Is the EJ figure compatible with the face room? The face room is not really half as bad as people say, I think it is one of the most underrated parts of poser 5. The face making is not automatic and sometimes doesn`t work, but it is still quite useful.

EJ is not compatible with the face room. Here's what 3Dream says: EJ is not compatible with Face Room, but with 472 head morph targets, you can do male , female or fantasy heads, as many as you want, with precision ::::: Opera :::::

If it isnt compatible with the face room, why didnt he just make a completely new figure?

As it turned out, the only characters compatible with the Face Room are the Poser-native characters.

Message edited on: 12/27/2004 23:05

xantor, i don't know what you mean, but you can certainly ask him. I don't know why EJ is incompatible, since she is based on Judy. ::::: Opera :::::

I meant if EJ is not compatible with the face room then why wasn`t EJ just made as a completely different figure? I suppose it would be easier to convert an existing figure than to build a new one from scratch.

Thank you, Opera Guy, for sharing the EJ pictures. Very illustrative. Her shoulders are much better indeed, though still a little too tiny compared to the upper arms. A little postwork can solve that. And there's nothing wrong with her face. Bagoas

Can be solved by dials, easily. I have hardly even touched the body morphs until today. ::::: Opera :::::

No probs, Melanie. ;) Just making sure disinformation didn't propogate - it's the only thing known that exceeds the speed of light in forums. grin And there's plenty of it about.

"I've been using Poser since the mid to late 1990's, coming in on Poser 2, so I've seen the leaps and bounds of improvements to the figures since then. The P2 figures didn't even have lifelike faces at all. You had to paint faces on them in a paint program to make them look like anything. Poser 3 was a major improvement!"

I did as well: I started out on Poser 2 in '95? '96? - not long after I first discovered it. I remember meticulously painting features on Poser 2 texture maps. My first efforts at that were rather horrid. ;)

Best answer I think to the origional poster's question: "Is it really necessary to buy V3, Freak, Michael3, S3, etc... ?" is....

It really depends on what you want to do. It depends a LOT on just what it is that you want to do:

1. You just want to learn the ropes, make good images, learn to do conforming, texturing and morphing, and possibly make the odd freebie or whatever available, then "No." Posette and Dork [and Don and Judy] are perfectly adequate and more than. You can do fantastic imagery with nothing more than the basic figures. Sean_Martin and Hack_Worthless and any number of people are proof of that by virtue of their work.

It's not the tools, it's the weilder. Period. You have the skill, you can do whatever you need to with whatever comes to hand.

And you develop the skill with work, not toys and the latest gadgets. ;)

I'd say personally that you're better off learning the skills with poser and dork, because you have to work harder at making them look "top shelf", and you learn a lot more useful skills that way than you do with the push-button-packages.

But not many people in these forums are going to tell you that, because they didn't learn the hard way.

1. If you want to keep up with the latest fads and be able to buy and use all of the latest store items and textures and freebies - "Yes". You need the newest and latest because that's all that the merchant communities support. You realy almost have to follow the latest Daz trends there because that's really all the bulk of the merchants support.

That's going to hold true ad infinitum: Daz releases Vicki 4, and support for Vicki 3 will drop to almost nil except from a rare handful of merchants and freestuff providers.

1. Same goes for merchandising: the non-Vicki stuff is niche merchandise, and it has limited markets. If one wants to be a high selling merchant, one tends to follow the newest Daz releases - Vickie, Mike, Freak and whatever.

Building a market for non-Victoria items as RDNA, Sixus1 and others have done takes a lot of work, consistent quality, and a lot of creative marketing, and the Poser markets tend to run along the paths of least resistance and easiest sales.

1. You want the "Ooohs and Ahhs and Yer a GAWD!" comments in the galleries, oh hell yes - you need to follow the fads. ;)

OR you need to get good enough that you make the fads, and everyone follows you. grin

Figure out what you want out of this, srrdude, and then your question is going to answer itself. The tools you need to use and master are going to be contained within the parameters of the goals.

And no matter what anyone else tries to tell you: there is no wrong choice to pick from the above. There's only what works best for you. ;)

Free advice. Worth ever penny.

More variety from base tools...

This is Jimmy, a jazz musician, 'sort of' based on a friend who is
not alive any longer, who I miss. Oddly, the most unusual feature,
the mouth and lips, are the closest to the real Jimmy!

Click here to open in new window. Format: TIFF 1.75MB, will display in Quicktime or WMP, please be patient

Model: Poser5Woman+EJ (Eternal Judy by 3Dream)
Texture: based on Nikki, but significantly customized by myself
Bump Map: reversed out and custom contrast from texture
Shader: Natural Skin Shader, (face-Off)
Post-process: only to fix break between head and body texture,
I don't have the body texture correct yet, plus a
little work around the ear. All else strictly Poser5+Firefly.

I am happy to get such a different, older
character without purchasing new texture or
anything. There is much to improve here... the
eyeballs are too white, there should be
signs of a hairline, even though Jimmy is bald,
the ear is out of focus because I don't understand
depth-of-field yet in Poser5 and the texture
is slightly too deep, even thou he was pretty craggy.

::::: Opera :::::

EJ isn't compatible with the face room due to the creation of new morphs and the shifting of the existing vertices. The face room depends on a detailed database of exactly where each and every morph and vertex is; if the geometry is altered, boom.

Can I get back to the original question? It's not necessary to buy extras with Poser. It is necessary to decide how you want to use Poser. You may want to depend on exterior and-- for the most part-- superior purchased models. Especially if you have no desire ever to model anything. Like, me having no talent whatsoever in that area. You may want to concentrate on Posette-- a very very study and well studied model with tons of possibilities for add-ons and magnets and morphs, not all but most of them free. You want to see what people can do with wit and imagination check out Den Tracy's gallery at PoserPros. He may have one here too. I don't go to the rocity galleries often, too huge to maneuver. He works almost entirely with freebies and does incrediable serial stories with characters he has perfected over a long period of time. I decided I wanted to tell stories too-- but with higher end models and I did so for some time in the Aldara Project at Rdna with V2 and Steph and some odd varieties of Mike2. It's been hard trying to convert these over to the higher end of V3 etc. Too many polygons to get a huge crowd going. At any rate, I knew what I wanted to do before I bought Poser, from cruising these forums, and the galleries and seeing what others were doing and what I wanted to do from that. Then I budgeted in V2 and M2 in my Poser budget before I purchased the program-- bang, no sticker shock. I suggest others do the same, it's a lot easier to get a handle on what you want from the program before you buy. Cheers, Emily

I tried to get by using Posette and Dork for the first year or so. It was utter agony. Even the simplest poses seemed to break their knees or elbows. In my own experience, the Poser 4 native figures are just not dependable or useable. I had great hopes for the "native" Poser 5 characters, but they just never really caught on. That leaves only one decent alternative: DAZ characters.

The first couple of years I used poser I downloaded a lot of freestuff to use, including figures. I didn`t have victoria 2 or 3 then because they werent made yet at that time. Sixus1 and combat bunny have a lot of good free stuff and many other sites have free things to try before you need to bother with the daz stuff IMO.

By the way,operaguy, I can understand your frustrations if that's as different as you were able to make V3-- she can be much more malleable than that and can look just about anyway you want-- I'll admit it's hard to make her look ordinary but possible. I like Stephanie for that. She has a set of sharper more sarcastic features. I like her for that. But My V3's don't look like your variants. For one thing, I don't like round faces and accent the cheekbones much more. I don't have much on my current machine, but here's one of my avatars made when V3 just came out. Emily

emily, your avatar at least does look like she came from a different tribe! Thanks. Luckily, while I WAS frustrated a month ago while trying to get Vickie to look like people, I am not frustrated now, because i let go of her.... I am flowing in power with my current solution. Last night I created that jazz musician older black guy in about 2 hours. Tonight I am working on a dignified older professor, female, whose face looks lived in. Other ethnicities and ages to come. what's your solution for Vickie's bad shoulder/upper arm and the fold at the elbow that looks like a bent straw? And when I look at Stephanie, she seems to have the same affliction. [note: post processing is not a solution to this for an animator.] ::::: Opera :::::

All the unimeshes have that damn upperarm anomaly-- I don't seem to have as much problem with the elbows. I'm lucky I don't animate. I think V3 would be hell to animate in any form other than RR cause she's just too huge--inhabits that area right at the border where Poser fails actually. All I can do is avoid over head arm stuff. V2 did not have the same awful problem and there's a picture in my gallery called Rapture that -- I think-- does arms overhead acceptably. Maybe I accept less perfection. My former fave for storytelling was Steff 1 and she's brittle as straw but strangely appealing like a gangly colt. I think we want different things from our programs and are willing to take different tradeoffs to get them. I don't have time to model-- or talent. Judy does not inspire me at all, unfortunately. V3 inspires me a little, Sp3 does alot and she's brittle too but human. Also, I love postwork, I'm good at it. There's is in postwork two chances to play, first I do the very best I can with Poser and then the very best I can with PhotoShop. This is why I say, you have to know what you want before you buy into this program or any program. I played around in these forums for three months while I was deciding to get back into 3d. I did it to stimulate my mind as I was getting older. To teach an old dog a new trick. Poser 5 almost broke me, it was so hard to learn. I pity those starting with 5 who just want to play-- I really want to say-- start with Artist, suck up the awful library mess and learn fast and cheap and fun. And, by the way, I really like your early characters-- especially the lower right Judy with Koz's ponytail, she's cute as a button and utterly real. It is Judy, right. I also wonder if Shade wouldn't give me more tools to work with. But I'm disabled now and under pretty strong pain-killers so my learning time hasw lessened. So has my Poser time. Unfortunately-- you can tell from the gallery how long it's been since I've been able to work. Trying to get everything moved from a huge Dell desktop to a small laptop has been agonising and just when everything was supposed to go togethr my firewire card busted. I'm hoping that's all it was. I should be able to mount some small runtimes any day now though. And be back in business. I have one dark and acouple of light holiday pics in mind and dang it, you're getting em late.;)) Keep doing what you're doing operaguy. You're doing it very well. I'm just trying to present an alternative view. Emily

All the unimeshes have that damn upperarm anomaly-- I don't seem to have as much problem with the elbows. I'm lucky I don't animate. I think V3 would be hell to animate in any form other than RR cause she's just too huge--inhabits that area right at the border where Poser fails actually. All I can do is avoid over head arm stuff. V2 did not have the same awful problem and there's a picture in my gallery called Rapture that -- I think-- does arms overhead acceptably. Maybe I accept less perfection. My former fave for storytelling was Steff 1 and she's brittle as straw but strangely appealing like a gangly colt. I think we want different things from our programs and are willing to take different tradeoffs to get them. I don't have time to model-- or talent. Judy does not inspire me at all, unfortunately. V3 inspires me a little, Sp3 does alot and she's brittle too but human. Also, I love postwork, I'm good at it. There's is in postwork two chances to play, first I do the very best I can with Poser and then the very best I can with PhotoShop. This is why I say, you have to know what you want before you buy into this program or any program. I played around in these forums for three months while I was deciding to get back into 3d. I did it to stimulate my mind as I was getting older. To teach an old dog a new trick. Poser 5 almost broke me, it was so hard to learn. I pity those starting with 5 who just want to play-- I really want to say-- start with Artist, suck up the awful library mess and learn fast and cheap and fun. And, by the way, I really like your early characters-- especially the lower right Judy with Koz's ponytail, she's cute as a button and utterly real. It is Judy, right. I also wonder if Shade wouldn't give me more tools to work with. But I'm disabled now and under pretty strong pain-killers so my learning time hasw lessened. So has my Poser time. Unfortunately-- you can tell from the gallery how long it's been since I've been able to work. Trying to get everything moved from a huge Dell desktop to a small laptop has been agonising and just when everything was supposed to go togethr my firewire card busted. I'm hoping that's all it was. I should be able to mount some small runtimes any day now though. And be back in business. I have one dark and acouple of light holiday pics in mind and dang it, you're getting em late.;)) Keep doing what you're doing operaguy. You're doing it very well. I'm just trying to present an alternative view. Emily

Queri, one thing you can consider trying at least. If your desktop is still operational, and you have a network card (wireless would probably be best), you might still be able to access a larger hard drive on your desktop computer, and use it for Poser on your laptop?! Does that make any sense? I might try it myself if I can afford to buy a laptop.

Emily,

Thanks for the support and kind words. Yes, animating
Vickie is daunting. That's one of the reasons I let go
of her, even if I COULD solve the shoulder/elbow/stubbornFace problems.

[Note: the clips below are quite short; they are just practice.
Also, no nudity or crudity!]

For instance, here is a vid, my last Vickie
animation. The render time was over 2.5 min per frame.
Hi-Res short clip, Vickie 3 morphed by myself.
Click here, opens in new window, Quicktime 6.432 MB so please be patient.

Here is my FIRST animation of EJ, the one you think is
'cute as a button' in her Koz pony tail. I have a crush
on her. Even though I kicked up the render intensity
on this vid, the render time per frame was UNDER 1 minute.
Click here, opens in new window, Quicktime 1.632 MB so please be patient.

Here is another...slightly romantic! There are TWO EJ's in this video.
Render time was 87 seconds per frame.
Click here, opens in new window, Quicktime 3.222 MB so please be patient.

By the way, if anyone thinks I am off-topic, I am not.
The question is...should srrdude (or anyone) purchase the Daz characters.

::::: Opera :::::

BB, thank you, I have some networking abilities but the speed is terrible 2k per whatever to transfer data-- I couldn't ever do Poser at that speed-- couldn't even get on the web-- fortunately, web speed is faster. I'm hoping the firewire card is the problem-- I can't do web and Poser at once, but I don't anyway, so that's no prob. We'll see soon, Friday or Monday. Networking is sooooo hair pullingly complicated just when everything seems great, something falls out of the network and we're back to zero. My tech's doing linksys. And he's a sweetie, no charge unless it works. Operguy, I don't have a fast enough weblink to do animations, sorry, I trust you though and the times are impressive. Emily

More flexibility without any Daz whatsoever.
Except to open the tif in my graphics software and
fix one little problem on the lips, and to make
the .jpg, this is a straight Firefly Render from Poser5.

Model: Poser5Woman + EJ
Character: Dials spun by operaguy, this is Georgia, a teacher
Texture: Golden Girls, modified
Bump Map: made from Golden Girls modified texture
Shader: Real Skin Shader by face_off
Render Settings: Depth Shadows and Displacement Maps, Granite and Bump texture
Execution: Bucket 128, Min Shader 0.2000 555x720 72DPI
Hair: Egypt Hair by 3Dream

::::: Opera :::::

The georgia character would look better with a higher focal length setting 100 is good for portraits. The character is very good but using the faceroom and plain judy this kind of character must be possible, too.

Neat image. EJ is lovely. But so far, all the characters I've seen have looked pretty much alike. They all have that child-like, round face and little-girl eyes. Even where you've clearly tried to eliminate it, it's still there. To me, EJ always looks like a 15-year-old girl.

xantor, yes the focal length is wrong. and your comment about the face room and Judy makes my point! Who needs Daz when you work with the tools. randy, did you look at the jazz musician in post 61 above? I'll post a jpg later today. gotta run. ::::: Opera :::::

Example of "non-cute-round-face" model dirived from EJ
(also see post #61 above)

::::: Opera :::::

Sorry, it still looks like a 15-year-old girl. Trying to pass as older, maybe. :-) The roundness of the face is mitigated because of the angle of the image. But I still find the eyes very unnatural looking. They are a young girl's eyes.

randym77,

your criticizm of the eyes is justified. I am working on it. Jimmy did have unusual eyes, but I don't have it right. There are several things wrong with the eyes. I will do a repost as I solve that problem.

however, if and when he gets proper eyes you STILL think he looks like a 15 year old girl, I would request your specific reasons, because that would be an extreme comment. And if true, you may push me to look deeper.

That having been said.....are you this critical of Vickie, et. al, regarding sameness??? Because Vickies looks FAR FAR more the same in every use on all Poser Forums everywhere and all Galleries than these characters do.

And if you have achieved a level of uniqueness and variety beyond both the Vickie clone world and my little beginner attempts here to stamp out 'clone-ism', would you kindly share your approach...it would be very welcome.

::::: Opera :::::

Randy, I just visited your gallery and have a question. Your image of the bloke with the croc... here is what you say... Michael 3 with the M3 Head Sculpture Pack, Book Pack, and "Christian" texture. and I would say that guy has some pretty non-clone attributes. Can you comment if Michael3 is capable of a lot of acutal, distinctive variety? and what is the sculpture pack, how does it work? Thanks ::::: Opera :::::

I'm always critical. :-)

I don't think V3's eyes always look the same. M3's eyes always do. And his jaw. Though there are some morph packs out there that can disguise it a bit.

As I said previously, I don't think V3 has to always look the same. (Her arms, maybe, but not her face.) People just like the way she looks. She's a Barbie doll, and Barbie is not only always beautiful, she's always very conventionally beautiful. I'm guilty of it myself. I start out planning to make someone different looking, but end up tweaking the dials to make her easier on the eye, and the next thing you know, she looks like all the others.

The M3 Sculpture Pack is sold at DAZ. It gives you a new CR2, with channels for injecting 300 more morphs. (No, you don't have to inject all of them!) There are also a couple of jaw morphs in Free Stuff that do a lot to fix M3's distinctive, sharp jaw.

IMO, M3 is much harder to make different-looking than V3, but in the galleries, you see a lot more variation in M3. I really think it's because our standards of beauty for women are much narrower than for men. A 40-year-old guy can still be a hunk, a 40-year-old woman is "too old."

There's a V3 Sculpture Pack as well, and "Brom," which is Capsces' fantastic morph pack for M3. I use them often, but I don't do much animation.

M3 and V3 are awfully heavy for animation. The injectable morph system helps, but probably not enough.

I have much more of a problem with M3 than V3. They really did load her up with a ton of very changeable morphs, a few more came with the International pack but IMO that was to beef up SP3 who desperately needed it. Still, the best morphs for SP3 come from independant work not the Daz packs. As always, my opinion, exception are Bethany and Ceilie Mahan, both incrediable Steff morph, the latter really looks Irish and interesting. I have plans for her.heheheh. M3 is skinny, with a jaw that is almost impossible to eradicate--I seriously prefer M2, whose bod is horribly clunky. I don't mean this politically, but M3 reminds me of a nazi. It's not just the jaw as I'm terribly fond of the Freak. It takes a major effort to get that rail-thin SS image out of my head. Rawn's and Ghost of MacBeth's work have helped greatly. Nouschka also does seedy M3's that truly humanise him. What annoys me is that I can't seem to humanise him. M3 desperately needs the International morph exstension treatment. I got the sculpture kit but, haven't had much luck. Lazy, ya see. I can spend an afternoon dialing different V3's easily and happily. All pretty much Eastern European varieties, which is not what you see in the stores. Long noses, harsh cheekbones, deep sunk eyes. Not terribly young. But for an all round unimesh guy, give me David, a real human being with pudge problems-- you know he overdid the beer on the holidays and is making impossible diet promises for the New Year. I love David. He is certainly not limited to young, does middleaged much more comfortably than M3 who is the father-in-law you dread. And I want him in M3 clothes! Not possible since I refuse to learn the Cloth room. It seems so darn much work for a one time use of one article of clothing. Sheesh. All of Capsces's morphs are magnificent for working with. Don't be put off by the cartoony look. You don't have to use any of the morphs at full value. A teensy bit here and there and it's pretty easy to get to reality very fast. I haven't done anything with them since M2--lazy art moi--but it took all of ten minutes, probably less, to get a realistic Tartar leader and fit him in clothes,close enough for jazz. Her morphs are essential to any unimesh. I'm eagerly awaiting the possibilities for Aiko,since I passed on The Girl whom I'm very sorry I got. Lovely but very limited. In my hands. Oh, I have one story that involves her and toontown, if I ever get the energy to do it, but then. . .?? I hope we haven't thrown the original subject too much to the winds, but this has been an interesting discussion and just the thing I would want if I was considering buying poser for the first time. Emily

I, too, much prefer David to M3. But there's more stuff for M3, so I still use him a lot. I've heard you can adjust M3's clothing to fit David, but it sounds like even more work than the cloth room. If you haven't tried them, try Lyrra's "jawcorner morphs for M3," in Free Stuff. They do a great job softening M3's jaw. I love Capsces' morphs. I didn't buy the Girl, but "Boopsie" almost made me change my mind.

I continue to be happy to report success
easily spawning new characters from my base set of tools.
No Daz models were harmed in the creating of this image.

Model: Poser5Woman + EJ
Texture: Two of Hearts
Hair: Kozoboro
Shader: Real Skin Shader

::::: Opera :::::

Emily, when are we going to see images of your un-Vicki-ized Eastern European ladies. Can you post an image? ::::: Opera :::::

Attached Link: Got Milk

Here's a few of mine-- the desaturated girl at 12 noon-- the background upon which I composited all the rest-- is the first V3 I made, kinda round-faced french, I liked her worried expression. Around 1 o'clock is Sensa, my eastern european gal, I like her, Her nose works in profile-- which my avatar does not, unfortunately. The guy in the lower right corner is also V3, not as butch as I wanted but as Butch as I could get. The blonde at 9pm is Jenny at 40, one of my better efforts I thought. The little postworked girl at 7pm is Steffie 1, still one of my favorite characters, combined from a lot of textures and morphs, but not V3. As you can see, I haven't done much for awhile. The link is to one of my better renders, only in my opinion, M2 and V2 and more realistic actually than any of these. I'm thinking seriously of going back to the older version, at least for some of my work. Don't know if you can see these without registering but they are some of my best and all 2 generation V's, S's and M's. http://www.poserpros.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=17277 http://www.poserpros.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8295 http://www.poserpros.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4318

Actually, the middle one from my PoserPros gallery is my oldest Vicki3-- late forties, I'd say. I'm still, afterlooking through my galleries, more impressed with my V2s, Steff 1's and M2-- though less so there, lots of work to make Mike2 do more than lumber. Slim Michael helped. So they got him real slim for M3 and I complain about that.LOL No pleasing me, is there? Toxic Angel's Ogre with a combo of textures is still my fav though. He has the most expressive hands. And a great sarcastic face. Emily

I like Father Abbassya the best. That's quite a composition! Also like the green-top girl above...she is too thin in the face for health, but father abba makes up for it! Thanks for showing your images...keep up the fight to get character out of Vicki. ::::: Opera :::::

Just to give a sample, this is a Vicky 2 character. I bought V2 in the recent DAZ sale, while the hair and textures are in the Platinum Club. The A2Z pack is very good value.

It doesn't show well in this scale -- you need a close-up -- but one of the things I did was to break the symmetry on the face. Where there are seperate controls for right and left, such as some of the area around the eyes, set them slightly different..

The pose helps add to that, and I also tweaked scales slightly on a few body parts.

The background colour is also slightly off-white, matching the default for this page.

I've done similar pictures using Posette as a base, but V2 does give better control.

Operaguy: those Karen pictures are good, though I would have maybe tweaked a few details. Lip-position, for instance. Something feels slightly wrong about the face, the region between the eyes. Might be right for copying a real person, but we expect different things for "original" characters.

I agree that going for a-symmetry is important. As has been pointed out by many studies, our biological instincts attract us to symmetry as "beauty." This is most likely why people resist changing Vickie's face; by leaving it alone you achieve perfect mathematical symmetry. More than one person has mentioned that when they attempted to 'dial away' from perfect-zero-Vickie, they end up dialing back again, pulled by the strong tide of "beauty." Meanwhile, in real life, yes, we flip over a man or woman or child whose face is nearly the same, left and right, and whose features are spaced by a certain geometrical 'pleasing' proportion. But...not 1000%. If you saw the real equivelent of Vickie, you would get sqeamish. Every human, even the ones with symmetrical faces, have something slightly askew, something joltingly out of round...that's what makes you take notice. Anyway, that's my two cents on that, and I'm glad Vickie 2 has left/right dials to aid in this. EJ, of course, has them to the nth degree. ::::: Opera :::::

AntoniaTiger,
I am open to constructive criticism, of course, and welcome it. Your paragraph...I need some help understanding it, if you are willing. I assume you are referring to the Karen images of her one dance pose in post #51 above. Note: there are really two poses there, the 'portrait', and then a series of images of her in exactly the same pose, taken from different angles.

You say they are good...but give no indication of what was good or why you liked them. Not being specific about a compliment is just as unrewarding as not being specific about a negative.

You say you would have "tweaked the lip position" but don't say exactly what is wrong with the lips.

"Something is wrong about the face, the region between the eyes," but that can't help me in any way. To say 'something is wrong' but then not be specific either means 1) you simply don't like a certain feature; 2) you know what is wrong and are withholding the information from me; 3) you 'feel' something and are telling me about it in the hopes I will feel it too and fix it. Etc.

This sentence: "Might be right for copying a real person, but we expect different things for "original" characters."
I did not understand. First of all, I am not clear if it refers to the unspecified wrongness between the eyes, or of the character in general. Second, can you indicate what you mean about "copying a real person" vs creating "original characters?" I am not 'copying' real people. I am attempting to invent completely fictional characters, with as much originality as possible, but who COULD be real, who you might see walking down the street.

Thank you for your comments and additional ones are welcome.

::::: Opera :::::

I think it's that last point which made me hesitant about the details. I had the impression that there was a real Karen, who I was trying not to insult. The area between the eyes, and a little above, eyebrows and nose, looks pushed inward. I can't tell whether it's a lighting effect or the actual model. There's usually at least some slight step as the nose reaches the brow line, unless somebody has a big nose. As for the lips, try looking in a mirror, and compare how they part with the jaw closed, and as the teeth seperate. I don't know what morphs you have available, but the lower edge of the upper lip, and the upper edge of the lower lip, seems too straight. It's almost an animation problem. Think of it as a single frame in the middle of a movement. Is she breathing through her mouth, or starting to smile? If she's opening her mouth there can be a momentary stickiness -- surface tension? -- opposing the movement, and it isn't there when they're closing. And, I confess, it's the sort of slight lip-opening that I don't think I've ever managed to get convincing.

For anyone looking, this issue is best seen in Post #51 above, Study 3.

Yes, this is one frame of an animation and yes, her mouth is slightly open in expression...it is not necessarily a 'pretty' position. I saw that, reached for a dial to 'fix' it into something comfortable, and stopped. She is in the middle of a dance sequence and there is some stress in her mouth as she efforts, emotes, breathes and transitions. So, you are very observant to note that distortion, and it is a deliberate choice.

There IS a flat spot between her eyes that seems to catch a big reflection in most images of her. That was a morph move by me. Actually, I'd prefer not to 'fix' it in the sense of putting the dial back to zero in the default position, but rather to put some additional character there...

I will play around with that one particular spot and perhaps change it, perhaps not. She has a crooked nose, too.

Thank you for your feedback.

::::: Opera :::::

More flexibility without any Daz whatsoever.

Except as I understand it, DAZ are the ones who designed Judy. :-)

Cubed designed Judy and Don...

But Judy and Don are just modifications of Posette and Dork...which were made by Zygote/DAZ.

Posette and dork were made by zygote not daz.

regarding my comment "More flexibility without any Daz whatsoever"....

My intent is: More flexibility without the current dominant unimesh culture and attendant problems and costs, as elucidated at length in this thread and others.

The point, posited in post 17 above, is not specifically "Anti-Daz" per se, it is 'you can achieve great things, great tools, great fleixbility without participating in the Unimesh emeshment.

Long live Judy/EJ and toolmaking/learning.

::::: Opera :::::

Message edited on: 02/02/2005 19:56

Message edited on: 02/02/2005 19:58

Then you should have said "no unimesh." :-) A lot of people prefer older figures, such as Posette, Victoria 1, Victoria 2, and the original Stephanie. Smaller the better for animators. And some people just don't don't like morph injection, or don't have computers powerful enough to handle generation 3 figures. I still think Judy's kind of creepy-looking, though. I like Posette better than Judy. Though some people have done cool things with Judy, such as 3Dream and Yamato.