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Poser - OFFICIAL F.A.Q (Last Updated: 2025 Jan 26 2:05 pm)



Subject: Antonia - Opinions?


odf ( ) posted Thu, 25 December 2008 at 3:04 AM

momodot: Hmm, I see. I don't know much about JCMs and injection poses, but I agree about the resolution issue, both mesh and texture. I'll definitely try not to bloat Antonia with unnecessary things. Also, the 'real' Antonia is basically the 9500 poly version. The subdivided one is only there because Poser doesn't do subD. I'll do all my morphs on the lo-res version and propagate them to the hi-res one. I'll probably develop a bunch of scripts for those things, which I'll be happy to share.

As for UV maps, I'll probably have three:

  1. Body including hands, feet and back of head.
  2. Face including ears, teeth and inner mouth.
  3. Eyes with lashes and brows.

I'll make texture guides for those that people can paint over. As you see, I'm trying my best to keep the seams at places where they're normally not noticed. So hopefully, Antonia will not be too hard to texture. And if she is, we'll try something else. 😄

-- I'm not mad at you, just Westphalian.


odf ( ) posted Thu, 25 December 2008 at 3:22 AM

file_420498.jpg

So here's an alternative seam placement for the neck and head: the central seams under the chin and on the top of the head are gone, and I moved the seam between neck and face up so it's along the line of the jaw bone. I think this flows more naturally than the previous version, and the remaining seams will be more hidden. Agreed?

-- I'm not mad at you, just Westphalian.


pitklad ( ) posted Thu, 25 December 2008 at 5:01 AM

Agreed! This seam looks in a very nice and hidden place!
As for the scalp maybe you could provide a scalpcap that would come from Antonia's mesh so that would match exactly her head, with its own UVS... just and idea
As for maps I would make the transparent part in a separate map than the eyes since those two need different amount of detail
To be sincere I would make one Eye only & one Lash only texture (which all use) and a third brow texture since most textures have brows on the head texture 😉
I don't mind loading more textures if I know that most of the space on those textures is used as good as possible


My FreeStuff


odf ( ) posted Thu, 25 December 2008 at 6:01 AM

Well, I think the eyes and lashes should nicely fit together in one texture square. The eyes together would fill only half. I might put the corneas and brows together in another one, since they'll probably both not be used much. Or I might put them with the head.

Having fewer maps means fewer texture guides and less confusion. But I don't really care one way or the other. I could even make the two eyes share one texture space and have separate materials for them in case people want to texture them differently. I guess if I can see some clear preference from the people commenting here, I will go with that, otherwise do whatever strikes my fancy at the moment. 😄

Sure, if you think that skull cap will be useful, I'll make one.

-- I'm not mad at you, just Westphalian.


momodot ( ) posted Thu, 25 December 2008 at 10:25 AM · edited Thu, 25 December 2008 at 10:33 AM

That looks very nice... the seams fall on natural tonal transition lines...

I am happy with one eye on the map... I can always spawn a new eye for some special effect and I don't see using this figure that way anyhow. Your three texture plan works fine for me.

Makes loading textures and making MATposes easier... esp. if one is going to do displacement and specular maps also.

Something fancy at just a little overhead cost... make the skull cap a body part with the morphs slaved to the head like the transparency eyebrows :) My preference actually would just be for the scalp area of the head to be just mapped like a skullcap.



Diogenes ( ) posted Thu, 25 December 2008 at 10:34 AM

file_420510.jpg

Hi all.  Wanted to show you a pic of the thumb movement, I think I have got a reasonable approximation of the human opposeable thumb and Antonia should be able to achieve all human movement with her hands. With a few minor JCM's (which I'm leaving to you) should be perfect.


A HOMELAND FOR POSER FINALLY


kobaltkween ( ) posted Thu, 25 December 2008 at 11:08 AM

just to say, i think she's progressing very well.  and i agree with pretty much everything momodot is saying.  i think nude figures are probably a bit more important in general usage, because so many people render nude or practically nude figures.  and while you may not see high res versions on this site, that doesn't mean people aren't rendering high res.  just glancing at the latest Exotique 4 preview, i counted about 5 or 6 Poser pictures, some of which were well known.  and all of which sported  V4 with her myriad facial problems.  i think it would be nice to be able to have a figure that one could submit work with that didn't have the same problems.  and personally, i never render below 2400px in my shortest dimension.  i render at about 3600 x 2700, and if i had the software and hardware, i'd double each dimension.

that said, those are my only sort of counter balances to what momodot said.  they don't actually refute what he's saying, just shade it a bit, i think.  i think by and large, new figures are full of bloat.  the magnet system was supposed to be great for other merchants, but Anton has explained why it's a much bigger resource hit than more polys or JCM.  and yeah, more complex figures has made a more dependent community.  when everyone just shared CR2's, most of the "characters" included custom morphs.  when the injection pose thing started, dial spins and  custom morphs became indistinguishable from a user standpoint, and difficult and expensive from  a creator standpoint.  and the whole no distributing the CR2 thing came from V2 being a morph expansion rather than an actual figure.  DAZ is by no means an evil empire, but they are very smart business people, and they've gotten the community to go along with changes that took power out of the hands of the general public and put it into the hands of people who pay for tools.  

imho, momodot's posette there looks more realistic than just about any V4 i've seen, and i'd say i've seen more realistic V3 faces, but not bodies.  i totally think you should continue your mapping project and keep doing what you're doing.  all your improvements have been exc but i definitely think it's good to talk about easy to use vs. clever, and to mention that while new figures have been more advanced in terms of topology and mapping, they've had fewer innovations and unique add-ons than the original base figures.  Posette still has the most  morphs, and lots of of textures, and a good amount of remaps, and more re-rigging.  she has inspired lots of tinkering because she was that easy to tinker with.  i think it's good that you're planning in good usability.



momodot ( ) posted Thu, 25 December 2008 at 11:30 AM

First, thanks re. the Posette... that is pretty much off the rack, no attempt to spin a character and the texture is c.1998. Lord I got a lot of work done with Posette but I lost most of my stuff to a disc crash from before I had a CD burner. I would kill for a copy of the MorphWorld 2 Disc!!! That is how the basic Posette looks with a single home-made morph... not even the fantastic FBM loaded Eve varient by Traveler, the FBMs of Staale Loseth, or the amazing Nea by pitklad. Poses well... light. Stahlratte made morphs that fix the eyebrows, eye shape, lips and nose without distorting the texture. There was amazing JP injections, geometric eyelashes and stunning characters from Japan. People like RemC made characters you could not believe were Poser 4. Stahlratte made one of the best (maybe THE best) children EVER with Dork. Posette could be a toon, a child, a man. The first cyborg by andygraph was Posette and there were others as good. I still use all the kozoburo P4 hair and some people made great P4 clothes... cyobitlab.hp.infoseek.co.jp is still up.

...while new figures have been more advanced in terms of topology and mapping, they've had fewer innovations and unique add-ons than the original base figures.  Posette still has the most  morphs, and lots of of textures, and a good amount of remaps, and more re-rigging.  she has inspired lots of tinkering because she was that easy to tinker with.  i think it's good that you're planning in good usability.

You put my thoughts much more clearly than I did.



momodot ( ) posted Thu, 25 December 2008 at 11:32 AM · edited Thu, 25 December 2008 at 11:36 AM

Content Advisory! This message contains nudity

file_420513.jpg

Here is an old render I made showing what one texture by Pitklad could look like on Dork without even displacement, bump or specular. Look how old it can be without even a texture change. This is my work c. 1998. Pitklad's new Dork has beautiful morph work.

The point isn't that old is better... it is that the easier something is to tinker with, the more "simple" it is, the more it can be innovated and /pushed/.



momodot ( ) posted Thu, 25 December 2008 at 1:06 PM · edited Thu, 25 December 2008 at 1:20 PM

Content Advisory! This message contains nudity

file_420519.jpg

Please indulge me one more Posette render 1000x2000 pixels. Off the shelf Posette-3 by Stahlratte without morphs... the skin detail is from using RealSkinShader. The point is that it was topology and sculpting that were the issues not resolution. I would have liked a little more mesh in the face and breasts but still renders pretty big without resolution issues and sure is light on resources.

I sure wish I had not been on a 300bps modem when Azura the hi-res Eve was free on MorphWorld.

There were people who did face morphs so you would never guess it was Posette. My biggest complaint was no ear canals!



momodot ( ) posted Thu, 25 December 2008 at 3:57 PM · edited Thu, 25 December 2008 at 4:03 PM

Also, that is a randomly selected Posette texture... you can see that despite the much maligned mapping and the single low-res texture it actually looks okay at 2000 pixels tall. The Staale Loseth textures had considerably more detail. I have an expensive btsculptor Shelly texture for P4 which is lovely. Did anyone ever shell out for the Halafi Posette textures? Were they good? I wonder how Posette would look in a nice big 4000x4000 texture. Only new P4 texture releases are from pitklad and they are beautiful. I wonder what someone like Thorne/Sarsa or ExprssnImg could do with a Posette texture given the skills and nodes they have now.



odf ( ) posted Thu, 25 December 2008 at 11:51 PM · edited Thu, 25 December 2008 at 11:51 PM

momodot:

Quote - I can always spawn a new eye for some special effect

Ha! I hadn't even thought of that. Spawn a new eye, parent it to the original, make the original invisible. Dirt easy! The uni-eye solution it is.

Quote -
Something fancy at just a little overhead cost... make the skull cap a body part with the morphs slaved to the head like the transparency eyebrows :) My preference actually would just be for the scalp area of the head to be just mapped like a skullcap.

Hmm, I'll probably leave it at the prop solution for now.

My slightly revised plan is to release a bare-bones version first and call it "Antonia 0" or "Antonia Base". Just the UV mapped geometry with Phantom's rigging; no morphs, no textures, no accessories, no special knick-knacks. But whatever's in that first release will be thoroughly tested - that's the part where I've revised my original plan - so that it can provide a solid basis for further developments.

That way I can release fairly soon - hopefully - and give people a chance to play with the figure. Let someone who knows their dynamic hair come up with the best rigging for a skull cap - not an utter dummy like me who'd either have to give himself a crash course in the subject prontissimo or else simply guess - and most probably guess wrong - about the best way to do it. Then at some point in the future there will be an "Antonia 1" or "Antonia complete" release with all the best contributed additions and extensions, including my own.

The UV map is a bit of a special case, because it has to be part of the original geometry file. Texture makers need it to get to work, and it's not a good idea to have every texture maker roll their own. So I'm building one that's hopefully halfway decent and can serve as a basis for future development. But everything else I'd rather have evolve from practical use of the figure than just dry discussion and me quickly trying to guess what everyone really meant. :biggrin:

-- I'm not mad at you, just Westphalian.


odf ( ) posted Thu, 25 December 2008 at 11:56 PM

phantom3D:

Quote - Hi all.  Wanted to show you a pic of the thumb movement, I think I have got a reasonable approximation of the human opposeable thumb and Antonia should be able to achieve all human movement with her hands. With a few minor JCM's (which I'm leaving to you) should be perfect.

That looks great. The thumb is definitely the hard part of the hand rig, and from what I see, you've pretty much nailed it. Many figures I used in the past had it wrong, which made posing their hands well very hard. And if you look at my early gallery entries, you'll see that good hand posing has always been important to me.

-- I'm not mad at you, just Westphalian.


odf ( ) posted Fri, 26 December 2008 at 12:06 AM

momodot: So, you're a Posette fan, huh? :biggrin:

Before I started working on Antonia, I thought about just re-sculpting Posette, seeing as she's fairly lo-resolution and should be easier to work with. But just like in all the Vs and Js and Ms and so on, I didn't find her mesh topology particularly appealing. While developing Antonia, I was vaguely hoping I'd be able to match Posette's poly count. I kind of missed that by a factor of two, but on the other hand you could say I actually beat her by a factor of two. And that includes better teeth. 😄

Hmm, so how deep do you need your ear canals to be? Because I just flattened Antonia's a bit, as well as her nostrils, to make the UV mapping easier. But I think there should be sufficient topology there to morph them deeper again, if necessary.

-- I'm not mad at you, just Westphalian.


odf ( ) posted Fri, 26 December 2008 at 12:22 AM

Okay, revised texture overlay plan based on the uni-eye solution:

1) Body with hands and feet, neck and scalp.
2) Face with ears, inner mouth, teeth and tongue.
3) Eyeball (left and right sharing one map, mirrored).

  1. Cornea (as above).
    5) Lashes (as above).

And possibly:
6) Floating brow mesh.

As for the brows, I have a shaped piece of geometry now, but should probably change that into a duplicate of part of the underlying face topology like on Apollo. Maybe for texture and mask painting it would be easiest if those polygons would just share texture coordinates with the ones below them rather than using a separate map?

-- I'm not mad at you, just Westphalian.


odf ( ) posted Fri, 26 December 2008 at 12:31 AM · edited Fri, 26 December 2008 at 12:36 AM

Umm, one more: I really like those Posette and Dork renders. That Posette-3 by Stahlratte looks much more realistic than most of the Vickie characters I've seen.

One thing I'm hoping to achieve with Antonia is to make her really easy to sculpt. Ideally, it would be almost trivial to change the shapes of her features in interesting ways - not just the usual smaller/bigger/higher/lower that leaves you with characters which all still look like very close relatives because their eyes, noses and mouths all share the same basic shape.

-- I'm not mad at you, just Westphalian.


pitklad ( ) posted Fri, 26 December 2008 at 3:09 AM

About the eyes I have to say that separate right and left mapping is not needed only for special effects... Eyes are not always exactly the same. I always add different small details on the iris, that gives the textures a small asymmetry that adds a realism detail...
Same goes for lashes and Brows...
For the cornea I wouldn't care if those where map on one overlaping UVS for both)
The brow overlap and sharing uvs with head is a very nice idea for an extra layer even for painted on texture eyebrows

**phantom3D **this is great hand rigging, I have to agree that hands make a good pose!

momodot that posettes looks fantastic! Can't wait to see Antonia textured! She looks great with a shader imagine what textures can do for her! :biggrin:


My FreeStuff


odf ( ) posted Fri, 26 December 2008 at 3:27 AM

Quote - About the eyes I have to say that separate right and left mapping is not needed only for special effects... Eyes are not always exactly the same. I always add different small details on the iris, that gives the textures a small asymmetry that adds a realism detail...

How about a shared texture map and two separate materials for left and right then? That would give people the choice of making one texture map for both eyes or separate maps for each.

-- I'm not mad at you, just Westphalian.


pitklad ( ) posted Fri, 26 December 2008 at 3:52 AM

Attached Link: Interesting observation about Poser6,Firefly, and obj Materials in re: Renderin

This would add 3 more materials but if you cut the pupil material you would have just one added... However some people want the pupil material... oh man! it is so hard to have everything!

Also I found a post about obj defragmetation this is OT but I had this in mind and just finded the link :biggrin:

So be sure to run Antonia through STOMP before the release 😉


My FreeStuff


odf ( ) posted Fri, 26 December 2008 at 4:48 AM · edited Fri, 26 December 2008 at 4:48 AM

Yes, it's hard to please everyone. :biggrin:

Thanks for the defragmentation tip! Fortunately, my Wings -> Poser group rewriting script already does that. It's 45 lines of standalone Python, and I wrote it to split groups with names like lShoulder into lShoulder and rShoulder based an face positions. That way, I can keep working on the virtually mirrored model in Wings without having to manually reassign those groups after each mirror freeze operation.

No disrespect to spanki, but I don't need no bleeding Windows programs that depend on OpenGL for graphics. 😉

-- I'm not mad at you, just Westphalian.


pitklad ( ) posted Fri, 26 December 2008 at 4:58 AM

Wow! That mirror groups tool seams very useful indeed! :thumbupboth:
I'm glad you already have this in mind 😉 because it really makes a difference


My FreeStuff


odf ( ) posted Fri, 26 December 2008 at 5:25 AM · edited Fri, 26 December 2008 at 5:26 AM

I have to confess I didn't even think of that thread when I wrote the script. It just seemed natural to cache faces by group and material and write them out at the end.

If anyone's interested, I'm happy to share that script. I'd just have to remove the Wings-specific bits or at least make them optional. Wings does some weird things like adding the object name to the group name, which the script fixes in the same run.

I've started to work on a more extensive .obj file cleanup program written in Scala. One of its purposes will be to transfer information between objects that have the same topology but possibly moved and re-ordered vertices. That should be very useful for making morphs with programs such as Wings that do not support direct symmetric editing, but also for patching UV maps back in after editing figures and such things.

-- I'm not mad at you, just Westphalian.


odf ( ) posted Fri, 26 December 2008 at 6:14 AM

Speaking of lashes: should I make them one-sided or two-sided? In other words: if I have a one-sided object with transmaps applied, do the non-transparent parts show up if viewed from the other side?

I know I could simply test this, but I'm lazy, and even if it works in my version of Poser, it might not in others.

-- I'm not mad at you, just Westphalian.


odf ( ) posted Fri, 26 December 2008 at 6:32 AM · edited Fri, 26 December 2008 at 6:37 AM

file_420548.jpg

Here's another test-render to show the distortion and seams in the head and neck area with the latest version. A full-body test-render from yesterday - with the same pattern but before moving the head-neck seam upward - is in my gallery.

It's quite interesting, actually. It's not so much that I don't see the seams along the jaw and collar bones, but that I don't seem to mind as much. Unlike in the skull area, where the seams appear as an obvious irregularity, my brain seems to expect change across those lines.

-- I'm not mad at you, just Westphalian.


momodot ( ) posted Fri, 26 December 2008 at 1:09 PM · edited Fri, 26 December 2008 at 1:14 PM

How about a shared texture map and two separate materials for left and right then? That would give people the choice of making one texture map for both eyes or separate maps for each.

This sounds good. It means extra materials but not neccessarily extra textures. pitklad is quite right about the symetry issues and I do a symetric eyebrows but myself am too lazy to do asymetric irises.

I rendered that Posette-3 at 2000x4000 and it actually looked even better... the key to working with Posette are the expression morphs on the old characters from Japan which also have lip and eyelid fixes and Stahlratte's fixes for the edges on the brow, nose and lips (available at Planit3D I think?). Posette rocks because she is so light on overhead and can look really good. Working with the V3RR and M3RR has made me realize how important topology is above all. Those V3/M3 shoulders though... ugh!

Here is something I have been wondering about odf... I still am not clear how you are releasing Antonia but can the ankle area and maybe feet be released in such a way that people would permited to build sandels integral right on them and use geometry switch injection for the shoes instead of conforming -- like those Bratz Dolls for kids where you change the whole foot instead of trying to fit shoes on. Kirwyn released "K" with injectable geometry switches for shoes and it is delightfull not to have conforming issues, not to have loose fitting straps and poke through, not to have "Big Shoes".



Faery_Light ( ) posted Fri, 26 December 2008 at 6:17 PM

The map looks great!
Wish I felt more like offering comments but still sick...ugh.


Let me introduce you to my multiple personalities. :)
     BluEcho...Faery_Light...Faery_Souls.


JB123 ( ) posted Fri, 26 December 2008 at 7:22 PM · edited Fri, 26 December 2008 at 7:23 PM

Hi ODF
The mappings coming along really good. I like that you moved the seam up under the jawline. I don't think I commented on the earlier part of this thread but here are my views on it and I think you have done an outstanding job.

I love that you made her on the lighter side it has far more advantage over bloated hi-res meshes as long as the topology is sound for both rigging and morphs. Im of the opinion hi-res meshes ( rigging experts feel free to correct me if im wrong ) often have more deformation problems than ( well placed topology ) lighter meshes.  Im not a fan at all of embedded magnets on figures. This seem to be the wave of the poser future but I'd rather not ride that wave ( makes my system slow to a crawl). I don't know much about the pros and cons of JCM's but from what I can see of mike's rigging they probabaly aren't needed. I do wonder if it will hinder future expansion such as clothing? Im curious to know though.

 I find morphs work better on lower-res models because you get less pinching etc. when a morph is dialed up extremely high. Lower res opens up a lot of possiblites for general shaping morphs because ( if designed well ) they can reverse better giving you unlimited possible shapes. Morphs dialed at even fairly low negative values usually look horrible on higher rez meshes. More variety is always good Not to mention it's easier to build up a respectable collection of morphs in less time.

I notice some figures come out of the box with too defined features ( like bone surfaces and defined muscularity for instance ) that are usually hard to get rid of if you need a smoother more natural look and can even be a problem with rigging deformations across body part seams. Knee caps, wrist bones etc. tend to look really bad when bending if thier too defined on the default mesh. I think it's better to handle those areas with morphs. On the other hand if you go too low-res you will have to do some creative morphing or displacement if you want a more defined look. I think it's good to have the default look slightly smoother than what would be considered realistic but still have just enough resolution and good topology to support more defined looks. Adding extra res just for the sake of extra res seems sloppy and amateur to me. I am a big fan of making every poly, edgeloop, how things flow etc. actually count instead of just adding more density which seems to have more problems and is less versitile IMHO.

Anyway I find it facinating making the most out of the least. I'll take effeciancy over bloat anyday. Keep up the good work.

Happy Holidays :)
JB


momodot ( ) posted Fri, 26 December 2008 at 7:22 PM

Wow that mapping is consitent but for me it is a pleasure to see another nice picture of that head. Teriffic modeling.



odf ( ) posted Fri, 26 December 2008 at 7:38 PM · edited Fri, 26 December 2008 at 7:39 PM

Quote -
Here is something I have been wondering about odf... I still am not clear how you are releasing Antonia but can the ankle area and maybe feet be released in such a way that people would permited to build sandels integral right on them and use geometry switch injection for the shoes instead of conforming -- like those Bratz Dolls for kids where you change the whole foot instead of trying to fit shoes on. Kirwyn released "K" with injectable geometry switches for shoes and it is delightfull not to have conforming issues, not to have loose fitting straps and poke through, not to have "Big Shoes".

Absolutely! The license will allow you to redistribute modified versions of the figure without encoding or any such thing, and you can sell them, too. All that's required is that you give proper credit to the original. So, you'd have to say something along the lines of "Based on Antonia figure by odf and phantom3D available on QCMZ" (supposing I had Antonia hosted on a site named QCMZ).

PS: What does "consitent" mean?

-- I'm not mad at you, just Westphalian.


momodot ( ) posted Fri, 26 December 2008 at 7:54 PM

consitent is my special way of writing "consistent" ;0)

I have a bad hand tremor that makes typing a real hassle and my spelling is attroshus too. I have a couple of useless graduate degrees now but missed out on a fair bit of ellementry education when I was a kid due to circumstances. Got into university when I was 16 just to have somewhere to live :) I can use spellcheck on every other site but Firefox has that locked for RMP for some sort of security reason.

That sure is a nice way to release the figure. Means people can do head swapping and all sorts of neat things that are usually proscribed :)



odf ( ) posted Fri, 26 December 2008 at 9:16 PM

Hey, I didn't mean to poke fun at your spelling. I was seriously wondering whether you meant something other than "consistent". Being a foreign devil and all, I don't English so well.

-- I'm not mad at you, just Westphalian.


momodot ( ) posted Fri, 26 December 2008 at 10:09 PM

Thanks, no problem, I knew you were serious :)
"consitent" seems like it could mean something.



agent_unawares ( ) posted Sat, 27 December 2008 at 12:47 AM · edited Sat, 27 December 2008 at 12:52 AM

Quote - Don't bother making a separate material zone for lips. Any lipstick or gloss effect should be driven by a mask. When you assign the lips a different material and don't use a mask with soft anti-aliased edges, any lipstick effect looks fake. It's important to blend the lips with the face. So in my VSS shader, I design the face shader as one thing and I never put a different shader on the lips.

Bagginsbill: With all due respect [because you're the god of Poser shaders], I disagree. Yes, in Poser you can use masking to change lipstick, eyeshadow, etcetera, however in DAZ|Studio, such a thing is impossible. And it really brings down the number of textures files required for makeup if you can put green makeup on one face map, red makeup on another, then just switch the face or lips textures in order to get a girl with red lips and green eyeshadow. Otherwise you have to make four texture maps in order to deal with all combinations, and when you add another color  it goes up to nine, another color and it goes up to sixteen...

Of course the same shader setup should be used for the entire face. However, you can easily use the same shader on both material zones. The problem with having the lips separate from the face really isn't because of that, it's because whoever creates the material zones always puts the edge right at the edge of the lips. Then texture makers can't make textures with appropriately soft edges that can be switched out without hard lines, unless they make the edges of the lipstick well within the edges of the lips, which looks just as unnatural as hard edges at times. Or, people try to make "lipstick" just by changing the diffuse color, which is pretty horrible for a realistic effect as well.

However, if the "lips" material zone extended slightly past the actual edges of the lips, that would solve all these problems. You could still use the same shader setup on both the face and the lips, and the diffuse texture could be switched out to another lips color without the edge blending issues.

If I've been horribly confusing I apologize. [Also, I will resort to awful diagrams in an attempt to explain myself properly if neccesary. XD]

EDIT: I also have to disagree about separating the pupil from the iris. It's incredibly useful in D|S to be able to remove the specularity and sometime the diffuse color from just the pupil easily.

Odf, Antonia looks absolutely incredible so far. If you don't have anyone lined up yet, I'd love to do some shaping morphs for her once you get the preliminary stuff finalized.

My Gallery - critiques desperately needed welcome!


Diogenes ( ) posted Sat, 27 December 2008 at 11:57 AM

file_420653.jpg

Here is a quick shot of some of the foot movement I have rigged into Antonia. It will allow for some decent dance foot posing like ballet.


A HOMELAND FOR POSER FINALLY


rjjack ( ) posted Sat, 27 December 2008 at 12:18 PM

excellent, do you have used an additional joint between the foot and the toes ?


Diogenes ( ) posted Sat, 27 December 2008 at 12:24 PM

Yes it uses a heel bone, foot bone, toe bone, and two big toe bones (the big toe is rigged as it can move independently of the littler toes.)


A HOMELAND FOR POSER FINALLY


rjjack ( ) posted Sat, 27 December 2008 at 1:23 PM

yeah, the usual Foot -> Toe setup from many figures cannot bend like this

can't wait to play with Antonia, she look like a very good figure


kobaltkween ( ) posted Sat, 27 December 2008 at 2:32 PM

Quote -
How about a shared texture map and two separate materials for left and right then? That would give people the choice of making one texture map for both eyes or separate maps for each.

yes, please. 



odf ( ) posted Sat, 27 December 2008 at 5:26 PM

Mike, that looks fantastic.

-- I'm not mad at you, just Westphalian.


odf ( ) posted Sat, 27 December 2008 at 8:52 PM · edited Sat, 27 December 2008 at 8:56 PM

Content Advisory! This message contains nudity, profanity

file_420702.jpg

Here's a sneak preview of what the final layout may look like. Hands and back/top of head will be scaled to 200%, everything on the face map to 400%. I moved the neck to the face map because it will show up in hi-res portrait close-ups and thus needs the same resolution as the face. Also, there was plenty of space left there anyway.

Teeth, tongue and such will go on the lower left of the face map, probably with the same scale factor. The eyes will be closed to give the upper lids more texture space. The nails will be separated from the hands and feet and scaled up. I'll probably cut out the insides of her labia, too, and scale them up or at least spread them out so people who are into gynecological renders can have fun. Not planning to do any morphs for that particular region anytime soon, though. :biggrin:

Straightening the lashes in UV is tedious. I have to do it four times and then make the results match. Wings is a little sadist when you try to push texture vertices around. More often than not, they drop quite a bit at first when you start to drag them, and although you know you're not physically dropping something, it gives you a little adrenaline rush every time. Bill, I'm expecting some kick-ass procedural lashes for all that suffering. :biggrin:

-- I'm not mad at you, just Westphalian.


momodot ( ) posted Sat, 27 December 2008 at 10:40 PM · edited Sat, 27 December 2008 at 10:44 PM

odf, could you rotate the hands so the center between front and back runs vertical like on the feet? Rotating texture ellements in Photoshop kills resolution.

Could you maybe map the lashes on a simple rectilinear plane and then curve and weld it? Should it be lots of narrow strips that are separate applied to the edge of the lid?

Personally I still would have liked the foot and hand cuts a little further up where clothing cuffs fall.

There is going to be a tricky seam for painted on hair where the sideburns and hairline go :) does the neck/scalp cut line up with a plausible neck hairline? I am maybe the only fan left of painted hair done with scalp morphs for volume but I guess the scalp prop will attend to that... just that hair painted on the head rather then transmapped on a scalp prop actually looks better close up. See this old image here. But I use even longer painted hair like on Fawne Wasteland for V3 and Mint's Helsinki for M3 when I can.

I sure appreciate the integer resolution ratios!

Just my thoughts... you are probably done anyway.



JB123 ( ) posted Sat, 27 December 2008 at 11:30 PM · edited Sat, 27 December 2008 at 11:32 PM

Looking good Mike. Very natrural bend for a very natural lady. It looks like quite a few people want to do morphs for her :) I will do a set in PZ2/pmd format. ODF do you have a planned morph list? I want to make a collection based on whatever you don't include to complement yours morphs. She looks like she will be fun to sculpt on. Btw what is the final polycount?


odf ( ) posted Sat, 27 December 2008 at 11:36 PM

file_420708.jpg

No, I'm far from done, momodot. I'm the kind who fiddles with those little details endlessly. 😄

Quote - odf, could you rotate the hands so the center between front and back runs vertical like on the feet? Rotating texture ellements in Photoshop kills resolution.

Sure, if that helps.

Quote - Could you maybe map the lashes on a simple rectilinear plane and then curve and weld it? Should it be lots of narrow strips that are separate applied to the edge of the lid?

That's an idea. Make a plane, map it as is, then shape it. Excellent!

Quote - Personally I still would have liked the foot and hand cuts a little further up where clothing cuffs fall.

I'll have a look at those cuts. But I think it's a bit of a trade-off. The best seam position for a clothed figure might not be best for a naked one - or one with short-sleeved/legged clothing, for that. Since I do mostly nudes myself, I might be slightly biased...

Quote - There is going to be a tricky seam for painted on hair where the sideburns and hairline go :) does the neck/scalp cut line up with a plausible neck hairline?

I think it's pretty close, actually (see image). You could probably morph it into submission. As for the other seam, I tried to move that forward closer to the normal hairline, but that lead to all kinds of problems. So I'm still strongly in favor of the skull cap solution, even if it's not perfect for every application.

-- I'm not mad at you, just Westphalian.


odf ( ) posted Sat, 27 December 2008 at 11:52 PM

Quote - It looks like quite a few people want to do morphs for her :) I will do a set in PZ2/pmd format. ODF do you have a planned morph list? I want to make a collection based on whatever you don't include to complement yours morphs. She looks like she will be fun to sculpt on. Btw what is the final polycount?

Of course it would be good to coordinate those morphs, but I haven't done anything in that respect yet. The initial release will be without morphs, so that people who want to make clothes or textures or just simply play with the figure don't have to wait a long time for her to be available. After the release, we can set up some kind of registry for people to announce what they're working on.

Myself, I call dibs on the expression morphs. I haven't thought about shape morphs much, but I might do a few goofy things for practice while establishing a work flow. Later, I think doing some custom morphs after real people might be fun.

Oh, and at some point I'd like to do a hi-res hand-painted texture. :biggrin:

The poly count is currently 37270, all inclusive. Or 9320 for the lo-res version. I'll try to come up with an easy  way of transferring morphs between those two, by the way. I'll most likely work on the lo-res version myself when making morphs.

-- I'm not mad at you, just Westphalian.


momodot ( ) posted Sun, 28 December 2008 at 12:49 AM

The back of the head and neck look good. Thanks.

On my personal morph wishlist is one I can not do well myself... small or no breasts,



odf ( ) posted Sun, 28 December 2008 at 12:59 AM

Excellent idea, momodot. That might be a good practice morph for me. Easier than expressions, but not exactly trivial, either.

I might actually switch from Wings to Blender for the morphs, because if I'm not mistaken, it can animate them. That would be extremely helpful.

-- I'm not mad at you, just Westphalian.


odf ( ) posted Mon, 29 December 2008 at 5:42 AM · edited Mon, 29 December 2008 at 5:44 AM

I think I'm pretty close to finalizing the UVs now. Before I give them the finishing touches, though, I need to take some time off to write my topology matcher. That's the tool I've been planning to develop for some time now that will allow me to transfer information between different versions of the mesh even if some of them have experienced rather rough treatment.

In the meantime, ponder my proposed list of material zones. I was too lazy to go through all the popular figures and check which names were commonly used, so the ones below are partly based on memory and partly pulled out of thin (h)air. I'm happy to change some names or add/remove zones if someone presents a good argument.

Map 1 (everything but the face and neck):
  01. SkinBody
  02. SkinSkull
  03. SkinHands
  04. SkinFeet
  05. Nipples
  06. Genitals
  07. NailsFingers
  08. NailsToes

Map 2 (face and neck, including mouth, but not eyes):
  09. SkinFace
  10. SkinNeck
  11. Brows
  12. Eyesockets
  13. Lips
  14. Mouthwall
  15. Gums
  16. Teeth
  17. Tongue

Map 3 (eyeballs, left and right sharing one map):
  18. EyeballLeft
  19. EyeballRight
  20. IrisLeft
  21. IrisRight
  22. Pupils

Map 4 (corneas, ditto):
  23. CorneaLeft
  24. CorneaRight

Map 5 (lashes, ditto):
  25. LashesLeft
  26. LashesRight

Some remarks:

  • The six skin zones reflect regions that are separated from each other on the UV map, so I thought I should make it easy to switch texture maps for each of these independently.

  • Some zones, such as the nipples and lips, make it easier to use Antonia without any textures, which should come in handy when using her as a background figure.

  • The genital zone is only for the region within the labia majora. The exterior of the genital regions is part of SkinBody.

  • The Brows zone is for the additional brow geometry that sits on top of the forehead. This would typically be used with a texture and a transmap to add a second layer to the brows and make them look less flat. There is no separate brow zone on the actual face geometry.

Okay, longish post. Let me know what you think.

-- I'm not mad at you, just Westphalian.


rjjack ( ) posted Mon, 29 December 2008 at 6:01 AM

From my memory most figures use FingerNails ToesNails and InnerMouth in place of NailsFingers, NailsToes and Mouthwall, but for me this is not important if the material name reflect the corresponding body part. But since my native language is the french i am not a reference for anything in english ;-)


odf ( ) posted Mon, 29 December 2008 at 6:15 AM · edited Mon, 29 December 2008 at 6:15 AM

Quote - From my memory most figures use FingerNails ToesNails and InnerMouth in place of NailsFingers, NailsToes and Mouthwall, but for me this is not important if the material name reflect the corresponding body part. But since my native language is the french i am not a reference for anything in english ;-)

I thought those names were more logical. But my native language is not English, either, so what do I know. 😉

If anyone cares enough, I wouldn't mind changing them.

-- I'm not mad at you, just Westphalian.


odf ( ) posted Mon, 29 December 2008 at 7:34 AM · edited Mon, 29 December 2008 at 7:36 AM

Content Advisory! This message contains nudity

file_420755.jpg

It was too late to program and too early to go to bed, so I decided to play in Wings for a bit. It's not a spectacular breast reduction, and it was just a quick test, anyway, so I haven't even saved the file or brought it into Poser. This is the result of some tightening, then moving the nipples inward with a magnet, then a bit of tweaking. Making her breasts really small will require substantially more work, especially if the intermediate steps are meant to look nice as well. But I thought it was interesting to see what could be done.

-- I'm not mad at you, just Westphalian.


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