Quote - > 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.

Well, I thought about that. Then again, if you make an FBM based on a mesh exported from Poser, you deserve to be punished severely and without mercy. (Edit: smiley removed because it's really not funny. Don't trust ANYTHING Poser spits out of it's unholy belly, EVER!)

Then again, for head morphs there's usually not much of an alternative. So maybe I should include an unmorphed head mesh anyway that people can use as a basis for morphs. And of course I would include any weird stuff like morphs not set to 0 by default in the readme.

No, not exported from Poser.
C'mon man, you should know I would never do that., since I've said I always use the geometries OBJ in Lightwave for that.
And remember, I was the one who discovered Antonia Head Bob Syndrome, due to my learned nitpickiness when t comes to morphs. ;-)

I mean, sliding morph dials for things such as expressions or the like,within Poser and then creating a full body morph through the menu. Which as you know will then take every MT that has a value other than zero and combine it into one FBM slider, including any you didn't want.

It's the cornea-bulge morph and it gives me headaches for every custom morph I do for V4. I do them from the original obj as well and as you may know we are not allowed to redistribute a DAZ morph either than by dial-settings. It is VERY easy to overlook that morph and create a delta for it and this way redistribute it...
But this may be not important with Antonia, I do not know what the finished license for her would say about her morphs.

Something completely different: I have uploaded a bodyexture with altered inner labias. May the one or other please load it, replace it in her materiral settings and see if this version fits? As said: I have no problem to make more versions but want to update the set only when we all are satisfied.

I am working on what I call the extra-eyes at the moment and like what I see so far. The only thing that's giving me headaches is the hard edge between cornea and sclera and the pupil/iris edge. They are too hard - of course - and need to be blended with a transparency map. At the moment I am trying my luck with the cornea, but the material settings I use here use the transparency channel and whatever I try to add a transparency map looks wrong. But I will quit for today as one should never work on such things when tired and try again tomorrow.
As you may see from the render the eye looks a bit like a doll's eye at the moment as the sclera and the cornea are not grown together but seperate parts. But sooner or later I'll figure something out to blend them together!

Here is a shot of the body front.
The texture has not been color-altered from the original photo at all, no bump maps yet either.

Quote - No, not exported from Poser.
C'mon man, you should know I would never do that., since I've said I always use the geometries OBJ in Lightwave for that.
And remember, I was the one who discovered Antonia Head Bob Syndrome, due to my learned nitpickiness when t comes to morphs. ;-)

I mean, sliding morph dials for things such as expressions or the like,within Poser and then creating a full body morph through the menu. Which as you know will then take every MT that has a value other than zero and combine it into one FBM slider, including any you didn't want.

Oops, sorry! I think I had a case of the dumbs there.

I am a strong believer in the principle of least surprise. Setting any morphs to non-zero values by default clearly violates that.

And that's exactly the problem with including options that most people won't use. You want to turn them off by default, obviously. But when turning them off by default creates problems, you have effectively shot yourself in the foot.

So if I had to decide again, I'd throw both the handles and that extra geometry out of the window. But removing the brows would create another big problem, since it would break all the existing face morphs. So they'll stay, and if they do, I see no good reason why the toecaps shouldn't.

With the handles, I'm not so sure. That "drop to floor" problem might very well be the final straw for me.

SaintFox: Antonia's licensing will be - and in fact is already - such that people can do with her whatever they want and redistribute that freely. I'm not sure if that's compatible with the texture resources you're using, so we might have to talk about separate licensing at some point. But the base figure with all its built-in morphs will definitely go under those conditions.

Ah well, Olaf, I was just giving my opinion on it. :-)
As for me, being that I feel I have a pretty good grasp of what's going on with Antonia's development, I'm not concerned about it much. For that matter, the problem like I mentioned above will never happen again, because as a result of it I learned to double and triple check things before I commit to anything, morph-wise.

So I was just thinking about other end users... but then again, you can't please everyone, and you can't completely dummy-proof anything. ;-)

So whatever you decide is what you decide. Strangely enough, I have very few opinions regarding changes I'd like to see in Antonia. You and people like Les here are the experts on Poser, and I'm just planning on using her in other programs, so I can make any changes I want without it affecting the final Antonia for Poser.

I have to say too, I'm not really following any of this DTF/Handle stuff, and Les totally loses me at times. ;-)

That eye looks pretty good, SaintFox, seems to have some actual depth to it, which was what I was hoping for when I was modeling it.

I don't have any suggestions for the cornea/sclera hard edge problem though. Just some kind of gradient transition is all I can think of.

That iris though seems pixellated or blurred. Do you have any higher resolution iris textures?

That blurring is cause by resizing the iris - unfortunatly I have either lager or smaller iris-photos but that is no problem, this is just a "test-iris" I've created rather quickly. Once the cornea-sclera problem is solved I will resize the template I use to match most of the iris-photos I have here.

Quote -
As you may see from the render the eye looks a bit like a doll's eye at the moment as the sclera and the cornea are not grown together but seperate parts. But sooner or later I'll figure something out to blend them together!*

[/quote*

Have a look at the screen shot. The cornea and sclera aren't separate parts, they're welded together as objects, and the UVs are together as well. Maybe you meant something else?

At any rate, remember, that eye I made was just a test object that came about during that long discussion on eyes in the beginning of September, and was never meant to replace Antonia's eyes.
That discussion died though, and I don't remember now if there was ever really a conclusion to it - if or how Antonia's eyes were going to change.
Even so, that eye is 3,391 polygons, so a pair of them is 6,782, which is probably way too much for eyes in a Poser figure. Since it was just a test of different iris shapes I didn't worry about trying to optimize the polygon count.

So I never meant for those to be Antonia replacement, or even alternate eyes. That mesh has other problems as well, such as the edges close to the pupil are too sharp.

SaintFox: I think the new labia look much better, although you probably brightened the "pink bits" more and over a larger area than would have been necessary. What's crucial, I think, is more a smooth transition of tones, particularly in the region around the clitoris hood, than the absolute difference in brightness.

Anyway, as far as I am concerned, this version should be fine for anything but gynecological closeups, and Antonia wasn't created with the necessary detail for that kind of thing anyway.

odf,

Re the DTF problems.

Hypothesis:
DTF works by finding the lowest point in the geometry for the entire figure geometry, then doping the actor below the root actor in the hierarchy until the lowest point in the overall geometry touches the ground (y=0).

The actor below the root actor in Antonia is the hiphandle, this is the part that moves when DTF is used.
---*---
To simplify investigating the DTF problems I deleted the handle for the BODY. I think at least that handle will have to go, but it may be possible to save the others. With the BODY handle gone, I note the following.

If the hip is always moved via the hiphandle, there will usually be no problem. The exception is when the handle becomes the lowest point in the figure, as for example when the handle is zRotated 180° so that she is upside down.

A problem arises if the hip itself is yTranslated so that the feet are above the handle. In that case DTF will terminate when the hiphandle reaches the ground, leaving the rest of Antonia up in the air. A similar situation can come about in reclining poses where the hip has been X or Z translated.

One simple solution is to hide the translate channels in the hip, forcing the user to use the handle for translations. A more complicated fix may be possible by slaving the translations of the handle to the hip, so that when the hip is translated the handle will always stay in the same location relative to the hip. With this fix, moving the handle would move the hip twice, once by virtue of the parenting, and once by virtue of the ERC. So extra ERC would be needed to cancel one of the motions. I have only done this in my mind, and don't know if it is really possible, but I will try it out soon. That covers the problem specific to the hiphandle.

Now on to the problem with the geom swapping. The handles need to have some actual geometry at all times for the DTF thing to work. The alternative geom can be so small that it is not noticeable in Poser. I strongly suspect that your null size geom will do the job, and that the problems you experienced when using it were related to the issues discussed above. If you like you can attach the null size geom to a post, and I will verify that it works.

One very important point with the Handles Gone geometry, I feel it should be in the same position as the normal hiphandle. Otherwise DTF may act differently depending on which handle is swapped in. With the Handles Gone geometry swapped in, all the other handles would assume the same position as the hiphandle. This is an advantage because it means that the hip and breast handles would not be an impediment when using DTF in reclining poses.

With one of the fixes for the hiphandle implemented, and the Handles Gone geometry swapped in, the only residual problem would be in poses where the hiphandle is the lowest point, such as head down poses where Antonia has been inverted by rotating the hiphandle. I for one feel that I could comfortably live with that situation.

So the action required is: Delete the handle for the BODY actor, implement a fix for the hiphandle, check and if necessary change the position of the Handles Gone geometry.

I will investigate the ERC fix for the hiphandle, and report back with my results.

odf,

OK, I think we can forget about the ERC fix for the hip. Whilst I had not visualised it correctly, the basic idea was sound, when the handle is translated via the dial. Unfortunately I had forgotten about a bug that happens when slaving translations. As soon as you try to move the slaved actor via the mouse, it goes crazy.

I also tried using 'linkParms'. Again it seemed to work fine with the dials, but the other actor did not respond when either part was  moved via the mouse.

Mike, please(!!): I am aware that this is just an experiment!! And sometimes I am worried about my limited english that disables me as soon as it comes to more than smalltalk...

Yes, sclera and cornea are physically one part but the cornea needs completely different material settings than the sclera and that's where I have to experiment to melt together what belongs together ;o)

As for the pubic area I'll experiment some more now that I begin to understand what overall look you're after.

Quote -
As for the pubic area I'll experiment some more now that I begin to understand what overall look you're after.

You could load the low-poly figure and try the "labia detailed" morph of the hip. That will show you where the clitoris hood is supposed to be. I think having a smooth transition from the skin above into the hood is the most important bit. I actually made an experiment where I just cloned the surrounding skin onto that region, and that looked pretty decent, at least with the morph applied.

The base figure only has that extremely stylized genital area because morphing the hip with all those folds in the way was a major pain. It's not meant to be used that way, at least not for "full frontal noodity" renders.

But don't spend too much time on that stuff, unless you really want to.

lesbentley: Many thanks for doing the research! That sounds like a plausible explanation of what DTF does. As for the proposed workarounds, I really feel that it would be too much effort to do all this just to be able to keep the handles in.

I think I'll just ditch them for the upcoming preview, and see if anyone throws a fit over it. :laugh:

Speaking of which: I know I said I was going to upload in time for the first birthday of this thread. Happy belated birthday, thread, by the way! But then I got distracted making new poses and rendering them. After that I thought about the licensing again and how it would affect texture maps made from commercial resources, and got a bit worried. So I wrote to the good people from 3d.sk and asked them for a copy of their license, because I can't find it online anymore. I'm hoping to get permission to distribute one or two texture sets with Antonia under the CC license, or at least some clarity on how I am allowed to distribute those textures.

I've been reading this thread for 12 months? Damn.

That's time well spent.

Nice work team.

Quick, someone model a candle!

SaintFox,

Ok, I see what you meant now, by "not grown together". I interpreted that as not "welded" together, as in separate meshes, but you meant the textures were not yet blended together to your satisfaction.

I just wanted to make it clear, in case you were seeing something different, or thinking something was different. And IIRC, I had uploaded a few different versions of that, so I wanted to make sure you were even using the same object I was thinking about. :-)

Yes, I mean "grown" like you would say about a real human eye. Sooner or later I'll figure something out as in fact your eye is better than many commercial products I saw so far - so there must be a way to blend both parts softly together!!

I just noticed this too:

Quote -
Once the cornea-sclera problem is solved I will resize the template I use to match most of the iris-photos I have here.

Yes, I know you know it was just a test object, so I won't mention that again. ;-)
Umm, but I'm wondering now what other people think. As I mentioned, the eye discussion just kind of died after a few days and a few pages of discussion, and nothing was ever resolved.

As I recall, it was lesbentley who brought it up, saying he wasn't satisfied with the look of the eyes, or more specifically, the look of the iris in a render. The problem was the iris shape, which led to a bunch of discussion and photos, which led to me making that object above.

Now I personally think that image you uploaded a few posts up is one of the best eye renders I've seen out of Poser. The eye object itself has problems, but even so, it appears to have more depth than what you normally see in a Poser render. Most of them are  just very 2D looking, like image maps applied to a surface.
Is that because the iris shape is different than what Poser eyes usually are? Or am I just imagining that?

Quote - Yes, I mean "grown" like you would say about a real human eye. Sooner or later I'll figure something out as in fact your eye is better than many commercial products I saw so far - so there must be a way to blend both parts softly together!!

Oh well thank you. :-)

I would think just a transparency map to blend the sclera in with where it meets the cornea, but I'm assuming you've already tried that. But I'll try to think up something. Maybe there's a better way to go about setting the material groups, and if I get some time I'll experiment around with it.

I've already tried this. I used the Cornea  and Sclera material settings I've used for the standard eyes, of course with the new texture, and then used a transparency with a kind of faded dot to blend the Cornea into the sclera. I have to say that I used the sclera texture on the cornea as well to have a nice blending area where the cornea and the sclera are grown together. What I got was a strange milky seam that looked pretty unnatural. Then I used the same material on sclera and cornea and a larger transparency on both materials to make each blend into the other. The result was a bit better but of course the cornea now lost it's effect as all that was left after the transparency did it's work was a glossy effect....

But I do not give up, I've worked with so many different eyes so far that I will find something for this one as well.

The only change in the model itself I can think of that MAY have an effect is if the sclera slightly overlaps the cornea, close to what we have for the standard eye.

The realstic effect may be caused by the fact that there is lots of space between the cornea and the iris so that there is an illusion of intraocular fluid. But it may be necessary to sharpen the iris a bit more (so far I hesitate to resize the whole texture) to create the little bit of idealized look we 3d-people are used to.

Quote -
The only change in the model itself I can think of that MAY have an effect is if the sclera slightly overlaps the cornea, close to what we have for the standard eye.

Okay, well if you'd like me to make some alterations to it, or even make a whole new sclera, or even some kind of "strip"of polygons to fake that, let me know what you need and I'll be happy to do it. :-)

Give me some days and I send some renders with the problematic areas!
And I have a request about the standard eyes we use at the moment but need the opinion of the other texturers:

Would you mind to remap the sclera (and only this, everything else works perfectly) so that veins and details are less stretched? I think Leo/Digtal-Lion posted a possible mapping some sites and days ago.
And before you remap it: How do the other texturers think about it and are they willing to re-create the sclera?

Okay... off to bed for some hours 

Quote -
And I have a request about the standard eyes we use at the moment but need the opinion of the other texturers:

Would you mind to remap the sclera (and only this, everything else works perfectly) so that veins and details are less stretched? I think Leo/Digtal-Lion posted a possible mapping some sites and days ago.
And before you remap it: How do the other texturers think about it and are they willing to re-create the sclera?

When you say "standard" do you mean Antonia 114 with the original mapping, or Antonia 116B, with the mapping I did?
Because I just checked and...wow, the scleras are stretched. Big time. I don't know how I let that get by, how I didn't notice it, but I'm definitely gonna fix it as soon as I get a chance.
Even if you didn't mean the mapping I did, I'm going to have to fix it. I can't let them stay the way they are...

wanders off shaking his head and mumbling...

I'm using SaintFox's texture "toni-eyepr.jpg" that I got a long time ago. I like this UV mapping a lot. Very easy to work with. Only problem I had with it was there was some junk in the pupil, so that it wasn't perfectly black. I fixed that up with a few nodes, so I didn't have to change the texture.

This eye has only two parts, and only two material zones. The sclera + iris + pupil is one part. Then there is a cover over the whole thing that includes the cornea bulge.

We were wondering about the right iris geometry - concave, flat, donut? And how should the sclera-iris and the iris-pupil transition be arranged? I think I'm close to a good geometry. Testing with a side light here seems to do what we want.

Mike: I am talking about the actual Antonia 116 mapping - and never mind, we all donÄt have to redo all the eyes, we just have to fix one and the same sclera on all the maps.

bagginsbill: This looks so awesome smooth and real that I'd like to adopt your settings for the actual version if you don't mind. Would you upload the material settings as soon as you are satisfied with them?

Edited because I didn't read closeley: I see that you re-modelled the eye... Maybe you want to have a look at the actual version (116) as well as it looks a lot as if we'll adopt it's new UV maps with the exception of the sclera that Mike will remap them soon.

bagginsbill,

That eye looks absolutely wonderful!

Yes, that does look great, BB.
If we're voting, I'd say replace Antonia's current eyes with a pair of those. How many polygons?
My only gripe wit that design is it will make pupil morphing a real chore, but that would have been the case for the one I made too, for the same reason.

Quote - We were wondering about the right iris geometry - concave, flat, donut? And how should the sclera-iris and the iris-pupil transition be arranged? I think I'm close to a good geometry. Testing with a side light here seems to do what we want.

The eye looks great, but I think the iris is too convex, as you can see from the extra highlight on the edge of the iris in your render.

Regarding morphing, it seems something I said was missed. I said it is TWO PARTS. So it is easy to morph the pupil - don't load the cover OBJ, or hide it.

The cover needs to be a separate actor, because we need to disable shadows on it. I talked about this but it went over everybody's head, apparently. You cannot get Poser to avoid casting a shadow unless you make a part transparent. If you make it transparent, then you can't use refraction. If you don't use refraction, the eye doesn't look real like this.

Saintfox wants me to look at the existing eye, but my reason for going silent was I was afraid my subtle issues would be tough to convey and it would be easier to just make an eye myself, decide the geometry, how many parts, how many materials, what the materials should be, etc. Too many things to explain to another modeler or UV mapper or whatever type person. It's easier for me to just finish this myself and hand it over.

Regarding poly count - what do you want it to be? My mesh builder is parametric with a Level of Detail setting. So I can make any poly count you want.

Here, from left to right, the polycount is:

LOD 3 = 456 polygons
LOD 4 = 896
LOD 5 = 1480
LOD 6 = 2064
LOD 7 = 2800

Quote - > Quote - We were wondering about the right iris geometry - concave, flat, donut? And how should the sclera-iris and the iris-pupil transition be arranged? I think I'm close to a good geometry. Testing with a side light here seems to do what we want.

 

The eye looks great, but I think the iris is too convex, as you can see from the extra highlight on the edge of the iris in your render.

You mean cornea, not iris. The iris is not convex - it is a concave curve and does not rise at all above the sclera.

The cornea is the bulge in the eye cover prop, and I don't think it is too convex, and even if it was, the issue is not convexity of the cornea, but the rate of change of slope where the cornea merges with the sclera. This is adjustable in my model, but I have seen this triple specular reflection in real life and I specifically set about to re-create it. None of the Poser eye models I've ever seen did this correctly.

oooooooooo!   pretty toy!  i want one!

Quote -
Regarding morphing, it seems something I said was missed. I said it is TWO PARTS. So it is easy to morph the pupil - don't load the cover OBJ, or hide it.

"The sclera + iris + pupil is one part"
That wasn't missed and I can see it's quite obviously two parts.
I'm saying the problem will be in sliding all those edges around to make the pupil larger or smaller, more opened or more closed. Not a problem really, but a chore.
There's not much way around that though if you want better accuracy in rendering.

Quote -
The cover needs to be a separate actor, because we need to disable shadows on it. I talked about this but it went over everybody's head, apparently

Since I can't help but feel that was directed at me...
I don't remember you saying that, but even so when I was doing my test I wouldn't have been concerned about it, being that I'm not terribly concerned about Poser's shortcomings when it comes to rendering.
Even so, you must learn to have more tolerance when dealing with those lesser in cognitive abilities than yourself... You probably should sooner or later realize that not everyone here hangs on your every word and perks up to full attention the moment you enter the room.

seriously, though.  it has exactly the shading i've always wanted in an eye.  and thank you for working around the shadow issue.  i knew exactly the problem you were talking about (as i think you know, i had a problem with some windows once), but never thought of that simple of a solution.

bagginsbill,

Quote - Regarding poly count - what do you want it to be? My mesh builder is parametric with a Level of Detail setting. So I can make any poly count you want.

I have no idea what would be a reasonable polygon count, but I note that a single eye for the hi-res Antonia is about 104KB as an obj on disk. There are 723 vertices in the eye, so I guess about 180 polys. On the one hand we want good looking eyes, on the other, there is no point in the eyes being able to sustain a level of magnification out of proportion to the rest of the head.

bagginsbill: Those eyes look awesome. If I can have them for Antonia, I will be overjoyed.

For technical reasons, I'd probably modify Antonia's existing eyes to match your specs rather than plug in your model, i.e. I'd cut off the cornea from the sclera and extend it to form the cover part, then attach the iris to the sclera and adjust the shapes. But the material settings and the model to use as a guide would be highly appreciated.

I must have skipped over the separate actor bit when you explained these things earlier. It shouldn't be a problem, as those extra actors would simply be locked to follow the movements of the proper eye actors.

lesbentley: Slight correction there: the polygons share vertices, so in a typical quad mesh one has about the same number of polygons as vertices. In a fully triangulated mesh, one would have appraximately twice as many polygons as vertices.

Quote - lesbentley: Slight correction there: the polygons share vertices, so in a typical quad mesh one has about the same number of polygons as vertices. In a fully triangulated mesh, one would have appraximately twice as many polygons as vertices.

Doh! I made the stupid assumption that as there are 4 vertices per quad, I needed to divide by 4. Totally overlooking the fact that each vertex is part of 4 quads. 

You said there will be some difficulty (a chore) morphing the pupil dilation? Why? There's nothing in the way of your reaching it - which is what I thought you were referring to as a problem.

Also, apparently the significance of "parametric" geometry building is not getting across. I'm not trying to be insulting, but I literally do not have time to explain everything I'm thinking about, so I use words that mean what I mean in the shortest possible sentence. The result is if you skip a few words of mine, then you don't actually know what I'm saying. I don't expect people to hang on my every word. But I do expect them to respond only after having read every word, otherwise we get into very cognitively dissonant conversations. If you don't have time to read every word I write, then please do not tell people what problems you think there will be, because you probably don't get what I'm saying accurately. ;-) In particular, parametric here means I built it using parameters. I did not manually model this as others do. Which means pupil dilation is trivial, not a chore. You've lost me and I've lost you, except I can demonstrate what I'm saying with this picture.

Here are a bunch of pupil dilation morphs. These were generated by the script, not by me. I can dial in any pupil radius I want.

Cut myself short. I just said "here are a bunch of pupil dilation morphs". You may think I meant to say here are various settings of a pupil dilation morph.

No. I mean those are 5 different morphs. Not only is the pupil changing size, the distribution of fibers in the iris is being altered in different ways. The point is each of these 5 morphs could not be exactly produced from dial changes of the other 4.

In practice, only one of these is needed, but theoritically more is possible than simply changing pupil diameter.

No problem with the materials.

But why would you not use this geometry? If you do your own, I will not be able to provide parametrically generated morphs. For example, here in just a couple minutes I made morphs to produce lizard eyes, bird eyes, cat eyes, etc. How long would this take you guys modeling by hand? It literally took me two lines of script and less than a minute to do.
 
 

bagginsbill: I keep explaining this, but apparently it just goes over people's heads.

The high-poly Antonia for use in Poser is generated from the original mesh by Catmull-Clark subdivision. I do all my sculpting and morphing on the low-poly version, then transfer to the high-poly version programmatically. Now I could add an exception for the eyes and just use the same resolution for both versions of Antonia. But I don't quite see why I should. Morphs like the ones you showed are trivial to make in the low-poly eyes. It's less than a dozen vertices to move around. All the surrounding stuff like transfering the morph, generating the deltas and so on, is where the real work is done. Obviously, I go on automating this stuff more and more as I go along and the workflow becomes clearer to me. But my point is that much more effort goes into these things than the original vertex pushing.

What I'm trying to say is, it certainly wouldn't hurt me to use your new parametric eyes, but it wouldn't give me any particular advantage that I can see, either.

I get what you're saying, but you have to be exaggerating when you say its less than a dozen vertices to move around.  If you are that low poly, even with Catmull-Clark, then you can't possibly produce the curves I made.

[Added Later]

Perhaps you mean control points of a surface of revolution. Then I can see it being less than a dozen, because that's how I made it.