Sasha needs facial animation helpers

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#1 | RE: Sasha needs facial animation helpers datum

Wed Dec 19, 2018 12:17 am

Facial animation: sure, you can spin dials. But in advanced software, direct manipulation is so cool. Video of Paul's direct facial animation here:

Youtube vid click here

Karina says that to get facial animation "chips" on the head of Sasha-16 similar to the function on Paul/Paulina in Poser pro, would be burdensome, so many new helper bones.

Can anyone think of another approach?

What about the "handles" you see in some Poser props, such as here in the famous V4 Morphing Fantasy Dress:

Those handles ... what are they? And is this dress full of helper bones?

Can a "handle" be attached to a morph, and made visible for posing?

Any creative ideas welcome.

::::: Opera :::::

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#2 | RE: Sasha needs facial animation helpers datum

Wed Dec 19, 2018 7:01 pm

Thank you for starting this duiscussion @operaguy

Let me start with two remarks about that video (was it made by Chuck/Netherworks? It sounds like him)

In the first part, he's happily mixing expressions with shaping dials to get his "character", which is an absolute no-no and will result in tons of problems if you want so share a set of expressions later on:

You all know those V4 expressions which reset your carefully dialed character to the standard V4 head.
On the other hand, if you used expression dials to "create" your character, you'll destroy your character each time you apply a "zero face" pose.

That's why the Shape and Expressions dials are in two distinctly separate groups in SASHA!

Another funny observation:
Watch closely when at about time index 11:00 the jaw is moved sideways: The lower teeth remain stationary!
This is the most serious case of PRJD (Poser Rubber Jaw Disease) I saw hitherto

About Helper Bones and Facial Chips:

To start with, I don't have Pauline//Paul, so I'm sort of shooting in the dark here a bit.

But from what I see, these are ALL Helper Bones, just like the ones we see in your picture of the V4_MFD:

The wiremeshed "arrowheads" represent the "bones" and their orientation relative to their parent (the hip in this case)
The blue cones are the "handles" which provide the User with an easy way to control (twist/bend) the helper bones. They are simply some extra geometry assigned to a bone, like the whole head geometry is assigned to the "head" bone which allows you to grab the head with the mouse and move the head.
This is why you can't specifically "select" those blue cones: they are the representations of the helper bones:
Those helper bones are the nine "Skirt..." actors in the hierarchy editor on the right

Now, what about Pauline/Paul's Facial Chips?

It's basically the same. The difference is that they used actual parts of the face mesh for the "chips" and probably weight-mapped them to follow the facial movements induced by them.
Take Pauline/Paul into the setup room and take a look at the head:
You'll probably see all those "arrowhead" helper bones attached to the head.

By the way, of course all these helper bones/facial chips must be set to "invisible in render"!

As you see, this would mean a lot of extra bones which would not only clutter up the Hierarchy Editor's uncollapsible endless list even more. As I use the Hierarchy Editor all the time, this is something I tried to avoid.

And there's another issue:

It surely looks straightforward to pick the "chips" in the demo video.
But have you ever tried to pose a figure (selecting body parts and dragging them with the mouse) in a more crowded scene?
More often than not, Poser will invariably pick some other figure's body parts (behind the actual figure you want to pose), and almost never the most obvious body part your mouse is hovering over.

Now good luck with picking any facial chips on you main figure, with several other figures behind it!

Until Poser doesn't solve this simple annoyance (they can do it with the texture picker in the Material Room already, so WHY THE DICKENS not in the Pose Room???)
I simply refuse to invest any time in this "new" technique.
And b.t.w., SASHA already used it with the Nipple (and now also Butt Cheek) controls, only that the "handles" are simple disks.

However, my comments and ramblings above

are NOT meant to stifle this discussion!

On the contrary!
I always appreciate new ideas to improve SASHA (and MISHA would subsequently inherit these improvements too).
I just wanted to show how things work, and hint about problems that might arise.

If I went a bit overboard, I apologize.
Now, please ignore this grumpy old man, and carry on! [cool]

Karina

Be nice to each other

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#3 | RE: Sasha needs facial animation helpers datum

Wed Dec 19, 2018 7:23 pm

Love the grump!
I'll post a wire mesh of "Paul" later.

There are already so many great morphs, some from Daz, many from Karina, on Sasha's face ... these are all that are needed for facial animation and lip sync.

Maybe there is a path to manipulating them directly instead of the dials.

:: og ::

Here's my setup, so far, for expression animating. I created a custom parameter dial panel, a great feature in Poser Pro 11, and have it open next to the visemes morphs in the normal head panel. I will probably make other custom parameter dial panels.

Really, dial turning for facial animation is not that dreadful, but still, direct manipulation of these morphs could be even better.

::::: Opera :::::

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#4 | RE: Sasha needs facial animation helpers datum

Wed Dec 19, 2018 11:18 pm

You can somewhat do this with the morphing tool, use the combine tab instead of the edit tab. But it can make a total mess if there is a bunch of morphs. Then again you can go down the list and lock groups or individual morphs that you would like for it to use or ignore.

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#5 | RE: Sasha needs facial animation helpers datum

Thu Dec 20, 2018 2:31 am

RL Owens, if you combine morphs, or even make new ones, how would you directly manipulate them, as opposed to spinning dials?

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#6 | RE: Sasha needs facial animation helpers datum

Thu Dec 20, 2018 6:47 am

Using the combine on the morph tool allows you to drag different areas on the selected actor which activates morphs for the area based on the limits you set and the morphs you have unlocked. Also you can add pins to areas to use. Which is why I say it can make a total mess if you have a bunch of morphs active. It would be easier just to give it a try, than for me to explain it. Lol. I'm not so great at articulating or teaching a point I'm trying to convey, unfortunately.

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#7 | RE: Sasha needs facial animation helpers datum

Thu Dec 20, 2018 4:20 pm

I didn't know about the "pins" thing. I'll play with that.

Zitat von operaguy

I didn't know about the "pins" thing. I'll play with that.

Add: I agree with Karina in the above grumble that the difficulty of "grabbing" anything in the Pose window can be infuriating! That Pin looks small. Anyway, thanks for the clue, RL.

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#8 | RE: Sasha needs facial animation helpers datum

Thu Dec 20, 2018 6:55 pm

returning to the subject of helper bones for the moment ...

here's a look inside "Paul"

As Karina expected, that's a lot of bones, and a lot of lines added to the hierarchy file.

Playing around with Paul, it takes some acclimation, but you can grab the controllers for the helper bones/actors okay, and directly manipulate them.

::::: Opera :::::

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#9 | RE: Sasha needs facial animation helpers datum

Thu Dec 20, 2018 9:01 pm

Karina

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Posts:	547
Points:	606
Registered since:	07.18.2017
Location:	Ukraine

OUCH!

Those are even more than I dreaded. Thank you for the pictures!

Zitat
As you see, this would mean a lot of extra bones which would not only clutter up the Hierarchy Editor's uncollapsible endless list even more. As I use the Hierarchy Editor all the time, this is something I tried to avoid.

And this is precisely what I meant in the cited line of my previous rambling:
As long as Poser doesn't save the state of collapsed/expanded body parts with a .pz2/.pz3 save, I refuse having to collapse every bloody hierarchy branch just to get a figure where I can easily reparent an item from one figure to another without first having to collapse all those massive sub-branches first, unless I'm a masochist and enjoy to scroll endlessly - which I'm not, and I don't.

Nota bene:

It's NOT that I reject the new technique as a whole!
In fact, with a Poser version that would make it easier to collapse them in the Hierarchy Editor (and also in those tiny windows that pop up if you click "change parent" in the menu), I think that this can be a great asset.

It's just that the way it's implemented NOW will create more frustration than joy.

And Good Lord!
I already suggested that in the Poser Forum a couple of times:

They already have the "save as collapsed" feature for years! It's the parameter groups which have a simple flag set which marks them as "collapsed 1" (That's what my "Collapse all groups" tool does).
So it needs just a single additional line in the .pz2/.pz3 file which also marks body parts and their children as "collapsed 1", and a slight adjustment in the Poser code to automatically read it from the file in the same way as if you click the "downarrow" in the hierarchy to collapse a hierarchy group manually.

LIKE THIS:

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...
actor head:1
	{
	name head
	on
	bend 1
	animatableOrigin 0
	dynamicsLock 1
	hidden 0
	collapsed 1 # &lt;--- yep, that&#039;s all it would need!
	addToMenu 1
	castsShadow 1
	includeInDepthCue 1
	# ...etc. etc.
	}
...
 
 

Note the "collapsed 1" line after "hidden 0" and before "addToMenu 1"!
What the hell is so damn complicated about this?!?!?!?

Just give me the Poser code and a day, and I could implement the new function into every single window that uses a hierarchy list!
I would even do that free of charge for SM, just to finally get rid of this bloody annoyance!

OK; finished for now...:D

Please keep your input coming - it's a real joy to collaborate with such dedicated people like you.
Thank you very much!

K

Be nice to each other

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#10 | RE: Sasha needs facial animation helpers datum

Fri Dec 21, 2018 4:10 am

sadly, i am now having poser problems. When I do anything moderately large, it bails out to the desktop. It's not Sasha ... it's doing it with an ordinary V4 as well. :::: taking a break ::::

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#11 | RE: Sasha needs facial animation helpers datum

Fri Dec 21, 2018 2:15 pm

No sweat mate!

Take your time to sort your problems out.
As you might have read in the SR1 thread there are a lot of other things coming with SR1 now, as suggested by @Perpetualrevision.

And then, there's "noviy god" (the Russian/Ukrainian equivalent to Christmas), so I'll probably be away for a week visiting my mother in Odessa.

Get Poser to work again, and see you in January!

Merry Christmas, happy new year, Mazeltov, or whatever it is called in other parts of this planet.
Stay healthy, stay safe, and don't let the bastards grind you down!

Kiev, 21-12-2018

Karina

Be nice to each other

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What causes some tops to distort under breasts? � � VWD and sasha?