oh, i wish i had the talent and the time.  right now i'm working on writing my own gallery in php  while still trying to make some decent images.  yeah, i know it's been done, but i want some particular functionality and it's really been educational.  and i'm kind of proud: i've looked the code for my hosting service's gallery tool, and it's not nearly as robust as i'm making mine.  i broke it just trying to upload a png (it doesn't do any testing on file type).  since i'm really a designer with some actionscript skills, i'm feeling pretty excited about the whole thing.  sorry, far and afield.

on the subject of d|s...  i like it, but it's limitations frustrate me.  i'm surprised no one has complained about v4's lack of grasp and spread dials in her hands.  though i've only used the base so far,  i'm guessing the full version is the same.  because d|s doesn't support those dials.  people say, "just multiple select the fingers," but that doesn't do squat for spreading them.  and then there's the ability to change a texture's colors on the fly in the material room, to separate out materials through masks (and i mean entirely, not just diffuse color), to let shaders feed on one another, inverse kinematics... even if you're just talking about posing and rendering, there's a lot of functionality that d|s just doesn't have.

but with d|s i can render huge images and with pwSurface i have true sss.  those two issues alone have me almost ready to switch from primarily using poser and occassionally using d|s to the other way around.  as templargfx just posted in another thread, it's kind of crazy that a character posing and rendering app doesn't have true sss, or even a good fake.

Are you redoing your gallery here or do you have your own web page? 

Wow, I didn't know that about  d|s,  thanks for the heads up.  As for V4,  from what I've seen she looks like a sub-divided and mesh-smoothed posette. 

Do you have poser7?  If so,  how do you like it?

well, i will have my own web site(s). i want a gallery that works with tags, (eventually) various formats, and  changeable order.  i don't actually have a gallery here- ideally i'll have my own up first or shortly after.

i think that's a really accurate assessment of v4's head.  it's interesting-  a lot of the products i've seen have heads a lot like  the free morphs for posette i acquired back in the day.

the body, on the other hand, is very much like aiko meets v3.  right down to less definition than v3.  check out  "the great bending test" over at poserpros.  jim burton did it.  it seems to show better bending and joints (seems only because it lacks an actual photo reference, so it's not definitive).  but it also shows how even though v4 has ribs showing in the space between her breasts, she has much less definition in her back and other areas.  and her hips are even less realistic than v3's.  i saw a 30-40 morph for the mill teen girl once (laura's predecessor), and the author said she chose her because she was the only female figure out with a proper pelvic area.  and looking at the morph, i could see what (iirc) she meant.  the weight of the figure was in her hips.  it kind of just floats on other figures.  v4's is even more doll like (or boyish), which helps her look younger.   

i'm actually kind of worried about  that.  aiko and miki pics often ran into t.o.s. issues, and one is anime and the other is asian.  v4 is neither, and some characters for her look young enough for my boyfriend to look over my shoulder and say, "that's just not o.k."

i don't have poser 7 yet.  i figured i'd wait until after holidays and possibly catch it at a different sale.  i definitely plan to get it for a few different reasons.  the primary ones are the reports of better render times and ability to render scenes p6 wouldn't, sydney, and layered animation.

Cobaltdream, that is one of the best assessments of V4 I've read.  You bring up a lot of things that I "felt", but couldn't quite put my finger on.

A lot of what I initially really liked about V4 is becoming less and less important.  I liked the facial expressions (the millenium figures just don't do cheeks, V4 full morphs does, a much needed add!) and I liked the improved bending.  In the end, I don't like her face enough (no matter how I spin the dials!) for the expressions to matter and I rarely bend my characters as drastically as you need to for the difference in meshes to matter.

Patorak, your adventures in remapping sound very interesting.  It is unfortunate you couldn't get it to come to fruition with full face-room and morph support.  In the end, I think it would have been nice to have a character that could have the "best of both worlds" (V3 textures and Face Room).

I'll be interested in seeing your results with you new character.  Good luck!

cobaltdream,  I never new that about the mil girl.  I hope my figure  will fit the billet.  Right now,  the hip and buttocks are exaggerated,  but i'm going to make that a morph before I bring them into line. V4 young?  Maybe DAZ is thumbing their noses at r*****osity.

ThrommArcadia,  I wonder if I should press on then contact e-frontier.  Thanks for the input on V4's face morphs.  I wonder if maybe I should make a head and shoulder figure with facial rigging as a bonus to my Jane figure.

ThrommArcadia - thanks!  yeah, i think her initial morphs are fairly limited.  i've been expecting them to release the old packages piecemeal: ethnic, phoneme, fantasy, etc., but they're taking longer than i expected to do it.  if they wait much longer, there will start to be noise that she always looks the same.

patorak - actually, i very much doubt daz is thumbing their nose.  i don't think they exactly did it on purpose.  i think a3 had lots of advances, and quickly became more popular than v3.  i remember reading a post on their forums that said the reason so much more stuff was being released for a3 than v3 was the a3 stuff just sold better.   and people had been saying v3 was just too amazonian for ages.  so i think it was an obvious direction to go in.  i wouldn't be surprised if there was proof that v4 was made out of aiko's mesh, just like dodger found proof in v3's mesh that she was made from v2.    so i think they made her deliberately more petite and more like aiko, but i don't think they deliberately created a figure that can easily look underage.

daz has much stricter t.o.s. on their forums and galleries than anywhere else i know of. 

the main advice i can give you on avoiding the hip problem is to look at a lot of reference photos and think about what's under the skin.  the way this other artist referred to it was a proper pelvic cradle.  i think if you have a notion of how a woman's skeleton works at the hip, and how the muscle works to support that, you'll be going in the right direction.  imho, also look at a lot of photos with legs at a 90 degree angle or so from the body.  i always liked a3's shoulders and more petite proportions, but her legs always looked glued to the front of her body when bent.  v4 has less of a problem with that an a3 but more than v3.

i think a lot of models come at figures from aesthetics instead of how a body has to be shaped to work properly.  the perspective is impression down instead of anatomy up.  i notice a lot of people model like people tend to draw.  they make what they think is there and what they want to see (and not what they don't want to see) instead of what is there.   oh, and if you can, use amateur photos or photos specifically for reference.  a lot of professional work will be postworked to make things look like people expect, and magazines especially do that.  as someone mentioned to me recently, they make sure that even photos of tools have been postworked to have the right highlights and gleams.

Hi cobaltdream, 

How's your gallery going?  Great I hope.  Since you've mention the hip,  I've been thinking.  What if I rig the genitals to be the hip and the hip to be a second abdomen?  Think it would work?  You're right about the reference photos,  I'll have to start taking some pictures.  Right now I'm modelling the mouth.  Do you think I should model each tooth individually or all as one mesh?  BTW have you seen Jane's head,  I've attached the eyelids to the frame and placed her eyeballs behind them.

Cheers,
Patorak

gallery is moving along.  i'm perusing the forums because i'm getting back an error i can't even understand at the moment, so i'm trying to think about other things for a bit.

wow.  definitely decisions over my head.  on the tooth issue, i remember anton swearing  that the individual way looked less realistic.  but i think the problem with teeth is mainly materials.  i think they're really had to get right- they're really shiny, mostly in shadow or occluded, have translucent edges, variable color and a bit of a texture running length wise.  so i guess i'd say that you should go with whatever is easiest to uv map.  and, if you want to attract the goth and furry genre groups, easiest to morph the canines with.

the hip idea sounds incredibly radical, which probably means it would either work brilliantly or terribly. 

i've missed the new jane images.  i knew i should have subscribed to that thread.   checking them out now...

Hello Everyone,

Download Jessi new uv mapping  http://theartdoor.com   Her eyes are compatible with Victoria 3. 

"Her eyes are compatible with Victoria 3. "

Umm, and what about the rest ?

Hello Everyone,

I am officially closing this thread.  Future updates on the New UV's for Jessi can be found at http://theartdoor.com   in the freebie section.  Thank you all,  see you over there.

Cheers always,
Patorak

Thanks Patorak!!  Does it work for Glamorous Jessi too?

Hello nakamuram,

I'm afraid not. I will work on Glamorous Jessi after I'm done with Jessi.

Cheers,
Patorak