Are the promotions for Ghost Dynamics composites or single renders?

Cybersox

If I've read everything right, the Ghost Dynamics items work by having a set of props that DAZ Studio sees as one item, thereby bypassing the limit of the single collision item.  Or are the promotional images actually composites of multiple separate collision images? 

KindredArts

Yes, the set contains props with serveral different rigged shaped joined into one figure, allowing you to bypass the figure limit (in a sense). The main promo isn't a composite, i used one figure.

barbult

What is "dynamic"? At first I thought dForce was involved, but I don't think that'ts right. Do you have a vidoe showing how to actually use it? I don't think I "get" it yet.

SnowSultan

I'm pretty sure it uses push modifers, I was just testing this idea the other day after watching a tutorial on them. Either way, it's in my cart like pretty much everything from KindredArts eventually ends up.   :)

skinklizzard

from what I understand from multiple threads asking about it, it is a group of various shapes and objects all collected together as a single figure with various sliders etc

this figure can be used as a collision object for the smoothing modifier allowing you to create multiple dents etc on one object.

basically simplifies the pipeline of moving all objects into colliding positions, export to obj, import as collision object. allowing you to avoid the whole export import business by using the presets.

KindredArts

barbult said:

What is "dynamic"? At first I thought dForce was involved, but I don't think that'ts right. Do you have a vidoe showing how to actually use it? I don't think I "get" it yet.

I poached the term from "Softbody dynamics". Basically i've just reversed the clothing smoothing modifier and i'm using it on genesis itself. So just like a shirt would "Collide" with a clipping elbow on genesis, My set will pull/push the surface of genesis by colliding with it. You can do this with pretty much any mesh you want, but you're limited to only one mesh at a time. My props are a workaround for that limitation, by providing you with a range of shapes and hand gestures to replicate contact with the mesh. It's arguably quicker than creating morphs, and more tactile than using dformers. All methods are relative, i'm just presenting another one thats all. 

nemesis10

KindredArts said:

barbult said:

What is "dynamic"? At first I thought dForce was involved, but I don't think that'ts right. Do you have a vidoe showing how to actually use it? I don't think I "get" it yet.

I poached the term from "Softbody dynamics". Basically i've just reversed the clothing smoothing modifier and i'm using it on genesis itself. So just like a shirt would "Collide" with a clipping elbow on genesis, My set will pull/push the surface of genesis by colliding with it. You can do this with pretty much any mesh you want, but you're limited to only one mesh at a time. My props are a workaround for that limitation, by providing you with a range of shapes and hand gestures to replicate contact with the mesh. It's arguably quicker than creating morphs, and more tactile than using dformers. All methods are relative, i'm just presenting another one thats all. 

I am in awe of the cleverness of this!

Phatmartino

nemesis10 said:

KindredArts said:

barbult said:

I am in awe of the cleverness of this!

Agreed, I usually cart any sort of clever innovation like this. Sounds awesome, can't wait to try it out!

KindredArts

nemesis10 said:

KindredArts said:

barbult said:

What is "dynamic"? At first I thought dForce was involved, but I don't think that'ts right. Do you have a vidoe showing how to actually use it? I don't think I "get" it yet.

I poached the term from "Softbody dynamics". Basically i've just reversed the clothing smoothing modifier and i'm using it on genesis itself. So just like a shirt would "Collide" with a clipping elbow on genesis, My set will pull/push the surface of genesis by colliding with it. You can do this with pretty much any mesh you want, but you're limited to only one mesh at a time. My props are a workaround for that limitation, by providing you with a range of shapes and hand gestures to replicate contact with the mesh. It's arguably quicker than creating morphs, and more tactile than using dformers. All methods are relative, i'm just presenting another one thats all. 

I am in awe of the cleverness of this!

 

phatmartino said:

nemesis10 said:

KindredArts said:

barbult said:

I am in awe of the cleverness of this!

Agreed, I usually cart any sort of clever innovation like this. Sounds awesome, can't wait to try it out!

Oh you guys 

Hurdy3D

nemesis10 said:

KindredArts said:

barbult said:

What is "dynamic"? At first I thought dForce was involved, but I don't think that'ts right. Do you have a vidoe showing how to actually use it? I don't think I "get" it yet.

I poached the term from "Softbody dynamics". Basically i've just reversed the clothing smoothing modifier and i'm using it on genesis itself. So just like a shirt would "Collide" with a clipping elbow on genesis, My set will pull/push the surface of genesis by colliding with it. You can do this with pretty much any mesh you want, but you're limited to only one mesh at a time. My props are a workaround for that limitation, by providing you with a range of shapes and hand gestures to replicate contact with the mesh. It's arguably quicker than creating morphs, and more tactile than using dformers. All methods are relative, i'm just presenting another one thats all. 

I am in awe of the cleverness of this!

Meipe is doing this with a breast geocraft product since a long time.

But it's a good idea to extend this approach how Kindred Arts it did.

However, question.

Are the hand props posable and can we apply our hand poses to them?

Or even better, can we copy the pose a hand and paste it to one of these hand props?

marble

Genius. Wishlisted awaiting some attractive stacking offer.

FSMCDesigns

This looks really helpful. one question, Is there a way to keep the details on the figure from smoothing out once you add the smoothing modifier?

Cora Regina

gerster said:

However, question.

Are the hand props posable and can we apply our hand poses to them?

Or even better, can we copy the pose a hand and paste it to one of these hand props?

I would like to know this as well. I love the idea and convenience of the product and if the hands are rigged for posing it'll be an insta-buy.

If I'm limited to a few rigid poses that may not provide the look I want (e.g. a character's cheek or lip showing pressure from a caress), or play nicely with extreme morphs that I would have to individually pose finger joints to accomodate, it becomes much less useful and "omg I need this yesterday" for my needs.

Still a brilliant idea and definitely on the wishlist, but not a day one thing anymore.

Janus3003

Just bought it and played with it for a couple of minutes (no time to do more right now). I like it, but I think it would be useful to be able to mirror the props, especially the hands. I only found left-handed "Grab" hands, for instance. Anyway to change that?

 

gerster said:

Are the hand props posable and can we apply our hand poses to them?

Or even better, can we copy the pose a hand and paste it to one of these hand props?

From my 5-10 minutes with it, no, the hands are not posable.

marble

I was thinking that this might be good for the bulges caused by tight clothing but now I'm doubting my thinking.

Silent Winter

 

Janus3003 said:

Just bought it and played with it for a couple of minutes (no time to do more right now). I like it, but I think it would be useful to be able to mirror the props, especially the hands. I only found left-handed "Grab" hands, for instance. Anyway to change that?

Would scaling it through x-axis at -100% work?

maikdecker

Janus3003 said:

gerster said:

Are the hand props posable and can we apply our hand poses to them?

Or even better, can we copy the pose a hand and paste it to one of these hand props?

From my 5-10 minutes with it, no, the hands are not posable.

But it's possible to collide one figure with another, right? And if one uses any figures with hands, these would be able to collide with the other figure's body, to achieve the desired effect, right? 'cause the smothing isn't restricted to single bodyparts, right?

I set this up in under 5 minutes using two G8F's. A large percentage of that time was spend making the rear figure's body and hands invisible, which in total could have been done with a single click, but I wanted to keep the two colliding fingers visible.

So thanks to KindredArts for reminding me about an effect I already had seen and used, but not to this amount, by releasing a - great it seems!!! - convenience product for all the people who don't want to spend the time fiddling around with the details themselves.

lilweep

The problem is, G8 character mesh isnt dense enough in many areas to do very small dents.  This is same problem with mesh grabber.

 

I guess if you export with SubD on as an obj after finalising pose, and then import back in, it could work.  But you need to set up textures etc.

nicstt

lilweep said:

The problem is, G8 character mesh isnt dense enough in many areas to do very small dents.  This is same problem with mesh grabber.

 

I guess if you export with SubD on as an obj after finalising pose, and then import back in, it could work.  But you need to set up textures etc.

agreed

i53570k

Just from reading the promo, instead of using ghost prop hands to push/pull mesh and then having to pose the actual figure again for rendering, wouldn't it be easier for the props to be some kind of invisible outfit? 

Rant: when will Daz add soft body physics?

lilweep

nicstt said:

lilweep said:

The problem is, G8 character mesh isnt dense enough in many areas to do very small dents.  This is same problem with mesh grabber.

 

I guess if you export with SubD on as an obj after finalising pose, and then import back in, it could work.  But you need to set up textures etc.

agreed

I want a script that is called something like 'Freeze with SubD' which exports your posed figure/object at current SubD and then reimports and applies all the textures for you.

This would be helpful for Mesh Grabber, and also when doing collisions, to give denser mesh for manipulation.

mrlee71

maikdecker said:

Janus3003 said:

gerster said:

Are the hand props posable and can we apply our hand poses to them?

Or even better, can we copy the pose a hand and paste it to one of these hand props?

From my 5-10 minutes with it, no, the hands are not posable.

But it's possible to collide one figure with another, right? And if one uses any figures with hands, these would be able to collide with the other figure's body, to achieve the desired effect, right? 'cause the smothing isn't restricted to single bodyparts, right?

I set this up in under 5 minutes using two G8F's. A large percentage of that time was spend making the rear figure's body and hands invisible, which in total could have been done with a single click, but I wanted to keep the two colliding fingers visible.

So thanks to KindredArts for reminding me about an effect I already had seen and used, but not to this amount, by releasing a - great it seems!!! - convenience product for all the people who don't want to spend the time fiddling around with the details themselves.

Could you explain how you did that? 

Cybersox

i53570k said:

Rant: when will Daz add soft body physics?

From past experience?  About a year or two after at least one PA has released a product that acheives the same thing and it sells well. 

maikdecker

mrlee71 said:

maikdecker said:

I set this up in under 5 minutes using two G8F's. A large percentage of that time was spend making the rear figure's body and hands invisible, which in total could have been done with a single click, but I wanted to keep the two colliding fingers visible.

So thanks to KindredArts for reminding me about an effect I already had seen and used, but not to this amount, by releasing a - great it seems!!! - convenience product for all the people who don't want to spend the time fiddling around with the details themselves.

Could you explain how you did that? 

I loaded two G8F figures and positioned them behind each other. Then I moved the arms, hand and fingers of the rear figure in the position seen on the picture. Then - for better visibility - I used that nice little eye icon to make every part of the rear figure - except those finger - invisible. On the front figure I added the smoothing modifier and set the whole rear figure as the target. As one can only use one target, it had to be the whole figure, not just a finger, 'cause then it would only have worked with that single finger.

I could have made the fingers invisible, too, if I had wanted to show only the indentions they leave.

Sorry.. I'm not that good at explaining things :)

 

Cybersox

maikdecker said:

mrlee71 said:

maikdecker said:

I set this up in under 5 minutes using two G8F's. A large percentage of that time was spend making the rear figure's body and hands invisible, which in total could have been done with a single click, but I wanted to keep the two colliding fingers visible.

So thanks to KindredArts for reminding me about an effect I already had seen and used, but not to this amount, by releasing a - great it seems!!! - convenience product for all the people who don't want to spend the time fiddling around with the details themselves.

Could you explain how you did that? 

I loaded two G8F figures and positioned them behind each other. Then I moved the arms, hand and fingers of the rear figure in the position seen on the picture. Then - for better visibility - I used that nice little eye icon to make every part of the rear figure - except those finger - invisible. On the front figure I added the smoothing modifier and set the whole rear figure as the target. As one can only use one target, it had to be the whole figure, not just a finger, 'cause then it would only have worked with that single finger.

I could have made the fingers invisible, too, if I had wanted to show only the indentions they leave.

Sorry.. I'm not that good at explaining things :)

 

By the way, a useful variation on the trick is to create a geoshell on the object that's supposed to be making the indentions and then setting the geoshell as the collision source rather than the item itself.  That allows you to scale the indent up or down for a wider oveall indent, which can look a lot more natural, especially when you're creating indents in things like seat cushions and mattresses, as it gives the impression of a more widely dispersed area of surface tension. 

Also, the one big negative to watch out for when using collisions this way is that sometimes figures will start to lose their shape if you turn the collisions up too high, something that I've found can be especially noticeable on the fine details of faces, low-rez mesh areas like breasts, and extremely straight lines like chair legs on props.. My ususal solution for that has been to just re-render the affected areas and blend them back in in post.

JOdel

What I want to know is whether there are any oopsies regarding whether you are on Mac or Windows. That's disallowed me a number of useful-sounding utilities. The promo text certainly doesn't *sound* like anything is platform-dependent. But I'd rather not have to return products.

I'm likely to be using it more on the furniture, or architechtural props, so is it possible to scale up the "hands"?

WendyLuvsCatz

I cannot myself see the need for this product at all

but if the PA can make money with it good on them

 

barbult

Many products in the Daz store are just handy ways of doing something we could do without those products, but they can make the task faster and easier. They have a place in many people's workflows. Think of light sets, pose sets, render settings presets for dome orientation and tone mapping, HDRI tools for Matte settings, clothing and hair converters between G8 and G3, etc. I think this product probably falls into that category. Some will find it immensely useful and others will find a way to accomplish the task without it, albeit perhaps with more effort.

daveso

i dont have a clue how to do this manually, so for me, it would be maybe something good to buy. 

One of the things I've noticed a lot is lack of body interactions in a lot of renders .. no squishing, the body weight looks incorrect in poses, and very little body weight onto chairs, beds, cushions, etc. These helpers should/could enhance a lot of renders. 

mrlee71

maikdecker said:

mrlee71 said:

maikdecker said:

I set this up in under 5 minutes using two G8F's. A large percentage of that time was spend making the rear figure's body and hands invisible, which in total could have been done with a single click, but I wanted to keep the two colliding fingers visible.

So thanks to KindredArts for reminding me about an effect I already had seen and used, but not to this amount, by releasing a - great it seems!!! - convenience product for all the people who don't want to spend the time fiddling around with the details themselves.

Could you explain how you did that? 

I loaded two G8F figures and positioned them behind each other. Then I moved the arms, hand and fingers of the rear figure in the position seen on the picture. Then - for better visibility - I used that nice little eye icon to make every part of the rear figure - except those finger - invisible. On the front figure I added the smoothing modifier and set the whole rear figure as the target. As one can only use one target, it had to be the whole figure, not just a finger, 'cause then it would only have worked with that single finger.

I could have made the fingers invisible, too, if I had wanted to show only the indentions they leave.

Sorry.. I'm not that good at explaining things :)

 

Thanks for the explanation! I will give it a try!

mrlee71

Cybersox said:

maikdecker said:

mrlee71 said:

maikdecker said:

I set this up in under 5 minutes using two G8F's. A large percentage of that time was spend making the rear figure's body and hands invisible, which in total could have been done with a single click, but I wanted to keep the two colliding fingers visible.

So thanks to KindredArts for reminding me about an effect I already had seen and used, but not to this amount, by releasing a - great it seems!!! - convenience product for all the people who don't want to spend the time fiddling around with the details themselves.

Could you explain how you did that? 

I loaded two G8F figures and positioned them behind each other. Then I moved the arms, hand and fingers of the rear figure in the position seen on the picture. Then - for better visibility - I used that nice little eye icon to make every part of the rear figure - except those finger - invisible. On the front figure I added the smoothing modifier and set the whole rear figure as the target. As one can only use one target, it had to be the whole figure, not just a finger, 'cause then it would only have worked with that single finger.

I could have made the fingers invisible, too, if I had wanted to show only the indentions they leave.

Sorry.. I'm not that good at explaining things :)

 

By the way, a useful variation on the trick is to create a geoshell on the object that's supposed to be making the indentions and then setting the geoshell as the collision source rather than the item itself.  That allows you to scale the indent up or down for a wider oveall indent, which can look a lot more natural, especially when you're creating indents in things like seat cushions and mattresses, as it gives the impression of a more widely dispersed area of surface tension. 

Also, the one big negative to watch out for when using collisions this way is that sometimes figures will start to lose their shape if you turn the collisions up too high, something that I've found can be especially noticeable on the fine details of faces, low-rez mesh areas like breasts, and extremely straight lines like chair legs on props.. My ususal solution for that has been to just re-render the affected areas and blend them back in in post.

Thanks! thats very helpful as well!