Controlling an image sequence with a Pose or Smartskin

[robcat2075]

Here is a brief demonstration project for controlling an image sequence with a pose or SmartSkin instead of time.

 

ImageSequenceToSS.zip

 

The image sequence shows numbers from 1 to 50 and fades from green to red

 

The top decal is controlled with the "UpperSequence" Pose slider

The top decal is controlled with a SmartSkin on the "Lower Sequence" bone below the square.

 

Neither is controlled by time anymore.

 

When you make a Pose or Smartskin there is a temporary Action created in the Actions folder. That is where you can turn on "Show More than Drivers" and make entries in the "Frame" parameter of an image sequence at certain Pose slider settings or certain bone rotations.

 

[John Bigboote]

Great stuff! I need to make time to watch this- useful info! Thanks Rob!

 

AND--- a potentially important gaming feature when you think about it... too bad we have no Arctic Pigs or HA:MR...!

[Rodney]

I just tested Robert's project in the HAMR viewer (it still works on Win10) and...

 

The project does work but the viewer does not immediately refresh which for most would equate to 'doesn't work'.

I resaved the project as a v17 project file and it works a little better although still considerable lag in display refresh.

If resaving (or recreating) yet again via a release closer to that of HAMR (better than 15 years ago!) I'll guess might play smoothly.

 

 

Edit: I'll have to retest this because I'm currently having display refresh issues with quite a few different programs so that issue might not relate to the HAMR viewer at all.

Update: Still delays with the HAMR viewer but... no delays in A:M itself which is of course the important thing here.

[robcat2075]

Here is a brief animation with a Displacement Map whose Percentage is keyed in a Smartskin to go from 0 to 200 as the bone rotates to create the appearance of compression wrinkles.

 

(You may need to click on it to see it animate)

 

 

 

The map looks like this...

 

[Fuchur]

Very nice.

[Rodney]

Yes indeed. Very nice.

[robcat2075]

If you had a surface feature that didn't just squish and become more obvious when bones moved but had to change shape, then that would be an occasion for using an image sequence so you could put up different forms at different bone angles.

 

Painting those would be a specialized skill, however.

[detbear]

Awesome!!!!

 

That saves a whole lot of complex geometry to achieve wrinkling on cheeks, eye brows, clothes, finger joints, etc.

 

Getting that system into a facial rig would add a lot of great detail without having to add the additional splines.

 

Very cool.

[detbear]

As Robcat said.......it will require the ability to paint the correct images required. That is a complex skill in itself.

[robcat2075]

My first attempt at painting the map in Photoshop got me something that had a profile more like pimples than folds of skin...

 

 

 

The standard brush and blur tools weren't getting me what I wanted so I modeled the shape in splines, put a white-to-black gradient on it and shot it with an overhead orthogonal camera.

 

 

 

However, if I'm going to model the shape to create a map for it, why not just model it on the model? Hmmm...

 

It's possible that a custom brush in PS might do the job but I don't know much about making those.