Do I get you right, areyou trying your hand on transmapped eyebrows? I did not dare until now as usually I'm a looser when it comes to them...

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/media/folder_9/file_440975.jpg

The are superb!!!

@odf,

Bug report.

I realise that the "Antonia-116-AltUVs.cr2" is not an official release, but I thought I had better point this out in case it does have implications for the next release. If Antonia-116-AltUVs is raised above the ground plain, either by raising the hip or the BODY, the Poser "Drop to Floor" command in the Figure menu (CTRL+D), does not drop the figure to the ground. However "Drop to Floor" does work if the figure is below the ground. I have absolutely no idea why this should be so. The 114 figure does not seem to suffer from this problem.

Aha! Now some things make sense... and I thought it's something I do wrong...

I don't know what I'm doing wrong this time...sigh.

 What's your transparency edge set to? Should be 100%, I do believe.

I've tried that too and setting the falloff at 0 and back to it's original setting.

This happens with or without vss.

@odf,

Quote - As for keeping both UV mappings, that's definitely what I'm aiming at. All we need is a user-friendly way to switch that's not too much of a pain to maintain.  But lesbentley's experiments with geometry switching could lead to a solution there, and if not, there are other options to look into.

I have taken my experiments with injecting differently UV mapped geometry about as far as I can in P6. As P6 is the only version I have installed, that is all that I can test. Everything is working fine at my end, so I guess it is now up to odf as to what he wants to do with it.

To summarise the experiments:

The purpose of the experiments was to determine whether differently UV mapped geometry could be injected into the figure whilst it was loaded in Poser, and without affecting the morphs or other functionality of the figure. The answer is "yes" as far as P6 goes, but it needs testing in other versions.

No way has been found to inject new geometry via a 'figureResFile' statement in a way that will survive a save and reload, thus the new geometry needs to be loaded as a separate obj file for each actor, via 'objFileGeom' statements (same syntax as in a pp2).

With this method the winding order and vertex count of the individual obj files needs to match those of corresponding groups in the full body obj file (whole actor groups may be safely omitted). For example, it does not seem possible to use this method to inject the low-res mesh into a figure that is using the high-res geometry. The UV mapping, material zones, and position of the vertices (shape of the mesh) can vary. I do not know how the inclusion of different sub-groups within an actor would affect the outcome.

There are two ways to restore the original geometry/UVs after a different geometry has been injected. The original declaration section of the cr2 ('geomHandlerGeom' blocks), together with the two 'figureResFile' lines can be injected. Or, the geometry can be injected via individual per-actor obj files.

The down side: The biggest problem I can see with this method is the possibility of the end user injecting the low-res geometry into the high-res figure, or vice versa, this would cause bizarre looking results. The cure is to restore the original geometry. Some things come to mind to minimise this risk. In the thumbnail for the injection pose, include text like "For HighRes Figure ONLY". Place the injection files for high and low res versions in different folders.

Injecting a different geometry may cause transparency maps not to work in preview (though they will still work in a render). For example the eyelashes may not show in preview. This can be cured by a Save and Revert (or reload) of the pz3. Saving and reloading a cr2 will also cure the problem.

So that's the story. I have done a reasonably thorough testing in P6, and it all works in that version. I am reasonably confident that this will work in other Poser versions, but as with anything new, one can not be 100% confidant until it has been  tested by different people in different Poser versions, on different systems, and not to forget D|S. I suggest that at a minimum someone needs to do a little testing in P8 before it is included in a preview release. My current injection files work on either the "Antonia-114.cr2" or the "Antonia-116-AltUV2.cr2", and would presumably work on the Antonia-116 standard version when it is released. I also have equivalent versions for the low-res figure. The restore file is specific to the cr2 being restored, as it needs to use the same figureResFile line. At the moment I have only made a restore file for the "Antonia-116-AltUV2.cr2". The restore file is something of an optional extra, as you can use the two injection files to swap between the different geometries.

There are different permutations of files that you can have with this system. The two that seem most logical are:

One copy of an alternately UV mapped geometry as a set of individual obj files for each actor, one full figure obj loaded by the default cr2, one geom-INJ file, one restore file.

Or, a cr2 that loads the geometry as individual obj files, with one copy of the default geometry as individual obj files, and one copy of an alternately UV mapped geometry as a set of individual obj files, plus two geom-INJ fles.

The second alternative seems the most logical and flexible, but it also represents putting all your eggs in one basket with a new system that has not been thoroughly field tested.

odf: I think the time has come for me to hand this over to you. To include or not as you see fit. I have already posted example files in this thread. If you like I can package everything as an automatic install in a zip, either with or without the obj files. I can send the zip to you, or post it on the developers site, or you can just have a play with the files already posted. Just let me know where you want to go with this.

Wow... you worked hard and I tried my best to understand everything. If no one uses Poser 8 or PoserPro I can test the files but will definitly need a german "how to test and what to test" from odf. I am not an expert when it comes to those things so a little guide may be useful.

SaintFox,

Thanks for the offer to test the files. I think before we proceed any further, we really need to hear odf's thoughts on this. But I very much appreciate your offer. Although my last post may sound complex and technical, testing the files should be quite simple, though perhaps a little tedious..

LOL I am definitly not in a hurry to handle things I do not understand (so far...). I just wanted to let you know that newer versions of Poser are installed here (in fact everything from 5 up to 8). Sometimes I need older versions for testing products and so I kept them all.

Hi guys, just quickly checking in. Exciting stuff! I'll take a look at the drop-to-floor problem, and I'll do some testing of the geometry switching stuff in P8, as well. P8 is now my preferred Poser version, so I have a decided interest in making things work in it.

I'd like to get the next preview out in time for the first anniversary of this thread, which happens to be next Tuesday. So I'll save everything related to the new UVs for the release after that.

Oh, and yesterday I finally understood a longstanding bug in the software I use for repairing vertex ordering for morphs, which once again confirmed that I'm an idiot.

I can haz eyebrow gon morfz nao.

:lol: I am glad that I am not the only one who feels like a complete "Dussel" in these days!!

 Hon, you ain't the only 'Dussel' around these parts. Bird of a feather, become feather-dusters together!:laugh:

That's a nice saying!! I'll keep it!

What's embarrassing is that it was such a standard mistake, and it should have been very obvious to me. Grrmbl!!

The fact that it was a standard mistake explains it: Standard means routine, not thinking, just acting... it happens to me all the time as well. See the toecaps question... I deal with transparencies and material settings all day long but forgot to set the diffuse channel to black and specular to zero and so on.

Those "standard mistakes" are the ones that are gonna get you too. They sneak up on you while you're watching out for more major, non-standard mistakes.

I have Poser 6 and 7 at present (can't afford 8).
P7 is installed on my laptop and 6 on my old desktop.

 I am very impressed. I would like to have this model in my runtime too! She has turned out  beautifully.  What will the download file size be?

Quote - @odf,

Bug report.

I realise that the "Antonia-116-AltUVs.cr2" is not an official release, but I thought I had better point this out in case it does have implications for the next release. If Antonia-116-AltUVs is raised above the ground plain, either by raising the hip or the BODY, the Poser "Drop to Floor" command in the Figure menu (CTRL+D), does not drop the figure to the ground. However "Drop to Floor" does work if the figure is below the ground. I have absolutely no idea why this should be so. The 114 figure does not seem to suffer from this problem.

What's even weirder: this only seems to happen while some of the handles geometries are switched off. As soon as "ShowHandles" is set to 2, drop to floor works again.

Quote - What will the download file size be?

None of us can see the future, so it's rather difficult to say what the total size of the package will be.  Since my upload speed is pretty horrible, though, I will probably limit the size per zip file to something around 10MB.

I thought I offer some render-fun for the weekend and uploaded a link to the new textures to the developer's site (look under Texture Sets).

It would be great if one of you (temporarily) deletes the previous texture set to see if there are materials that call the old textures in the new set. I was as careful as possible but as the new materials are built on the base of the old one something may have slipped through.

Thanks SaintFox! I have Monday and Tuesday off and might find time to have a look at the texture. Very exciting!

Update on the drop to floor problem: this seems to be related to the empty geometry file I used to replace the handles with. If I use some actual geometry, drop to floor works fine with the switching. So instead of the empty, I could probably use a really tiny cube, hoping that it doesn't show up in renders. It's not pretty, but it might just work.

The other option of course would be to elevate the bug to a feature by documenting it: "Drop to floor is disabled for your convenience unless all handles are visible." :laugh:

"Drop to floor is disabled for your convenience unless all handles are visible."

People will like it as much as the handy library in Poser 8 that shows so many thumbnails at once!!

Okay - I am off as well for a while, a bit sleep, shopping some groceries... have fun with the textures!!

Well, an infinitely small cube as the "empty" geometry did the job.

The textures look great, SaintFox, thanks for uploading those!

I have a totally "clean" Antonia 116 runtime, meaning no textures so far or anything in it, and the only problems I see is the new pose files "VSS Full Tex" and "VSS Face Brows 1" were asking for "BE4Antonia-Bump-Head.jpg", which is, of course, an older texture file.
But then Poser ('Pro') stopped asking later, and I have no idea why, because I deleted those old textures after storing them in a rar file, so they weren't anywhere to be found.
And I was restarting Poser to clear its memory too. shrug No idea, that's a new one there.

BE4 is definitly a file by BlueEcho - I will look into it later and if I find something I'll upload a fix (for those who already loaded the set) and a new version of the whole set. So far you can use "ToniPHeadBUMP.jpg" instead. The matposes you've had issues with call for the standard face bump.

That Poser stops asking is pretty strange as long as you do not hit the "cancel" button...

Quote - Well, an infinitely small cube as the "empty" geometry did the job.

Good detective work, finding and nailing the problem. I suspected that the handles might have something to do with it, as that is the obvious thing that has changed, but I was concentrating on the body and hip handles. I'm still mystified as to why displaying the other handles should have anything to do with it.

Attached Link: Toni

Hello Mike, I found the reason for not getting the usual error message when Poser finds that there is a missing texture. There are some orphaned nodes in the material systems. Maybe these maps are already orphaned in the previous versions of Antonia. However: If a node is not connected to the material in any way you only get an error message when you enter the material room and open the material itself - and if the texture in question is not available in the Runtime.
Many if's - too many to find out while building the material system as it seems.

As said: the materials where not connected to anything and unfortunatly hidden behind connected nodes and this made me overlook them. I'll try my best to fix the problem and let you all know when the new version is available.

We have fixed the problems
The downloads are available at the developers forum.
 

Those of you who have already downloaded and installed the texture set and material poses need only the small updated file.

As we did fix the full set as well those of you who pick up the complete set now need only the full set, not the update.

I just downloaded the new texture and made a few test renders. It looks spectacular, probably even better then the previous one. I'll have to do more tests, but so far I love it.

Just two small things: I think her "privates" might be a bit too dark relative to the surrounding skin. I haven't tried closeups yet, but in a full-render it looks more like a wound than genitals. I think the inner bits of the outer labia should probably be a bit darker and maybe the inner labia a bit brighter.

Also, I now understand why you didn't want to use those specular maps with VSS. I thought you were talking about true specularity, but those maps just have some fake highlights painted on them. With VSS that actually looks pretty awful.

Thanks very much for the new texture set for Antonia. I know that a lot of work has gone into this set, and I really appreciate what you have done, and I am sure all the other Antonia users will agree that this is a wonderful addition.

In view of this wonderfully generous gift you have given us, I hope I do not seem too ungracious if I make a few suggestions as to how I feel that it might be improved.

Now to get down to a critical review. I very much like the overall skin tones, and appearance of the skin. I agree with odf that some of the genital area looks a bit dark, and this is accentuated if the "Labia_Detailed" morph is used, because this morph seems to compress polygons around the edge of the genital cleft. I also feel that the teeth may be a little too light.

In preview a few white seams are visible, especially on the lower abdomen, and inside of the thighs. Although this does not show up in a render, as I sometimes use preview for animations I think it would be good to at least fix the abdomen.

After applying the "!Clasic ! FullTex" file, the brows material is still fully visible, and not textured. I think it would be a very good idea if the MAT file set the brows material to transparent and the Specular and Diffuse values of that material to zero. This would save the user from having to do that step manually. A slight "shadow" of the brows would still exist in preview, unless the Preview properties were set to 'Actual'  transparency.

There are also some things about the eyes, that I am not completely happy with, though I am not sure whether these have more to do with the shape of the mesh and the UV mapping than the textures. As you noted yourself, the blood vessels in the sclera look very stretched out. I am wondering if there is something about the new UV map that is making it hard to map a texture into them?

There is a raised area of mesh around the outside of the iris that seems more obvious in your set than when the BlueEcho set is applied, I think this may be because the BlueEcho iris covers this bulge, where as, your iris falls inside it. So again I think that the real problem here may be in the obj file and the bulge itself rather than the texture set. I'm also wondering if a transmap to fade the iris gradually into the pupil would be a good idea. The last point I want to make with the eyes is the lacrimals, these seem to be more or less the same colour as the surrounding skin, where as I would expect them to be a darker pink colour. I notice that on your head texture the lacrimals do appear to be coloured correctly, but I also note that in MikeJ's texture template the lacrimals do not seem to be part of the head map, though where he has put them I don't know.

I hope the above does not make it sound like I don't like your texture set. I do like it very much, I think it is wonderful. I just wanted to point out a few places where I think it could be made even better.

Looks good Digital-Lion.

Constructive critique is always apreciated and I'll try my best to alter what can be altered and to answer to the other questions.

First about the specular map: In fact I combined it with the VSS and it works well. The specular map is not a "fake highlight" - it picks up the parts where a body has more shine. Look into the mirror (well, in fact we talk about women here, so please imagine yourself less hairy ) - but not directly after you took a shower or treated your skin with a body lotion, give the skin at least 6-8 hours to recreate it's natural lipids. You will find that some parts of the body are more dry (side of the thighs, cheeks...) and dull and some are smoother and have some shine (shins, nose, forehead). The VSS shader, used as is, gives the same overall shine to the body. You, odf, gave me the idea to combine the specular map with the VSS to have a slight vary in the skin's shine. And it works. In other words: In the material room you'll find the specular map more on the right side, GeneralNutts and I spent a whole night to weave it into Antonia's shader :laugh:

In view of this wonderfully generous gift you have given us, I hope I do not seem too ungracious if I make a few suggestions as to how I feel that it might be improved.*

As said: No problem!

I agree with odf that some of the genital area looks a bit dark, and this is accentuated if the "Labia_Detailed" morph is used, because this morph seems to compress polygons around the edge of the genital cleft.*
I am unsure about them as well. Unfortunatly, I think I said it before, I am not allowed to post the photoresource here because of copyright reasons. And THESE photos that I used for the genitalia I can not post because I will be banned immediatly as well.
But I can tell you that they are not color shifted, the woman on the photos has such dark outer and inner labia, they are almost purple (and this is, as I have seen meanwhile from dozens of photo sets, the average color beside dark brown - for caucasian women).
But - and this is an important but! - we are not about to distribute the truth but an illusion. And an illusion is what people think about how a body looks (or should look following their taste) and not how it looks in reality. Most Poser characters are far, far to evenly tanned to look realistic. But I see that I should brighten up this area a bit and shift the color more to match the thighs.

I also feel that the teeth may be a little too light.
I am amazed!! I left the teeth exactly as is (but can tell you that all teeth are made from the four upper and lower front teeth as the molars are not visible on the photos) and thought that people will find them too dark!! I can darken them with ease but prefer to offer a second set that is darker for those who prefer it.

In preview a few white seams are visible

There is just one workaround for this and this is filling the white part of the texture with a skin tone. Pretty useless as it only makes the textures' filesize bigger. I know that some merchants do it because their are always customers who say: I have seams in the preview... but on the other hand people will complain about larger filesizes.
By the way: I see no seams in the preview as all textures are slightly larger as the UV-map. So this seems to depend on your settings. Do youu use OpenGL or Sree3D? And may this be a problem of your version of Poser? I know that it was something people complained about when using Poser 6...
Okay, I just opened up PoserPro, 8, 7, 6 (one after the other of course), loaded and textured Antonia and oh my... I am spoiled, I almost forgot what a super-crappy preview mode P6 has. I will post some screenshots later, just FYI (and maybe, if you often use the preview mode, you want to get P7 sooner or later - or better get Pro!!).

After applying the "!Clasic ! FullTex" file, the brows material is still fully visible
I did this willingly as a full transparency never does what a "Brows gone" morph can do. But it is no problem to add something like the "Toecaps gone" matpose. As soon as I have reworked the genitals I will add one.

I am wondering if there is something about the new UV map that is making it hard to map a texture into them?
Yes, that's the UV-map, we are already experimenting with a different sclera mapping. And to comfort the other texturers here: It will ONLY be the sclera, everything else should be possible to keep.

* I'm also wondering if a transmap to fade the iris gradually into the pupil would be a good idea.*
The bulge is a mesh-thing, yes. As I added a "blend" between iris and sclera it may be more obvious. But this blending area avoids the look as if the iris is a seperate prop, stuffed into the sclera (a problem known for instance with the Sydney figure). The Iris-blend is something I will try out, I do not like the fact that every 3d-human's iris is a round hole as well where in fact the iris looks more like a rosette.

The last point I want to make with the eyes is the lacrimals, these seem to be more or less the same colour as the surrounding skin

The lacrimals are part of the head, if you open the head texture you can clearly see them in the inner edge of the eyesocket. The "almost skin" effect may be caused by a combination of light and shader. In fact I made them from a close shot of the eye by cutting out the lacrimal section and tweaking it to the given form. But of course the area of the lacrimal is very, very tiny and this leads to a kind of "pixel purree" after tweaking and resizing.

So, as said: First thing is the genital section - I will idealize it a bit. Then I make a second set of teeth, with a whiff of more saturation and maybe darkness. The sclera thing is the third project and I will experiment with a pupil-transparency but I am not sure if this works.

Attached Link: http://www.german-3d.com/TempDownloads/preview-generations.jpg

As you can see the preview mode got better with each version. This is a comparison of the Sree3d-mode only, no OpenGL as in fact (well, IMHO...) the OpenGL mode in Poser 6 does absolutely nothing and in the next versions I get kind of a strane material preview for the eyes.

Just for the sake of saying it, I did ask several times if y'all wanted the eyes remapped or mapped differently. ;-)

There's also the question about the eyes themselves, which was a looonnnggg discussion about a month ago. Will these eyes that are currently with Antonia remain the default eyes, or will something else be developed to answer all the eye issues that were brought up during that week or so we all were discussing it?

Anyhow, just wanted to post that quickly. I'm real busy right now and have no time really to read what all else was written this weekend until tomorrow....

Mike, the "trial remap" of the sclera was just a quick experiment we did today to see if it might solve the "stretched vein" problem (it does) - and I, personally, have no problem with the rest of the eye-mesh and mapping as more as we still have the "high end replacement eyes".

So my question: Would you please position the extra-eye you did in the correct place, maybe make a pair from it and upload it for me? I would like to leave the positioning to the creator as I found that the one who creates a model handles it the most perfect way. I would really(!) like to try my hand on it and if they look as good as I guess from the preview - and my recommendation is to add those eyes to the finished figure to use them in close-up renders.

I'll try that, SaintFox, but I'm not sure what you mean, really.
You mean that eyeball mesh I uploaded to the dev site about a month ago?
And do you mean position it as in position it to match the UVs of the current Antonia eyes, or make new objects out of it to match the position in the Antonia 116 figure herself, or both?

Take your time replying - I'm  going out now and will be gone all night, but I'll have plenty of time tomorrow to do whatever you want. :-)

Yes, these eyes are exactly what I mean. I have the object already here but what I mean is if you would "insert" it into Antonia's head and save it as a prop and, if possible, it's counterpart as well. I just would like to have it in the correct position so that I can use it like it will be used later when the finished Antonia is released. You do not have to remap it, as this wouldn't make much sense, I am aware that this eye is different to the original eyes.

We are to bed now, so you have plenty of time as well
but I'll have plenty of time tomorrow to do whatever you want. :-)

Be careful with your offers, one could take advantage of them!! :biggrin:

@SaintFox,

Quote - Constructive critique is always apreciated and I'll try my best to alter what can be altered and to answer to the other questions.

Glad to hear that. But perhaps I should have said from the start to take my comments with a pinch of salt. I know nothing of the skill and art of making textures, but am pretty good at putting my foot in my mouth.

Re the teeth.

Quote - I am amazed!! I left the teeth exactly as is (but can tell you that all teeth are made from the four upper and lower front teeth as the molars are not visible on the photos) and thought that people will find them too dark!! I can darken them with ease but prefer to offer a second set that is darker for those who prefer it.

On reflection I feel is is probably better to keep the teeth the way they are. After all it is a simple enough for me, or anyone, to darken the teeth by  using a darker Diffuse colour, but not as easy to lighten them if they are too dark, as the Diffuse is already white. The comment I made was just an initial reaction, and not well thought out.

Re white seams.

Quote - There is just one workaround for this and this is filling the white part of the texture with a skin tone. Pretty useless as it only makes the textures' filesize bigger. I know that some merchants do it because their are always customers who say: I have seams in the preview... but on the other hand people will complain about larger filesizes.

You have a good point there. I would not like to see you filling the whole white part of the texture with a skin tone, but I see that there is one place on the lower left of the abdomen where there is a lot less overlap of the coloured area than on the rest of the map, or on the equivalent area on the right side, I think a little spot of "paint" there would be a good idea.

Re bulge on mesh.

Quote - The bulge is a mesh-thing, yes. As I added a "blend" between iris and sclera it may be more obvious.

I owe you an apology on that point. I was looking at an un-rendered preview when I made that comment :blink:. Whatever you have done with the blend works well, and the join between the iris and sclera looks much better in the rendered image . I hope that you will forgive me, that my haste lead me to wrong conclusions.

Quote - The lacrimals are part of the head, if you open the head texture you can clearly see them in the inner edge of the eyesocket. The "almost skin" effect may be caused by a combination of light and shader. In fact I made them from a close shot of the eye by cutting out the lacrimal section and tweaking it to the given form. But of course the area of the lacrimal is very, very tiny and this leads to a kind of "pixel purree" after tweaking and resizing.

Perhaps I am mistaken, but I can't help thinking that there seems to be something not quite right about the lacrimals in the "Antonia-116-altUVs.obj". When I try to investigate further in UV Mapper (free version), I am running into other kinds of strangeness when selecting by group, which are hindering further investigation.

SaintFox: Sorry I misinterpreted your intentions. I shouldn't make assumptions like that. But I do see some serious problems with the specular maps. For example, there is a sharp bright strip at the front of the thigh in your map, which shows up as a very irritating second highlight when rendered. In general, I think that the boundaries of the shiny regions are often too sharp - leading to those unmotivated highlights - and sometimes plain wrong. To mention another example, my nose is pretty much shiny all over, not just along a sharp strip on the ridge. Also, my lower lids seem to be pretty homogeneous in their skin structure. I don't see sharp, shiny strips there either.

Like Les said, I'm just trying to give constructive criticism. You've done a great job with the texture already, which I absolutely adore. The specular maps would have been an extra treat. Looking forward to that treat and then realizing it's a flavour I don't like is a bit disappointing, but it doesn't take away from a lovely, and very generous meal.

As for the labia: I realize that they tend to be darker than the surrounding skin. I think the problem with your new texture (which by the way didn't appear in your original one) is the stark contrast between the outer and inner labia. I looked at a bunch of references just now and couldn't find one in which the inner and outer labia didn't have virtually the same tone. So maybe it's just that the outer labia are not quite dark enough in this texture. Or maybe whoever that reference was from really, really enjoyed having pictures of her genitals taken.

Again, this is just a tiny detail, and if you decided to leave it as it is, I'm sure nobody would be any less grateful.

Lesbentley: If you turn texture filtering off, does that help with the white seams? I'm not sure it has any effect on the preview, but it might still be worth a try. I know it helped me with my renders when had the texture resolution restricted to 1024.

Regarding the eyes: what's nice about those is that they can be pretty much tampered with to ones heart's content without doing any harm to rest of the figure. So I definitely encourage everyone to experiment and try to come up with the best Poser eyes possible. As long as licensing permits, I'll be happy to replace Antonia's current eyes with whatever is deemed best in the end. That goes for alternate mappings, shapes and even alternate mesh topologies.