hex?

I'm going to try Mark's suggestion also and look at the weight map painting. I must confess that I suffer from the engineer's problem of not reading documentation.

- Ed

[edembowski]

OK so I had time this morning and I've tried a few things out. It really is pretty important centering the bones when placing them like this. I haven't had a chance to work on weight mapping the figure yet, but I'll get there.

I'm going to post the results of each method to compare.

- Ed