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Using Poser Walk Designer to make Genesis run in Carrara

Boojum the brown bunnyBoojum the brown bunny Posts: 348
edited September 2013 in Carrara Discussion

Ok, innovative solutions time that I thought I would share.

There aren't a lot of run animations for Genesis, at least not one's I'm happy paying the price for. I own Poser Pro, which has Walk Designer, but loading Genesis into Poser Pro to attach the morphs to directly doesn't work because it doesn't seem to have any Inverse Kinematics, which is required for Walk Designer to work. Also, this is how to get your character running along that perfect path.

1. Load M4 into Poser. (other figures will probably also work, but I worked with M4)
2. go to Figure/Create Walk Path.
3. Go to Display/Camera View/Top to switch your viewpoint to overhead.
4. Pull the top camera back until you can see all the walkpath and about the distance you want your figure to run over.
5. Pull the control handles on the walk path into the shape you want your character to run in.
6. Go to Window/Walk Designer.
7. Tweak settings until you get a walk or a run that you like. Leave the figure type as the default figure. the walk button will loop the example character walking/running.
8. Left-click the Apply button (you can also save your walk if your particularly impressed with it's settings)
9. In the Apply Walk panel, Figure should be Michael 4 (or whatever character you chose), Follow Path should be checked. I like to Align the head to next sharp turn or one step ahead. New Animation Layer will be checked and leave your start/end frames alone.
10. Left-click ok and the figure in the scene will now have the animation applied. You can scrub the sequence forward and back to make sure you like it.
11. Select the Pose Library.
12. Go to a folder you like and click the + button to save the animation.
13. Enter a name you like and click ok.
14. Make sure Body Transformation is checked and Morph Channels is unchecked. The Body Transformation is what makes your character run along the path even though the path isnt in Carrara. Left-click on Ok.
15. Choose to save the whole animation and click ok.

Now open Carrara.
1. Load Genesis into Carrara.
2. In your content library, go to the Poser Pose library you saved your walk/run into.
3. Drag that pose onto Genesis.

And that's it. The feet line up when they hit the ground, I'm not able to see any sliding. I'm including a youtube video I did of Genesis running with the run that I put on him. This way, if you own poser (or know someone who does) you can make some nice run cycles for your Genesis Figure.

Boojum the brown bunny

http://www.youtube.com/embed/tAXiPmuQPsE

Post edited by Boojum the brown bunny on

Comments

  • JonstarkJonstark Posts: 2,738
    edited December 1969

    It's kind of awesome that this works, but I'm not sure exactly *how* this works, as I didn't think Genesis could use poses for Gen4 characters (at least when I try it gives me not-correct results, and hitting the undo frequently turns my Genesis skeleton into a freakshow).

    Did you use to GenX on your Genesis to give him a M4 shape before applying (since it was an M4 walk cycle)?

    Thanks for taking the time to show this, it's very interesting.

    I'm not into animation, but I'm interested in learning, so I've been watching several of Sci-fi funk and Dart's vids to try to learn the basics. Who knows, maybe one day I'll actually learn enough to try my hand at an animation? :)

  • Boojum the brown bunnyBoojum the brown bunny Posts: 348
    edited December 1969

    While I do have GenX, I didn't change any parameters on Genesis. I just loaded the base Genesis figure. But it should be noted that my Genesis has all the M4 morphs available to it. I don't think that would change the results, but I suppose it could. I'll see if I can do a clean genesis install on one of my machines and use the pose and see if it still works. But not tonight.
    Boojum the brown bunny

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,583
    edited December 1969

    This is awesome! That WD is my favorite thing about Poser - and I'm glad that you don't need 'Pro' to get it. I'm wondering if the Walk Designer has received changes since version 7?

    boojumbunn said:
    While I do have GenX, I didn't change any parameters on Genesis. I just loaded the base Genesis figure. But it should be noted that my Genesis has all the M4 morphs available to it. I don't think that would change the results, but I suppose it could. I'll see if I can do a clean genesis install on one of my machines and use the pose and see if it still works. But not tonight.
    Boojum the brown bunny
    Correct - shouldn't make a pinch of a difference. That is strange, since usual walk cycles from Gen 4 to Genesis need feet to be adjusted in the graph editor. Thanks for this, and congrats on the killer work flow you've got! After seeing how happy some Carrara users are with Poser 2014 Pro, I just may have to check it out.
  • PjotterPjotter Posts: 274
    edited December 1969

    Thanks. Gonna give this a try. Hope it works. A while ago I tried exporting the result as BVH, but the forward motion was not included at all. So also no walk path. Gave up on this.

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