Qumarion Mannequin: 3D Character Posing made EASY!
There are a host of 3D skills needed to make some half-decent, from lighting to seamless texture map making but what differentiates a good from an amazing 3D character model is posing. It’s incredibly easy to make a fantastic model look like crap by having overlapping body parts or just the wrong pose for the 3D character… that’s where Qumarion Mannequin shows promise!
If you are serious about 3D printing, you will have to cross the 3D character creation/posing bridge sooner or later!
Why are 3D character Posing so hard?
The problem (and advantage) to 3D modeling is that you are allowed to create without having to follow the laws of physics… if you want one hand to go through the other, the computer has no problem making it happen. You might thing, no big deal – just don’t do it… but it isn’t that simple. You have your base character THEN you add cloths… throw-in accessories like rings, key chains and the like and before you know it, your perfect character seems to have embeded and absorbed key parts of other meshes. The nice thing about 3D printing characters is that they AREN’T MOVING (yet!) – that’s a whole other ball of wax but the challenges remain.
How 3D character posing is done now
After the modeler creates/buys their character, the posing begins. Depending on your software package, this usually involves rigging it with a soft-body or bones system. It’s easier to manipulate bones than it is to edit mesh. There are a host of programs out there that do this but if you are new to this, you need to checkout Poser Pro by SmithMicro (http://poser.smithmicro.com/poserpro.html). This program is FANTASTIC because you can buy pre-selected poses – which you can then edit – taking ALL the hard work out. I think for the vast majority of people out there interested in 3D characters (to be 3D printed or not) will find this invaluable. It does have its limits though… but by the time you discover them, you are ready to move onto creating your own rigs/bone/soft bodies.
AutoDesk Mudbox
Alright, you’ve now become a pro character poser, next step up is most likely Mudbox (if you haven’t already, time to get 3DS Max or Maya to). MudBox allows you complete freedom in character creation… Poser is good for posing and buying models… but if you want to make your own stuff, there is no better (affordable) program out there to bring your characters up to a whole new level of creation.
Qumarion Mannequin
Regardless of the system you use, the other problem with 3D poses is that you are using a 2D mouse to move around a 3D character and numerical values from a keyboard for fine tuning… it’s time consuming and a pain in the ass. I’ve done lots of this, it’s fun but it’s still rather inefficient and has a steep learning curve. Poser’s UI is powerful but hopelessly complicated! That’s where something as intuitive as the Qumarion Mannequin seems to fit the bill perfectly!
You have in essence, a REAL 3D mannequin which you manipulate and voila, on your computer screen, the character you created (or bought) does the same pose! Unlike the other solutions, this is actually something you could give to a 4 year old kid and they’d put even the pros to shame… of course, you have to do some fine-tuning using the good old mouse and keyboard after but this is a huge step up from Poser and far quicker. I do look forward to playing with one of these in the near future!
How does the Qumarion Mannequin work?
The Qumarion Mannequin uses 32 sensors arrayed across 16 joints and this data is sent at 120 frame per second via USB to your waiting computer! If you want one though, it’s about 800$US… which is actually pretty cheap for the 3D world. (If you don’t think so, please don’t get pricing information for 3DS Max or Mudbox, you’ll have a heart attack).
You can get the Qumario Mannequin at http://quma.jp/en/quma