For those interested in the model "Miki"
from efrontier and Blue Moon and frustrated
by lack of information on the selling
page of Content Paradise......

What follows are strictly my opinions.....

The good:

1. The model has a good shape. I can't put it any better than that, she is great to look at. I just get the feeling she was lovingly modeled in Japan in Shade or Max by someone who likes women very much. That is pure opinion on my part.
2. She is believable as representative of an Asian female.
3. High-res, well-designed 112,595 poly count mesh allows for creative and effective morph-making.
4. Included facial expression morphs are few in number, but powerful. You can bring her alive.
5. Thankfully: a model with near-normal shoulders. Yes, there are still some problems at the shoulder and upper arm, but Miki's collar/shoulder rigging is far, far better than those of Jessi, Vickie, EJ, etc. Her upper arms have a slight reverse inward curve, but relatively acceptable. She does not have shoulder pads unless you put them on her! See, it goes to show you that the incessant line of models with ridiculous rigging at the shoulder are NOT completely the fault of Poser's limitations. It can be done.

The Bad and semi-bad:

1. There are NO character-change morphs. Using the included morphs, you can't change Miki into a different "person."
2. There are no explicit, purpose-built phoneme morphs. In mimic, you'd have to map some of the expression morphs, and that may or may not work well.
3. There is no low-res version. Therefore, unless I am mistaken, exporting the mesh out to 3DS or Maya, etc., for advanced animation and rendering would mean always having to deal with the dense mesh. Not to mention that for Poser itself to deal with 112,595 polys all the time....yikes!
4. The included texture is somewhat mediocre, and its color-tones are pushed too far into the red. Requires tweaking in 2D or tone adjustment in shaders. I think the texture lacks character. The shape of the Oriental eye is okay.
5. The mesh breaks under certain conditions (see images below), instead of proper deformation. This is especially true at the knee and shoulder. This would be fatal, except for this: even in animation, you can control it by avoiding the narrow band of interaction/bending that produces the failure. My experience and opinion on this point was made with experimentation with "use limits" turned on. Still, it is a significant weakness; you have to 'work around' the mesh failure-points.
6. Miki suffers to some extent from the "bent drinking straw" inner crook of the elbow. Not as bad as Vickie and Jessie.

The ugly: E-Frontier is selling Miki at Content Paradise from a page that omits most important information, omits illustrative full-body nude representations, omits list of morphs, omits almost anything you'd want to know (except that Miki can ride a motorcycle and likes sunglasses.) On top of all that omitting, there is a seriously misleading item: the promo video intended to show off Miki's facial expression power is NOT EXECUTED IN POSER! It is hosted in 3DSMax and rendered with Brazil. For a product being sold to Poser users, I consider this wrong.

Perhaps e-Frontier includes a commercial license for 3DS with Miki, an un-advertised 'extra' that you can obtain by sending them an email, value $3700. Sorry E-Frontier, I like the model but that video kinda got my steam up. Actually, I am sure nearly pretty similar results of lighting, resolution and ambiance might be obtained within Poser6, but it's not right to imply that that video is "normal" Poser6 render.

images of Miki's near normal shoulders:

images of Miki's knee bend, some with mesh breaking:

Test Videos:

Video 1: Expressions.
Please note. I did not attempt to animate her hair, nor attempt AO or ray-traced lighting (I used a three-light setup with depth map shadows on one light). No attempt to improve texture in 2D or with shaders and bump maps. Rendered in Poser6 SR1 with Firefly engine. No postwork.
Quicktime, 4.5 MB, right-click here and download.

Video 2: Movement.
Please note. I did not attempt to animate her hair, nor attempt AO or ray-traced lighting (I used a three-light setup with depth map shadows on one light). No attempt to improve texture in 2D or with shaders and bump maps. Rendered in Poser6 SR1 with Firefly engine. No postwork.
Quicktime, 11.7 MB, right-click here and download.

Below is a list of the ONLY head expression morphs included with Miki. At first it might seem like a short list. However, I have always found that if expression morphs are well made, you do NOT need a huge list, and that by clever dial-spinning and combining of effects, you can achieve power. I found this to be true with Miki.

Brow:
BrowUp
LeftBrowUp
RightBrowUp
BrowFurrow
LeftBrowFurrow
RightBrowFurrow

Eyes:
Blink
BlinkLeft
BlinkRight
Squint
EyelidLowerLeft
EyelidLowerRight
EyeOpenLeft
EyeOpenRight
EyesLowerDown
MIKIEyeSide-Side
MIKIEyeUp-Down
MIKIEyesDialate

Jaw:
MouthOpen
MouthOpenWide
MouthClosed
JawShiftDown
JawShiftLeft
JawShiftRight

Lips:
Smile
SmileSmall
SmileWide
SmileThinLeft
SmileThinRight
LipsShut
Frowm
LipLowerPress
LipsFunnel
UpperLipRaiser
LipsPucker
LipsMShape
LipsFShape

The package also comes with some "expressions":
Joy
Anger
Disgust
Sad
Surprise
Talking
Tired

Conclusion: Miki is fun and cute. She is shapely. She has sorta-okay shoulders! She has a LOT of potential. She could use a fix of her knee and elbow rigging. Other than that, as long as you either 1) use her straight out of the box; or 2) accept that the model is just a starting point and in order to turn her into other characters you will have to use magnets or create morphs, plus you will have to map phoneme equivalents in Mimic, she is a winner. Wished-for: Rig fixes, Low-res version and a flood of great textures from the texture-making community.

And hopefully E-Frontier will create a more honest marketing page for this model.

::::: Opera :::::

P.S. For anyone who wonders about my absence...I was on an all-consuming database project last six months. It is tapering off now and I am renewing my quest for tools for a big animation project.

A most interesting review, Opera, worth a bettter fate than be lost and forgotten in the fast growing heap of this forum. and good to see you back. B.

There seems to be a lot more sloppily made figures out nowadays than there used to be.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=1041037&Start=1&Artist=Merlin&ByArtist=Yes

You might want to check the forum and see what already has been done and is being done. Miki's Hip and thigh JP's are very poor, but some of us are working on that. There are quite a few fixes that need to be done, as you have shown some of them, but for a basic out of the box figure, I have to agree, she has character.

Opera,

Thanks for the review. Here's how I can respond and help:

1. I'll have the video link removed. It was linked to out of professional courtesy for Blue Moon at their request. We did not intend to mislead anyone.

2. More morph targets for her face are coming along with fixes to the JP's on the hands. This will be a free download. I was hoping this would be out of testing today so it will be soon. I also plan some freebie body morphs.

3. We currently have no plans to do a lower res version although I would not rule it out.

4. The 1020 Cr2 included adjustments to the knees and hips that were not present in the earlier Japanese version. If you have the earlier Japanese version please contact tech supp for an update.
   Here's an image of the knee bending in P6:

Are you using P5 maybe? (you can see that there's a curl on the outer edge of the back of the knee in your similar image which leads me to believe you either have a diff JP setup or using diff math.)Send bend values to Colin or a pz3 maybe and we'll figure it out. You can send them to me through IM but I'm almost constantly traveling and may not respond in a timely manner.

1. We will update the CP product page to include more specific information as soon as possible.

Thanks again, Steve

I'm amazed to see so many threads about non-DAZ characters having crappy JP's and bending. The only way DAZ can offer such bending is using tons of JCM's, ERC, and a bunch of circular falloff zones. Sure V3 may look nice when posed, but try to make clothing for her without JCM, ERC, and other corrective measures. Your clothes will look terrible when conformed to V3 and posed. With that said, perhaps somebody( Possibly at e-frontier), could release an advanced rigging module, so that Poser characters can take a Maya or Max rig that includes weight-mapping, true collision, and ragdoll physics. This way, we would be able to have much better rigged characters; so one could set up the scene, simulate, and render in Poser, with the quality and functionality of a higher-end application. -Starkdog

It looks like she's suffering from Flat Ass Disease. Not good.

Ok, I just spent 1/2 hour with Miki's knees. "Use Limits" was on. I am on Poser6, SR1 Miki1020 (purchased and downloaded this week) You CAN make the back of the knee look unnatural, but frankly, it takes some doin'. I did not achieve any massive broken mesh moments. Most of my images looked quite a bit like the one in Steve's post above, not like the trouble in my images in Post1 above. Initially, perhaps I had been too aggresive with "side to side" or "twist" applied to shin/thigh in addition to simply making the knee bend by spinning the YTrans on RightFoot. I was also grabbing the thigh and shin and dragging, perhaps not a wise idea. I thought "Use Limits" sould protect me. For the most part, the deformation looks pretty good, unless you push it. In other words, you can find trouble if you try hard enough. If you download and play my Video2 above, at the end, you will see knee flexing in motion. I did not try to push it. What do people think? Does that knee flex look too wierd? On thing I need to remember, I am looking with hawk eyes in glaring light for problems, whereas in production very much can be done to not only "not go looking for trouble" but mask it. As for that promo...Steve, probably good you are taking it down, but why not replace it with something spectacular done in Poser6 with AO, dynamic hair, etc.? Happy to know an update is on the way. Thanks for responding, Steve. ::::: Opera :::::

BkMrrrqq

Many thanks for the excellent review, Operaguy.

Miki follows the path of the other eFrontier characters:
Excellent head sculpting but mediocre setup with way too many polygons.

At least Jessi and James come with more usable standard rez versions, too.

Yes, I know wheres a lot that can be improved with DAZ Unimesh, too, and ERC and JCM should be a last desperate resort for bending problems and not an easy way out.
But unless we see a "Apollina Maxima" (Or a Vicky4) they are the best currently available meshes out there.

So my suggestion is someone put Mikis head on Stephanie Petites body like I put Jessis head on V3s body and be done with it.

No muss, no fuss, she wears all V3s clothes and even works in ALL versions of Poser.

^-^

stahlratte

Awesome job on the review, Opera! Looks like you hit the nail on the head with the "good" and "bad" points.

Also, Kudos to CLSteve for promptly addressing some of the concerns!

"For the most part, the deformation looks pretty good, unless you push it. In other words, you can find trouble if you try hard enough. If you download and play my Video2 above, at the end, you will see knee flexing in motion. I did not try to push it. What do people think? Does that knee flex look too wierd?"

It doesn't look completely natural, but it does look much better than that horrible breaking mesh in the first test! Definitely more acceptable. However, you'll have to take care not to push it beyond the limits, and when using any mocap files, I'm sure there will be some extensive editing to do... beyond what is typical (I think). Keeping her arm and leg range of motion constantly within tightly confined limits might severely limit you as an animator as well. The limits imposed on the mesh are not the same limits of the human body. It all depends. Creative camera angles can hide these flaws, but if you are determined for a particular angle, that's going to be tricky.

"On thing I need to remember, I am looking with hawk eyes in glaring light for problems, whereas in production very much can be done to not only "not go looking for trouble" but mask it."

Yes, this is true. In animation especially, so many of the "flaws" you see glaring out at you in stills will not be as evident. You'd be surprised how much motion blur and quick camera angle changes can hide imperfections. Often times, you'll go and add a great texture to your character because of tiny details you think will make a difference in realism, only to find out that when the animation is played back with motion blur, all those small details you admired are not even noticable at all. ;-) Mesh problems from bad joints/rigging are hard to hide forever though... eventually you're going to come across a shot where these problems are unavoidable, and not easily concealed. Hopefully, they only last a few seconds on screen. LOL. PS: I'm willing to bet that the annoying "shadow flicker" visible in the expressions test (the first clip) is just driving you insane! LOL. SCALE UP, my friend! JK ;-)

Message edited on: 09/08/2005 22:47

I did scale up, but not enough. Also, i did not have the patience to jack up the blur and shadow map size, which fight flicker, but increase render time. I am counting on "going around" flicker as I get more and more serious thru rendering in other apps and using AO, raytrace, etc. ::::: Opera :::::

Great news, clsteve... One question though : are you planning on releasing body morphs for Miki any time soon ?

Many thanks for this review. I'd like to second the idea that it should be placed somewhere more permanent and visible. I've been playing around with the figure since it appeared, and pretty much agree with all the good, bad, and ugly points. >>As for that promo...Steve, probably good you are taking it down, but why not replace it with something spectacular done in Poser6 with AO, dynamic hair, etc.?<< Yes!

hi Opera ,P5 Judy has some real ugly mesh creases at her rear hip/buttock seams when putting in doggy pose.How about Miki?

I don't know, because although she WILL let me photographer her in the nude, it's purely on an artistic basis. No doggy poses. ::::: Opera :::::

When the updates and free body and face morphs are released you have another sale! Thanks much Richard ;-)~

Yes the info and images showing Miki were so appalling and so uninformative (glasses on, fully clothed) that I got put off completely. I must say though that 'Cho for Miki' by Outoftouch looks fantastic - almost a good reason to buy Miki. Incidentally, why Terai Yuki and not Yuki Terai? On the DVD from 2000 she is called Yuki Terai (I have it). :] Fish

That's always a problem, surname first or not. In Japan the surname comes first. You would be Nose Fish. I would be Guy Opera. Often Japanese vendors give in to the American/English way and even though their product has a Japanese name, they present it in the "wrong" order to please the customer. However, if they are naive or purist, they will persist with the surname first. ::::: Opera :::::

What happened to her anyway?? She's not available right now at CP!! Richard ;-)~

Maybe they have taken the figure offline to sort out the problems with it.

I didn't mean to kill her, honest. She's cute and shapely, I said! :: og ::