hmm, my ebots stopped again...sigh.

Quote - Wow, i must try Antonia and her bodysuit tonight :)

Bodysuit, where!?

CHEERS!

Drakelot made one, it's here:

www.renderosity.com/mod/rrfilelock/download.php

Above is a render. I used the Old UV one and she worked rather well. The hair is Action Hair and was quite easy to fit. I lit her with an HDR I got from Mec4D. Mec4D characters come with a python script that turns all diffuse colours to grey, once you run this, anything can be lit with an HDR.

CHEERS!

This applies to head morphs made for previous versions of Antonia. If you are loading the morphs by delta injection (from a pose file) there should be no problem. Although I have not tested this I would guess that the same applies to PMD injections, no problems.

Morph targets loaded from obj files are a different story. If you load a head morph that was made for a previous version of Antonia from an obj file, when expressed at a value of one it will cause the eye sockets to assume the same (bigger) size as in the old versions of Antonia.

This is because a delta injection only loads deltas - an amount of displacement of a vertex relative to its current position. On the other hand, when an obj is loaded as a morph, Poser calculates the current position of the vertices in the default geometry (vertices have absolute locations in space) and compares this to the position of the vertices in morph obj file. Only then does it convert this difference into deltas. So the upshot is that what you see in the obj file is what you get.

But I only did it that way because it never occurred to me to transfer the deltas directly.  :blushing:

I was posing the figure yesterday, when I noticed a spiky bit coming out of the bottom of the foot when the toes are bent.  It turned out to be the toecap, with the Toecaps-gone FBM applied.  

It isn't really a problem, as far as I know, at least when the toecap material is set to transparent.  I just wondered if this was supposed to be happening...?

Q: Who wants a tank top?

A: Me, me, me!!!

Quote - I was posing the figure yesterday, when I noticed a spiky bit coming out of the bottom of the foot when the toes are bent.  It turned out to be the toecap, with the Toecaps-gone FBM applied.

That could have implications for walk cycles. Also for Drop to Floor.

It might be better to shrink the toecap into one of the toes. Then again, I don't really see any need for the Toecaps-gone morph. The toecaps will be invisible when rendered, and if people don't want to see them in preview, they can set transparency to "Actual" in the Preview Options.

Some quick remarks:

• Object Morphs — definitely something to keep in mind! If you have morphs for an older version in obj files, I think the method proposed by Cage is probably the best. Load your original morph, load the actor's old shape as another morph, then subtract that from your morph and export the result.

• Toecap Blunder — I'm afraid that's the result of not quite thinking things through on my part. The morph for hiding the toecaps can be useful when using the wireframe mode in preview, which I often do when evaluating new morphs, particularly JCMs. Also, since transparency slows down renders, it's probably more efficient to get invisible bits behind visible ones so that the raytracer can safely ignore them. So, I'll make a new "toecaps gone" morph which will move them close to the center point for the toe rotation.

• Tank Top — Me, me, me! drools

Oh, and regarding the lower lids: yeah, I think they might be a bit on the thick side now. So I might reduce the thickness a bit. Extended tip for people who make single actor morphs: if you keep your morphs in obj files, make sure you remember which version they were made for.

Almost done.  Just have to add the thickness morph and write the documentation, then I'll start zipping stuff up.

The Chinese New Year texture will be included in the package.   This tank top for Antonia is texture-compatible with all my others, of course ....

On the other hand, my morphs are probably inadequate.  :blushing:

Quote - I've made some spandex morphs to smooth out the navel, genitals, and buttocks crease.  When the legs are bent, the hip2 JCM's create significant camel toe-ing, on the smoothed gen.  (Which, I suppose, may actually be a desirable thing for some....)  I don't think it's a problem, but it seems like it might be the sort of feedback a developer could use(?).

Thanks! I didn't expect that, so it's definitely good to know.

So here's a (usually) better way to pose the arms: user either bend or swing on the shoulders, and do the rest with the collars. That's why I tried to make the collars as mobile as possible in the latest version. Antonia's right shoulder (which as we all remember is Poserese for upper arm) is bent down and her right collar twisted backward. Her left shoulder is swung forward and her left collar twisted forward. I've then used the up-down motion on the collars to bring her shoulders back to a normal height.

Cage: I thought about that cameltoe effect you're getting, and it could easily be an artifact of the way you made your morph. But to be sure, I'd like to take a look at it.

Quote - So, I've equipped Antonia 0.9.121 with her new, official, hybrid UV mapping - all by MikeJ, except for the eyes, which are reverted to my original mapping.

From this version on, the packaging will be a little different: I'll put up the base package without the textures and contributed morphs; just the obj and cr2 files with the JCMs and the few "built-in" morphs, plus the demo poses I made for her. Since she has her own web-site now (primitive as it may be), there's no need to put everything into a big package, and by splitting things up we'll have a bit more flexibility. I'll keep maintaining the base package, and I'll host contributions from people who can't host them themselves, but otherwise I'll just put up the links, and people can update their own content when they're ready. When the stable release is out, and we have some stable add-ons that seem essential, we might go back to a more complete download package for user convenience.

Hi, I've finally gotten a bit of time to do a bit of work on those eyebrows I've been promising DPH... but been puzzled by the UVMap. BlueEcho's textures don't seem to fit (from page 34 or whatever) Antonia nor does V3's or V4's. Am I missing something? Is another texture along the way?

Hmm, I know what you mean. I couldn't get Blu Echo's textures to apply right with the newer UV's either and his were the only textures I could find. That was why I went with the old UV version for my render.

CHEERS!

Nice shrine!

Isn't that the Artbox freebie?

CHEERS!

Yes it is Rogerbee:) Thanks, The one with the Poncho is in my gallery now for a full view of it.

@ RobynsVeil and Rogerbee1: the "oldUVs" versions still work with the existing textures. The alternative mappings should be usable soon.

SaintFox and BluEcho have both made textures for the new UVs by MikeJ. But since I changed the mapping for the eyes back to the original, they need some adjustments. So please be patient. I'll prepare the updated obj and cr2 files for dphoadley's V3 remap versions this weekend and do some more testing on those, but then it's up to him to decide when they're ready for publishing.

Quote - Yes it is Rogerbee:) Thanks, The one with the Poncho is in my gallery now for a full view of it.

Pretty cool render! I like the poncho. It's a dynamic a cloth, I presume?

Yes odf,It's a dynamic a cloth...Glad you like it:)

I do too.

Good to know that there will soon be some new textures too. Not that there isn't anything wrong with the current ones!

CHEERS!

I have uploaded the files (Eyes_MJ_UVs_121.zip) I use to do this to the Texture Sets section of the developers site. I hope this does not cause any confusion. It is only meant as a temporary fix until Saint Fox updates the eye textures to the current UVs.

I think that's a good part of the problem.  My inexpert spandex morph smooths out the genital vertices in the wrong directions and doesn't cooperate well with the JCM's.

But I think there's more to it than that.  I had to clean up the same area on the garment I made, after porting over the morphs.  I think the spread and bend JCM's on hip2 move the outer labial areas of the genital region more than the inner labial areas, which leads to a genital crease when the JCM's are active.

Mind you, I'm not complaining about the effect.  It would extend the versatility of the figure and ease clothing creation (porting of JCM's) if the hip2 JCM's didn't move different parts of the genital mesh at different rates.  But the way it is now, it looks darned good on the base figure.  :D

I'm going to try to attach the OBJ for the morph.

Edit:

Okay.  My morph is attached to this post.  Change the .txt extension of the attachment to .obj.

Quote -
Mind you, I'm not complaining about the effect.  It would extend the versatility of the figure and ease clothing creation (porting of JCM's) if the hip2 JCM's didn't move different parts of the genital mesh at different rates.  But the way it is now, it looks darned good on the base figure.  :D

I'd be happy to be proven wrong, but I don't think that's even possible with JCMs. See, when Antonia kicks her leg, in order for her crotch area to transform smoothly, each vertex gets moved upward depending on its distance from the center. The ones in the middle move less than the ones further out. Since it's done by JCMs, the amount of displacement depends only on the original position of that vertex. So if you move one further out with your morph, the JCM will still displace it according to its original position. That is generally true for combining morphs. They all have to behave nicely in order to play well with each other.

The problem is that we didn't manage to set up the hip so that Poser's regular bending algorithm would take care of the crotch. If we had, things would be much easier because then each vertex would be displaced according to its morphed position, not its original one. Maybe one day when phantom3D gets tired of Brad, he'll make a female adversary for him with the same kick-ass rigging so that it will only need minimal JCMs to smooth out minor glitches. Then morphing or clothing the hip should be much easier.

That said, I'm not saying the JCMs I made are the best possible for this situation. It's just that I spent so much time on them that I think I got pretty close to the limit of my talents (and patience).

odf:  Hi :)

The main problem with the rigging the crotch with a bike shorts type hip was the position of the crotch. The crotch sticks down and out and you want the legs buttocks to move with as little as possible of the crotch moving. next to impossible with poser rigging unless you do as is usually done and put the leg center down and below the problem area, which gives horrible looking leg and hip deformations.

I have had the same problem with Brad, even worse since his stuff really sticks out :) But recently I changed the grouping in the hip area to include a genital bone, and simply grouped a small portion of the hip covering most of the genital area, which does wonders for this problem. It allows you to grab much more of the inside leg with the red fallof zone and still keep the crotch in place. (of course there are problems with mesh pull away.)

Also I moved the crotch in towards the backbone and up towards the belly which also helps alot and from looking at grays anatomy of the human male I think it's closer to correct. I have not tried on a female figure yet, but I would think the same type of thing may solve most of these issues. But I dont know,have to consider that the genital on a female may not be correct if moved up..........

When I made the rig for Antonia I tried my best to do it without moving any geometry or changing the shape, Didn't feel it was my place to change the shape. So I let some of the inside leg bulge out somewhat instead of grabbing more of it and causing breaks. I believed at the time ( I still dont know) that it was important that JCM's remove volume rather than add volume for clothing, I am not sure this is correct.

Brad also has a wealth of poly's which gives me more leeway. Antonia bends very well in my oppinion, the JCM's you have made are expertly done. I dont see why any JCM's in the clothing cannot compensate for any movement of the underlying geometry. I would think that the JCM's in clothing are of course going to be different than the ones in the figure itself, maybe close, but they still must compensate for poke through, and shape etc. so they have to be different. Conforming clothing is basically it's own figure and need not have the exact same JCM's as the parent figure, is this not correct? 

Well, just my .02

P.S.  I also changed the rotation of the center of the legs which compensates for the lack of being able to use the Y rotation of the falloff zones this also has alot to do with getting a cleaner grab on the inside leg. Many people likely will not like that it also makes the leg rotate at somewhat of an angle.  :) So prices to pay for anything done.

cheers,
Mike.

@phantom3D: I noticed a while back that I had originally placed Antonia's crotch too low, which made it virtually impossible to get the poses look right even with JCMs. So that got fixed at some point before version 118. Looking at it now, I think it would probably not hurt to move it back a bit, as well, but unfortunately I didn't realize that in time. As I always say, if you try to make your mesh do something that your body wouldn't, you're in trouble. :laugh:

If you ever try your hands at rigging Antonia again, you should feel free to modify her geometry and mesh as you see fit. Brad is an excellent demonstration of what you can do if you work holistically on a mesh and rig. Or if you prefer to make your own mesh from scratch, or based on Brad's, feel free to take whatever you can use of Antonia. That's really her purpose (except for being modeling practice for me): to be a free mesh and figure that people can use as a basis for their own work.

By the way, I'm starting to think that the legs and crotch are a walk in the park compared to getting the arms to move correctly.

As some of you asked for the textures: I've tweaked the eyebrows today and created the same collection of exe textures for the "new old" eyes. Tomorrow I will start making the material poses so you all should not have to wait very long until the texture is available

About the shoulder bending/rotation: Although we are used to handle it in a different way it is much more natural to include the collar in such a way as more as the breast will follow in a way that is close to what happens when real women  move their arms.

Quote - The tank top has been submitted to Renderosity's Free Stuff.  It should show up in the next day or so.

That looks fantastic. I'm happy to see that Antonia's starting to fill her wardrobe.

Quote - As some of you asked for the textures: I've tweaked the eyebrows today and created the same collection of exe textures for the "new old" eyes. Tomorrow I will start making the material poses so you all should not have to wait very long until the texture is available

That's excellent news.

Quote - About the shoulder bending/rotation: Although we are used to handle it in a different way it is much more natural to include the collar in such a way as more as the breast will follow in a way that is close to what happens when real women  move their arms.

Edit: Oh, when you say breast you mean chest. :laugh: I wrote a whole passage on how her breasts don't follow her collar movements, then realized that wasn't what you were talking about. Yes it's quite true that by using the collar actors one gets a much more realistic movement of the upper chest.

*Well, except that Antonia's collar movements don't actually include her breasts.

You are right. I just gave it a try and I was not able to repeat the effect I (thought I) saw on you image above. Now I see as well that it's a kind of clever shadow-play.

I thought about moving her breasts with the JCMs, but decided it would be better to implement the breast movements separately later.

odf,

I am going to do a rerig for Antonia. I really like working with her mesh. Personally I have never been able to even make a decent low poly mesh to work with. I want to try these new ideas on her and see how they come out. I really think I can get the same deformations. Some may not like the change in the rot of the centers for the thighs but it is really very easy to compensate for (by just using the Y and Z in posing the leg) and it lets you grab that inside leg , much closer to the crotch.

Yes the arms and shoulders are a real biznitch. There are so many different movements going on in some small spaces. I messed up with Brad a bit in the geometry in that it does not lend itself to much twist of the collar at all, so I put in an extra part, I have a collar, shldr, and arm. this let me use the shldr and arm for twist (a small amount in the collar)

Thanks for Antonia odf, when I get time I will make some clothing for her. I would like to try and make some geometry inserted clothing, it has been going round and round in my mind since I learned of the idea. 

Oops a little late with my post :)  

Looks very good so far.

So does this have any JCM, you considering that possibility? In some cases it's the best way to get something like a pointy vs flat elbow in different positions.

odf :

Thank you for the response.  I don't think the tone of my last post was what I'd intended.  I should have been asking questions about the current setup, rather than jumping to conclusions based on incorrect assumptions and posting those conclusions as assertions.  Bad habit of mine.  My apologies.  :blushing:

The current figure setup is wonderful and there's nothing in it about which to complain.  This is simply the best-handling Poser figure I've ever seen, and that fact has me very excited.  It's an amazing accomplishment!  I don't mean to seem critical of your work.  I get a bit carried away in my excitement.

I just need to figure out how to adapt my figure and character creation processes to the new (to me) techniques Antonia uses.  And try to keep my enthusiasm under control.

Quote - Looks very good so far.

So does this have any JCM, you considering that possibility? In some cases it's the best way to get something like a pointy vs flat elbow in different positions.

Ha! She's got quite a bit of JCM - how do you think her thighs bend so well? For asking this silly question, I now demand that you read this entire thread - BACKWARDS!!! ;-p

BTW, she thins down quite well, I have a nice set of magnets that make her look a bit like a young Audrey Hepburn, which I'm waiting to release until the official 1.0 is ready (but I could put them on the dev site if I had access...).

@Cage: No harm done! I had no problem with your tone, and your assumption was plausible enough. I hope I didn't come across as patronizing in my response, because I know I've been guilty of that before.

For your spandex morph, try to pull vertices forward without spreading them out. That should give you decent results in most poses. Unfortunately, it means that you won't be able to use automatic smoothing (at least not without additional work), and the whole thing gets quite tedious. I thought I had made a morph to flatten out the vulva at one point, but I can't find it.

I think the problem with JCMs for clothes is that everything is very close together in that region, so although I haven't tried it myself, I would expect any program that converts the morphs over will have a hard time figuring out what's what and probably need some manual help.

Keep going guys!

It's time Daz were shown just what the little people can do. Antonia is brilliant and can only get better.

CHEERS!

Quote -

For your spandex morph, try to pull vertices forward without spreading them out. That should give you decent results in most poses. Unfortunately, it means that you won't be able to use automatic smoothing (at least not without additional work), and the whole thing gets quite tedious. I thought I had made a morph to flatten out the vulva at one point, but I can't find it.

What program are you using to build the mesh and shape it?  Is there any way people could morph the lower resolution mesh and use the same process you do, to intensify it, preserving the morphs?  Working with the low res mesh would be easier, obviously, for those of us with less skill.... 

I suppose I should try to break out Modo and actually use it for something other than the 3D paint.  Sigh.  Learning curves.

I tried to read the thread backwards at one point, but only got about halfway through.  :unsure:

.ti od dluoc I taht erus ton ma I .erohc laer a eb dluow sdrawkcab daerht eht gnidaeR

kml
 

Quote - .ti od dluoc I taht erus ton ma I .erohc laer a eb dluow sdrawkcab daerht eht gnidaeR

kml
 

Zatanna?  Is that you?  Isn't that the spell you used to turn Aqualad into a platypus?

OK.  Sorry for the OT.    Bad Cage. 

 Ha, Zatanna! LOLOLOL At least she didn't have to shove food up her butt and crap out her mouth like on South Park,TOO!  :laugh: There is SO much goofy stuff in comic books! Her outfit was strange, but it made sense since she WAS a Las Vegas Magician /show girl at one time.

WHY am I thinking of Antonia in a Zatanna outfit, now? :lol:

Quote -
What program are you using to build the mesh and shape it?  Is there any way people could morph the lower resolution mesh and use the same process you do, to intensify it, preserving the morphs?  Working with the low res mesh would be easier, obviously, for those of us with less skill.... 

I use Wings3D for everything. The hi-res mesh is just a one-step subdivision of the low-res one. That's the simple version. Unfortunately, there are complications:

1) The vertex ordering for Antonia's mesh is a bit of a historical artifact. :laugh: I've added and removed bits and pieces and such, so the order in which Wings spits out the vertices after subdividing is probably not the one you need when you apply your morphs. The famous Morpher tool (by Kawecki, if I remember correctly) might help with that.

2) I've used a few hard edges (implemented via smoothing groups in the obj file) in the original mesh to prevent certain boundaries from sliding around when subdividing. For Poser, I had to remove those because I don't want them to actually be hard edges in renders. That means you would have to use a version of the mesh with the hard edges put back in. Obviously, I can provide you with such a mesh, but if you need to work on a posed or deformed mesh exported from Poser or D|S, that still won't help you.

1. If you apply the subdivision to just one actor, the boundary of that actor gets deformed. So you'd have to work on the whole mesh, then subdivide and finally extract the part of the mesh that belongs to the actor you're actually interested in.

I've written my own software to manage Antonia's mesh and morphs, which has some clumsy ways of dealing with issues 1 and 2. Unfortunately it is slow, very memory-hungry and requires you to specify three input files in the right order on the command line. I haven't implemented a solution for issue 3 yet. At some point, I'd like to optimize and streamline that software and smash a GUI on it, so that other developers can benefit from my work. I'm happy to share the current version with anyone who's brave enough to use the command line. It's at http://github.com/odf/meshes, and for those of you who for mysterious reason's don't know how to get Scala code to execute (tss, tss! :laugh:), I can put a snapshot in a .jar. If you ask very nicely, I might even provide some sad excuse for real documentation.

Ooh.  I liked the simple version.  LOL

I'm interested in your mesh management software, but Scala is a mystery to me.  If there's a guide for the specifics of the entries to make on the command line, I might be able to hack my way through as well as I can using the DOS command line in Windows.  :unsure:

What would a .jar snapshot do?

Quote -
What would a .jar snapshot do?

That would be a pre-compiled and pre-packaged version that you could use from any Java installation, without knowing anything about Scala.

Quote -
That would be a pre-compiled and pre-packaged version that you could use from any Java installation, without knowing anything about Scala.

Ooh!  That's the stuff!  That would be wonderful!  :D