Battle of the Meshes! (click on Link)

Contest Managers: dphoadley, karen1573
Contest Judges: dphoadley, karen1573
Contest Full Description:

This is the Challenge of the Century: The Battle of the Meshes! Dphoadley, following his successful remap of the P4NudeWoman, wishes to challenge all V3 users to a Morphing, Texturing, Posing, and Rendering Contest that will pitch PosetteV3 against DAZ’s Victoria 3.

Your mission (should you choose to accept it!) is to morph, pose and render the figure of your choice to recreate the photo below as closely as possible.

Rules:

1. The challenge is to morph your chosen model (PosetteV3 or Daz V3) to as close a semblance as possible of the photo above. All participants may use this and only this as the photo reference for morphing their respective figures face.
2. All participants must use the SAME "Alannah" texture (download link below.)
3. All participants must use the SAME light set (download link below.)
4. All participants must use the SAME hair prop - Kozaburos's Kyoko Hair (download link below.)
5. Renders must be against the default Poser Grey background.
6. You may use the standard Daz V3 morphs, magnets, external modelling app, or any combination to achieve a resemblance to the photo.
7. Posing should be your own work and not using a "canned" pose created by someone else.
8. Final render should be in Poser and not any other application. You may use the Firefly or P4 render engine, and you may use the material room to add nodes to the texture if desired.
9. Postwork is allowed for removing render artifacts and colour correction, but should NOT be used to add parts of the original photo to the mix.
10. Please save your .pz3 file and any layer files from your graphics program in the event of any dispute.

Winners will be judged by the Content Managers and be awarded the following prizes:
Overall winner - $15 Renderosity Gift Certificate
Best Posed - $10 Renderosity Gift Certificate
Best Morphed - $10 Renderosity Gift Certificate
Best Rendered - $10 Renderosity Gift Certificate

Renders should be a maximum size of 1024x1024 (any dimension.)

Winners will be contacted by email to receive their gift certificates.

Downloads:
Posette V3
The "Alannah" texture
Light set
Hi res model photo
Kozaburo's site - Kyoko Hair

Artists grant permission to Renderosity for the use of submitted images for an undetermined period of time. This is strictly for posting the image on the front page and within the contest archives. The Artist will remain the intellectual property holder.

Judging from your promo Image I'd suggest a hairstyle that hide's PosetteV3's ears. You can see she falls down there compared to V3's ears. Good luck with the contest though! It sounds fun if you're into making look alikes.

**dphoadley@****LostinSpaceman
**I didn't make the Promo pics, that was somebody elses handiwork; but with 'Smooth Polygons' checked, PosetteV3's ears are just as smooth as V3's.
DPH

Quote - You may use the standard Daz V3 morphs, magnets, external modelling app, or any combination to achieve a resemblance to the photo.

You should indicate if displacement maps are allowed or not, cause with those one can literally turn either of these figures into a much higher quality one. May be an unfair advantage.

That's cool to know, but V3's still look more lifelike than Posette's. Just my opinion maybe.

dphoadley@tekmonk

Quote - > Quote - You may use the standard Daz V3 morphs, magnets, external modelling app, or any combination to achieve a resemblance to the photo.

You should indicate if displacement maps are allowed or not, cause with those one can literally turn either of these figures into a much higher quality one. May be an unfair advantage.

Displacement maps should only be used in the following parameter: *Final render should be in Poser and not any other application. You may use the Firefly or P4 render engine, and you may use the material room to add nodes to the texture if desired.
*Whateve displacement map is used, has to be derived from the texture itself.
DPH

Quote - That's cool to know, but V3's still look more lifelike than Posette's. Just my opinion maybe.

Then join the contest and PROVE it! ;=)
DPH

I'll think about it. The contest sounds like it's asking me to use skills I haven't developed yet. Like making Look alikes from textures.

**dphoadley@**LostinSpacemanLook upon it as an opportunity, my friend, to develope a new skill; and NOT as an obstacle to be overcome. 

GO through the archives, and see how others have done this before.
DPH

ps. How you're over your stomach bug DP, nothing worse when it comes out both ends.

**dphoadley@****ashley9803
**I think that Vietnam showed us all that Victory doesn't always go to those with the  most Polygons.  I truly believe that it's mapping and texturing, and the individual skill of the artist him/her-self that counts in the long run much more than polygon count.
DPH
PS: Still feeling lousy, but thank you for your good wishes.

I think you're right David
or to put it another way, "it ain't what you got, but what you do with it."
Looking through the galleries right now, I see billions of polygons just wasted on
oh so predictable renders churned out like some nightmareish sausage factory.
Remind me of the "Sorcerer's Apprentice" with ever reproducing clones, one after the other.
No lack of content or skill, just a ack of imagination or experimantation.
Maybe I'll take up the challenge with P4nudewoman.

I'll try to do p4 proud - in my way ;) Get well David

No, I've remapped Posette vertice by vertice, I'm more intimately famliar with her figure than I am with my own wife's.  I expect PosetteV3 to WIN this contest!
DPH

Quote - No, I've remapped Posette vertice by vertice, I'm more intimately famliar with her figure than I am with my own wife's.  I expect PosetteV3 to WIN this contest!
DPH

Are you sure you are the best candidate to judge this contest given your bias and preference fo Posette and PosetteV3 and your expectation that she will win?

Judaism requires a minimum of three judges; I'll be happy to include yourself as a counterbalance.
DPH

I'm already challenged by morphing, texturing, posing, etc., without having to join a contest for it..;)

FUNNY :)

Quote - Judaism requires a minimum of three judges; I'll be happy to include yourself as a counterbalance.
DPH

Oh no! Sorry. I'm not a good judge. I can't make my mind up about stuff like that. I've been tossing around for months about having a contest here, but I was thinking of putting names into a basket and having my building caretaker pick the winners randomly,  LOL

A contest like this might not be so much about the figures themselves as about the skill of the artists involved.

It's like with photography -- some people can purchase the most expensive Hasselblad medium-format camera setup on the market, and they can still end up taking truly lousy pictures with $90,000 worth of equipment on their side.  While someone else can purchase a cheap $20 110-format camera, and then proceed to work wonders of the photographic art with it.

Sort of like Ansel Adams with an old 1915 Brownie.  But of course -- in an ideal world you'll match the 21st-century digital-back Hasselblad with the Ansel Adams.  It's easier if you have the right tools.

But this is not an attempt to throw cold water on the idea of the contest -- because such a contest as this could be just plain fun for the participants-- which is a big part of the reason why some of us are into this hobby in the first place.

given polygon smoothing and other techniques, I don't see that a few extra polygons are gonna give v3 much of an advantage. it's like saying one should add more notes to a song to make it sound better, or to add more words to a poem to make it better. however, I predict that posette will win.

I honestly don't see how Posette will win unless it is slanted that way.

Was smooth polygons not checked in the promo image up there?  

Those ears do look significantly different to me.  Not to knock it, she looks a far cry better than she ever did before to me, but still doesn't seem to be a reasonable comparison to V3 (which I'm not a fan of either lol).

Just wondering.

It's nothing that a whiff of postworking can't fix.

Poser's limitations can usually be overcome in Photoshop.

As can the limitations of Poser figures -- be they V3 or Posette.

*Was smooth polygons not checked in the promo image up there? *

No, it wasn't - I rendered the promo image in the P4 renderer. :-)

dphoadley@GhostofmacbethWould you care to be one of the Judges?  That's fine with me!
DPH

This is a cool contest.  If I can get something together in time (what with work and such) I'll gladly enter.

Questions:

1.  Can we enter more then once?  (I'd really like to give the thing a go with both figs.)
2.  Do we post the results in this forum to enter?

1. What is the deadline.

Sorry if these are explicit in the rules and I somehow missed them.  I'm at work, so time and attention span is limitted.

Good luck to all entries!

**dphoadley@**ThrommArcadiaClick on the link at the top of the thread, and register you entries in the parallel thread in the Contests Forum.  Keren is the overall judge of entries, but as I see nothing forbidding multiple entries, I think it's OK.
DOH

Cool contest -  love to enter - but I'm away for a week. 

So heres a little contribution - if it's OK with DPHoadley and Karen I'd like to offer another prize - a copy of my lastest model -- to the winner as well. Call a contribution to community sprit.

mrsparky, I think that is very generous of you!

dphoadley Sure .. I could do that :)

This is a great idea DPH, and a great way to showcase PosetteV3 (and your incredible re-mapping work).

I'd love to give this a shot, but fear I won't be able to do it justice given time contraints. Hopefully I can free some time this weekend.

Regardless, I'll be keeping a watchful eye on the proceedings. I can't wait to see the results!

Quote - I'm not sure Posette could win this, simple due to the tyrrany of the polygons.

The problem of Posette was not the number of polygons! and it can be resumed to:
1- Textures
No good textures for her, it wasn't only hers problem, all the textures were bad in those days, just look as the Poser's default ground!
This problem is solved today with the remapping that allows you to use any V3 texture.
2- Joint parametersPosette is the first succesful female figure but is an old figure without any JCM and current inprovements, but it also can be solved redoing the joint parameters and adding joint controlled morphs and magnets in a Vicky4 style.

The biggest problem of  mapping or remaping is the compatibility with existent figure textures, the are much better ways to map a figure and this is not done by the current commercial products.
If your character has a special mapping then you have no textures available unless if your character is a great success, so you  must to create your own textures and you must be skilled!!!
In case of female textures you need textures with a great detail for some body parts, you don't need this for the whole body, but as the area that require great detail is small compared to the whole body the only way to achieve this is with a very big resolution texture, somethin very inefficient, slow and still doesn't give the required resolution.
My idea is very simple: the body part that requires detail must have its own texture, you only need textures of 512x512 or less that is enough and of course, very more larger than the few pixels that have in thecurrect body textures.
The remaing body don't need a big texture, 1500x1500 is just  enough.
The parts that need a texture alone are: eyes, lips, nipples and genitals. With the current textures only the eyes have its own texture!

With male is a very different story, man doesn't need detailed areas, but he is hairy!!!!. A  small detail covering the whole body. Maybe a procedural approach would solve the problem?.....

I applaud dphoadley's work on creating PosetteV3, but I'm not quite sure how this actually qualifies as a 'contest'. We have to use the same textures, same lighting, same hair, and try to match a photo (so basically, the same pose and camera angle too), and no postwork is allowed. Why not have entrants just use PosetteV3 in an image of their own creation to show off what she is capable of? Trying to compare her to V3 really only stirs people up and makes them pick sides. Besides, we all know that it's the artist that brings out the full potential of a figure. Give Posette to ToxicAngel and he'll make a masterpiece. Give Apollo or V4 to a first-time Poser user and you'll get a first-time Poser user's creation.

SnowS

Just a small correction - max size for renders is 1024x1024 - I've just been told that's the limit imposed by the software! I've updated this in the opening post.

Attached Link: Battle of the Meshes!

nickedshield@dphoadley Entry submitted.