So that's how I change layer name in Manga Studio Ex

Sometimes to answer of a problem is so obvious that you almost want to chock yourself.

So I was trying to figure out how to change layer name in Manga Studio EX 3. I right clicked on the layer in Layers windows and couldn't find an entry called property. Fustrated, I went to the Net, and eventually find out that there's always a Properties window available. All you need to do is bring it up by pressing [F7]. There you are change the layer name is whatever way to want.

Personally I think 2 things need to be changed in Manga Studio regarding to this issue:

• Add a property menu in right click menu on layer in Layer window.
• Renew Property to "Layer Property"

But then at least I found the answer.

Common mistake when using Toon Boon Studio 4

During my re-learning process, I found out that I made some mistakes here and there when trying to create a cut out animation. So I think I better write down those tidbits cause I may probably make the same mistake next time I pick it up several months later.

• When animating your cut out animation, make sure that either "Tranform" or "Rotate" button are selected. Otherwise the movement you made will be just on the first key-frame.
• Check the preference and make sure that "Create Constant Keyframes" checkbox is OFF, unless you totally don't want the in-between automatically generated for you. After all, you can always set and reset the in-between nature by first selecting the in between area, and then right click to select the segment nature (constant or non-constant)
• Animation only happeneds on the peg. So make sure you set the hirechachy so that everything you want to animate is sitting inside a peg.
• You may wonder why all the parts do not show up on the screen after you have the hireahacy set up. Mostly that's because you are at the "Drawing View". Switch to Camear view and you will see all the parts.
• Save frequently. My Toon Boom Studio 4 still crashes very once in a while.
  

Here's a typical work flow of creating a cut out animation using Toon Boom Studio 4:

• Create a new document. I use 800x 600 camera size
• Go to Exposure Sheet. For each part of your cut out, create a new "drawing" at Frame 1. Remember to name your drawing properly. That makes organizing hireachy much easier.
• Create Peg, put drawing into the peg, with right hireachy. I name peg with "P-" prefix
  
• With "Rotate" selected, select each Peg, and move the pivot to the proper location (make sure indicators are all green.
• Save, before animate anything (that way you have a base to go back to)
• Collpase all hireachy. On the very top Peg, drag the first frame all the way to the final frame. Now the timeline should fill up by a blueline, with all the cutout part.
• Go ahead and animate. But make sure that (1) you select the peg instead of the drawing (easier to be done on the timeline), (2) Make sure either "Rotate" or "Transform" tools are selected (3) Use the solid black square handle to move the rotation.

Finally, try create a static drawing to layout the route of the motion to make sure that it's smooth.

Relearning Toon Boom Studio 4

I opened Toon Boom Studio 4 and tried to do some simple animation, and found out that I already forgot a lot of basica concept of how Toon Boom Studio works. Fortunately I downloaded some tutorial video back then. And those video really helps me to pick up what I left off all over again.

Manga Studio 3 EX blue, and then a happy ending

I haven't been using Manga Studio 3 EX for a while. The last time I used it was way before I got the ATI HD 4850 graphic card and the DELL 24 inch UltraShape display as my second displace. So when I found out that Manga Studio went nuts when I tried to use my Wacom Graphite 4 8" x 6" tablet with it. I wan't too surprise. What surprised me was the solution.

The moment I encountered the problem, I went ahead and downloaded the driver to update the Wacom driver to 5.0.8.6. Well, does NOT solve the problem.

Then I went to Smith Mirco's site and found that there's NO UPDATE on Manga Studio 3 EX... great.

Finally I found my rescure in CP Forums. Someone found out that by removing Wacom Tablet Perference, reboot, and set the preference again, it will resolve the problem. But how do I remove the preference?

Well, Wacom provided instruction to remove the Wacom tablet perference. I basically followed it, but went 1 step future by removing both Tablet.dat and Pen_Tablet.dat. After removing all these perference files, reboot, and then set the Tablet setting, Manga Studio works again. In fact, I am continue using my dual screen setting with no problem.

Poser vs Daz Studio

Comparing with Daz Studio, Poser (and Poser Pro to that respect) is like a lousy elder-brother who has talent but horrible people skill, while Daz Studio is an aggressive younger one who only inherited a few talent from the heritage but does those several things very well.

May be that's not a particularly good analogy, but the relationship between Poser and DazStudio is just too strange. And to fully take advantage of all the Poser format content, you need to have a good grip on both environment.

Ironically. while Daz Studio takes Poser scenes files in most case, you can't do the other way around opening Daz Studio file in Poser. So there's an incentive to do most of the work on Poser, until you found out that the posing environment in Poser is so much inferior comparing with Daz Studio. Daz Studio is definite so much easier to work with.

And then there's an issue of organizing material. Daz Studio has it's own little database in SQLite format which to me greatly enhance the workflow. Unfortunately Poser, even when pointing to the same runtime folder. Thus I am struggling about whether I should reorganize my Poser content physical folder structure so that both DazStudio and Poser can benefit the content structure. I am afraid that this procss would that me several days to complete, and even then I probably won't know for sure that I have all the content at the right place. ,

I already spent/wasted most of my time yesterday trying to get myself used to Poser Pro. I am not srue if I am willing to spent another day to just doing mechanical stuff today ... sigh ...

Wait and wait

I feel like I spent a lot of time in my life to wait for stuff. Especially waiting for Daz Studio to load up. Hopefully the graphic card that coming will ease that part of the pain in my life.

Crossdresser 3.0.1 has it's limit

I was overjoy figured out how to use Crossdresser 3.0.1, but then there are quite some limitation that I am to live with:

- Crossdresser doesn't do well on converting shoes or any sort of footwear.
- Crossdresser may not always convert clothing perfectly even when I do all the right setting. The Mongolian gown virtual cloth I brought is one of the example.

In fact I need to check around and see if there's others who have the same problem as I do.

Finally really figure out the power of CrossDresser 3.0.1

I finally figure out how to use CrossDresser 3.0.1 effectively. The sad part (about me) is that the application is supposed to be pretty easy to use, but because of my stubbornness of not reading the manual in the first place, and then made some wrong assumptions, as the result it took me almost a day to get the convention going to way I want to go.

My biggest mistake was that I forgot to set the "From" drop down. Thus the converted address were always not conformed properly. And I kept banging my head wondering why result was so different from what I expected.

Second, I didn't realized the Vicky 2, Vicky 3, Vicky 4 actually means Victoria 2, Victoria 3 and Victoria 4. Thus I was kept puzzling about how I could set the target or source to Victoria, since the drop down only has Vicky 4.

Let me continue my conversion journey. This is great. Now Miki 2 and Gina (Preteen Girl) has more costumes to wear.

Daz Studio 2.2.2.20

2.3.3.15 is just too darn crappy! It crashes time after time when I try to do something as simply as reorganizaing the catalog. I really couldn't stand it any more. So I am rolling back to the 2.2.2.20 and see if it's any better.

Used 2.2.2.20 for several hours. No crashing ... good ...

Big mistake with Daz Studio 2

I found out, today, that I made a big mistake regarding to organizing my Daz Studio resources. Instead of putting all my content files in Daz Studio's main content directory (under Program Files), I put them in the Q drive of my desktop machine. My rational was that it will give me flexibility of detaching the content from the main application, in case I need to rebuild the OS partition.

The problem is that by doing so, it makes backing up the whole Daz Studio environment difficult. After I installed the application, I started to use the Daz Studio database to organized my content. So now some reference in the database pointed to C: drive while others are pointing to Q: drive. That means if something goes wrong, and I need to replicate the environment, I have to put some content in C:, and then some content in Q:.

I also realize that it's impossible to consolidate folders. If you move the folder, Daz will lose track of your content, and all the work you did on organizing the content will be lose.

So now I kind of have a mess on hand, which is really not the end of the world, but I definitely will do it differently if I can do it again.

Taking back my words :-<

After trying it a bit more, a realized that Metasequoia 2.4.8 really isn't as Tablet PC friendly as I expected. Oh well.

Metasequoia 2.4.8 ,,,, Tablet friendly!

Most of the 3D modeling application I used so far has some serious problem with Tablet PC. Navigation on the screen (like move, scroll) usually goes crazy when I use stylus. That's why I was slightly surprised to find out that Metasequoia 2.4.8 does not have that kind of problem. Sure I need to play a bit more, but it seems very promising.

Metasequoia + Texture mapping = knocked me out for 10 hours

I fell into sleep because was the struggle with a 3D application called Metasequoia. Getting it to do basic modeling it's OK. In fact it's almost fun. However, I have major hardtime using it to do Image mapping. After struggling with it for more than half a day yesterday, I decided to roll back from the current version (2.4) to a much older version (2.1 beta). At least there are some tutorials online that I can follow for the older one.

Rendering

Here's I am testing various way of casting shadow.

Finding clothes for Gina

It all started when I found a 3D model that looks very much like my friend. So I wanted to pose some scene using that model called Gina. That's when I realized that the model is derived from Daz Milliumn PreTeen model, and that model does NOT have a lot of ready made hair, clothing and props to use with.

I resolved them problem by using Aiko 3's hair, and then decide NOT to apply "Fit To". That allows me to free to adjust the positioning of the hair. All I need to do, at the end, is move the hair to the head level of hireachy of the model and then all becomes fine.

Next, I need to make some clothes for Gina. Luckily, there's a software called CrossDresser 2.5.1. So I can use the tool to convert clothing form "Aiko 3" to "Preteen Girl". The conversion is not perfect, and it's a bit like trial and error. But at least there is a way. Each conversion takes from 15 seconds to 4 minutes.

After some twisting here and there, I got a ballet scene setup. But after I rendered, I found that there's no shadow casted on the floor, which makes the scene looks very strange. That's when I realized that I need to adjust the "Shadow" setting of my distantlight source. I picked "Raytraced(Software Only)" as Shodow Type and found that it takes A LONG TIME to render a scene. In fact, it took 20+ minutes to render the scene, and it doesn't look particular better than the "Deep Shadow Map version", which takes much shorter time to render.

Still couldn't find a converter to convert .bip to .bvh

I spent almost 2 hours and still couldn't find a way to convert .bip (motion capture file format for 3D Studio Max Character Studio) to .bvh (something Daz Studio can use, sort of). Some mentioned a way, but I don't have that motion builder application. What a bummer.

Faceshop, wow

I accidentally came across this Daz Studio plug in called FaceShop. The Basic version is now free, but it only works with version 2.2.2.17, which is still in beta right now. So I better wait for the release of 2.2.2.17 before I mess with it.

Finally, Aiko 4's eyes are not messed up

I was struggling for 2 hours (how many times did I write an introduction of my blog like this) with Daz Studio 2.2 trying to figure out why Aiko 4's morph was not working. Result: Aiko 4 got a very tiny eyes, and when I tried to slide the Aiko morph parameter nothing changed except the size of the model's head. That's a very creepy look.

I finally got my answer by reading the Daz 3D forum. Solution: Reinstall Aiko 4, and eveyrthing will be working fine.

3D Bridge for Photoshop is no longer free

I didn't really dig into 3D Bridge for Photoshop from Daz (for better integration between Photoshop and Daz Studio). To me, all I really care is find a way to export rendering image to a format that support layering, so that I can integration the scene rendered in Daz Studio into my photoshop work. And during the beta period, this is the only thing I used it for.

Guess work, the beta period for 3D Bridge is over. The final version has been released, and Daz started charging US$199 for it. I definitely don't have that much money, but I found a solution: .PNG file format. As long as I set up Daz Studio so that it render stuffs using .PNG, I can reopen the files in Photoshop, and integrate the rendering on my drawing. That's kind of my poor man version of 3D Bridge.

Found a clumsy way to import Lightwave 3D 8.5 models into Daz Studio

I enjoy using Lightwave 3D 8.5 since it works well in a "portable application" setting. However, I have hard time exporting or important anything to and from Lightwave to other format besides ".lwo". I tried making sure that all the plugins are being installed by:

• Opening Lightwave 3D 8.5
• Click [Utilities] tab
• Click button "Edit Plugins"
• Click [Scan Directory] button
• Point to the plugin folder

Still, when I check [Import ...] I got nothing.

So then I need to find a way to convert .lwo to .obj . Eventaully I found this solution:

• Open Shade 8
  
• Import .lwo file
• Export .obj file.

Once in .obj, I can open it in both 3D studio Max or Daz Studio.