How do I make my original character have a track in the sequencer?

grankin

When I expand a character like Victoria 4.2, I see a track, then model, then body parts. My character shows any groups I've made and parts.

grankin

evilproducer

There's a couple things here. What you see in the V4 figure is essentially what is called an Animation Group in Carrara. I'm not sure of the name in Poser of Studio, but it consists of the Model, and the rest is the bone hierarchy. The top (or root) bone in a human model is usually the hip. The rest of the skeleton branches off from there. The bones in the V4 model aren't actually geometry.

The bones are named to correspond to where they are on the figure. So, the right forearm bone is attached to the forearm area of the model. The eyes are also rigged, and rotating the right eye, is actually rotating the eye bone, which moves the underlying eye part of the model.

I don't know how your model is built, but if it is separate objects grouped together to form a chair, you can still put it in animation group to get the NLA Track.

To create an Animation Group, you could leave the group as-is or un-group it. The choice is yours. If you leave it grouped, select the group and go to Animation--> Create Animation Group. Carrara will create a new group Called Animation Group with your old group as a sub group.

If you un-group the objects, select them all, just as you would when creating a normal group, but instead of using the Edit menu, select the Animation Menu--> Create Animation Group.

You can even create an animation group with a single object like a cube or sphere, or whatever. Just use the Create Animation Group option.

I recently built this cartoon style Llama. I mimicked the figure hierarchy that Poser and DAZ Studio use. I built my model and named it Model. I added bones to my model and named the bones, I then selected the model and the bones, and then used the Create Animation Group command, which placed the Model and bones in the Animation Group. I changed the name from Animation Group, to Llama.

My Llama model is a single vertex model with a rig (or skeleton) attached, so that when a bone is moved, the underlying mesh of the model is distorted to follow the bone. The bones for the skeleton are weighted, so that the left thigh should only move the left thigh part of the model. Since this process isn't always perfect, you can weight paint the joint influences on your model so that when you move a leg, the nose doesn't deform.

You can attach a skeleton to a group of individual objects, such as your chair as well. It can make it a little more difficult to weight paint though.

grankin

WOW! I was expecting to get a complicated answer involving code, scripts, and whatever. I AM SO GREATFUL!  I opened a help ticket and was told DAZ doesn't support character creation. Go figure! The chair was just showing the heirarchy of my group. I created a dragonfly... prehistoric variety that will play a significant part in an animated introduction to a movie I'm producing. Originally, I created the model in parts but now I'm determined to get one vertex model for everything except the wings. Of course, I'm over-cooking the modeling with detail to create an accurate model. But now I think I will back off on the detail in the mesh and apply bump maps to achieve the same effect without all the work (more work = more polys). I also plan to unwrap this guy and create most of the textures with a uv map.The dragonfly will have a complete bone structure for the body but I'm experimenting with morphs for the wings. I think it will be easier to animate flying with sliders vs bone manipulation. The bones aren't acting the way I want because the leading edge is rather stiff and the trailing edge of the wing is flexible. Now, I'll have the NLA and produce clips for flight and hover.

grankin

NOW... while I've got your attention... I have a T-Rex, the main player in the animation, and when I make him walk, I want his body to react to inertia and gravity when his foot hits the ground, but when I manipulate the bones in the body, his stationary foot goes through the surface of the ground. Collision didn't work.I even tried pinning the back foot to an immovable object. No luck. Any chance weight painting would help?

evilproducer

Weight painting won't do that. It means you are "weighting" the joint influences on the mesh.

what method did you use to "pin" the back foot to an immovable object? Was it IK tracking under the modifier tab? I've used purchased T-rex' and other bipedal dinosaurs, and the actual foot joint is further up the leg. Kind of towards the hock. You may be pinning the wrong part as far as the IK chain is concerned. Also, when the foot is pinned and the figure's rig is moved, the foot joint does its best to work withing the constraints, but if you dramatically move the rest of the rig way outside the constraints of the foot joint, the figure may move away from the immoveable object, with the pinned foot desperately stretched back to try and stay in position but failing.

You can change the constraints to be a little more lax if need be.

You could also use the working grid as a guide and a couple of the isometric views, such as Left and Front (for example) and hand animate a step forward, create an NLA clip with the hip as the offset, and then when you use the clip, select looping, and the dinosaur will move forward as it walks.

The walk would need to show both legs stepping forward. It can be a bit tedious, but there is something you can do to easily and exactly match the end of the walk cycle with the beginning of the walk. Select all the figure keyframes from the first frame, and if you're on a Mac, then hold the Option key and drag towards the end of the walk/timeline. This copies the first keyframes to the end of the animation. I'm not sure what the key is in Windows, but I know it exists.

However you choose to animate the wings of the dragon fly, remember that you have multiple tweener options to help you automate repetitive animations. The most useful could be the oscillate tweener. At the beginning of the animation, position the wings in the beginning state of being flapped, and then at the very end of the animation, place the wings at the end of the flap cycle. Select the space between the two keyframes and then use pull down menu to select the Oscillate tweener. You will then have the opportunity to choose the number of oscillations, the profile of the oscillations (I think Sine would be more organic), and if you want the oscillations to reduce over time, you can adjust the damping.