I'm working on a whole series of original figures for Poser. They are all low poly, about 12k, and in a kind of superhero toon style. I think they would be good for animation, similar to the new Vincent Parker figure, but toony. (And no, I didn't get the idea from him, I've been working on these for months). Anyway, I've got a heroic male and female nearly finished, a male youth rigged and a big freak, hulk-like guy partially rigged. It's him I would like opinions on. I thought he looked pretty good in my modeller, but now that he's posed I'm not so sure. It might be that his torso is just too short, but I'm not sure. In this render, I put him next to Bruce, my heroic male. I want to keep them stylistically similar, that's kind of my goal, to have a whole line of different figures that look like they belong together. Anyway, any feedback I could get would be much appreciated.

Hi!

Nice work , original characters are so cool.

The beuty of toons is that they can look anyway they want too :-)
If you want to go for similarity  I agree with you about the torso (and maybe a bit less muscular on the neck).

Do they share textures (same mapping)?

Regards / Jonny

I know the style you're going for and you're doing a great job, I'd totally buy that.  I think that maybe the big guy's trapezius is a little out of control.  That may be because the neck is a little on the short side, but other than that they look very good.

Hi, I'm the maker of Vincent, so here's some advice.

The pose files in Poser 7 and up are universal poses, and work on a system of comparing the length of body parts in your figure to Simon and adjusting the pose to work on your figure. So, to make your figure good for animation, you have to get the relative lengths right. So to check the relavent lengths, load up Simon next to your figure, and scale him up to the same height. At exactly the same height, the knees, hip, shoulders, elbows and hands must all be at the same heights. If they are not, you are going to have problems using standard poses and BVH and motion files on your figure, which will cut down on his useability for animation.

Also, the neck on your figure is maybe too thick. With standard poses and motion files you are going to get a situation where the head is going to move into the neck, or the neck is going to move into the body. I don't know, maybe you have found a solution to this, but it is one of the problems we are having with our Orc character for Vincent.

Other than that, the style looks good, and the figures look fresh. Good work.

First of all, let me say that a line of low poly toon figures for Poser is a great idea. I think the models are wonderful to look at. You've captured the look of a lot of recent cartoon heroes.

I do find the big hulk's proportions a little strange. I think it's the combination of long legs, no neck, and short torso that is throwing me off. Many big guys have a big torso and short, stubby legs -- being top-heavy gives them character. I wonder if a longer neck might help, or if elongating the torso slightly while shortening the legs might also improve the look.

I'd love to see some more renders when you think they're ready.

Wow, thanks for all the replies. I think you are all right about the neck. The motion of his head is very restricted by it. If he bends his head more than a few degrees, his chin goes into his chest. I did a little experiment and scaled his torso a bit longer, I think its an improvement. To fix him right, though I'm going to have to go back to the uncut mesh, adjust, then cut him up again. Ah well, if it's worth doing right it's worth doing over and over and over..

Quote - I did a little experiment and scaled his torso a bit longer, I think its an improvement. To fix him right, though I'm going to have to go back to the uncut mesh, adjust, then cut him up again.

Good idea. Looks much better. IMO semirealistic toons are best option. Daz figures are good for rendering images, but do not look good animated. I haven't seen any good longer animation with realistic characters, even in cinema - Final fantasy and Beowulf were crap.
I think big guy can have shorten legs and both can have little bigger heads, but it morphs/scaling can do it as well. Good luck.

bouncy, it looks like excellent work IMVHO.  please post full-frontal wire-mesh
render of your new figure in default pose.

Nice, my only comments may seem odd... I think club feet are less /expressive/ than feet where the toes form an arc... e.g. it is harder to see things like toes pointing in a jump or toes spreading. This is more an issue on the little guy I think. Next, I think you should build in spandex morphs and consider including a morph to round the underside of the pectorals. Then I think you might want grouping on the head for different kinds of masks and morphs for "masked" ears, nose and maybe even mouth. Grouping for hands and feet and a boot geometry switch for the feet would be cool. Finally... I think all Poser figures male and female should have genitals... integral body part that can be turned off rather than stick on... however, I hate multi part penis since a morph or two should be adequate for most use... or maybe just some a good bulge morph... Does any one ever pose these multi part penises anyway? I think morphs for tongue are better than possible too. I like the body handles for face control on the old Sarah 1 and I wonder if animators would like body handles for biceps, buttocks, and thighs... I know I would. I would consider a well oganized single map texture with proportional scaling of the different elements. Does anyone know if a single 4000x4000 texture is faster than four 1000x1000 textures? Could proper grouping permit purely procedural textures? When I was doing commercial toon work with Poser I use ambient rather than defuse for my textures and lights just for shadow. Last thing is proportional scaling linked to morph fix dials for sizing the hands feet and head for toon and maybe a smooth morph on the heads for people who want to work with non-distinctive features for building thier own characters... making a base head for a figure with distinctive features can be a real drag which is why although I love the expression on most toon figures for my work I chose the old V2 Shazam for both male and female figures since then they would not look like DAZ The GIRL or some other distinctive character. What I have wanted is really disproportioned figures like the ones in the Incredables but I suppose those are not good for most Poser users.

Okay, I'd like to reply to everyone's questions and comments as much as I can. I really do appreciate the input. First of all, I'm building all the characters from the same mesh, and I'm going to try to use the same mapping for them all, but some of the characters have extremely different proportions, so I may include two differently mapped versions, one that can share maps, and one that's figure specific, to reduce stretching.

I'm going to have to think about the Universal poses proportion thing. It makes perfect sense from the animation ease of use point of view, but part of the fun of a toon figure is extreme proportions. I'll probably try to find some sort of middle ground. Besides, I haven't got poser 7 so I don't know, wouldn't any figure with similar proportions be able to use the same poses anyway?

I think they may be too low poly to do good spandex morphs. I've tried mask mat zones on a previous figure, but the lines on this mesh don't lend themselves well to that, and I don't want to dirty up the mesh with unnecessary lines. I think a simple texture map would probably work better.

I don't consider myself a prude, but I don't intend to include genitals, male or female. My figures dont even have nipples (sorry). I dont see them as particularly sexy, or appropriate for studying anatomy, so I don't see the point. I figure if anyone wants nipples, a displacement map could probably be made.

I would like to know about the single map versus multi map thing. I started with a single map configuration, but then made the head bigger to make it easier to map. It would be easy to change back though.

The figures do have lots of scaling options, hands, feet, head, torso, limbs, all that. It's not as comprehensive as Apollo, but you can do some stuff with it. I've placed the channels on the hip, and you can make scaling poses just like any other pose.

I'm redoing all the morphs, so I'll consider any suggestions. I don't plan to do many body morphs, mostly just face shape and expression morphs.

Lastly, here's a picture of Emil,(the big guy) in my modeller, with his proportions tweaked. This is still a WIP, though.

As regards a single map versus multiple maps.

In a character made for a single purpose, such as a video game character, it is better to make one map.

But for a figure where you may want to change textures, such as the colours of the eyes, or a new face, or make clothing painted directly onto the body, using multiple maps is more logical. Someone making a new face only has to make one map, and you don't have to load a massive 4000x4000 map everytime you want to change something, such as the eye colour.

Another thought. Make your maps square, and in sizes such as 1024x1024, 2048x2048 or 4096x4096. I am not going to go into explaining the mathematics behind this, but trust me that a computer processes and renders a map of 2048x2048 faster than a map of 2000x2000.

Thanks for the info. I had originally planned on using a single map to make it easier to use in sculpting and painting apps such as zbrush, hexagon,  silo etc. I know it's a pain to paint in hexagon when the maps overlap. Of course, I think it's always a pain to paint in hex, but that's just me.

Well, how are the eye textures on these figures done? Painted or procedural? It may, in this case, make sense to make one map, but it depends on how you think they will be used. What are the chances someone is going to make new face maps for them, and not new body textures?

Personally, for toon figures, I think procedural textures are best for everything except second skins. but if I put the figures out for sale, I ought to use whatever methods are most flexible, to give the user the most freedom to choose how he wants to use the figure. I think with that in mind multiple maps are probably the best way to go. Of course, I could include differently mapped obj, DAZ studio even allows you to load multiple UV sets. I just hate to bloat the file size with options most people probably wouldn't use. Maybe an alternative UV set as a free UVS file ?

As long as I'm at it, here's a pic of my little person figure. Does anyone have comments on these proportions? I know real little people have a huge variety in their proportions, but I'm looking for a good base. he could also pretty easily be scaled and morphed to look like a toddler.

...and here's a Kingpin-type plus-sized model. I have a feeling he's going to be a challenge to rig well.

If anyone's interested, I uploaded a video of Bruce,(the smaller guy) going through Vincent Parker's bodybuilding routine.

www.youtube.com/watch

Very cool. I will be releasing a whole set of motion packs for Vincent soon, and they should all work as well with your figures.

Shrink all their giant feet.!  Jeez, those are V4 sized gunboats on all of them!  In some 'Pixar'-like toons the big top body almost beggs smaller feet to focus attention on the upper body. Like Mr Incredible, for instant.  I saw a test of the original mesh with bigger feet and he lookded bloody AWFUL running!  Like a super muscled DUCK! :lol: LOLOLOLOLOL A little exageration is fine, but to much is deadly for the characters in an animation.

Personally, I like his giant feet. But, with the turn of one simple dial, you can pick whatever size fits your personal style. For his hands, or his feet.

Variety is ALWAYS better! That pic shows some poor fellow about to fall over with his itty-bitty feet, but that's alright. :lol; He'll save money on shoes though. LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL  Great work!

I like the lil guy but not thrilled with the big one.
Granted they are to look disproportioned because they are toons, however...I don't like the big one.