Warp Modeling General Tips

Warp Modeling General Tips
By Bill Allen

For working with workbench figures . . .
1 Turn on Display/Tracking/Full Tracking.
This helps greatly to see changes that you can miss with Fast Tracking, and can help avoid unwanted surprises. It should be practical even on a lowly Pentium P5-133 with 64Mb RAM and no 3D hardware acceleration.
2 Set a special Preferred State.
Life will be simpler during a big session warp modeling if you create a special state and use Edit/General Preferences to set it as default for launching Poser and for opening new Document Windows:

New Document Window: empty
Display/Tracking/Full Tracking: ON
Display/Ground Shadows: OFF
Display/Guides/Ground Plane: OFF

And do NOT have a default figure load (usually the default state when you first install Poser).
3 Keep an eye on the Current Element selection (displayed below the Document Window).
It's easy to select something other than what you think you are manipulating. For instance, while moving a camera to inspect your work, you may, without noticing, actually be causing unwanted changes in the model (irreversible changes if you've gone beyond the one level of undo or did one of many operations Poser can't undo).
4 Edit/Properties/Element Properties/Bend must be on.
This is the default for all figure parts. Leave it that way.
5 Leave Figure/Use Inverse Kinematics initally on or off.
If your workbench figure has one or more IK chains, enable each or not from the start and don't change this later, which can cause unpredictable and possibly undoable changes.
___ Advisory: The Poser documentation instructs you to turn OFF all IK chains while editing Joint Parameters. For the most part, that is how it will be shown here, but you also will see warp modeling techniques explained that use an enabled IK chain to get at parameters not available otherwise.
6 Watch out for Main Camera distortion.
The Main Camera Focal length defaults to 25mm, a cinematographic setting that can be excellent for working in close to a subject for final rendering. While settings less than 45mm also can be interesting and maybe useful for looking at your modeling work, 25mm is too distorted for actual modeling. Use the non-perspective orthogonal views, such as Front and Top, when you can. With the Main Camera, just for viewing, try something between 45 and 55mm, which more closely mimics how the human eye sees the world. Realworld photographers use 85 to 110mm for portrait work, but you will need to go longer, to something like 200mm, to get near orthogonal viewing.
___ As Poser creator Larry Weinberg points out in his 3DA#34 article, you can make any perspective camera, such as Main, become orthographic by changing its Focal length to 0mm. This nearly freezes the trackball, so first move close to the view you want, then change the Focal setting to 0mm.
7 Modeling should be subordinate to storytelling.
A bit of philosophy: If movies were made like so many people approach 3D graphics, you would find George Lucas and Steven Spielberg out in the carpentry shop working on props for their next movies, instead of at a desk writing scripts, drawing storyboards, and managing the overall process. As a general proposition, you should start with developing a story and how it will be framed, working it out with different camera and figure poses, and bringing in or creating props as needed. (If your goal in doing 3D is to serve others telling their stories, or to embark on a career in architectural, courtroom, or other illustration, then Poser may be the wrong software for you.)
___ Don't get stuck on premature concerns about detail. You can prototype an animation with stand-in props. For instance, use a stretched box as a temporary table. When you are ready to do the final animation, if that table is still in a scene, then bring in a suitable model.
___ For all its strengths, Poser 3 is not going to give you anything like CAD accuracy, photorealistic rendering, or even consistent results, so don't fuss too much with perfecting tiny details. Put your time and effort into the story animation, and just get your modeling to a point good enough to serve that larger purpose. Besides, when the camera starts moving, much detail won't be as evident to your audience as it is to you now, the storyteller/animator who sits there, staring at it on screen.

Revised: 14 Jun 99
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