A product which can calculate floor and or ground y-axis height

Serene Night

I spend too much time with feet. Whether its an HDRI, or placing dark leather boots on a dark black floor, and zooming in to see if the heel, the toe, or feet are bisecting the floor.

I would pay for a tool that would move my character to the ground, and that would have the heels, or whatever is groundmost touching precisesly. Drop to ground does not work.

Richard Haseltine

How is the Drop to Floor script failing?

Serene Night

Too often when I use it, the shoes are still imbedded in the floor, or floating slightly above with room to spare.

It doesn't help that floors are often above zero, or below zero or the poses are made with the foot bent weirdly or one foot not seated on the ground or the shoes have heels which drop to floor can't handle.

HDRI are always a hassle. They are either sunk in, or above the ground. I have to do multple  test renders pulling the y access up and down to make them look good.

Even pas seem to have trouble with the foot thing, since, promo art shows feet sticking in the floor.

I guess I spent about 50 percent of my time making sure the feet look good..... Its not fun. I'd rather do other stuff. =-)

Serene Night

so a product which could calculate the exact height of the floor or ground of HDRI- would save me hours of time in corrections later.

Chohole

Edit > Object > Move To Floor (Ctrl + D)
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Edit > Figure > Move To Floor (Ctrl + D)
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Parameters pane option menu > Move To Floor (Ctrl + D)

 rbtwhiz

Serene Night

Yeah, I use that- and it doesn't always move to floor. It doesn't work well with HDRI either.

Richard Haseltine

Serene Night said:

Too often when I use it, the shoes are still imbedded in the floor, or floating slightly above with room to spare.

It doesn't help that floors are often above zero, or below zero or the poses are made with the foot bent weirdly or one foot not seated on the ground or the shoes have heels which drop to floor can't handle.

Drop to floor does drop to y=0, it doesn't detect the actual modelled floor, so offset models will cause problems.

Serene Night said:

HDRI are always a hassle. They are either sunk in, or above the ground. I have to do multple  test renders pulling the y access up and down to make them look good.

In Iray the Ground Position button set to On should, I thought, help with this.

Serene Night said:

Even pas seem to have trouble with the foot thing, since, promo art shows feet sticking in the floor.

I guess I spent about 50 percent of my time making sure the feet look good..... Its not fun. I'd rather do other stuff. =-)

The Measure Metric plug-in could be used to measure, or you could line a node (such as a null) up with the floor and use the Align pane.

Serene Night

An example. Same character. Same pose. Two different kinds of shoes. One pair of shoes aligns perfectly with the HDRI floor when dropped to floor. It has smooth soles. The second pair of shoes- has treads. When I use drop to floor it imbeds in the floor- below where they should be. Nothing else has changed. Pose, character, HDRI all the same. Drop to floor re-used after new boots are autofit.

Then when you try to use multiple characters with different footgear this becomes almost impossible to manage.

It should be possible to have multiple characters in a scene with different footgear and line them up without the degree of hardship I currently experience.

This is why I would love a product which can tell me where the floor is so I can get stuff lined up properly.

Syrus_Dante

Which DS version are you using?

Had this problem before, had my character with all parented clothes parented to a group and no matter what child node I selected the Drop To Foor always used the Group position to level it to floor height. Also I thought the Joint Editor - Center Point of the root node could influence the height for Drop To Foor - but no at least not in the recent DS.

I just tested this in DS 4.10.0.123. Turns out the Center Point has no influence and even if I parent my figure with high heels to a group and translated the figure above the floor Drop To Floor makes the shoe soles touch the floor again and translates the group below ground. This is better behaviour than the last time I tried with some older version maybe it was DS 4.9.

Serene Night

I am using 4.10

It is super bad for me... But I do complex scenes usually and I try to have multiple things going on. 

It doesn't help I'm far sighted. I have to zoom in down there an enlarge everything.

I think its often the boots and shoes with heels and other complex surfaces that tend to have an issue.

Syrus_Dante

Did you try this script Come On Down - Collisions for DS4.5 (mcjCollider)?

This should work with uneven ground or a floor level other than y=0.

Chohole

Serene Night said:

An example. Same character. Same pose. Two different kinds of shoes. One pair of shoes aligns perfectly with the HDRI floor when dropped to floor. It has smooth soles. The second pair of shoes- has treads. When I use drop to floor it imbeds in the floor- below where they should be. Nothing else has changed. Pose, character, HDRI all the same. Drop to floor re-used after new boots are autofit.

Then when you try to use multiple characters with different footgear this becomes almost impossible to manage.

It should be possible to have multiple characters in a scene with different footgear and line them up without the degree of hardship I currently experience.

This is why I would love a product which can tell me where the floor is so I can get stuff lined up properly.

Rob says
The disconnect comes from your use of the term "floor" to mean something other than 0.0 on the Y axis. What you sound like you want is more like a "Drop to Collision" or "Drop to Surface" action, where the selected node (root) is translated on the Y axis until the surfaces touch.