Ah. before I forget: the next preview (due tomorrow, if everything goes alright) will include "gone" morphs for both the brows and the toecaps.

The thighs demonstrate the "fake painted-on highlights" impression I got when I first looked at this. The left image has no specular map, so the highlights just appear naturally as a consequence of the shape and the relative locations of the light source and the viewer. On the right one sees vaguely the same highlights, but they look too sharp and irregular, and on the upper thigh there's what looks like a double highlight.

Anyway, I've started to make some new poses for the upcoming preview. It's going slow, so don't expect more than... err, one or two? Anyway, here's what I've got so far. Since I'm crap at coming up with my own ideas, I'm letting the pictures on my favourite pin-up site (coughsuicidegirlscoughcough) inspire me.

Of course whenever I try to pose Antonia, all the things that don't quite work yet the way I'd like them to become painfully obvious. Although not perfect, I've done a good deal of work on the hips and shoulders and am pretty proud of what I've achieved. But the way the neck and head bend is so awful that I almost don't dare to do anything with them. The hands and feet are alright, but have some pretty ugly deformations in certain positions that I think can only be fixed by - wait for it - more JCMs. Furthermore, as you can see here, her knees are far to pointy.

On the other hand, she still only has a few sporadic expression morphs, and I think it may be time to get to work on the main phase of my big, evil plan: making a realistic Poser character that can convey emotions.

So I'd like to ask for your opinions again: should I do more work on perfecting her body rigging, or should I put that aside for now and start on an expression system (meaning a collection of morphs and a set of dials to drive them in a user-friendly way) for Antonia?

Man, I miss a couple days in this thread and so much happens I'm totally lost. ;-)

Quote -
So I'd like to ask for your opinions again: should I do more work on perfecting her body rigging, or should I put that aside for now and start on an expression system (meaning a collection of morphs and a set of dials to drive them in a user-friendly way) for Antonia?

Personally I'd try to get whatever I was unhappy with, rigging-wise, taken care of and out of the way first.
However, it can also be good to move on to other things and revisit older problems later with a fresh set of eyes and ideas.

They're there, and are attached to the head UVs in the place one would expect them.
The screen grab is from Lightwave's UV view, with the lacrimals highlighted in blue. It's been so long since I used UV Mapper though that I have no idea what the problem there might be, but they are there.

To SaintFox (and anyone else interested),

I just uploaded a pair of eyes to the Dev site on the Files To Work On page. Actually like always just a link in a text file called "AltEyes_10-26-09.txt"

I included some info in the text file, but just to summarize it here, they're re-scaled to fit Antonia 116 more or less.
That is, I did the best I could, but that eye had just been an experiment at the time and I didn't model it to really "fit" Antonia's head. But the OBJ files I just uploaded are about as close as I can get them without major work. Good enough for government work as we say in the US. ;-)

I wasn't thinking about it when I replied last night, but my Windows 7 DVD will be arriving today and I've gone and completely reformatted my drives in my main PC so I can get it installed as soon as I get it. And I don't have Poser installed on my other 3D box, so I couldn't make actual Poser props out of them, but the OBJ files, if imported into Poser with the figure size thing and center checkboxes turned off should load into Antonia's head in the correct position.
If you have to have it in Poser prop format I can do that, but it will probably be all day before I have everything reinstalled and up and running. Maybe  someone else can Poserize them in the meantime...

The zip file has both eyes in one OBJ file, and also separate files for the left and right, plus the original UV template that was with the original eye object I uploaded in September.

Just let me know if you wanted something different, or more help. :-)

odf,

Quote - 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.

That must have been such a chore. I really appreciate all the research and hard work that is going on between Antonia's legs!  :rolleyes:

Quote - So I'd like to ask for your opinions again: should I do more work on perfecting her body rigging, or should I put that aside for now and start on an expression system (meaning a collection of morphs and a set of dials to drive them in a user-friendly way) for Antonia?

Well these are both important things, but I feel that if you leave the expression morphs for now, more contributions may come along from us Antonia users, and it is always easy to add expression morphs later. The rigging on the other hand is a very fundamental thing, and probably not something that most of the community is able to contribute towards. I think it is probably best to get the rigging and JCM sorted first. And especially as this may have implications for anyone developing conforming clothing for Antonia.

odf, I find the wrist / forearm / hand bend more distracting than the knee.

Quote - The rigging on the other hand is a very fundamental thing, and probably not something that most of the community is able to contribute towards. I think it is probably best to get the rigging and JCM sorted first. And especially as this may have implications for anyone developing conforming clothing for Antonia.

You're probably right, and I guess I just needed to hear that again. :laugh: It makes me feel a bit bad that Antonia still has so little in the way of expressions, but it probably makes sense to take care of her posing abilities first.

My thinking was that since I expect a relatively small fraction of all conforming clothing items to cover any or all of the neck, ankles and wrists, it might not hurt too much in that respect to leave the fine-tuning of these for later if users were eager for more facial expressiveness.

But in fact there's a lot of emotion that can be conveyed by just the posing of the head and eyes, so improving on the former will definitely help. And we already have some very nice expression morphs by Joel and Laurie that can be used in the meantime, even though because of the 'head bobbing' problem, Joel's should not be taken as a basis for other morphs.

One thing I should mention: I thought I had averted the 'drop to floor' problem by replacing the 'empty' handle geometry with one that contains an infinitely small cube. But that's not the case. I'm not quite sure about the details, but in certain poses 'drop to floor' still only works when all the handles are visible.

For now I'll leave it at that. It's a bit of an inconvenience, but not too important in the grand scheme of things. In the long run, I'd like to try a different strategy. Instead of adding figure geometry to the handles, I'd like to try adding a prop for each handle and slave the appropriate channels of the handle actors to the movements of those props. I think Les might have some experience with that kind of thing...

Wow, lots of things happend. First, please, lesbentley - I've got you right! Either I could see where the real problem was (P6 supercrappy preview mode) or things can be changed. It leads to nothing if you all are all hurray and bravo and then no one uses what we've made here.

I see the difference myself between Toni 1 and 2 - it's because of color shifting to match the pubic mound and outer labia to the inner thighs and abdomen on the first version. This time I left everything as is and Leo did the rest with seam fixing. I am looking for a compromise at the moment... The inner labia, oh well, I did made them from scratch and left them as is - and I see that they look more like a shadow then like human flesh. I'll fix this - and as I have to alter them massivly: Do you connoisseurs prefer an innocent tone of rose or something darker? this will get me banned... anyhow: I like to know!.

I will re-do the maps for the VSS materials and pick out the specular map - but leave them in the classic settings as these tend to look kind of "soapy" if you don't control the blinn with a specular map.

I know... the other way to create speculars is to use a kind of overexposed bumpmaps with some manual corrections. I've already done some but gave up on this system because IF you have an effect that is clearly visible you end up with a "glittery" character under specific light situations. Just look at the DAZ V4 Elite textures and you see what I mean.

Oh... yes, the question for expression or joints. So far I do not use the joints we can pick up in the developer forum as these act strange for me (yes, they are a first version, not finished). If I have the choice I would say please give us good joint parameters that are already usable so that we can begin to experiment with poses and such.

But somehow it sounds a little bit as if you are in the mood to try out some other things and maybe you saw enough bending joints for a while and need something else. Then go over to a new goal and pick up the joints later as this here should not only be hard work but fun and a kind of recreation as well!!

...and as for the pose you've made: Mean, very mean - tell her to stand up now!! Or, like my old doctor uses to say when someone was in serious trouble: "Have you ever kneeled on your hands when the telephone rings?".

Quote - I will re-do the maps for the VSS materials and pick out the specular map - but leave them in the classic settings as these tend to look kind of "soapy" if you don't control the blinn with a specular map.

Sounds planish to me.

I think specular maps made from bump maps might work well if those bump maps were hand-painted. You'd have the dark parts corresponding to fine lines and pores, which should mostly block specular reflection because of self-shadowing. But in photo-generated bump maps you also have the elevated bits resulting from highlights. Although these create bumps that are not quite realistic, that's hardly ever a problem because the scale is so small. But once you turn the bump map into a specular map, they will create extra-strong highlights and hence the glitter effect. Or at least that's my working hypothesis. :laugh:

One of these days I was going to try my hand on some detailed, completely hand-drawn skin materials for Antonia, just using the photo references as guidelines. But that will have to wait until a number of other things are sorted out.

Well... in fact I do the bump maps from the skin I created before by using several filters to get the right tones and contrast. 95% of the map shows the right behaviour: pores, creases and such are dark/deepened and gooseskin, folds are bright/aised. Then I look at the map at 100 to 200 % and go slowly through it from one side to the other and from above to below and search for all things that are paradox: Moles, freckles, some scars, bodyhair. Some of the moles and all the freckles are evened out then (with the healing brush) as they are in fact not raised. Other moles are raised and I have to edit them by hand with a brush or the dot tool. Other things need to get more darkness, here I use the burn tool - best thing is to keep the bump at RGB here and use grayscale mode only on the jpg.

The really problematic parts are kept on seperate layers: Brows, lips, nipples. It depends completely on the original color of these parts what to do now: You can invert them and alter brightness and contrast until the surrounding skin matches the base (and than burn and dodge as usual). You can alter the brightness and contrast until you get what you want or create and avarage scala of grays and paint by hand. In fact I had to use all of the technics for Antonia's bump map because the original skin was so full of contrasts. The bump map takes at least a full working day after the textures are seamless but I think it' worth it and even if someone calls me silly now: To me it's one of the most fun parts!

Handpainting a texture is a BIG challenge! on the one hand you do not have to care for stretching and tweaking and what it does to the photo-resource. But on the other hand: try to pick up an average color of a photograph of a stomach and paint it on a leg or foot and you know what you will go through

The material poses are already corrected, so the VSS materials are already specular map-free. I am working at the private parts now... and can tell you that they give me a hard time. It's pretty much the same as with the "paint on the leg" thing I wrote above...

Well, it's obvious that you take a lot of care when making your maps. That's why they're so good. I can imagine that the private parts would be a pain to texture, and I am very happy that you're taking another look at them.

As for hand-painted maps, I realize it would require a lot of effort. As does, say, modeling a realistic human from scratch. :laugh: It's just something I'd like to experiment with when I find the time.

I think I MAY found an easy workaround but have to ask first: Are you satisfied with the outer part of the genital region or is it too dark either? And please be honest! I have no problem in altering it all!!

*Well, it's obvious that you take a lot of care when making your maps. * Thanks a lot - believe me: I wouldn't do it if it isn't (almost) pure fun. I LOVE the feeling of playing Frankenstein and bring those artificial humans to live. It's a bit scary and sometimes you have a crazy feeling like many of once once had when playing god-simulations (does anyone remember Populus?!). So perfect for grown-up play-calfs like me.

Quote - I think I MAY found an easy workaround but have to ask first: Are you satisfied with the outer part of the genital region or is it too dark either? And please be honest! I have no problem in altering it all!!

What's the outer part of the genital region? I assume you mean the outsides of the labia majora? Personally, I'd even prefer them a bit darker so they'd stand out relative to the mons pubis and the inner thighs. But the way they are now is fine, too.

(Dang, I hope all this talking in Latin won't get me banned.)

If you get banned I will be sent directly to the 3d-hell where I have to texture woody, the stick-man, all day long because I stir up those discussions.

Yes, I am asking about the labia majora (I am glad that there is the language of science that is the same all over the world - and it sounds as innocent as my intentions are)! I already had to make them brighter, original color was dark brown, almost like milk chocolate and the contrast to the inner thighs was so stark that I found a tone that was darker but not too extreme. As said: this is the thin line between keeping it natural and adding a bit idealizing. I already had this problem with the brows but simply added two versions. Unfortunatly there is no way to have a different crotch without adding a complete new body and legs - I think that's too much file size for such small effect.

Quote - I see the difference myself between Toni 1 and 2 - it's because of color shifting to match the pubic mound and outer labia to the inner thighs and abdomen on the first version. This time I left everything as is and Leo did the rest with seam fixing. I am looking for a compromise at the moment... The inner labia, oh well, I did made them from scratch and left them as is - and I see that they look more like a shadow then like human flesh. I'll fix this - and as I have to alter them massivly: Do you connoisseurs prefer an innocent tone of rose or something darker? this will get me banned... anyhow: I like to know!.

I'm sure everyone has different preferences here. A rose tint sounds good to me. As to the luminosity I'd like to see it about mid way between the old texture and the new. Roughly as in the bottom image above, which was made by superimposing the new genitals over the old, with 40% opacity for the new. This was done in PSP using odf's image from page 152, not on the texture map itself. This is meant to approximate what I would like for the hood of the clitoris and labia minora. With the outer part of the genital region, labia majora and mons pubis, I think it is perfect in the old texture.

Quote - Unfortunatly there is no way to have a different crotch without adding a complete new body and legs - I think that's too much file size for such small effect.

I guess it is a bit late to suggest this now, after all the work that MikeJ did on the UV map, but perhaps separating the genital/pubic area to some degree would have been a good idea. A separate material would allow some variety in texturing, without having to replace the whole body map. A separate sub-group might be a convenience when making morphs. Perhaps even a separate actor to allow geom swapping? Much the same comments might apply to the nipple/areola also. odf, perhaps it is something to think of the next time you create a figure.  :scared:

 I like the old, actually; it's more representative of what I've actually seen in the real world.

I'm thinking of doing some hand poses (.hd2) for Antonia. Obviously; default, a couple of grasp, point at, cupped, and fist will be included. Is there anything specific that anyone would like to request. If possible, a link to an example image might help in meeting requests.

The gen/pubic area is separate, as you can see in this screen shot. It should be pretty obvious what's what. ;-)
It is out of proportion, yes, but the way I chose to do it I figured could easily enough mask the seams, considering the seams would be one of many "bikini line" patterns or tan lines. And/or could be hidden with hair. For that matter, for anyone skilled enough with Photoshop and experienced enough to know how to deal with it can clone skin all around that area without any noticeable texture difference, or very minimal.
And of course I gave the gen area more UV space to allow for more detail, particularly because that would make painting hair and other small details much easier with a one pixel brush without having to use an enormous image map.

But again I have to go back to the fact I wanted this to be both developer friendly as well as user friendly, not only for Photoshopping textures over the UV maps, but also for 3D/2D painting. The original way had it UVd where it was just the very inner parts as a separate UV  island, which creates more trouble 3D and 2D painting, plus blending into the outer areas. So I gave it more "space" by doing it this way.

As for materials groups, you could give every single polygon its own material group without affecting the UVs, so that doesn't matter and any added material groups wouldn't require new UV mapping.

As for the nipples, I have mixed feelings about that, just as with the lips, only I chose to keep them part of the Body UVs, to make 3D painting and blending around the area easier. Unlike the lips though, you're less likely to see sharp transitions around the nipples, so it seemed like a better idea to keep those UVs attached to the body.

MikeJ,

Point taken. I guess as far as materials go my head is still back in the P4 days. I was forgetting that it is now possible to to use just a segment of the map and superimpose that in the desired position. Mind you, if I had to do that myself, I would not have a clue how to go about it.

P.S.
My comments were in no way meant as a criticism of your UV map. As far as my very limited knowledge of such things goes, I think you have done a great job. I just thought that a separate material might be a good idea, but as you pointed out, it is not needed.

Quote -
My comments were in no way meant as a criticism of your UV map. As far as my very limited knowledge of such things goes, I think you have done a great job. I just thought that a separate material might be a good idea, but as you pointed out, it is not needed.

Thank you much, and I didn't take it as criticism at all, I was just explaining it to you. ;-)
At any rate, any and all criticism is fine with me. I may defend certain decisions, but the problem with the idea is there's no "right" way to do it, aside from a few certain rules such as no overlaps on individual islands, try to limit distortion and all that.
The problem with UV mapping and textures is I don't think it was really designed for the way it's used in Poser and expected to be able to be used by the masses. Ideally, you would be creating a figure for your game or movie, or whatever and be part of a team of developers. Someone would model it, someone would texture it, someone would animate it, someone would code it into your game and any number of other things, but your figure or creature or objects would be your team's, for your team's project, and be designed around the needs of the project. In all respects it would have to conform to a set of pre-defined specifications laid out by your project manager or client.
So, everybody working on it would know what was what and why it was as it was. The topography would be designed to make the riggers and animators happy and productive, and the same goes for all other aspects, such as the UV mapping.
You may use that figure again later on down the line, but chances are you won't and your game or movie sequel will have features better designed to take advantage of the latest technology.

Not so in the Poserverse, where the same figure will be used by hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions of of people with widely varying ideas on what should be what and how this, that or the other thing should be done. And the UV mapping is something that gets thought about and variably praised and cussed alike, as people try to texture the models. I don't think anybody who paints or makes textures for Poser models likes all the UV mapping on any one figure, and it will always be that way because you can't get a consensus from that many people. So you're designing blind for an enormous user base, each individual with his own needs and ideas, as opposed to a small team that has agreed to operate within a given set of pre-defined standards that have to be met before production even begins.

So you go with what you know and hope for the best. ;-)

BTW, I didn't point out that a separate material is not needed. There are benefits to doing it all with separate materials assigned here or there. I have a number of versions of various DAZ figures through the years that I made whole new OBJs for, particularly for consolidation of some of the materials into one. For example, all that "skinArm", "skinShoulder", "skin3rdpolygonfromthetop" nonsense irritates the hell out of me. And in a few cases I added material zones if I thought I needed to for certain situations.
So again, that's another choice thing, but what I pointed out is remapping the figure isn't necessarily necessary in order to have new material zones. However, if the desired new material zones cross over a seam, remapping may be necessary, depending on the circumstances of the UV map.
That affects Poser more than anything though, since Poser has made the (very bad) habit of overlapping UVs acceptable, since Poser before version 5 couldn't do regions. If you're using multiple regions, you don't have those restrictions, though it might make texturing more difficult.

For example, in the screengrab above, the pubic region and the body are the same UV map, in that they don't overlap. As it is now, in Antonia 116B, that is the skin_BODY material. You could separate those islands into  two separate material groups, or even give every polygon its own material group if you wanted, with no need to remap it.
And the same goes with Vicky 4 and all her different materials for the limbs, skinArm, skinShoulder, skinHand, skinFoot, skinLeg and so on: Since they're all part of the same non-overlapping UVs, you can make one material and call it "skin_Limbs" (which is what I did), and all will be well.
However, you cannot cross the leg or shoulder lines with materials, because then you're into the skinTorso mapping, and running into overlapping. You can physically assign a new material, but it will cause a lot of problems when texturing.

Short explanation is, the words "materials" and mapping" are not synonymous or necessarily  mutually exclusive. ;-)

I too like the first one best though the last one is very close and almost imperceptibly different.
The middle one could work better if there were more extreme labia minora morphs added to the model but without additional "extreme" morphs the first and last are nice.

odf,

Quote - ... In the long run, I'd like to try a different strategy. Instead of adding figure geometry to the handles, I'd like to try adding a prop for each handle and slave the appropriate channels of the handle actors to the movements of those props....

 :blink:   Hu? I don't hold out much hope of that fixing the drop to floor problem. As the handle actor's geom would still be empty, I can't see what adding a prop to the mixture would achieve.

OK, how about this. Make the "empty.obj" geom small, but not infinitely small, say about 0.0001 Poser Units. Place this geom in the middle of the hip. Set the material to be transparent and the Diffuse and Specular to zero, you know the drill. Most of the time the handle will be hidden by virtue of being inside the hip. If it does get moved outside the hip, it will be fairly unobtrusive at that size and with those transparency settings. Even if it did show in the preview, it would be completely invisible when rendered.

I am going to try that. I will let you know the results.

If the worst came to the worst you could always put the handle geometry back in the base obj, we know it works that way, and it can still be invisible by default. Putting the geom in the base obj feels wrong, but makes no difference to the end user. The only problem I can see with it is an inconvenience for those who want to edit the base obj in a modelling app.

But I am liking it a lot. :)

odf,

OK, some faulty logic in my last post  :cursing:. If you just set the material to transparent, you won't be able to see any of the handles  :sad:. There are two solutions. Set transparent, and also set the handles to use Cartoon Display Style. This should make them visible in preview, but invisible when rendered. With this method we are relying on the small size of the alternate obj to keep it invisible. A better way is probably to use a different material in the alternate obj.

Quote - odf,

OK, some faulty logic in my last post  :cursing:. If you just set the material to transparent, you won't be able to see any of the handles  :sad:. There are two solutions. Set transparent, and also set the handles to use Cartoon Display Style. This should make them visible in preview, but invisible when rendered. With this method we are relying on the small size of the alternate obj to keep it invisible. A better way is probably to use a different material in the alternate obj.

You can make them visible in previews but invisible in renders. There's actually a pose for that in my last preview. I think that feature was added in P5.

I'm not quite sure what's causing the 'drop to floor' problem, but it was my impression that it had something to do with the geometry switching. Since Antonia-114-lo has no handle geometries and no geometry switching to add the handles, this should be easy to test. I'll do that when I get home, and then we'll know if my handle prop idea has any chance of being a useful workaround.

odf,

Try this experiment. Load "Antonia-116AltUVs", display all her handles. Select the hip, xRrotate it -90, yTran it 0.1. Now Drop her to the floor. That should have worked. Now yTran her 1.0, and Drop to Floor again. If you get the same results as me, the hiphandle has now dropped to the floor, but Antonia is still levitating way up in the air. This has happened, even with all the handles displayed! I don't know what this means, but it seems to implicate rigging of the hiphandle, and possibly the hip as well in the problem.

I note that the hip is a child of the hiphandle, and this is certainly an unusual situation. I'm going to go back to 114 Hi and see if the same thing happens with her.

odf,

I did the same experiment with 114. Same result, hiphandle drops to floor, Antonia still levitating. So having the handle geom in the base obj is not a cure. Neither is the geom switching the culprit, as 114 does not have that.

I'm going to try parenting the hip in 116 to the BODY and see if the problems persist.

Les: Well done! I'm actually kind of glad that it doesn't seem to be geometry-switch-related.

I think the current rigging with the hipHandle as the figure root and parent of the actual hip is very, very useful, and I'd rather drop the 'drop to floor' feature than that (no pun intended). But obviously, it would be good to understand where exactly the problem lies. Maybe renaming hipHandle to hip and using a different name for the actual hip is all that's needed. With Poser one never knows.

BluEcho: I like that texture. She looks like an everyday person like us with our not-so-perfect skin.

odf,

I tried parenting the hip in 116 to the BODY. It did not seem to make any major difference. Then I deleted the entire hip handle from the cr2. Repeating the same experiment, the second Drop to Floor still fails, but now if I try to execute Drop to Floor one more time, it does works! it seems that with the hiphandle gone I can always (within the constraints of this experiment) drop the figure to the floor, but it may take more than one attempt, in fact it can take several attempts, with the figure dropping down in increments with each attempt. The above is with all the handles visible. If the handles are hidden the figure won't drop to the floor.

I'm going to try removing the handle for the BODY actor, and see what happens then.

Quote - With Poser one never knows.

Never a truer word spoken!

odf,

Quote - I think the current rigging with the hipHandle as the figure root and parent of the actual hip is very, very useful, and I'd rather drop the 'drop to floor' feature than that (no pun intended).

What is so wonderful about the hiphandle? Sure you can select it then use it to move the hip, but why not just select the hip directly. I must be missing something here. Please enlighten me.

odf,

With both the hip and body handle gone, the 116 figure drops to the floor in every circumstance that I have tried, but only if the handles are visible, or rather I should say not empty. With the handles turned off, 116 still refuses to drop to the floor.

odf,

There actually seem to be two problems. One related to the hip and body handles that happens regardless of the state of the geometry switching, and another that is related to the geom switching. Perhaps in the latter Poser becomes confused because it can't solve the Drop to Floor equation for an empty actor other than the root actor which I guess must have special dispensation.

Quote - BluEcho: I like that texture. She looks like an everyday person like us with our not-so-perfect skin.

Quoted for agreement. :-)

One thing I left out of my earlier UV "lecture" from yesterday is that in the course of doing all that I was trying to anticipate what Poser users might want to have.
Being able to get a good amount of detail into an area is something you can not take advantage of if you don't want to, but can't easily add if you do, if that makes any sense.

And 50 pages of discussion on Antonia's naughty bits and an equal number of renders, sort of confirms my speculation.

Quote - odf,

Quote - I think the current rigging with the hipHandle as the figure root and parent of the actual hip is very, very useful, and I'd rather drop the 'drop to floor' feature than that (no pun intended).

What is so wonderful about the hiphandle? Sure you can select it then use it to move the hip, but why not just select the hip directly. I must be missing something here. Please enlighten me.

Am I freaking Buddha or what? :tongue2:

I just find it very useful to have some extra degrees of freedom for the body's orientation that I can save in a pose. For example, I just made a crouching pose yesterday (see my gallery), which requires an x-rotate of the hip. Let's say I want to combine this with a twist of the torso for which I now need to rotate the hip vertically. The hip's y-axis is no longer vertical, so this can become quite tricking without the extra hip handle. Of course I could always rotate the body, but saving the body transforms in a pose is not usually a good idea.

Another neat feature of the hip handle is that it allows one to make use of inverse kinematic of the legs in a more intuitive way. Instead of having to find the hip and move it around, you just grab the figure above the head.

All that said, I sometimes wonder if I shouldn't just ditch all the handle actors, the toecaps and the brows and make the figure as simple as possible. I have a dark suspicion that there's a lot of complexity in there that hardly anyone will ever use, including myself.

 Tools that are not there cannot be used. If not needed, they can be disregarded. I'd saw for now, to leave them. Are they actually harming anything?  If not, don't worry about them.  If they actually help something, leave them there.

The Hippocratic oath can apply to more than medicine. "Do no harm." :laugh:

I am starting to wonder if the handles are worth the price of loosing Drop to Floor (DTF). DTF is something that I find very useful at times. On the other hand, ever since I got Antonia, about the only thing I have done with the handles is to try to find ways to hide them!  

You have a very good point about the extra degrees of freedom offered by the hip handle. Personally whenever I run into a gimbal lock situation, I parent the figure to a primitive and use that for the extra degrees of freedom. Of course it is more convenient to have the freedom built into the figure, and it allows the the freedom to be included in a distributed pose.

Initially I thought that the breast handles were a good idea, but one limitation is that their influence stops abruptly at the collar/chest boundary, and this can look quite obvious when trying to use them for side-side movement. I have wondered if the functionality of those handles could not be better implemented by magnets, where the zones can span actors, and this is on my "to investigate" list. As to the other three handles, I have never used them, but perhaps that is because I do not understand their intended purpose. The one handle that I did have high hopes for, and would probably use very often is the one for the BODY. Much more convenient to have some actual geometry to click on, rather than waving the mouse wildly in space, hoping against hope to snare the figure circle, or as I usually do, use the dropdown menu.

Personally, unless some way can be found to solve the DTF problems, I'd give the handles the thumbs down. I think the DTF function is too valuable to loose for the sake of the handles. I'm going to make a simple test figure, to see if I can make any progress with the handle/DTF problems, but I don't hold out a great deal of hope.

As to the toecaps and brows. I think the toecaps are a great idea, and whilst I will leave it up to the texture people to decide how useful the brows are, I don't think they do any harm, as long as there is a Brows Gone morph. I was about to make a Brows Gone morph myself, but then you posted that you were including one in the next release, so I decided to wait.

Fully agree. I also suspect them being resposible for PhilC's OBj2CR2 not working with Antonia although I created the necessary files. I always get an No such actor eror.

No, I am not dead, I just felt that a cold was on it's way yesterday and decided that sleep is the best medicine. Now I am still sneezing but feeling far better and go on with the eyes and fixing the texture.

About the seperated pubic texture: In fact that leads you to nothing when you want to change the color or brightness or use hair or whatever. This part is attached to the lower abdomen and the thighs and because of this you will get a seam if you change something. But of course seperating it is good anyway: You have a different resolution (but not sooo different that it' obvious in renders) and it is far easier to tweak the skin into place. I was very happy when I saw that Mike has split the body from the pubic area!

BlueEcho@: That's a wonderful milky skin tone that should work like a dream with the VSS!!!

Quote -  Tools that are not there cannot be used. If not needed, they can be disregarded. I'd saw for now, to leave them. Are they actually harming anything?  If not, don't worry about them.  If they actually help something, leave them there.

I think I'll definitely leave the toecaps and brows in, but maybe set their "gone" morphs to 1 by default, so one only has to worry about them when they're needed.

As for the handles, apparently they do some harm. I'm not a big fan of the "drop to floor" thing myself, since it's too inaccurate. But I see that it saves some time and some people have gotten used to it. So there should be a good reason for breaking it. Of course, Poser uses all kinds of weird assumptions internally, so I wouldn't trust drop to floor to work even with all the handles gone before it had been confirmed.

Quote - I think I'll definitely leave the toecaps and brows in, but maybe set their "gone" morphs to 1 by default, so one only has to worry about them when they're needed. > Quote -

I like what you are saying. Extra features can be good, but should be optional.  :thumbupboth:

I have made a little progress in understanding the problems with the handles, but find it hard to express in terms that  are  comprehensible.

Quote -
I think I'll definitely leave the toecaps and brows in, but maybe set their "gone" morphs to 1 by default, so one only has to worry about them when they're needed.

Just my .02...
Actually, I hate when a figure has any morph on it set to anything but 0 by default.
When I first got V4 the first thing I started doing was creating new morphs for her. I searched all through the massive set of morphs that came with the original V4 super-megamaxi+++ whatever-it's called bundle for any morphs that were not at 0 and didn't find any. So then I set about creating some FBM's and discovered later that the eyes or corneas, or whatever were set to 1 or negative one. Can't remember now.
But the point is, since I overlooked that I ended with with a few useless FBM's before I discovered it, as the eye morphs were compounded atop the morphs I had made.
If it were me I'd make the morphs and put them in there, but include in the readme how to get them out. When I think how much time I've spent over the years searching through a new figure to make sure every last morph is zeroed and still miss one or two, it's made me very opposed to the idea of any morphs preset in a base figure.