"Oh, and just so you know, I'm calling dips (sp?) on expression morphs and the face rig. Trying to make a head with a proper face rig was my main motivation for starting on Antonia. But then I guess I got carried away somehow."

That's fine by me.  If you can use any of the one I did as a spring board, I sent my updated cr2 to Mike.  He can send you a copy, or I can, and you can delete or keep what you want.  I was trying to save you time modeling. :laugh:

You can PM me with a place to send them, other than the trashbin.

JOELGLAINE: I'm not saying you shouldn't make expression morphs, or that people shouldn't use them. Just saying don't spend too much time on these things unless you're confident you can do it well enough to make me give up my own plans. :biggrin:

Incidentally, what's a good way for distributing custom morphs? Obviously, simply providing the .obj files will work, but it's not very convenient. On the other hand, cluttering the .cr2 with lots of injection channels doesn't seem very attractive either. I think there's a way to add a channel via a pose file, which would be ideal for that kind of thing. Does anyone have details on how that works?

Anyway, any add-on content you'd like me to use can be sent to Antonia dot Polygon at gmail dot com. But please don't send modified .cr2 files if you can avoid it. Send pose files or .obj files or describe the changes you made. Poser is quite quirky when saving figures, and it can be tricky to extract the relevant changes.

I belive it's Binary morph files that you can use without clutering up your CR2 with chanells.  I was reading about it with the info that came with Dimension3D's tools, I will look it up again to be sure.

Attached Link: Antonia Posing

BluEcho: Thats looking great. Wow, this is all so cool things are coming together for a new figure.

BluEcho: That does indeed look great.

Her lower torso is rigged quite differently from other figures, so it's no surprise that some poses would have to be adjusted a bit. The same is probably true for the arms.

Adjusting the poses is no problem to me because I usually do alter them to suit my own ideas. :) The texture is almost finished and I will make the Mat and mc6 files to go with it. odf, do you want to distribute it with your model or have me put it in my own freebies when you release the final version?

Quote - odf, do you want to distribute it with your model or have me put it in my own freebies when you release the final version?

I'll be happy to distribute it with the model if you let me have it. But you decide what suits you best.

BTW: where do people host their freebies these days? I still haven't quite decided whether I want to create a dedicated web site for Antonia or just put her on some free hosting site.

Quote - I belive it's Binary morph files that you can use without clutering up your CR2 with chanells.  I was reading about it with the info that came with Dimension3D's tools, I will look it up again to be sure.

Yep, that seems to be the way the cool kids are doing it these days. I found a Nerd3D tutorial that explains how it's done.

So I'll educate myself on that technique, and if anyone wants to provide free morphs for Antonia, I'll be happy to take the obj files and convert them into hot-pluggable morph poses.

The only drawback is that PMD's were introduced in Poser 6, so that technique will not work for people who still use older versions. I know I sometimes went back to rendering in P5 because of the infamous refraction bug in P6. But I imagine injecting the morph in P6, saving the figure and loading it in P5 would still work for these situations.

Quote - > Quote - odf, do you want to distribute it with your model or have me put it in my own freebies when you release the final version?

I'll be happy to distribute it with the model if you let me have it. But you decide what suits you best.

BTW: where do people host their freebies these days? I still haven't quite decided whether I want to create a dedicated web site for Antonia or just put her on some free hosting site.

I don't have a lot of freebies - okay, just one hair texture set... which I just host on my own believable3d.com web site. I'm a web developer, so I like to that kind of stuff myself, although I think with something like this, you're going to get a lot more traffic and downloads, so you'd need hosting that could sustain quite a bit of bandwidth activity.

phantom3D sent me a pose file that sets up Antonia properly for IK, so I put that up in my file locker as well. If you use the default pose the .cr2 loads with, you will notice that her legs do funky things when you move the hips or the hip handle. This pose file fixes that. You can apply it once and save the figure to a new .cr2 or apply it every time you want to use IK.

Quote -
I don't have a lot of freebies - okay, just one hair texture set... which I just host on my own believable3d.com web site. I'm a web developer, so I like to that kind of stuff myself, although I think with something like this, you're going to get a lot more traffic and downloads, so you'd need hosting that could sustain quite a bit of bandwidth activity.

Yeah, if I could find inexpensive hosting with sufficient bandwidth, I might decide to set up my own site. That would also give me an excuse to get some practice with Merb.

Although I have to say that for someone who earns their living by developing web sites, my personal sites tend to be pretty pathetic.

Quote -
BTW: where do people host their freebies these days? I still haven't quite decided whether I want to create a dedicated web site for Antonia or just put her on some free hosting site.

ShareCG is one place but with the daily arrival of stuff Antonia will quickly disappear from the top and you need to search to find her.

A dedicated site cost some money but everything is in one place : Antonia, freebies, link to free products , links to commercial products

Yes Deimension3D makes a cool tool for doing just that, you can make morphs into binary morphs or the other way around. You can even embed them into scenes and pose files. I was just reading up on it too The tool had a little PDF that explained it all. It says that they also load way faster than regular morphs, and the files are smaller.

OOPS I'm a slow typer :blushing:

I have a domain name and web hosting, it has 100GB disk space and 1500GB bandwidth. (I don't have a clue if thats enough) 

Anyway I don't know how to set up a website :blushing: I've had it for a year now and havn't done anything with it. So you all are welcome to use it.

Quote -
A dedicated site cost some money but everything is in one place : Antonia, freebies, link to free products , links to commercial products

True that. I looked at Dreamhost, but they seem to have this weird 'unlimited bandwidth unless you plan to use it' policy. I'd probably have to write to them, explain exactly what the site would be for and see if they're okay with it.

If anyone has had good experiences with a hosting provider for this kind of thing, let me know.

Quote - I have a domain name and web hosting, it has 100GB disk space and 1500GB bandwidth. (I don't have a clue if thats enough) 

Anyway I don't know how to set up a website :blushing: I've had it for a year now and havn't done anything with it. So you all are welcome to use it.

That doesn't sound too shabby. 1500GB per what, though? Per month, per year, or in total?

Having my own provider would be neat, because I might use it for other things as well. But if I can't make up my mind, I guess we could always set up something for Antonia on yours. Why don't you mail me the details?

Quote -
Although I have to say that for someone who earns their living by developing web sites, my personal sites tend to be pretty pathetic.

You too, huh? I have to admit I haven't devoted enough attention to the believable.com site yet...mind you, I don't really have enough decent images at this point for a gallery. Truth is... I'm kinda like phantom, in that I enjoy creating more than the actual process of setting up scenes etc. (Except that phantom has real talent like rigging etc... for now, I'm content to create custom characters.)

Quote - > Quote - I have a domain name and web hosting, it has 100GB disk space and 1500GB bandwidth. (I don't have a clue if thats enough) 

Anyway I don't know how to set up a website :blushing: I've had it for a year now and havn't done anything with it. So you all are welcome to use it.

That doesn't sound too shabby. 1500GB per what, though? Per month, per year, or in total?

That would be per month.

As far as a host with good rep and good price point (100 GB disk; 10TB bandwidth for $20/month, and they insist they stand behind those numbers), I'd recommend you check into Eleven2:

www.eleven2.com

Quote - > Quote - I belive it's Binary morph files that you can use without clutering up your CR2 with chanells.  I was reading about it with the info that came with Dimension3D's tools, I will look it up again to be sure.

Yep, that seems to be the way the cool kids are doing it these days. I found a Nerd3D tutorial that explains how it's done.

So I'll educate myself on that technique, and if anyone wants to provide free morphs for Antonia, I'll be happy to take the obj files and convert them into hot-pluggable morph poses.

The only drawback is that PMD's were introduced in Poser 6, so that technique will not work for people who still use older versions. I know I sometimes went back to rendering in P5 because of the infamous refraction bug in P6. But I imagine injecting the morph in P6, saving the figure and loading it in P5 would still work for these situations.

Great I just downloded her and will check her out. I think Pmd is the way to go. I do all my morphs like this. It's very easy and resource friendly. Glad you called dibs on expression morphs. Im pretty decent at generic body and face morphs but lousy at phonomes and expressions. I want to build up a fairly extensive collection of FBM's and head morphs but it will take some time because I want to get them working well together. Im thinking of doing them with some sort of tagging system at the end of a morph name so people will automatically know which morphs work well together and which ones are for more specific looks that don't really play nice at higher positive/negative values. I will not set limits that's up to the user.

i.e..
O at the end of a morph name=Only plays nice by itself.
D at the end of a morph name=Does play well with other morphs but at a limited range.
F at the end of a morph name=Fully reversible or atleast close to fully reversible.

PS
I did a small tutorial on how to do Pmd a while back @CP. It's for Apollo but still applies to any figure. Scroll down to post # 33 on page 4 is the step-by-step
http://www.contentparadise.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10184&page=4
 

Quote - I did a small tutorial on how to do Pmd a while back @CP. It's for Apollo but still applies to any figure. Scroll down to post # 33 on page 4 is the step-by-step
http://www.contentparadise.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10184&page=4

Excellent! Thanks! I think that's the shortest set of instructions for that kind of thing I've seen so far.
 

**ODF--**You have mail coming your way. Use them however you want. :laugh: If any save you time, so much the better.  There are two because I was up late and just woke up and forgot the file on the first one.   I don't plan to go driving until I wake up, either.:lol:

In the meantime, here's the height map for stockings I promised bagginsbill. The tips of the toes are around 0.25 and the top of the pantyhose region around 0.75. This might need some fine-tuning, but should work in principle. Let me know what you think.

One interesting aspect of this map is that it was rendered in Poser with Antonia's standard UVs posing as geometry and an alternate set of UVs as - obviously - UVs. Then I made a very simple shader that translated the v coordinate - which in this case happened to be just the y coordinate of the original mesh with the feet stretched out - into gray values and rendered using the front camera shifted by (0.5, 0.5) in native Poser units and scaled at 100%. Et voila!

Height map - cool - I hope I have some time today to check it out.

Meanwhile, on hosting ...

I find it odd that every time I suggest Google, I am beaten down with reasons why that's not going to work. Well I'll try again.

sites.google.com

Make your own site. This does not mean building HTML - there's none of that. You edit pages like in word, and you attach documents like in email. You can easily upload images to include in pages, and you can link between pages with a nice GUI - no hand-typing.

You get 1 GB of storage and there is no official limit on bandwidth (or total bytes transferred per month).

Also, I have Google analytics track my site so I know what is being viewed, for how long, from what countries, etc.

Here's my site:

http://sites.google.com/site/bagginsbill/

Well, if Google is okay with nekkidness, I could try that and see how it goes.

Regarding the height map: not sure if 8 bit - or actually 7 bit in this case - of resolution for the height values will be enough for you. If they aren't, I imagine we could always use two or three color channels in combination.

(Except that phantom has real talent like rigging etc... for now, I'm content to create custom characters.)

Well thank you :biggrin:  I'm going to get a swelled head.  But I could get used to it. More please. :biggrin:

You might also take a look at lunarpages.com - which is where I got my website and domain name from.

I've got a fair bit of stuff up on my site but it needs a total revamp.

I've only really used it to put free textures up, but you can also use shopping carts with it if you want to.

that looks good.

Wow, that's really cool stuff, Starkdog. It's great to see how my "everyday girl" inspires all that pretty everyday fashion.

By the way: as long as we don't have an "official" texture or shader, Antonia should work nicely enough with VSS, even without a texture. I haven't  tried it lately, but I'm pretty sure the materials are still set up the right way. Just make sure the skin tone is yellow enough. I've included some light setups in the preview download that work quite nicely with VSS, I think. There are also some simple procedural iris materials based on - you're guessing it - a shader by bagginsbill. I haven't included my VSS based materials because bagginsbill is working on some new skin shaders for Antonia, and I didn't want to use anything that's not approved by the master.

For starters, use the "Invisible" material on the material zones "Invisible" (d'oh!), "ToeCaps"  and "EyeBrows" (actual names may vary). :biggrin:

Hi Phantom and ODF

There is something a bit weird with the IK. Even with the IK update pose in ODF's locker
i.e. translate Hip X or Z axis to 1.0 at frame 30 and watch the animation
notice how the feet have a jerky jitter back and forth. Not good for animators.
I also noticed movement on the other leg when using twist, side to side and bending one leg. The other leg mostly the foot jitters slightly.

Rotation on the foot makes the other foot move but then it jumps right back into position when you release the dial. This could be related to the IK jitter I mentioned above but Im thinking this may be a bug with poser because I have seen this before with mat poses etc. that had nothing to do with rigging.

The bending/deformations are Outstanding!!! I noticed when looking at brad you had some problems with rot twisting particularly the arms had tearing but on Antonia they are really very good. Im not a big fan of JCM but these were done really well also. There very subtle which is good.  I know ODF said the scaling is not finished yet but it looks impressive already. CTLHeadgrow is hilarious and very cool. Im probably most impressed that the arms can move up and forward without reaking havok on shoulder deformations. I noticed this on brad too. Every figure I have seen to date has big problems with this but your rig excels at it.

Concerning the eye movement morphs could you guys include both with and without eyelid movement. I kind of like being able to move them without eye lid movement sometimes and it would add greater flexibiliy having both options.

Pretty inspiring thread people already making clothes,textures,shaders,morphs. I think she will get alot of support :)

Cheers
JB 

**odf--**I cannot figure out the brows or lashes.  Is there a mask or even just some marks on anything you have to indicate where they go?  The templates aren't helping me any.  Of course I never claimed to be the sharpest tool in the shed,either. :laugh:  I've made lashes and brows before, but from other people's positioning of them.

Quote - Concerning the eye movement morphs could you guys include both with and without eyelid movement. I kind of like being able to move them without eye lid movement sometimes and it would add greater flexibiliy having both options.

I think the right way to do this is to have one set of controls for eye movement with the lids following the eyes and one for the lids opening and closing. The first set would control the direction the figure looks at and the second the state of alertness. I don't think moving the eyes on their own is generally a good idea.

I'm not going to be dogmatic about this, though. I'll add extra convenience dials if people ask for them, but I might hide them in a special group at the bottom of the list or maybe even make you load a pose file to get at them. :tongue2:

I'll have a look at the IK problem, but I can't promise anything. IK is pretty much a mystery to me. My instinct would be to only use IK when setting up the key frames, but turn it off for the actual animation. Is that a stupid idea?

I hate IK. OTOH, I only do still poses at this point.

I do only still poses for the greater (99%+) of all renders.  However if the figure HAS IK, I do use it to positioning bodies after I tweak hands and feet, and realize the body is not right.

**OTOH--**If the IK is messed up in the figure--it IS a nightmare!  Does 200% rotattion on one hand and 455% side to Side on a leg, making the figure look like a transporter malfunction!  Some figures work REALLY well with IK, and other's are literally disasters waiting to Pose.

I have heard from some content creators, it all depends on how the figure is rigged and how the IK is set up in responce to the rigging.  If you have questions about IK, PM lesbentley or Philc.  If those folks don't know about it in Poser, it might not be ther to know! :laugh: Not being a wise man, I am impressed by people who are far more knoweldegable than me.  I am a wise guy, though!  Not the same, though.:lol:

Quote - > Quote - Concerning the eye movement morphs could you guys include both with and without eyelid movement. I kind of like being able to move them without eye lid movement sometimes and it would add greater flexibiliy having both options.

I think the right way to do this is to have one set of controls for eye movement with the lids following the eyes and one for the lids opening and closing. The first set would control the direction the figure looks at and the second the state of alertness. I don't think moving the eyes on their own is generally a good idea.

I'm not going to be dogmatic about this, though. I'll add extra convenience dials if people ask for them, but I might hide them in a special group at the bottom of the list or maybe even make you load a pose file to get at them. :tongue2:

I'll have a look at the IK problem, but I can't promise anything. IK is pretty much a mystery to me. My instinct would be to only use IK when setting up the key frames, but turn it off for the actual animation. Is that a stupid idea?

I completely agree about the eye lids need to move with the eyes I just like having the option to move them independently as well for extra control.

Concerning the IK thing, I beg your pardon. I looked at it again and I was mistaken. I only noticed the jitter when moving the hip,  the shin ( where it meets the foot ) jitters/offsets slightly. Btw I just tested half a dozen other figures and the same thing happens. So the only thing now is the Hip2 offset problem phamtom posted about everything else is working as it should.

Quote - So the only thing now is the Hip2 offset problem phamtom posted about everything else is working as it should.

Yay! She's not brokened.

Have you seen my other post about that offset problem? Basically, remove all occurrences of the string "hiphandle_" - and only those that have that underscore at the end - from the .cr2 file and you're good to go.

IK and how well it works depends on several factors working smothly together.  The JP's and the center rotation as well as the Favored IK angles that the figure starts with.  To a less degree also the joint rotation.  I havn't put Antonia through her paces again since the release yesterday but I will look at the IK when I do and see what I can see, that is, if odf still wants me to.  Also I should check the weights again.

PS Oh and also end points some times wreck havock. But glad to hear it's working as it should

Quote - Okay, I fixed it. Joint channels that link to parents need to have certain internal names, unlike joint channels that link to children. I fixed that problem after I had introduced it, but forgot to do it for the hip because I hadn't realized the hip was not the root.

If you feel adventurous, you can apply the fix yourself by editing the .cr2 and changing 'hiphandle_jointx' to 'jointx', 'hiphandle_jointz' to 'jointz' and 'hiphandle_twisty' to 'twisty' in the hip channels. To be save, better work on a copy of the orginal file.

Yeah I did see it. Im not to adventurous when it comes to cr2 editing but this looks easy enough.

Quote - PS Oh and also end points some times wreck havock. But glad to hear it's working as it should

Lol I noticed I spelled that wrong. My grammer is pretty bad. I goggled how I spelled it and came up with this.

“Reeking” means “smelling strongly,” so that can’t be right. Lol no her arms are not smelling strongly when posed high and in front. LMAO.

Quote - Yeah I did see it. Im not to adventurous when it comes to cr2 editing but this looks easy enough.

Just make sure you work on a copy, so in case something goes wrong, you can always go back to the original.

Here's the brow mesh rendered on top of the face, so you can see where it goes. I think the middle line is a good starting point. But as always with textures, I imagine you'll have to go through a lot of trial and error to find the perfect placement.

The lashes are very easy: just draw a vertical lines for each hair. Inside is inside and outside is outside. In other words: the UVs for the upper lashes go from the center upward, the ones for the lower lashes from the center downward. The outer corners of the eye correspond to the outer edges of UV space.

This is some amazing work. I've tried the preview version, and she's looking good. Ive noticed a few tiny imperfections with grasped fingers. Do you want some renders to see what's going on? BUT- I love the way the thumbs can be manipulated very simply- why doesn't DAZ do that with their figures?

Also, are there any working textures available to us plebs yet? Maybe I've missed something.

odf, I'll have the texture finished in the next couple of days. I'll send it to you and you can include it in the release package. I just need to finish the toenails and mc6 files.

Quote - Ive noticed a few tiny imperfections with grasped fingers. Do you want some renders to see what's going on?

Tiny imperfections are to be expected, but I'm happy to take a look.

Quote - odf, I'll have the texture finished in the next couple of days. I'll send it to you and you can include it in the release package. I just need to finish the toenails and mc6 files.

Excellent! Then we will be able to answer serene's question with yes.

Many thanks for making the texture free! I think that'll go a long way toward making Antonia a popular figure.

I just love the way the thumb curls realistically! Stunning work.

I may throw a few realistic poses together when I have more time.

The hands were the one place where I felt the modeling was not on par with that on the rest of the figure. The jointing was superb, particularly in the case of the thumb but the sculpting seemed to suffer some 'rubber glove syndrome' in failing to suggest under laying bone structure, notably in the wrist, the heel of the hand and the finger segments. There is not the expected permanent creases in the palm suggest by topology and there is the concave top surface of finger segments  bends, and scale distortions especially in terms of length as well as scale issues on the final finger tip giving a 'clubbed' look to the fingers. Certainly the hands are adequate but they do not match the standard of excelence found in the rest of the figure. They appear not to have been sculpted with photo referance in the late stages... something found also with Miki 1020 and which in this case gives the impression of a more stylized look as found in a figure such as MayaDoll. Certainly I do not wish to be discouraging in regards to such a fine figure, I would not make these comments if I did not feel sure that issue was soley that of inattention given the talent evident in the rest of the sculpting.