Skin corrective morphing in LW, with ease

[Mythigo]

Seems clear and concise enough; I'll give it a shot.

[Mike RB]

I tried this again on a more compicated object, And I got a huge mess when I ran bkg to morph. One way to get around it is to save transformed the body in the rest pose as well as the bent pose, then replace the base with the new base (exactly the same, just different point order) and then run bkg to morph.

I'd like to hear from people if this step is nessecary or not....

Mike

[Mike RB]

bump

[KOryH]

OK,
I'm off to try it out!

[whattawa]

I'm not sure whether point order gets killed when you save transformed (I hope it doesn't) but I have seen a tutorial that did something similar to this and reading your steps they all sound 100% logical and should work. I would say they better work or there is something seriously wrong with Lightwave! ;)

Very nice tut. If I have time I will definitely give it a try.

[toonshady]

I wonder how practical this method would be when you have a full figure with corrective morphs all over the place. But anyways, while doing this, I find myself using the save endomorph and then save object in the file menu of layout, instead of save transformed object to get my "bent" morph. I went on to do the bicep, but it didn't completely work for me when I reapply the bent morph with -100% the second time to the bicep morph. I have a saved file I can share of my findings.

[Cman]

Hiya MikeRB! :wavey:

Your tut reads similar to this one created by Faulkermano:

Modelling Morph Maps (http://www.geocities.com/lightwavespread/tutorials.html)

Using this tut you create tweaked morphs - and it seems to follow your steps but without going to Layout. Check it out.
(bottom of page)

[Eugeny]

Originally posted by Mike RB
I tried this again on a more compicated object, And I got a huge mess when I ran bkg to morph. One way to get around it is to save transformed the body in the rest pose as well as the bent pose, then replace the base with the new base (exactly the same, just different point order) and then run bkg to morph.

I'd like to hear from people if this step is nessecary or not....

Mike

U can use Polygon Rekniter to fix this ...

Interesting technic i'll try it.

[Mike RB]

http://www3.telus.net/paratrooper/smartskin.gif

[Facial Deluxe]

Awesome, super efficient, Beautyfull, got to give it a try...

[toonshady]

well here's a screen grab of my finding that I posted before. the problem area is circled. When I sent the final bicep morph to the layout, I also noticed the elbow points aren't as sharp as the bicep morph before apply -100% of the bend morph. Btw, has anyone got around to try out the submorph plugin at posted at flay few weeks ago?

[SplineGod]

Heres a sample of a technique that I taught on the Newtek Next Dimension Tour. I also teach how to do the same thing on the upcoming CD with the same name. I also have another CD that is being finished up that covers this technique and also how to do nonlinear morphing as well as how to control endomorphs using weight maps. The Next Dimension Tour CD will be $79.00 and the other CD will be $25.00. Anyone who has bought the World Wide Tour CD knows just how much stuff is packed on it. :)
This technique uses NO endomorphs, NO displacement maps and is controlled with the help of weight maps.

[Tudor]

The submorph thing works great..
I think it does exactly what has been described here.
I see no use for it now that I know this teqnique.

[wgreenlee1]

All I can say is WOW!!!

[yon dabuda]

hey mike, its cool to see you experimenting with joint morphs.
here is a quicker way though,
run "bkg to morph", then tweak your background layer, then from the background endomorph, run a second "bkg to morph", ta'da :) only the transformed points(relative to the endomorph) will be applied to the new endomorph. :thumbsup:

[Mike RB]

You right, thats the same as my copy map stage. Either way you still have the original bent one to use with the -100 apply. You can have both arms bent, make one bicep morph and unbend the whole character to keep the that one..... cool stuff.

Mike

[Mike RB]

I tried this some more. IT really works, and is really easy, you can even do more than one joint at once, by exporting a really deformed mesh...

Mike

[DotPainter]

I think that considering the intended work flow of lightwave, that SplineGods technique is probably efficient in most cases and endomorphs come into play for situations that cannot be handled with bones and weight maps like facial animations.

However, Mike's method is cool! I have to try it. I also think that this method can even be extended with motion mixer. As a matter of fact, all three methods, bones/weightmaps, morphs and motion mixer are probably the best approach for sophisticated sequences. For example, I if I was to have cerretos demon walk up, flex the arms above its head, roar, flex the upper body and shake its head and crash its fists onto something it would require the use of all three techniques......:D

[SplineGod]

I just watched Ice Age on DVD. The 2nd Disk has some short clips on modeling and rigging. The characters were rigged in maya and what a complicated setup some of the characters had. I thought he said that some rigs had hundreds if not thousands of bones and they didnt move very quickly in opengl. The characters were very simple but done with nurbs...yuck

Also the technique Im using for morphs allow you to create a single morph target in some cases and you can use weight maps to determine exactly which part morphs and by how much.

[MK2]

Yeah

[Eugeny]

Originally posted by Mike RB
I tried this again on a more compicated object, And I got a huge mess when I ran bkg to morph. One way to get around it is to save transformed the body in the rest pose as well as the bent pose, then replace the base with the new base (exactly the same, just different point order) and then run bkg to morph.

I'd like to hear from people if this step is nessecary or not....

Mike

Finally i have time to check this technique Mike ... U can replace Save Transformed step to Save endomorph ... It's let u still work with sub-d and u don't need to record morph on rest position, there is no different point order so no more morph mess . Just record endomoph , name it Bent and save Current object to force Hub make update in Modeler ...

Great technique Mike u are genius
:buttrock:

[Mike RB]

Save endomorph dosent seem to work at all for me.

[Mwai Kasamale]

Good Jointmorph result
Female Shoulder Bend (http://benkas.homestead.com/files/Arm_Bend.mov)

[Mike RB]

Wow cool. I'm glad it worked for you.

[Eugeny]

Originally posted by Mike RB
Save endomorph dosent seem to work at all for me.

Strange...
Here is the steps i used:

Open some scene with your character and bones ( i used scene with some animation and my avatar model) or convert scelegons to bones.

Make some bend for arm or any body part u want ...

Go to (in Layout) File -> Save -> Save Endomorph and name it.

Go to (in Layout) File -> Save -> Save Current Object, save your object with the same name.

Load your model in Modeler. U will see the new morph created. If u had already loaded model u will see immediately the new morph target added.

The rest of of steps is the same like youth.

This technique give ability to make morphs on fly during animation ...

I found if your bone need to be rotated to negative direction u need to fill Joint morph properties like IK limits
Say your bone rotates from 0 to -90
in this case Angle Minimum will be -90
and Angle Maximum will be 0. As well u need to swap morph max. and min, for this case it's mast be Morph Minimum 100% and Morph Maximum 0%.

I mast say ones again it's genius technique ... How u get it Mike?

[baccarafred]

There is a cool plugin that do all this stuff for you its call sub morph here is the link
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/elistuff/sub_morph/
Hope this could help
Fred

[Eugeny]

Yes it's famous plug, but him require using weight maps - with Mike technique u can make it with out weight maps and it's more "hand made" effect :)

[wgreenlee1]

Yep!
You can control it more because you are fine tuning only the morphs in specific places where it needs to be.
Seems as though weights would be more generalized.
In fact this could be used for a exaggerated morphs undoable with weights.
Very cool stuff!:bounce:

[Mike RB]

Eugeny. Thanks for the steps, I have it working now, you're right, thats a much better way to do it. This is actually really simple to do in LW now....

Mike

[Eugeny]

Great :)

[Mike RB]

http://www.3dluvr.com/blackbourn/web/tuts/cmorph/CMorphs.html

Now in tutorial form! Thanks Eugeny for the save endo tip.

Mike

[Raul3d]

Thanks Mike for the tutorial. You rock!!!!!!!!:thumbsup:

[Facial Deluxe]

Thanx to both you guys :]

[KOlson]

LightWave never ceases to amaze. Thanks for the great tut Mike, you rock! :)

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