Can we have labels and coordinates in Puppeteer, please?

kgrosser

While you are busy with beta 4.12 and the new timeline there is something I keep on missing which I think would be very useful.

I am using Puppeteer  to organize (sequential) poses in one scene for graphical novel storywriting. Using many characters, groups, etc in lengthy scenes quickly turns into a cluttery mess.

It woukld help greatly if one could put descriptors or even just numbers to the individual poses that pop up when hovering the mouse over.

Secondly it would help to have the grid fitted with horizontal and vertical coordinates which also would help to organize and find the matching poses.

Is that something that could be hopefully considered in the future development, please?

Syrus_Dante

I've used Pupeteer once before and what I found by trying so far was how to add images. Make shure you are in Edit mode, left-click the Puppeteer grid to add a pose point of the curent figure pose, right-click the pose point and choose Assign Image. For demanstration I've made a Pose Label with an image editor and saved it as PNG with alpha channel (transparent backround).

My other idea as I first tried this was to render the posed figure in the viewport and use that render with transparent backround saved as PNG for the pose point image. Well as I once tried further I got stuck with adding and positioning pose points, it's tedious. First the label image is always centered to the pose point. You can scale the image but if you want the point not covering the image you need to add transparent space in the PNG image, at top or bottom dpending where you want your labels. If you have placed multible points just use Zoom to Fit from the right-click menu to get them all framed in the grid. As far as I know there is no way to add a backround image, maybe you could find a way around by adding a pose point with a big image in the center, not shure if Toggle Enable will hide the image, those are some things you could try.

Also I prefer less points on one layer and instead add additional layers that you can also Rename. Before you close the Daz Studio don't forget to save the Pupeteer Preset from the main menu File>Save As>Pupeteer Preset once you think your pupeteer preset is done.

I hope this helps. Have fun with Pupeteer and good luck with creating your preset.

mindsong

Syrus_Dante said:

... (good stuff)

My other idea as I first tried this was to render the posed figure in the viewport and use that render with transparent backround saved as PNG for the pose point image. Well as I once tried further I got stuck with adding and positioning pose points, it's tedious.

...(more good ideas)

Boy, tedius is an understatement. If we could right-click and have a 'render-current' (with png trans) that would insert a small image and save it 'near' the current scene or puppeteer preset source-file, that would be the bomb!

I also would add a request for arbitrary placement of presets and their images in the libraries. Right now. it seems that such images have non-relative paths, so far as I can tell. (I'd like relative paths, so the whole works could be moved around...). I'd love to be wrong here - has anyone manually edited a preset and tried relative paths?

and... if a morph or bone are not moved in a panel's dots... don't save them in the preset! It gets crazy slow when you have a well-populated figure (w many morphs) that uses 4 expresions morphs and saves 3000 zero's bone and morph positions in the preset. Or maybe make it an option. Most of *my* puppeteer presets shouldn't zero out other settings, but rather layer on top of them...

thanks for considering it.

--ms

kgrosser

I've used Pupeteer once before and what I found by trying so far was how to add images.

 

Thanks for the advise, but rendered pictures wouldn't work for me as they would either be too tiny or consume way too much space. Labels thern, I'd need to prepare a ton of for just numbers aforehand and descriptoors would require me to leave DAZ to create a label while I am actually working on the scene. A simple label and coordinates would be sufficient and much more effective for me. I may try layers to see if they automatically follow once I change focus in the scene, but I guess rather not.....

kgrosser

Another thing I'd really appreciate to be added for Puppeteer and no dark magic either was that the actual pose in use be highlighted when loading a scene.

If one hasn't worked on a scene for a while and loading it is tedious to find the right pose on the grid, so mostly I will just add another "WIP" pose all the way down  right, which at some point inevitably leads to pose doublettes in my scenes.

Imago

I use layers names for that and some times I use small images. I simply group similar poses in the same layer.

It would be an hell of unreadable labels on my puppeeteer since I often have hundreds in one single layer but I guess it can be a nice addition if I can turn them off.

I second the coordinates, it will sure be helpful to find poses if I can know where A-12 is precisely!

In my opinion a system to "lock" the creation of new dots in the Edit mode ( It's painful when I try to select a precise pose and I end creating a new dot over the previous) can be also useful, since the Preview mode is too much imprecise and tends to blend poses. Or add to the Preview mode the ability to choose one single dot.

Also the ability to change layers order, I like to keep my stuff organized.

nonesuch00

Actually having just done the puppeteer tutorial it is a nice tool but why no explanation of Layers in the tutorial?

Also, you know how you have to move the mouse from point to point to point to get it to animate, is there a way instead to make a graph using arrows that point to dot to dot to dot to tell the animation how to proceed instead of manually moving the mouse? And then for each arrow that point to the next node/keyframe in the animation between the dots we can say how much time that arrow needs to animate the deltas between dot A & dot B, eg Arrow A is 0.25 seconds while Arrow B is 2 seconds. Finally we should be able to choose a frame rate that is constant, 30 frames per second or 24 frames per second once we are able to say how many seconds each arrow between dots lasts. So an Arrow A that is 0.25 seconds would be 7 or 8 frames at 30 frames per second between node A & node B and Arrow B that is 2 seconds would be 60 frames total at 30 frames per second. It might be required that further nodes are added or the time delta is increased in some cases where not enough time is allocated for the deltas between two nodes to be calculated (although truth is I see animations moving in slow motion compared to how movement really happens as more a problem in the DAZ Studio animations I've and others have made). 

Puppeteer is basically the timeline and now with far fewer features than the time line so I guess I'll just start sticking to the timeline unless if that isn't already possible please add those as new features to the puppeteer. If it is possible can someone give a link to where the tutorials on how to do that are? 

Thanks.

Richard Haseltine

Don't forget that to reach Daz your request needs to go to Technical Support https://www.daz3d.com/help/help-contact-us

nonesuch00

ok, done, thanks

cain-x

Sorry to bump this but will this feature be on the next build?

Richard Haseltine

ffzero58 said:

Sorry to bump this but will this feature be on the next build?

There's not, as far as I know, been any indication that it is on the development plans - and certainly no indication of when it would be added if it was. All you can do is watch the change log

stitlown

Just adding my voice to desire for text labels on saved puppeteer poses - maybe best as a hover-over popup or the <right click>