I’m having a few problems with sculpting correctional morphs with the Pose Morph tag.
Theoretically, I understand it should be possible to sculpt correctional morphs on a rigged character
which has been posed to a particular position, so that the mesh can be sculpted to compensate.
I can sculpt a correction for a particlar pose, but only with the skin switched off. With the skin
active the sculpted pose ‘snaps back’ to the original position. If ‘Correctional’ ‘Post deformers’
is active in the pose morph tag (while in ‘edit’ mode) any sculpting of the mesh causes it to
explode unpredictably - so defeating the purpose!
Is it actually possible to sculpt a correctional deformation onto a posed rigged character? I have not
seen a demonstration video of this on Cineversity, or elsewhere, so perhaps I am mistaken.
[… to save everyones time, I hope at post #22 we have a workaround, skin, sculpt and so on.]
Hi Keith_2,
Just a first question, what works first on your character, the Skin or the Deformer? This is an important hierarchy which can’t be switched the other way, the “skin” comes always first.
Please note what the manual states as well:
Important
Keep in mind that the Correction Deformer has to be placed below other deformers in the hierarchy, otherwise deformed editing won’t work (the object will appear non-deformed, since its state will be calculated before the other deformers).
So far I understand, you animate with Joints and Skin the character, and if needed you introduce a Pose Morph [point] to adjust the mesh.
I have attached a file, where I adjust the animation around frame 45 with the Pose Morph, and have no influence of the Pose Morph at frame zero to 90.
Is that in a nut-shell what you would like to have?
I have set up Editor Window>>Options>Configure All>>Attribute Manager>Display>Deformed Editing. The check box need to be set to on.
The Priority of the IK, Skin, Pose Morph is set as well, so one works after the other. The higher the priority (Attribute Manger>Basic tab) the later the change/influence will happen.
In your case, you want the skin to do its work, then correct with the Pose Morph. This means, the Pose Morph works after the Skin, which equals a higher Priority for the Pose Morph.
Let me know if that makes sense and solves the problem.
Just tried out your example (thanks), but sadly the same problem remains…
Fundamentally, if I use the Sculpting tools (Inflate, Grab, Wax brushes etc) the mesh
will either not respond at all, or will ‘explode’ without deforming correctly.
This happens both with your supplied example, and my model.
I have tried every combination of Pose Morph tag settings, including ‘Relative’, ‘Correctional’ etc
edit settings, with no obvious difference.
Perhaps I am asking the Pose Morph tag to do something it was’t designed to, but it seems natural
that, for example, when simulating the compression of the thigh and calf muscles during a leg raise
you could pose the rigged character (with the Skin active) in the correct pose and sculpt the required
deformation directly onto the mesh. The deformation, would of course be stored in the Pose Morph tag
and be controllable via Xpresso.
So far I cannot get this to work. If it is possible, perhaps someone could demonstrate this in a video
tutorial?
Please let me know if I’ve missed something obvious!
Many thanks.
K.
PS:
It seems that I can use multiple ‘Correction’ deformers on my mesh, with which I create point deformations
using the Sculpt tools quite effectively. I can connect the ‘Strength’ settings via Xpresso so getting the effects
I need.
However, his is a bit inconvenient since you have to use a new deformer for each pose correction
rather than a single Pose Morph tag, but it is a ‘work around’ for the time being.
There was no “Sculpting Tag in your Screenshot”, so, I though you use the term as a term for pulling points.
As the Sculpting Tag by itself tells already that one has to check these boxes to deform. Skin is certainly considered a deformation tool. So, you can use the Sculpting tool, but not in the way that you move along the time line and keep the Skin Influence active. You will also see that the Sculpting Tag is the most left sided, no change possible. This sets a strong priority from my point of view.
Since I never have used this combination, PoseMorp as a fix with the Sculpting Tool instead of the Magnet Tool, I had to explore it.
My findings are, that you need to create a copy of the mesh you are working on, and drag that mesh into the PoseMorh. The question will come up: Relative or Absolute, I used here Absolute. Note, that the copy of the object must be in an non deformed state, e.g., no influence of the Skin. If that information is in the object, it will of course been applied again!
With the PoseMorph active, you can sculpt now and the results will be transferred to the Main Object. But there are two things to acknowledge, first you get only the level 0 of the Sculpting, secondly and most importantly, the initial object might change while you subdividing it. Which is perhaps not wanted at all.
My personal view, since the Sculpting stays on level zero, the Magnet tool seems the better way, but that is my personal take on it.
Thanks for trying. I did try creating a duplicate mesh at one stage, sculpting it and using it
as a morph target, but this would mean exporting a mesh for each potential pose that requires
correction - i.e. dozens per character. I hoped that the Pose Morph tag would get around this.
It seems that creating correctional point morphs using (critically) the Sculpt tools, the Pose
Morph tag and a posed (Skin deformed) mesh all together is a bit problematic at present.
This is a pity since it is an obvious solution to use the Sculpt tools on a level 0 mesh, (without
the need for a sculpt tag) as the Sculpt tools were recently updated to do just that! I can use
the magnet tool, or move points one at a time, but this seems like a bit of a step back in R17.
As mentioned, I can use the Sculpt tools on a level 0 mesh without a Sculpt tag, (the mesh
having been deformed into the correct pose using the character rig and Skin deformer),
when I use the Correction deformer by itself.
Sculpting the character when it is in the correct pose makes the process both intuitive
and straight forward.
I’m not sure why I can’t do the same thing with the Pose Morph tag in point mode? Changing
the Priority of all tags and deformers does not seem to solve this problem either.
If anyone has successfully used the Sculpting tools with the Pose Morph in the scenario above,
it would be good to know (or see) as this would be a massive benefit.
I can use the Correction deformers as a solution for the moment and hope for an update…
As I mentioned, I haven’t used it that way before. If we consider only 1,500 tools, options as well as functions in C4D, and combine these only in groups of two, we end up already with a very large number. Just to define an excuse and a sorry to have not more informations here ;o) For me the functionality is not the stop to explore, it is always the idea of how it will behave down the road, when more options and functions play together. Not to solve a problem and create two new once, etc.
Anyway, I think your idea is certainly worth to follow up on, and the first step would be, to suggest this to MAXON. http://www.maxon.net/support/suggestions.html
Perhaps a Magnet tool with a Sculpt_Lite functionality.
Just to round of this topic, I’ve spent some time experimenting and found that it is possible to
transfer the data from a ‘Correction’ deformer to a ‘Pose Morph’ tag simply by dragging the actual
‘Correction’ deformer into the ‘Target’ field of a Pose Morph.
This is a big step forward as it gets around the problem of using the ‘Sculpt’ tools on a rigged and
‘Skin’ posed mesh.
The critical thing is to sculpt your posed mesh (using the Sculpt tools as opposed to
the Magnet tool) with the ‘Skin’ and ‘Correction’ deformer active (but the Pose Morph tag deactivated!)
Then deactivating both the ‘Skin’ and ‘Correction’ deformer; only then dragging it into a newly created
Pose Morph in the Pose Morph tag.
Once the target data is in the Pose Morph, the ‘Target’ field can be cleared and the information will
be permanently stored in the tag. Operations such as copy/paste and ‘Flip X’, to mirror the
Pose Correction can be subsequently used. Setting the ‘Mixing’ mode to ‘Correctional’ ‘Post Deformers’
seems to work for general use.
After all the Pose Corrections are complete, the ‘Correction’ deformers can be deleted, and
the Pose Morph tag used with Xpresso to synchronise the deformations with the rig movements.
The full workflow is a little involved, but I would be happy to post it if anyone needs more detail
to get it to work properly.
This solves my original problem, but it would be great to see a more flexible Pose Morph tag version
to directly support the Sculpting tools, either within the Pose Morph tag, or perhaps some kind of super
‘Character Sculpting’ tag, combining Pose Morphs with accurate Rig-Posed Sculpting?
Anyway, hope this is useful to anyone following this thread…
Nice that you found something, K. Thanks for sharing.
Since we talk in a more or less public form, please allow me the following:
Yes dragging “states” into the PoseMorph is certainly an option, as mentioned in post #5, especially for corrections (The suggested mode after deformations, e.g. Skin, see text below). For any change one needs to set the PoseMorph back from Animation to Edit. Or do you unchecked the Basics>Enable checkbox?
One more question, as I feel uncertain about the term you use ‘Correction’ deformer, do you have the Correction option in the Pose Morph in mind or the Correction Deformer?
All the best
Below, I have pasted the text from the Manual about:
Correctional
This new mode allows you to edit a morph target for an object that is affected by a deformer. This is used, for example, to create a morph that will correct the shape of a mesh that is being deformed by joints. In previous CINEMA 4D versions, when moving points of a deformed mesh, they would move according to their non-deformed state, which would render difficult any precise modification of the mesh (since pulling a point up could result in it moving sideways instead, depending on how the mesh was deformed).
The new correctional mixing mode by-passes this limitation and allows you to move points based on their deformed state. To work in this mode, simply add a new morph target, switch to Correctional and activate the Post Deformer option (so it can calculate the points positions after the deformation). That’s it, now you can edit your pose, and even change the state of the deformation dynamically (keep in mind that in the case of correctional morphs, you will often want to link their strength parameter to the object driving the deformation, such as the rotation of a joint, for example).
This sort of correctional morphs can be pretty useful on areas of a character that are very hard to weight properly, such as the shoulders and waist areas. Instead of fiddling with joints influence, just pose your character at each extreme pose and create a correctional morph for those. Now just link those morphs to their respective joints rotations.
Correctional (Area)
This new mode allows you to edit a morph target for an object that is affected by a deformer, much like the Correctional mode. This mode differs in that it will also take into consideration the size of the surface area the morphs are in. If that surface area changes, the morphs will be scaled to reflect the changes in the size of this area.
The terminology is rather confusing with both ‘Correction’ deformers and ‘Correction Morphs’, so to clarify
the image below should demonstrate what I mean by dragging the ‘Correction’ deformer into the ‘Target’ field.
The problem I had was actually using the ‘Sculpt’ tools when creating a ‘Correctional’ morph with the Pose Morph
tag in Point Mode. This new workflow seems to bypass this bottleneck. Sorry if all this seems a bit long-winded,
it’s quite difficult to fit into a couple of paragraphs! Not sure about ‘Correctional’ vs ‘Correctional - Area’,
as I guess you would need to experiment to see the actual results.
Here is the full workflow to examine, a missed step may cause it not to work so it needs to be detailed!
1. Add a ‘Correction’ deformer to your character hierarchy directly under the
‘Skin’ deformer. (See image below)
Also add a ‘Pose Morph’ tag to your character mesh and make sure ‘Points’
mode is active. Disable the tag for the moment by switching ‘Enable’ off in the
‘Basic’ tab.
2. Pose your rigged character in the appropriate position and leave the ‘Skin’
deformer active. You can name your ‘Correction’ deformer something suitable
for the pose, e.g: ‘R_leg_raise_correction’.
3. Select the ‘Correction’ deformer by clicking on it to make it active. (This is important!)
Using the ‘Sculpt’ tools (Inflate, Smooth, Grab, Wax etc) simply sculpt
the level ‘0’ mesh until the muscle and skin appears correct for the pose
in question.
Using these tools, realistic effects such as muscle compression and skin folding
can be reproduced.
Do not subdivide the mesh by adding a ‘Sculpting’ tag. Just use the Sculpt
tools on the level ‘0’ mesh. Sculpt only one side of the model as symmetry can be added later.
4. Once you are happy with the sculpted correction, disable both the selected
‘Correction’ deformer and the ’Skin’ deformer (essential!)
5. Go to the ‘Pose Morph’ tag, click ‘Enable’ again and place it in ‘Edit’ mode.
Click ‘Add Pose’ to create a new pose morph in the list and name it appropriately,
i.e: ‘R_leg_raise_correction’, as above.
6. Now drag the selected ‘Correction’ deformer from the character hierarchy into
the ’Target’ box in the ‘Advanced’ section. (See image below also)
The new Pose Morph will now have an ‘a’ next to it to indicate a target is set.
7. To make sure the correction morph is stored permanently, go to the small white
arrow tab to the right of the ‘Target’ box. Click on it and select ‘Clear’.
The name entry will disappear and the ‘a’ in the pose morph will change to
a ‘bullseye’ icon. The sculpted correction should now be stored in the Pose
Morph memory. Change the selected Pose Morph ‘Mixing’ mode from ‘Relative’
to ‘Correctional’. You may need to click on ‘Post Deformers’ also - try it on your
character.
8. Switch the Pose Morph to the ‘Animate’ mode and reactivate the character
‘Skin’ deformer (but not the ‘Correction deformer’!). You can test the morph
effect on the character by altering the strength slider.
9. To create a mirrored correction pose e.g. exactly the same for the
‘L_leg_raise_correction’, right-click in the Pose Morph list to copy and paste
the appropriate pose morph. Rename of course.
Then right-click and choose ‘Flip X’ (or whatever is suitable for your character)
to create a mirrored version.
To add additional morphs, make the Pose morph tag inactive again (important!) and carefully repeat the process by either adding new
’Correction’ morphs and sculpting each pose one at a time (possibly the best option), or reseting and reusing the existing one.
The completed correction morphs can be wired using Xpresso and Range Mappers to synchronise the effect with selected body poses.
All the ‘Correction’ deformers can eventually be deleted once all the poses are stored in the ‘Pose Morph’ tag for the finished character.
This is all a bit experimental at this stage, but initial results seem to work so far, so I think its worth trying!
I tried to make it and follow, but I do not see the huge amount of steps.
I hope the one minute clip wraps all suggestion I made so far in on movie.
What do I miss in this, so it will work for you? I can sculpt, (as mentioned earlier, of course only on Level-Zero) and I have Joints and Skin, as well the Pose Morph working.
(I have not set Priorities in this clip or in the file, this might be needed later.)
Thanks, as always for the help with the video clip, which does indeed show the sculpting process on a rigged mesh.
My question would be: Can you set the joints in your example to an intermediate point, e.g. 45 degrees and still sculpt on the mesh
in that particular ‘Pose’ position?
Whenever I click on the level ‘0’ mesh and use the sculpting tools - despite carefully replicating your example, the mesh snaps back
to its default unposed position. Switching to ‘Correctional’ ‘Post Deformers’, or ‘Correctional (Area)’ ‘Post Deformers’ does
not allow me to manipulate the mesh either - when it does respond at all it tends to ‘explode’.
I’m not sure whether I’m being unlucky here, or missing something trivial…
You’re welcome, Keith, but I have to say thank you as well. I see it as a work in progress, getting your idea, finding what disables a fluent workflow and hope on the end you have what you like. My win, to see your idea and find a solution that would not exist if we hadn’t chatted about. So, thanks.
Here is clip one, showing to add another pose, just to show case this: (Edit: we found this is all not leading to the target/edit) link removed
... and clip two to work on a joint that is not in its “T-pose” or initial binding pose. At 45º as suggested. (Edit: we found this is all not leading to the target/edit) link removed
Sorry about the strong compression, not my idea, my source looks super clean, but I hope downloading helps a little bit.
If you see some video glitches, I wrestle here with my screen capture software and a 5K monitor, sorry about that.
Currently, I have no idea how to replicate the explode behavior, I really wish, so that part wouldn’t annoy you anymore.
