So how are you going to give her eyebrows?

Quote - OK, let me guess:  displacement  with a link the z-part of the N-node and some magic math stuff inbetween?

best regards,

Bopper.

Y-part, but yes. Do you understand matmatic notation? Here it is:

sagDisplacement = .1 * SmoothStep(Bias(2 * Clamp(N(0, -3, 0) - .5), .3))

Quote - So how are you going to give her eyebrows?

Yep, that's what I'd like to know.

My best guess would be to make a mask that specifies where on the forehead the eyebrows should go, then use something similar to the lash shader, but with several layers of hair and some change of direction between the central and outer parts.

Quote - Sagging Skin Ball will be the name of my next band. :biggrin:

LOL

Quote - So how are you going to give her eyebrows?

I'm not sure yet if it's possible to do procedurally. I may have to go with hand-painted on that one.

Yeah, eyebrows are probably beyond what can reasonably be done with a procedural shader. I'll find some references and try to turn them into an eyebrow map.

*Baggingsbill wrote: Y-part, but yes.

*Of course, I'm working daily with autocad and rhino, both use z as the vertical, so I have to switch my brain when I'm working with poser or carrara. I've tried some "gravity" -shaders myself, but I haven't thought of matmatic. I have to dig in that deeper some day, when I have some more spare time.
I had always problems with the nipple-area, I solved that by using an extra displacement map instead of geometry on top of the gravity shader. The problem is that when you use a mask to hide the nipple area you get and break, because the area around the mask is displace and the the nipple is not.

Great project is this by the way!

best regards,

Bopper.

Thank you.

I see a bit of a hard edge on the right nipple. I'm wondering if there's a little bit of angle change built into the geometry that is causing that? I don't think it's the mask - it seems pretty smooth. I'll have to try just rendering with a simpler shader so I can see what's going on there.

Also, this is just a color test. I want to apply a different bump there and literally put some bumps in. Nipples are bumpy.

Anyway, conceptually it works.

man, that is awesome. i have no idea how you do it, but the shader is fantastic.

Thanks. I like words like awesome and fantastic.

Actually, I've published "how" to do this for years. My very first gallery posting was about procedural skin.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1051057

I'm not too proud of that skin anymore, but I was at the time. What I'm doing now is pretty much the same as then. The difference is largely how many of these effects I include and in the numbers I use to control the effects.

It is an endless task to guess whether a particular Spots node Softness/Threshold should be .5/.6 or .54/.59 or what? If you assume only two digits of precision matters, there's still 10,000 ways to configure one Spots node. Then there is the question of what color to make them, and again even if there are only 10 meaningfully different values of R, G, and B for that, you get 1,000 colors to choose from. Combine that with the 10,000 values for the other two parameters, and a Spot effect runs into 10 million combinations. Which ones work and which ones don't? Endless experimenting is required, as well as tons of staring at reference pictures.

Now that I have a really good digital camera, I've improved my ability to "see" reality. My D90 is 12.5 Megapixels. I don't have a macro lens, but even with my regular 18-105 mm zoom, I can get in close to see a lot of detail. It has helped my understanding of materials immensely.

Reference pictures I find on the net are helpful, but it is much more helpful to take a photo of something, like my hand, examine it, and then decide to take another from a particular new angle or with a particular change in the lighting. This helps me answer questions that I don't even know to ask until I start seeing pictures.

The quality of this procedural skin has improved largely because of my camera. I've only had it a month. I've compiled a bunch of interesting pictures of various things I plan to use in the future for more procedural shaders.

The 18-105 mm zoom is ok, but it doesn't let me get closer than about 18 inches, which means I'm limited in how much I can magnify something. I borrowed a Nikkor 60 mm f/2.8 D macro lens last week from a friend. That lens is ridiculous - it is sharp as hell and I can get to within 1 inch of something, producing a 1:1 image size ratio. For example, I can photograph a penny and it fills the image. The photo of my eye I posted earlier was done with that lens. I want to go to there. I had to give it back,

I learned some amazing things with that lens. For example, I've not successfully generated a believable blue-jean material, and now I know why. When I shot a macro of my own pants, I couldn't believe what I saw. I have to change how I color the threads - the dye is missing from the top of each hump in the thread, where one crosses over the other. I never would have guessed that.

This is the full frame shot I got of my watch. Obviously I reduced resolution for this forum. But it gives you a sense of what fills the frame to start with.

Now a watch face is pretty straightforward, in terms of a shader, right? You just make it white. Nothing to it, right?

Remember this is just a crop, reduced. I can zoom this to my entire desktop and see it in even more detail.

I did not know that some of the glowing stuff in the minute hand was broken off.

CG renders look fake because we don't have this in the texture. You can't get this kind of resolution in a texture. But I think I can with a procedural driven by a low-res map that tells me where to put different styles of procedural bump on the figure.

We haven't even gottten to that yet, but we will.

Quote -
I see a bit of a hard edge on the right nipple. I'm wondering if there's a little bit of angle change built into the geometry that is causing that? I don't think it's the mask - it seems pretty smooth. I'll have to try just rendering with a simpler shader so I can see what's going on there.

Yep, it's an angle change. Poser makes a hard edge there because of those 's 1' and 's 2' lines I mistakenly left in the file. They are called smoothing groups. Each polygon belongs to either group 1 or 2 (in case of Antonia; there could of course be more than two groups). Poser does not average normals between polygons that belong to different groups, which is why you see a sharp angle there.

If you take all the lines starting with 's' out, there's only one default smoothing groups and everything should look nice.

The reason I have an hard edge there is so that the outline of the areola doesn't move when I subdivide from my original low-poly mesh. I should have removed them from the subdivided mesh, but I forgot.

I think there was one on the lips that was causing problems too. The upper lip line looks better to me now.

I like this. The face it seems was a labor of love. It has a lot of character and looks credibly "Real world" ....not perfect model material but everyday perhaps Eastern European. Nice.
The body is your average any woman body. No model material she but your average real flawed woman. Nice too. If morphs were created for this it would be great to see how she changes from one to the other. The wrists as was pointed do need a bit of articulation as well as the collar and neck area. Also the tail bone needs a bit more prominence (or maybe the way it was rendered it got lost to  view) bit a nice separation in the buttocks. The groin too I would like to see what it does when the ankles are close together for that space between the thighs that I personally like that many of the other models out there don't have (to my recollection though my memory is lacking here so forgive me if I am wrong). The waist is a bit thick but it seems ok for the figure as she is....woman next door and not a model you would want to render with a sword but perhaps a pin roller or broom!  LOL

Personally, I love the bulging areolae and would like to see breast size and shape mts for this...would be awesome. The chin, as was mentioned, could be fixed a bit...looks funny to me anyway.
Feet? I love well made feet and though I can't make them out too well it seems they are much better then the newer G2 figures (which is a shame for some of us with foot fetishes since those figures especially Miki are great figures overall. The only one I liked from that whole newer P6/Pt generation was Terai Yuki's feet. Judy's feet were well made to from what I remember from all the renders I saw of her when P5 first came out. Even Posette's feet were better then theirs.

Quote - How's this for toe curl? half of it had to be done with a morph since there was no way I could get the smaller toes to curl properly without rigging each one individually. Almost done with the rig just a few JCM's to apply. I have set up hand dials for finger grasp and spread, thumb grasp and curl. I wanted to put in a couple of magnets for the breast and the buttocks but I don't know how.

Cheers,

Mike.

Nice touch for us foot freaks. Is there any chance of doing big toe raise and lower and spread as well as smaller toes left/right/spread and raise for better articulation?

Quote - 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.

Love these feets! Got a nasty foot fetish and when feet are groty I freak.
These feets groty are NOT so I be Happy!
Nice job on these. Renders look good. Would love to see some of the other toe movements too if you have the time.

Quote - This is Posette with a single 1024x1024 texture. Nothing fancy.

I am just gonna say this, please take no offense... what do you think of releasing the figure with a simple easy to texture UV while you continue to work on the optimized mapping? You have gone low poly in part to make the figure accessible... simple mapping such as for Posette or Victora 1/2 was easy for people with basic skills to texture and the distortions are not visible in most renders. I miss the old days when people could really push a figure like Posette, do wild things with it as opposed to the figures like V4 which are impossible for average users to even build characters for between the crazy .cr2 and the crazy mapping. I do full body work so I use most my textures at 1024x1024. I swear even in big renders it is hard to see the resolution difference between say Vicky 2 with a 2048 texture and Miki with 4000x4000 textures. Esp. now with render object smoothing.

Sometimes I wonder if I would have been more productive stuck back in 2000. People did radical morph work, crazy hacks, hybrids and all sorts of things... I have see really amazing figures based on those old P4 figures... I feel like the DAZ  bloat has really put a damper on DYI user creativity. I sometimes wonder if had the Azura hi-res variant of Eve/Posette gotten traction over the first Vicky Poserland would be a much more dynamic and sharing community today instead of the market base it is now. It is like cars that can't be tinkered with anymore because of the electronics as opposed to the VW bug that people could service, super charge and even mock up with a fiberglass body as a Porshe. My old Buik Riviara... that thing drove fine millage aside and it was all pins and cables... I could stand IN the hood to get at the engine.

Sorry... late at night and just thinking in print.

Momdot...That is Posette!? Unbelievable! Aside from the tan lines which I hate even on real women, it is very real looking!
Is this figure something you created for Posette because I don't recall her looking this good out of the box? And if so is that figure available for all to use or exclusive?

I agree BTW. I would love this to be a simple texture UV as well so I can make my own textures. I prefer the V2 texturing mode though and have done many of my own from hacked textures out there...little changes to suit my own needs. But the new texturing systems are difficult for me to wrap my brain and limited skills around.

Quote - Ah, perfect. I removed the "s" lines. Problem solved.

I think there was one on the lips that was causing problems too. The upper lip line looks better to me now.

Excellent!

No, the lips shouldn't have had hard edges. Skin and lips are both in smoothing group 1. If they did, it was a glitch.

Quote - 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?

One of the things I have a problem with is textures that include the pubic hair. I prefer what was originated with the Mil2 figures which had a separate pubic hair prop so you could create a texture with a labe detail painted in and add pube tex & trans if needed. That way if you felt like a blonde or goth princess one day and a raving brunette another you had the option with the pube texture NOT on the figure tex.
Another is make-up. If you want makeup on a figure include the option but I think a default "NATURAL" just out of bed or fresh out of the shower w/o tan lines texture the best as a default texture out of the box...in my opinion anyway.

Quote - Oh and while you're at it, make toe caps (stocking/sock toes) with their own material zone. When not needed we make these transparent. When needed we can make them have an appropriate cloth material. Instant and perfectly conforming leg coverings of any kind become possible with a simple change of shader material.

I need a specific V value where they connect to the foot, so I can color the toes natural, where the toe cap takes over for the nylon.

If I am understanding this correctly (not so much the shader stuff which I do not) but the toe cap....do you see this as say a floating add-on mesh for the character's toes say like the Upper Brows or the Pubic Hair Prop in V2?
Because if you do that would be wonderful especially if the cap conformed to the toe movements/articulation. God I just got goose bumps thinking of that possibility!  :)

Quote - Additional Xanna info...
http://market.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=64375&WhatsNew=Y

Details NUDITY NSFW!!!!
http://www.kaposer.com/XannaV4tutorial.htm

Nice idea but I am getting kinda tired of all that Barbie Doll stuff in Poser.
I use the dials in V2 (Stuck using that still) to get different characters not only of face types but body size/proportions. The frustration lies with the clothes. On a Mac I have fewer tools available to me to adapt clothes and conforming props/accessories to customized figures like this. The fact I am still also stuck in Poser4 right now, limits my options even more.
So aside from the obvious slim/heavy/short/tall/pregnant/old/teen morphs I prefer seeing what say Posermatic has done with breast morphs for all the current figures. Maybe he can be brought on board to do something for this figure. It would be smashing and certainly more realistic.

Quote - > Quote - I think the ears might look better laid down closer to the skull. Cut down on clipping the hair, at least. :laugh: The ears look alright to me. They aren't dumbo-sized to me. An elf-ear morph might be neat to go with them.  Someone is always crazy for elfin ears. :lol: LOLOLOLOL Then people won't care what size they are!

As with the nose, it should be easy to adjust them to individual tastes using morphs. The important bit for me was to get a more or less realistic structure. As with the shape of the head, most people will probably give her long wigs and not notice the difference, but I'd rather like her to look good bald or with very short hair as well.

Oh, and elf ears: excellent! I was going to ask for a list of morph wishes so I could do some practice ones before tackling the expressions. Elf ears will definitely go on it. And a bad-ass stereotypical wicca nose! :biggrin:

Sorry here I am stupid and have been reading this thread backwards so ......someone later in the thread mentioned making a skull cap for this and you asked why. here is a good reason why in my opinion. You can create the skull cap to follow hair line of a regular young woman and tex and transmap it to look like very short hair. If the skull cap is longer over the ears and neck and overlays the original hairline it would also leave room for transmapping for slightly longer hair to release with the figure out of the box. I have some such skull caps created by several artists in the community and use them all the time. No need to texture stubble or hair on the head texture...just do it for the skull cap/hair prop and it can be colorized as needed...until you find nicer hair/hair fits for her. Just an idea.

Quote - Here is Antonia's face mesh as Poser will see it.

Enough resolution?

Since this is still developing can I be so bold as to ask for an alien/Anime eye and eye rotation/slant morph for her? Would go nice with the elf ears and morph combinations I have for V2 I love and use all the time.

Quote - Detail crop of the skin under my eye. Click for full size. Observe that at this magnification, the skin is not the least bit smooth.

CG renders look fake because we don't have this in the texture. You can't get this kind of resolution in a texture. But I think I can with a procedural driven by a low-res map that tells me where to put different styles of procedural bump on the figure.

We haven't even gottten to that yet, but we will.

Hi Baggins Bill
I posted this link some time ago in your VSS thread and wanted to know it you checked it out.
scroll down to 2005 Technical report pdf on "The Appearance of Human Skin"
http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/CAVE/publications/

Some very interesting stuff about skin in that paper although you probably know most of this from your own research. Anyway you brought up mask maps for fine wrinkle detail etc.

Micro scale as defined in that paper is on a cellular level so you wouldn't see that, but you would notice Meso scale and Macro scale. Meso scale is defined there as fine wrinkes, pores etc. while Macro is regional areas such as face, arms, etc.

 Im thinking maybe a bump map for larger wrinkles such as skin folds..knuckles, palm creases etc. and a procedural bump shader for really fine wrinkle detail and a mask map to control the regional scale of that fine detail.

BTW that skin is looking awesome and fantastic! :)

Cheers,
JB

Quote - > Quote - How's this for toe curl? half of it had to be done with a morph since there was no way I could get the smaller toes to curl properly without rigging each one individually. Almost done with the rig just a few JCM's to apply. I have set up hand dials for finger grasp and spread, thumb grasp and curl. I wanted to put in a couple of magnets for the breast and the buttocks but I don't know how.

Cheers,

Mike.

Nice touch for us foot freaks. Is there any chance of doing big toe raise and lower and spread as well as smaller toes left/right/spread and raise for better articulation?

Hi Shante,

I have rigged the big toe to raise and lower separately from the smaller toes. I will post some pics when I get a chance.

Thanks Phantom....Look forward to seeing what you got and thanks for the reply!

I love it. Here's a test render. I haven't done any new work on the shaders - just wanted to see the changes. I love the lashes!

I have to do real work today, but I'll get back to this ASAP.

Excellent! When I made the lashes, I had no idea how long they needed to be. Now I just have to go and fix that little bit of distortion I introduced in the UVs.

The lacrimals and ears look much better now, too. Funny that I never noticed anything with them.

Just because someone mentioned feetz. :biggrin:

In other news, I've decided that going with a dedicated third-party hosting site, even if the figure stays free, wouldn't really work that well with neither the idea of progressing this as a community project nor the goal of minimizing my workload.

So with many, many thanks and sincere apologies to the good people at Namelesssitethatofferedmehostingandsuch coughrdnacoughcough, I'm going back to basics and will simply upload Antonia to my file locker here for beta testing and later on for the development release. That way, anyone who wants to use or support Antonia in any way, be it by hosting, testing or developing content, can simply do so without having to ask for my permission or endorsement.

Toe caps! Where are the toe caps for socks/stockings built into the mesh?

Well, I haven't made any yet. If you want them, you can get them, but I actually think I prefer conforming figures for stockings and gloves over second skin. Using 3D-Coat's retopology tool, I can make them with very regular meshes that will be easy to texture.

Quote - aella: Thanks! Glad you like her. Sorry about your computer. That's got to suck.

What is C7? Did you mean P7? Ideally, I'd like the base figure (mesh and rig) to be compatible with anything from P4 up to Pro and also the latest D|S. I only have Poser 4 to 6 myself, and D|S hasn't really been working for me on either Wine or Virtualbox, but it shouldn't be hard to get beta testers for the platforms I'm missing.

Sorry it took me so long to respond but C7 as in Carrrara 7 I have the pro version.

I believe C7 is Adobe's latest Photoshop version. don't have it so can't tell you anything about it. Might be Carara too

i can see both sides.  personally, i'd really rather not spend ages fitting something that would be a piece of cake if i just had a couple of props and a second skin.  especially something like gloves or stockings that will look wrong if you're away from the surface of the skin even by few millimeters (with a translucent texture).  a toe prop and a smooth hands morph means a whole lot more flexibility when i make morphs than something that would have to be morphed to expand just enough to stay on the surface.  totally possible, but imho, more trouble than it's worth. 

but i know some people prefer the other way around. 

I was just thinking about when phantom3D said "I have rigged the big toe to raise and lower separately from the smaller toes." I assume that if the toe-cap was part of the mesh, this sort of thing would just work right.

As well, when there are new leg morphs or foot morphs introduced, 2nd skin is automatically supported. I suppose there are tools to make a conforming clothing item work right. But why bother making the whole stocking, and then working on all the morphs, when a couple toe caps built into the mesh and a shader gives you zero-pokethrough in all cases?

Maybe I'm mistaken about which is easier to make. I don't do modeling so I have no experience with that. I do have lots of experience with poke-through and unsupported morphs.

I hate that 'ghosting' on close fitting glove and stockings when they are transparent... given how tight so much of the new Millennium 4 figure clothes are and given the lack of seam detail and edge dimension they would just as well be 2nd skins with cuff morphs! My opinion is that unless the clothes are properly draped why should they not be second skin... even the draping on tight stuff can be done with displacement... instead we get the "Barbie Effect" with tightly fitted clothes that seem to be made of half inch thick latex... maybe it should be called the Polly Pocket look. We end up with big damn shoes to compensate for poke through... that is why I favor the Bratz strategy of switching integrated foot/shoe units. It is weird that so few clothing artists have used Cloth Room as a tool in creating conforming clothes but now more and more stuff in the market looks like single sided stuff made with quick suite tools... makes me miss the old end capped clothes that were nicely modeled in a lot of cases.

<<A 'good old days' moment brought to you by a member of the 18 Apr 2000 straglers.>>

just to say, with stockings or tight-fitting clothes, it goes the other way, too.  stockings or other skin-level elements floating even a tiny amount is immediately identifiable and glaring, imho.  but then, i watched people praise a bodysuit and body hair transmap combo, when all i saw was a glaring CG error of hair floating over the skin like what it was: a flat hair coat.  so what i see and what everyone else sees isn't the same.  that said,  in my experience, postworking so small an precise a change can be a big PITA. and i've never seen 2nd skin stockings look bad unless they were mapped badly.

Attached Link: Free stocking+leg shader

The only problem with this is it colors the toes. - I just need a toe cap and a mask (or make the toes a separate material zone so it gets normal skin, exactly at the point at which the toe caps begin) and I'd be all set.
I

Quote - Toe caps! Where are the toe caps for socks/stockings built into the mesh?

I would love to see toe caps like the V2/M2 figures had pubic hair props attached to the figure.
I think adding conformers to a figure adds posing and render complications let alone Runtime Folder realestate. Wherever I can I prefer smart props and in this case would love toe caps to turn on or off especially for simple renderings. Also a second version of this cool figure (up the pike of course) with adjustable zones for selective texturing would be great. I have V2 and have a set of texture MAT files that break the file down to add long gloves and short gloves or second skin stockings as separate texturable zones. I don't use it often because the textures that came with the item were limited but if it was supported by others in the community it, in my opinion, was a wonderful way of controlling the size of the file and still add versatility to your character through selective texturing.

Will there be a separate pubic hair prop with this BTW....eventually?

How did Kirwyn create that dial system for her free figure that adds and changes clothing items for it? That is all one figure isn't it or is something else going on with that? I know that Anton Kisiel did the same thing when at DAZ when he created hair styles that changed with a dial as well as a set of costumes and armor for M2 & V2 that you changed with the turn of a dial. I thought that was brilliant but except for Kirwyn I have not seen this used on too many figures.

Quote - I just have never seen conforming stockings look this good. These are examples from my stocking shader thread, linked above.

The only problem with this is it colors the toes. - I just need a toe cap and a mask (or make the toes a separate material zone so it gets normal skin, exactly at the point at which the toe caps begin) and I'd be all set.
I

Someone did create a toecap SmartProp for Posette I think but I have used it for V2. A little texturing and transparency and the toes beneath are visibly articulate and not altered as in second skin and the stocking looks like it should. I think it is a great idea to have the cap as an invisible but present prop!

Quote - ... Undercover assignments as "fetish vixen" or "prima ballerina" posered no problem for our heroine ...

Just because someone mentioned feetz. :biggrin:

Me! Me! That was me! Loves dem feetzies...especially when they look GOOD! Sorry can't help that deeply rooted proclivity....or is that called a fetish?  LOL
These look good. Glad to see another footsie afficionado here. Thanks so much.

Now I want someone with these skills demonstrated here to fix the feets of the G2 figures especially Miki! She is lovely but her feets are grotie! Come to think of it V4 feets are not so lovely IMHO...toes too long for my tasties!  LOL

Okay, bagginsbill, I'm convinced. Just wondering about the best way to add that toe cap now. I'd love to make it a prop or conforming figure if that's possible, because I'm a bit concerned about adding even more complexity to the rig. Also, someone has to do it, obviously, and I'm a total n00b at .cr2 magix.

shante: It would be great if we could simply make it a prop. But phantom3D set up all that complicated rigging for the toes, and it would be a pity to immobilize them just because she's wearing stockings.

Anyway, I think this is probably one of the things to put on the to-do stack for later. I'd like to finish the basic figure first and put her out for testing. Then maybe someone with better Poser-fu could step in and demonstrate how to make a working toe cap.

I think the toe caps were for Vicky 1 by the generous Jaager.

You are probably right. Like I said I didn't remember. Jaager is no longer in the community?

Quote - Okay, bagginsbill, I'm convinced. Just wondering about the best way to add that toe cap now. I'd love to make it a prop or conforming figure if that's possible, because I'm a bit concerned about adding even more complexity to the rig. Also, someone has to do it, obviously, and I'm a total n00b at .cr2 magix.

shante: It would be great if we could simply make it a prop. But phantom3D set up all that complicated rigging for the toes, and it would be a pity to immobilize them just because she's wearing stockings.

Anyway, I think this is probably one of the things to put on the to-do stack for later. I'd like to finish the basic figure first and put her out for testing. Then maybe someone with better Poser-fu could step in and demonstrate how to make a working toe cap.

Why would this involve cr2 magix? It would be similar to your eyebrow zone - it's just some more polygons that are part of the toe group. Give them a ToeCap material zone, and by default make them 100% transparent. I'm assuming that since they are part of the toe group, and since the edge of the toe cap uses exactly the same vertices as the foot/toe joint, they will always be in the right place, will always bend the right amount with the rigging, and always be included in any morphs created using magnets and such.

Basically you want to duplicate all the polygons from the toes exactly where cloth would touch the toes - these are the same vertices, but new polygons with a new material zone. Then you connect the remaining vertices across the tops and bottoms with additional new polygons, as well as connecting them to the foot.

As a separate body part the toe cap would have its own JPs and could have visability unchecked rather than using transparency I think.