phantom3D:  Do the different rigs involve changes to the way the geometry is cut, or just to the placement of joint centers and/or falloff zones?  If the cut doesn't change, you could release a main version and then release the alternate JP's as poses.

Can you post and image which shows the difference in handling between the two thigh setups?  Or one of your youTube shorts.  Just a common pose (or animation, if video) and the opportunity to observe the two versions side-by-side would make it easier to form an opinion.  Right now, either one sounds great to me!  :laugh:  :thumbupboth:

*Michael might be envious for a little while till M5 comes out, then I'm sure Daz will have trumped me. Or perhaps Anton will do a new Apollo.  But C'est la vie, I shall have to come up with something better.  :)

Sounds a bit like evolution to me - and it looks as if Brad will be - at least - the missing link. ;o))

I am not really good in posing but your idea to release trials to let people decide sounds good and will give you more opinions!

Just plain outstanding.
This figure looks superior to every similar commercial offering I've ever seen. With some good textures and acesories to make a package, DAZ should snap this up and restore some of their lost credibility. A female companion figure would be fantastic. ......I'd buy it in a heartbeat.

I for one am very very glad Mike is working on a male figure, rather than a female. :)
I do more renders with the guys, and the last time I loaded V4 (or any female for that matter) was um... yeah. Quite a while ago.
Any product purchases I make.. the first question is "What's it gonna look like on M4", be it hair, textures, clothing.
Though I'm the minority, I'm sure!

OK I am going to get these two rigs together and post them with limited functions, I will leave some things out. Need to also get a locker I guess that would be easiest.

Quote - OK I am going to get these two rigs together and post them with limited functions, I will leave some things out. Need to also get a locker I guess that would be easiest.

A locker for money? No not the easiest.

Create a site at sites.google.com.

BB is right. Or you may use something like 4shared.com. I use it when I have to store giveaways or test-files.

Well I set up a single page on my domain, my first attempt at a web page. At least it gives me somewhere to store files.

Here are the two versions of the cr2 with different thigh alignment.:

www.poserpub.phantom3d.net/attachments/File/Brad_Low_Trial.zip

There are also some Pose files included to help get used to how this figure poses. No JCM's at this time, and I have set no limits on any body parts. 

Any critique, comments, discussion is welcome on any aspect of the figure.

I will likely be adding a few poly's here and there to aid in difficult bends. He is at 14,780 poly's at this time.

Cheers,
Mike.

Bump.

Anyone try these yet? No hurry need to take a break anyway, have twenty acres of tree limbs and winter mess to get cleaned up. Land in north Idaho gorgeous, but alot of work.

It looks like the Hip1 figure can tolerate higher y rotate settings on the thigh.  It looks like z rotate is a bit cleaner, too, but I may not be posing them correctly.  

It looks like they're cut the same way and the joint differences are subtler than I'd expected.  Is that accurate?

Generally, I think Hip1 Brad comes out slightly better in (very) basic pose-testing.  But either one handles remarkably!  :thumbupboth:

They are very close, the main difference being the slight differences in mesh deformation, and on the Xrotation of the thigh Hip1 has more of a swing-rotate action to the leg which is not hard for me to "pose out" of the leg, but I was afraid people may find it too much of a bothersome thing.

Thanks for the feedback Cage. :)

Another thing I am worried about is the geometry itself. I was in hopes that someone with more experience-understanding of mesh and mesh structure might take a look.  Give it a thumbs up or down so to speak, perhaps point out the errors? I know you are busy odf, but I would really vallue your opinion of the mesh.

I am about to leave for a couple of weeks, up to the north twenty.  Hate to spend my whole vacation working but I need to get the place cleaned up (every year) Still nice though, two weeks in the boonies, just me and my dog.

Quote - I know you are busy odf, but I would really value your opinion of the mesh.

I'll see what I can do.

Winter mess - yes, here too. Finally the New Year's firecrackers showed up under the snow - but now everything is clean and white again as we got new snow ;o)

I've already picked up Brad and installed him but unfortunatly work and PoserPro 2010 got in the way...

Thanks odf! that would be great.

SaintFox:  I picked up pro today too on work time even :ohmy: Wish I could get my boss into Poser too, we could have daily poser sessions. :lol:

No internet up north (no power either) so I will be totally isolated. There is usually always snow left this time of year up there. Best time for burning, pulling out the fallen trees and all. Grade the road, fill in the wash outs. I enjoy it, nice quiet contemplation.

Gave him a quick test run in Carrara 7 Pro, handles quite beautifully. Then again it's missing the features that are typically troublesome in Carrara (like geometry switching) so we'll see.

Anyway, can't wait to play with the full version :)

The mesh looks good overall. There are some things I might have done differently, but I think that's mostly a matter of taste. I've circled some regions you might want to have another look at.

The one above the knee seems a bit ugly, particularly the two triangles that share a vertex. It also seems much denser than the surrounding bits, and I'm not sure there's a good reason for that.

The regions at the hip and the chest just seem unnecessary dense, although at the hip maybe that's intentional and helps with the bending.

See, I can't really criticize the face, since I haven't made any expression morphs for Antonia yet. But I believe that her edge flows are better, because they follow the natural line of the face more. Since you won't get into trouble if you change things around, I would suggest you make some very simple heads and see how they morph. That way you'll know what works.

Thanks hoplaa, its good to know he works well in other apps. Perhaps this geometry insertion will work well in Carrara, if not we shall have to figure out why and fix it.

odf:  Thanks, hip version 1 is my favorite as well, I got one vote for version 2 on another site, but so far its 4 to 1 for version 1.  :)
The spot above the knee is an ugly little bugger, it is left over from rearranging things. I will try to figure out something for it. I shall see if I may thin those other spots out and check the head for morphability Though I hope Carrodan will look at the morph possibilities of it since he knows much more than I do.  I am such a pest I know. :)

Thought you might like to see the "uncanny valley" portrait. Hehehe.

Quote - Thought you might like to see the "uncanny valley" portrait. Hehehe.

  :lol: :lol:

(Sorry for the pointless post.  Seeing the Uncanny Valley invoked was a ROFLMOA moment for me.)

bagginsbill: Thats really great  :biggrin:  Seeing him like that with VSS and eyes, really gives me a different perspective of what he looks like. Actually helps alot to see things I need to do too.  Man, I have to learn how to do that.

I still need to set up the material zones.  He needs more top eyelid I think. He looks great though, best he ever has so far :) Thanks for that.

Edit:  Looks like he could be a red head or that sort of orange-blond color hair.

I had to look up "Uncanny Valley" and now I am even more glad that there is Wikipedia. Of course the face and head need refinments - but so far his face has what I would call a high cuteness-factor Refining the face will for sure make him more masculine and he will loose this appeal. I know that it's necessary but I will keep the render above and store it where I stored the Brad-preview zip.

I don't think there's anything wrong with the face.  I took the Uncanny Valley statement as a compliment to the effectiveness of Brad's face.  With a realistic-ish skin shader, he begins to look real enough to hit the Scary-Spooky spot which defines the Uncanny Valley.  

Although the lack of eyebrows and lashes sort of freaks me out a bit.  :lol:

I'm very excited about Brad!  :woot:

Dang, I misspelled "ROFLMAO".  :lol:

Well... I think that the final version needs a more realistic proportion for the upper head and Phantom3d already mentioned the eyelids. And, as far as I can see it from the render, the ears need to be detached a bit more.

Thanks Cage, it will be even better bending :) The new tool in PP 2010. :woot:

SaintFox, Maybe the upper half of the face need Y scaled? I was noticing earlier that it sortof looked like a child, which is what I think you mean? I do need to pull the ears out, they got melted (smoothed) sometime during retopo.

Did I ever mention he has Antonia's ears? odf gave me leave to use them, thanks odf. I changed them a bit here and there but the base is from Antonia.

I wanted to say I am very happy with the vertice strength veiw for the joint editor. I cant say how much of an improvement just that little thing is. What used to take me hours by the old method of guestimating and watching the poly's bend to get a fallof zones zone of influence just right now takes a few minutes. I can actually see the vertices effected, soo much easier and more accurate. This is wonderfull, I think I'm going to cry.

Whoever put this in take me I'm yours. :wub:

 please don't cry.

Hi estherau, you gorgeous thing you. How you like the low poly Brad?

 I have a huge big confession.  I've just downloaded poser pro 2010 so I haven't tried him yet.
I'm kind of hoping you'll finish him soon and then I can download the finished one.
Do you want me to try him?  I'm home tomorrow evening so I can if you like.
Love esther

Your opinions would be nice to hear :) But its no hurry Esther, so when ever it piques enough interest is fine. I have to confess I have been playing in the new pp2010 too. So wonderfull, this really will make my job easier and faster.

 Yes, it's the best version of poser I've ever owned!  I love it!  Haven't crashed it yet either.

The library is very much better now, and I'm getting used to the really narrow scrolly slider (I just have to make sure my mouse is over it when I've found the thing I want before i let go, otherwise sometimes I lose my place and have to start again).
It's much more customizable and I can spread it out to see more. I love the drag and drop.

Now don't go soppy on us please.  I liked you better when you were tough and mean.

Love esther
 

Me? soppy? Alright pilgrim, say that again and you'll be pushin up daisies (in my best John Wayne imitation)  :lol:

Quote - Did I ever mention he has Antonia's ears? odf gave me leave to use them, thanks odf. I changed them a bit here and there but the base is from Antonia.

I wanted to say I am very happy with the vertice strength veiw for the joint editor. I cant say how much of an improvement just that little thing is. What used to take me hours by the old method of guestimating and watching the poly's bend to get a fallof zones zone of influence just right now takes a few minutes. I can actually see the vertices effected, soo much easier and more accurate. This is wonderfull, I think I'm going to cry.

Hooray for odf!  :woot:  I love these open projects which have been taking place in the community recently.  Reminds me of the good old days, back before everything in Poser-land turned into marketplaces and copyright concerns.  :woot:

What is this wonderful new joint tool you describe?  Is it something only in the Pro version?  I don't think I've seen it. 

I think that what Mike is referring to was added in P8.

Quote - I think that what Mike is referring to was added in P8.

Ooh!  Excellent.  I'll check it out.  :woot:  If I can just keep P8 from crashing on me long enough for me to do so.  :lol:  So much crashing!  :cursing:

Well P8 added all the new joint tools but in Pro 2010 they added the ability to display the effected vertices themselves and how strongly they are effected by the brightness of the color. So instead of having to use the wireframe mesh view of the falloff zones and watch how they effect the mesh in the smooth shaded lined display mode, I can now watch how the vertices themselves are effected. And how strongly they are effected as I move the fallof zone around. It is so much better.

It has in the past been so hard to get those falloff zones just the right size, angle and placement to grab just the vertices you want, in the right strength to get smooth bends. Most of the time you were just making an edjucated guess and fiddling with it for hours, into days, into months, into years, to finally get them just right. Now that I can actually see the vertices, while I work with the falloff zones, I can get optimum placement in just minutes. Not long anyway. All these past years of fiddling with falloff zones has taught me to know what vertices I want to grab and how strongly. But it was still a tedious long protracted process of actually getting there using the old tools.

So I guess its not really a new tool, they just gave me the ability to see what I am doing.

Quote - Well P8 added all the new joint tools but in Pro 2010 they added the ability to display the effected vertices themselves and how strongly they are effected by the brightness of the color. So instead of having to use the wireframe mesh view of the falloff zones and watch how they effect the mesh in the smooth shaded lined display mode, I can now watch how the vertices themselves are effected. And how strongly they are effected as I move the fallof zone around. It is so much better.

Ooh!  I want to go to there.  :lol:

So it basically displays the vertex weights?  About time they did that.  :woot:  You can get them through Python if you really need to, but the process is complicated and you can only visualize it within Poser by showing the averaged weights on a per polygon basis.

It sounds excellent.  Maybe this is a first step on their part toward integrating support for figures which use the weight-mapping technique for joints.  That would represent HYOOOGE growth for Poser.

Cage I had the same thought about weight mapping. I think though that that would take some serioud code changes internally in Poser. But if they ever do set it up, woa lookout! Imagine being able to paint the vertices you want to be effected by a joint rotation? And anywhere on the same mesh? But for now this is still a big, big improvement. It's like taking off a blindfold.

Quote - Cage I had the same thought about weight mapping. I think though that that would take some serioud code changes internally in Poser. But if they ever do set it up, woa lookout! Imagine being able to paint the vertices you want to be effected by a joint rotation? And anywhere on the same mesh? But for now this is still a big, big improvement. It's like taking off a blindfold.

It probably would require a huge revision of a lot of the core Poser code.  We'll probably never see it.  When Poser has new features added, it generally seems to be without touching any of the old core.  How many of the tools since Poser 4 are actually plugins?  Hair, cloth, Firefly, the Materials room, and apparently the new library all seem to fit that model.  Possibly other things I'm not remembering at the moment.  I keep hoping for some big advancement in core functionality, but I probably shouldn't expect anything, alas.  :crying:

In spite of it all, though, I love Poser.  I'm jealous of your new joint tool.  :lol:  It sounds fabulous!  :woot:  And it is a useful advancement, in itself.

Quote - It's like taking off a blindfold.

Oh my gosh, yes! I think I I badly need PPro 2010 now.

BTW, D|S shows you the vertex weights as well. I just can't get it to recognize mouse movements properly in Virtualbox, so that feature is useless to me. Poser on the other hand works fine, and from what I hear, one can even install it natively under Linux via Wine.

Just my opinion on the topology, and please odf do not take these opinions as contrary to yours, I highly respect your opinions and talent and am just adding my dos centavos as a fellow modeler...

www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/media/folder_9/file_449348.jpg

The hip and thigh area are somewhat bunched, but the loops are good are add to the overall bulk later in the mesh. So I wouldn't do away with what is there but mearly move edges around to space out those tight areas a bit.
Personally, haven't found a workable way around the nipple other than what is modeled.
More polys at the face = better morphs

Regards

Quote - More polys at the face = better morphs

That depends very much on the kind of tool you're using. But I did not mean to say that there were too many polygons in the face. What I meant is that meshes with low density are more sensitive to good or bad edge flow, so in order to see what works in terms of topology, it's best to experiment with low-density meshes first and then add more polygons for detail later.

I know that in the age of ZBrush and such, my methodology might seem a bit old-fashioned. But the funny thing is, I actually realized the importance of good topology when I tried to morph V3's face in ZBrush, which did not handle all the poles there too well. I also realized that until volumetric sculpting with subsequent (re-) topologizing came along (which is now finally happening), I'd rather work on the actual mesh than pretend it didn't exist.

 friends, romans and ODF, lend me your ears...

hehe sorry. I'm waiting for a wardrobe wizard conversion to go through so I can't use poser for awhile.
Love esther

Quote -
That depends very much on the kind of tool you're using. But I did not mean to say that there were too many polygons in the face. What I meant is that meshes with low density are more sensitive to good or bad edge flow, so in order to see what works in terms of topology, it's best to experiment with low-density meshes first and then add more polygons for detail later.

Yup, couldn't agree with you more.

Thanks DarkEdge, I do want to keep the poly's I have now for morphs, especially in the high poly version. I do get what odf was saying too, about the lines in the face. I am going to try to solve some of that by moving things around, especially for the nose to mouth lines. I will see what I can do just by shifting poly's and then make changes where I have to.

rjjack: Thanks for the render :woot:  What clothes are those? were they hard to fit?

Do any of you think his head is too large?

Well I guess most people so far like the hip version 1 (my favorite too) So I am going to go with that and finish out the hands feet and face rigging. I will get to the finnish on sculpting after that. Then it's UV time, should be fairly quick since I already have the layout etc.  I have a few days yet befor my trip to the hills so I am going to try to get much done befor I leave (maybe even stay behind for a couple days) and post it for download befor I go.

Quote -

rjjack: Thanks for the render :woot:  What clothes are those? were they hard to fit?

Do any of you think his head is too large?

the clothes are something i have modeled in less than 1 hour, they are dynamic so far, i don't try conforming until i have a more finished version.

i think the ears are too small for the head, but for me the head size is correct with the body

Not knowing too much about figure design or rigging, I want to get a clearer idea about these test rigs.
Are the proportions and basic shapes of the bodyparts in these examples just roughs at this stage
(i.e. good for testing the core functionality of the mesh / rigging interactions)?
I'm just noting that to my eyes his rough proportions look kinda wrong. He's very stocky and his neck is very thick, for example, amomg other things.

The rigs offer brilliant bends though, considering there are no JCM's at this stage - very impressive.

I'm assuming there's a lot of development to come in terms of shaping and proportioning once you've fine tuned how the basic underlying mesh structure works with the rigging techniques you decide to use.

rjjack:  Thanks for pointing that out, I get those from time to time when cutting flipping and welding. One of Zbrush's irritating habits.  Ears. Too small, noted and I will work on it.

carodan:  Yes at this stage this is rough. Any insight you would like to offer would be appreciated. In fact if you would like to set the proportions that would be super :) If you have the time.  Or just tell me what you see needs done and I will do it. I am a pestering mooch and I will take full advantage of your talents if you let me.  :biggrin:

Quote - I am a pestering mooch and I will take full advantage of your talents if you let me. 

Dang.  I wish I'd said that!  :lol:  It belongs on a t-shirt, or in a sigline.  :lol:

Sorry.  I actually had nothing legitimate to contribute the the conversation.  But I do like the clothes, up there!   :thumbupboth:

If you're including a full range of scaling options (lengthening bodyparts, adding simple bulk etc) in the rigging then to a degree you only really need to get reasonably close to an average set of human proportions. The end user can thus tweak anything they don't feel is working for them.
I don't have a specific scientific or artists reference in mind (I tend to work with references of specific people for both paintings and 3d morphs), although I'm sure someone can point you in the direction of some.
As a base shape you'll probably need to decide for yourself what body type will work best with the rigging as an average in order to permit a good range of scaling and morph variations. This is always assuming that your plan is to create a figure with such versatility in mind - not everyone agrees with this approach as it takes an awful lot of time and planning and there are limits to just how much you can do with one figure. I like the versatile figure concept though.

One approach I might opt for is to try and find a willing individual in your local area to act as a living reference - someone who generally fits the description of 'average male' (whatever that is, you decide - you can look into the various scientific studies that have been done if that appeals to you). I'm imagining someone who takes regular care of their physique at a gym (fit but not overly muscular) and who is fairly proud of their body such that the idea of being 'digitised' will appeal to their vanity. I've often found such willing individuals to sit for portrait studies - not for money but just because it intrigued them. It's worth a try IMO.

I've never made a 3d figure and only made morphs for very specific projects I've worked on, so I'm just sounding ideas here. But I do know that reference is vital to achieving realism and what could be better than a living reference.
With such a living reference you could directly measure and study bodyparts and joints in various poses and as they bend - achieve as accurate a recreation as you like. The problem with just working with data compiled by someone else is that it can be ambiguous what exactly they were measuring. Working only from photos has problems associated with camera angles and lens distortion.

Just an idea.