Hi all, I'm getting a lot of positive feedback about Blacksmith3D, sounds like I might have to try it out. I've got a ton of questions about it though : Re the Head Forge stand-alone : (1) does it only spit out random head morphs, or can you sculpt with it ? (2) can you use it with any character if you don't have the full suite ? .... I understand it works on "selection sets", so can you create these selection sets for any character if you don't have the full Blacksmith3D suite ? Re the texturing part of the suite : (1) Is it possible to texture using photographs, and avoid the tedium of spending many many hours in Photoshop ? (2) Does it create MAT poses ? Thanks for your answers :) regards, Andrew

You CAN sculpt the random morphs, there's a Unimesh Selection Set. There's a Selection Set ofr each character, and it's fairly easy to make your own if the character isn't supported (for instance, Judy isn't supported) It creates MAT poses, I think (I use Shader Spider for those now, but Blacksmith can create them too) You can use Photographs, and Blacksmith is GREAT for making textures seamless, bu IMO you can't totally omit photoshop. (depending on the type of textures of course, for instance, my Nybras texture (here in free stuff) is 100% made in Blacksmith - human textures will typically need a helping hand from Photoshop)

thanks, ernyoka. so you can create new selection sets just with the Head Forge stand alone (i.e. without the full suite) ? i'm tossing up whether to just get the Head Forge, or to get the full suite ....

If you can afford it, get the Suite. If you want to morph heads only, get Head Forge. If you want to do morphs for more than just heads, get the morph only version of the Suite. Be sure you have a video driver that supports Open GL. You can test the Suite demo to make sure. bB

Er.. I am not sure what you can do with head forge only. I have the Suite, because I knew I'd want both the paint part and the morph parts. Head Forge wasn't invented when I bought it, but was a free upgrade. Konan keeps working on the program btw, so there are upgrades all the times :o) It simply keeps getting better, it's not just a question of removing bugs, there's actually NEW features being added :o)

How big a DL is the full Suite?

around 18Mb. The demo IS the Full Suite, all you need is the .dat file to unlock it :o) There's no additional things to download. At first I thought it was "too small to be worth anything" - but.. it's not. It's just (apparently) coded efficiently.

thank you ernyoka