hmmm.  i was using something recently with no collars, and i could have sworn it was V4.  ah, well.

i wasn't thinking that your JCMs would make anything worse.  just that the more corrections you add that are based on posing, the more there's a correct or optimal way to pose her.  she's looking great in your promos, and i think it would help people achieve the same greatness if she came with some poses to give people a feel for different basics (best way to bend her thigh, best way to raise her arm above her head, etc.).

definitely looking great.

It looks like experimenting is really proving your theory!  This "organic-sculptor" is really the way to go. Wasn't  it Aristotle that said,"I can move the world through very small movements"? It was one of those Ancient Greek thinkers, I'm sure.

Looks like you found a way of doing similiar things with one of the great bug-a-boos in the Poser world.

That makes her arm look waaaay better!
Now it looks more natural.
She is really coming along great. :0)

This thread's so long, I don't know if this has been talked about yet.

As far as I can tell, the "Point At" function isn't quite right for her eyes. I've tried messing with the joint numbers, but still, when her eyes are set to point at the main camera, they seem to be looking above the camera. I have to say, it is kind of weird that you have her eyeballs set at angles in order to have her look straight ahead.  That might be contributing to the problem.

Far as I'm aware, NO ONE has mentioned THAT! Thanks!

I don't use the "point at" feature, but others do use it, and I think that odf hasn't mentioned anything about it.  Anything like that kind of feed-back is valued!!  You did good, smallspace!

odf--Check them eyeball "point at" thingees!

Just to make sure he catches the gist, even if he just skims the thread. :laugh:

Psh! I never skim. :mad:

:biggrin:

Thanks smallspace! That has indeed not come up.

I didn't know if you was a skimmer or not,mate!  Like the eye-pointy thingee, it ain't ever come up before!  So no worries ,mate.  No harm, no foul. :laugh:  Since this might be the first real flaw worth looking at, I just got excited is all. I'm easily exciteable. :lol:   If she had NO flaws, it'd blow up later. Better we find 'em all now, if possible.

You're right. If there's something wrong, we better find it now.

I have to go to work, so I can't check the eyes just now. But I will.

Actually, you'll be a God if you not only fix the eyes but can figure out how to do what no one else seems to be able to do...

...make your figure's face "point at" the camera!

Every other figure winds up having the TOP of the head facing at the camera if the "point at" function is turned on for the head.

I don't have my Poser here, but I suspect that the "point at" function would rotate the actor so that its "twist" axis points toward the object. That's fine for arms and legs and - theoretically - eyes, but in the case of the head, the twist axis is the vertical axis. It has to be, or posing the head wouldn't work correctly. So I'd actually expect the behaviour you are seeing. The best we can probably do is create some dummy prop or actor that we can point at things properly and then slave the head to that.

Another thing to take into account is that "point at" uses the coordinate origin, not the actual center, of the target object as its reference point. You see that pretty clearly when you point a camera at - say - a forearm. I'd have to check where the origin is for cameras in order to see whether there's a chance at all that "point at" would work correctly with them. At any rate, my recommendation would be to place a small, properly centered prop - say the default cube prop scaled to some appropriate size - in the scene and use it as the object to point at. You could, for example, parent it to the camera and make sure it's in the center of the view.

Actually, for the eyes at least, I know DAZ got it right with V4. Point the eyes to the main camera, and they do track it properly.

I don't know if an extra bone with a different rotation could be added after the head bone or if that would even work for the point at function. As I said, no one else seems to have cracked it. However, it would be a great help with animation, as the head would automatically tack any other desired object in the scene. 

Sadie has a bone connected to the eyes. It actually has three parts. One for "Eyes", another for "Right Eye" another for the "Left Eye".  It works spectacularly! I don't know how it's rigged, but if you have her, take a look at it.  I got her back when I had money, and never regretted it.  THOSE eyes are a real joy to pose.  Something I can NOT say about MOST poser figures.  Who ever came up with it was a freaking genius!

smallspace: Hmm, I tried it out, and pointing her eyes at the main camera seems to work fine for me. I think I need more information on the problem you encountered.

Edit: (some nonsense about using IK for pointing the head deleted)

Err...

Public Service Announcement

For everyone who makes morphs:

Please, please, always keep your obj files in a save place where you can find them easily! Apparently I managed to do something that changed the vertex order on the head (and, strangely, only the head) between the last preview and now. So the deltas in my cr2 stopped working. This kind of thing can be fixed, but if all we have are deltas, I need to go back through all the versions of the mesh (which I kept) until I find the one that worked with those deltas. If we have the obj files, it's much, much easier. So make sure you don't throw them away after you've successfully applied them to the figure.

Thanks!!

With UV-Mapper Pro it should not be a problem to reorder the vertexes.

Quote - With UV-Mapper Pro it should not be a problem to reorder the vertexes.

Of course. It's not a problem to reorder the vertices when you have both obj files. I'm just saying if one had only the deltas for the morphs and the original mesh had its vertices renumbered, no program would be able to guess what to apply those deltas to.

I actually don't think anyone would throw them away, anyway. I was just shocked when I tried to apply one of Joel's morphs and it screwed up the face. I'll restore the ones I have, so when I post the next preview, at least the morphs I know of will still work.

See, whenever I opened the joint editor, I wondered what those strange "end points" on some actors were for. Pointing at things is what.

This should actually work for any figure, although I have tested it only on Antonia so far (and don't overwrite your original cr2 and blame me if it stops working, k?):

• Select the head.
• Open the joint editor.
• Place the end point directly in front of the center point (easiest to do by entering numerical coordinates - make the x and y equal and the z a bit larger).
• Close the joint editor.
• Point the head at whatever you like.
• Enjoy!

This works for the eyes as well, by the way. Makes them less squinty.

Excellent work, looking forward to her release :)

Look at both figures and compare, would you like a girlfriend like the ugly V4 or like Antonia?

Well V4 is not so bad with her make up on.. LOL

odf (et al),

Antonia is getting quite amazing. You keep casually tossing off renders to show morphing and posing features, and what jumps out at me is how realistic these little "test renders" are. Her features are incredible, shoulders and arms look natural in many poses, the textures are beautiful, the skin reacts to light convincingly. It's like the realism just comes for free. I'm impressed. I wish I had time to play - I'm so busy with my job right now.

Very cool! I knew about the end points on the eyes. I usually increase the Z ti help the positioning. I agree with you that the point at IS working for Antonia's eyes. I'm not sure what the effect is that makes her appear to me to be looking above the camera, but it's more pronounced when the camera is close in, and directly in front of her face. (not to the side) I think it may be that I perceive her eyeballs to be a little "high" in the sockets. (I see too much of the bottom of her eye and maybe not enough of the top) Of course, it may be there just needs to be a morph to raise her bottom lids a little, as when a person focuses on something close to them, they tend to squint their eyes a little.

I just realized this thread has a lot of pages :P

And there is a release already.

So will there be more added to this model in the future?

Umm never mind.. I read the license text now :)

She's getting there..  =)  I wish I had more time to work on her stuff right now too but got two important projects going simultaniously.

I still have all the objs going to the morphs.  I almost never throw anything out, and never on WIPs.  I still have a WIP from when I had poser 6. and have a thread about my Giant robot WIP in the forum!:laugh:  I'm to much of a pack rat.  You taught me about "point at's today.  That makes it a worth-while day,now!

Between V4 or Antonia?  I'd say Antonia because she looks like an actual person.. I need to finish the hair I'm working on to put something on her bald head. :lol:  Though some bald chicks turn me on.

Quote - I'm not sure what the effect is that makes her appear to me to be looking above the camera, but it's more pronounced when the camera is close in, and directly in front of her face. (not to the side) I think it may be that I perceive her eyeballs to be a little "high" in the sockets. (I see too much of the bottom of her eye and maybe not enough of the top) Of course, it may be there just needs to be a morph to raise her bottom lids a little, as when a person focuses on something close to them, they tend to squint their eyes a little.

Hmm, interesting. I never noticed that particularly about the lower lids. She does have a bit of a blank stare, of course, which is how one needs to model the "ground state" of a face. So I imagine when she finally gets expressions - including that little squint you mention - this will go away.

Quote - odf (et al),

Antonia is getting quite amazing. You keep casually tossing off renders to show morphing and posing features, and what jumps out at me is how realistic these little "test renders" are. Her features are incredible, shoulders and arms look natural in many poses, the textures are beautiful, the skin reacts to light convincingly. It's like the realism just comes for free. I'm impressed. I wish I had time to play - I'm so busy with my job right now.

Thanks! That's very encouraging coming from you. I sometimes feel a bit overwhelmed when I think of all the things that still need to be done. But fortunately, I'm no longer alone in that endeavor.

(Of course her skin reacts to light convincingly. You wrote the shader. )

Olaf--I don't think he just wanted to come out and say,"WOW! DAMN! I do great work! Look at THAT!"  Even though I would have said something much like that under similiar circumstances!:laugh: LOLOLOLOL

well it is rather awsome.. I wish it worked in D|S.

Well, it seems like DAZ are pretty eager to catch up with Poser's feature set. So I wouldn't be terribly surprised if they added support for more interesting shaders fairly soon. Don't they use 3Delight as their render engine? That's a Renderman compatible renderer, so I suppose it should be able to outdo Firefly easily if they really used all its abilities.

It already can in the right hands IMO.  But that's an arguement for another thread..  and with that I will shut up so I don't break my nda.   =)

Hehe, bagginsbill and you can have a contest biting your own tongues. :lol:

I am following this thread and the evolution of Antonia in the gallerie for a long while now and some weeks ago I started to create another texture for her. Unfortunatly as for many of us work comes first as I have to pay a rent and so working on the textures is an on-and-off thing. But today I finished the head (with teeth and one set of eyes and so on) and started with the body. What you see below is what I've got so far. At the moment there is no bump, no specular map, no ambient occlusion or, to say it the simple way: What you see are the plain textures. Only the eyes already have AO, bump and so on. I adopted the materials from our V4-characters (as far as possible) and so far I am satisfied with the result.

Leo (digital-Lion), my hubby and partner in crime, will paint some specular maps and do the seam fixing later on - and maybe I can talk him into painting Antonia's first tattoo

So here's a sneak preview:

Yay, more textures!!! Looking good so far. I like the freckles and the little mole above the lips. I have to confess I'm most exciting about the promise of specular maps, though.

That last image is cute. I'm always amazed at how much one can express just with posture.

(Nit pick: that was mean of you to take away the wall she's leaning on. She'll fall over any second, and everyone will laugh at her. :biggrin:)

that is so unbelievably cute, omg

She is already so expressive!! I had such fun with posing those brows! And was left with one (silly?) question: Is there already a morph to open the mouth. So far I just found morphs to open the lips what, of course, looks odd when you overdo it.

She has a lower jaw actor (for moving the lower teeth and the tongue) that will eventually be slaved to the "open mouth" morph. At the moment, you have to x-rotate it by hand.

Okay! I'll try it out!!

OMG that IS really funny! :laugh:

I'm glad you like the morphs I did, and that you found out about the jaws.  I only did morphs on the head.

btw--Olaf, Antonia's jaw shape kicks V4 right in the teeth.  One of the things I DESPISE about V4 is the bottom jaw shape because it pokes through the jaw when the face  is morphed! Arrrrrgggggghhhh! This is the main reason I don't use V4 much.  When they tested V4, NO ONE SAW THIS? It makes me think that they (DAZ) did NOT do any test-to-destruction events to screw the figure up to see where it breaks down.

Antonia and you should be smiling about those choppers!  Renaming the lower jaw's X-rotate "Mouth Open" Might help with people figuring out what's what in the mouth. It might also help to "Lock Actor" on the top jaw when you get it in a position you like.  Having BOTH jaws floating loose, might lead to problems and is very unrealistic,IMO.

"Lock Actor" on the upper jaw is a great idea. It's not really meant to be moved around much.

I didn't give the lower jaw a fancy name yet because I was planning to slave it to face morphs, anyway. I could do it the other way around, but I suspect people are used to finding things like "Mouth Open" on the face, so I should probably leave it that way.

One weird thing I notice with the milenium teeth--when the morph on the face matches up to the the "open" name, it sometimes cross-talks it into opening!  I do not remember whether it happens when parented, or conformed, but that it happened stuck in my mind, and might be worth pursuing an investigation?

A "Mouth Open" on the head would be best. It's like a horn being looked for on the steering wheel, not on the dashboard.  A dashboard might be closer to the horn, but most people won't look there.:laugh:

Obviously, there's still room for improvement, and I'll definitely keep working on these morphs. But for a first shot, I think they're not too shabby.

Is it the depression across the middle of the bicep?  That's the only marginally dodgy thing I spot.  My eyes are shot, anyway, so meh.

No, that's just a flaw of my current JCMs, not a systematic problem.

Hint: it's not on the arms or shoulders. And it may not at first sight seem to be a mesh problem, although it is.