So I just saw the banners for Miki 3.0 (no idea how long it's been announced for) and I must admit I am hesitant to be excited about it.  Miki 1 and 2 were massive let downs.  Miki 1 bent terribly but at least had a face you could do interesting things with.  Miki 2, bent slightly better, but couldn't use any of Miki 1's clothing or textures and still bent terribly.  I felt very ripped off as a consumer.

Given how unsatisfying the G2 figures have been in general, and how unusable whatever the figure that came with P8/Pro 2010 is, I am leery to say the least about the quality of Miki 3.0.

Has anyone seen any info out there showing otherwise?  I would like to be wrong and see them make a really bang up figure with Miki 3.0.

She's very cute, but I'm not sure either. I'll do like I normally do and wait until a bunch of other folks have her first and see what they say ;o).

Laurie

I'm like Laurie, I'd like to see others use her first. I'm kinda so so on her myself. :)

You guys thinking P8+ rigging

(I wish it were Sydney 2)

P8+ rigging might be a way of them trying to leverage more people into buying P8. Wouldn't surprise me.

yes. how dare they rig for their own program's features... it's not like anyone else does that....oh wait.

Thanks for the laugh.

Quote - You guys thinking P8+ rigging

(I wish it were Sydney 2)

A Sydney 3 would be nice. I wouldn't mind if they made a lower poly count version too. The high poly count and some wonky bends from the extra middle rigging in her torso were the only things that kept me from using her.

Well, I wish them well and best of luck with their Miki 3. I still occasionally use Miki1020. Aery Soul did her good with their morphs.

It was announced in the newsletter from CP that I got this morning.

I am really excited about the release of Miki 3.Miki 2 and the G2 Girls (sounds like a rockband) are my favourite Poser figures.I don't care about Victoria 3 and 4 and yes P8 figures are a mess - completly useless.Maybe Miki 3 is planned as a excuse for those P8 freaks.

Wouldn't it be nice to see the G2 figures all upgraded to the P8 rigging?!?

I cant wait for miki3 :D so excited
just also nervous to see if her rigging is decent
since poser 8 figures are well crap! lol
and i hope they didnt change her body and face shape to much
but i do hope they edited her geometry a bit since some areas were badly made i think on miki 2
but still cant wait to see more of her :D

edit: also i cant believe they called her Miki Smith on her facebook page lol :S

Ohoh,I see lots of Days working on another Druuna ;) .

 The-3DArtist has some pictures ( untextured) of Miki3 at DeviantArt: 
http://fav.me/d2oyr1v 

Yes. I do. Though now I'm not sure I was supposed to put those up. 

do you have a pic of her default body shape? that you could show us

Not handy and for right now at least, I'm going to refrain from posting any other pics. I have that sick feeling in my gut that I've jumped over marketing's head.

ok:)

Bad Teyon! :tt2: We're glad you did though!

She looks good to me. Much more realistic and cute. Will have to check out her rigging when she comes out. I dont know, I'm guessing, but I think JoePublic may have rigged her, (I hope so) If so, I expect she will bend gorgeously. :thumbupboth:

Aside:  I'm guessing Joe may have rigged her, because I saw ThinkCooper taking an interest in Joe's P8 rigging.

But by and large a big improvement on prior Poser figures going by looks.

Where are examples of Joe's P8 rigging?

"Aside:  I'm guessing Joe may have rigged her, because I saw ThinkCooper taking an interest in Joe's P8 rigging."

HeHe, thanks for trusting in my rigging skills, but no, I didn't.

Actually, even if Mr Cooper had asked me, I would have flat out refused t waste my time with this thing.

Looking at the Deviantart pics, I have to say that finally SM managed to ruin the only good mesh they had.

BRAVO ! You successfully skankified MIKI.

MIKI 1020 had serious rigging problems.
She also had serious mesh resolution problems.

But...her body was a PERFECT copy of Aneta Keys, a Czech adult model.

MIKI was the only Poser mesh with a REALISTIC body because she was sculpted after an actual human being.
Without "artistic license" or pandering to "customer tastes".

Sydney was nothing like a lame "Vickified" rehash of her. Same mesh, but nothing of the "realism" that you only get if you sculpt after an actual human.

MIKI 3.0 now is the same stylized, smoothed over and eyeballed DRECK we've seen coming from DAZ for years.

No body detail whatsoever. Kneecaps. Who needs them anyway, right ?
Lumpy shins ?
Who cares about realism as long as she has a HAWT ASS.

Sorry, but MIKI 3.0 makes me want to puke.

Thanks. I culled my images to avoid any problems. I had thought she was released but it's clear she isn't yet. Hope you all enjoy her when she comes out. It's a new and lighter mesh, I started the rig but a co-worker with more experience completed it and perfected it, so she should bend really well. I hope to revisit her to do more face shaping morphs and the like. She actually has detail - though the renders are a bit blown out  (all the more reason to pull them).

I learned SO MUCH about modeling FOR Poser during the creation of this figure. I expect my next model - assuming I didn't just get myself in trouble - to be significantly better than anything I've ever done and I owe it all to Miki 3 and our beta testers.

Anyway, I'm going to bed. It's 3:22 here in NYC and I think I'll be having a long day ahead of me when I wake up.

But I guess a REALISTIC woman isn't good enough for all those so called "Poser Artists".

The body shape is basically the same with the exception of the arch in her back - There's even a morph to go to the original Miki2 hip shape for those that want it (like me).

So Joe, have you or have you not done any P8 rigging? Enquiring minds wanna know.

"The body shape is basically the same with the exception of the arch in her back"

No, it isn't.
Don't waste my time by arguing with me.
I'm doing this for 10yrs now.

You just "eyeballed" her new shape trying to make her "hotter".

"So Joe, have you or have you not done any P8 rigging? Enquiring minds wanna know."

Yes, I did.

And I'm very happy with the results.
Poser rigging is still more black magic and "happy little accidents" than an exact science, but those "capsule shaped" multiple falloff zones are a real help in thse "hard to reach corners".

:-)

Cool. I haven't really messed much with the new rigging but I'd eventually like to see if I can modify G2 figures with P8 rigs. Something to learn on anyway.

The biggest advantage is that the second sphere can "reduce" the bulging of the first sphere.
That means you can greatly reduce bowling ball shoulders and "exploding" buttocks without making compromises.
(With a single sphere you either have bowling ball shoulders or too high armcuts for example)

What's the trick to adding the new capsule shaped falloff zones? Does it have to be a CR2 edited by hand or could I, for example, just take the geometry for James and take it to the setup room to copy Ryan's skelleton and then tweak the heck out of it til it fits James mesh?

You'd probably be better off just loading James and then going to the Joint Editor and using the Add Capsule option in the falloffs drop down. There's a few extra bones in Ryan's hands that aren't in James', not to mention all the other tweaking you'd need to do to get the rig to fit his mesh. Much easier to just add to James' rig I would think. Insomnia sucks.

"...just take the geometry for James and take it to the setup room to copy Ryan's skelleton and then tweak the heck out of it til it fits James mesh?"

You could do that, no problem.
But you can just add additional falloff zones using the joint editor.
Load a figure, start the joint editor, select a joint, then one of the existing falloff zones, then click on "ADD" to add another one. (Either Sphere or Capsule)

Then edit that new sphere just like you edit the "old" fallofzones.
The only thing new is that you have extra parameters to edit the shape of those new capsule shaped zones.

Just experiment and you'll quickly find out what is doing what.

(I just barely scratched the surface myself) :-)

BTW, a little tip:

If you want to "borrow" a skeleton from another figure, this will save you a lot of work:

ZERO figure "A", then LOCK it.

Then load figure "B".
Change it to Display --> Wireframe.
Then scale and pose it that it closely matches figure "A".
Make especially sure that the hands of figure "B" fit over figure "A"'s hands like a glove.

Then export Figure B's mesh.

Now you can use Figure "A"'s rigging with figure "B"'s mesh with minimal joint editing, because rigging the hands is one of the most time consuming things to do.

I used this trick for several customized figures and it always saved me lots of time.  :-)

(Of course both figures must have identical grouping)

Very cool! Thanks for the tips. I wasn't aware of the Add New Falloff part of the joint editor. I haven't messed with it in Poser 8 or Pro2010 yet. My Joint editing skills are still P6. (And no I'm not saying you can't add things in P6, I just have never tried or gotten that far with the joint editor. All I've ever done with it is tweak existing zones so far.)

The meshes are 100% V4 and V4-17K. 
They are not hybrids.

But they are rigged (mostly) like SP3 and also shaped like SP3, so they can use SP3 clothing.

I first made sure that V4's and SP3's hands "matched", then I reworked the rest of the body.

Miki? Who is she..... o, I see, she's another digital barbie.

Quote - "The body shape is basically the same with the exception of the arch in her back"

No, it isn't.
Don't waste my time by arguing with me.
I'm doing this for 10yrs now.

You just "eyeballed" her new shape trying to make her "hotter".

can i just point out that the image you saw on the deviant art
he accidentely used the voluptuous morph he made for miki 3 on 2 renders instead of showing her default body shape (he said it at the bottom of the description after he had uploaded the image).so that image we all saw actually didnt have miki 3s default body shape but a morphed version shown twice.

just thought i should make that clear lol :P

"...can i just point out that the image you saw on the deviant art
he accidentely used the voluptuous morph he made for miki 3 on 2 renders instead of showing her default body shape (he said it at the bottom of the description after he had uploaded the image).so that image we all saw actually didnt have miki 3s default body shape but a morphed version shown twice."

And can I just point out that I'm perfectly able to distinguish between a pair of blown-up boobs and an unrealistic eyeballed bodyshape ?

I saved the DeviantArt pics to my desktop.
The whole bodyshape is different.
The ass is blown up, the hips are smaller, shins have weird bulges, calves are completely different.
Practically all body detail is gone.

All in all she looks like a failed attempt to turn MIKI into a stylized computer-game chick.

"HeHe, thanks for trusting in my rigging skills, but no, I didn't.*"  

Bummer, I had hoped that ThinkCooper was working out a deal w/you to do some rigging. I have seen a number of your posts on shoulders and thighs with P8 rigging, and they look very good.  Well I will wait to see what whomever rigged her has done.

But Joe, I like the new Miki's face, it looks pretty good to me and seems within normal human proportion. As for the body I dont have any prior Miki's that I know of so cant comment on any changes.

I do have Anetta Keys photo layout from 3dsk though Nice model to work from.

Someone mentioned the high forhead... I think alot of that depends on how you fit the hair, if the hairs was farther down on her forehead it would not look so high. I have not seen her up close, so just guessing from the pics.

I have seen Teyons mesh work though, and am confident that her mesh will be worthy as one of the best in Poserdom.

Keep an open mind she may surprise us all. 

BUT...If you want to achive realism, you need human reference.
And you need to slavishly stick to that reference as best as you can.
Even If you don't know much about human anatomy, you can still "just sculpt what you see" and it still will look right.

But if you start "eyeballing" a human, things will get really nasty real soon.
(Unless you're a real certified genius.)

Sorry, either do a "real" toon (Like The Girl), or do a "real" human.
But don't mix things up.

DAZ already has the "Hyperrealism" thing more than covered.
A truly realistic figure like MIKI is extremely rare in the Poserverse.

I think she deserves better.

Well I cant disagree with that.  But if she has a good mesh though you can do alot with shape and proportion. I just think the most important thing to find in a figure is a good mesh and rig, the rest (even the rig I suppose) is changeable.

"Phantom, my mind IS wide open."

while you yell at the man who made the mesh and berate him.....

Is it just me or was that second one really anorexic?   As bad as big boobed is to some people, anorexic is worse IMO.

Cautiously optimistic about Miki 3.0... but those who know me will not be surprised by my next statement.

Wake me up when there's a Terai Yuki 3.0. :D

Hey Joe! Since you like Miki so much, have you gone and fixed her rigging so she bends better? I'm talking about Miki 1, not 2. I'd love to see someone actually fix the first Miki rather than keep churning out new Miki's when the old one looks best but just needs some fixes.

"Hey Joe! Since you like Miki so much, have you gone and fixed her rigging so she bends better? I'm talking about Miki 1, not 2. I'd love to see someone actually fix the first Miki rather than keep churning out new Miki's when the old one looks best but just needs some fixes."

I think I tried adding some JSM magnets (Yes, I used magnets to fix joints long before DAZ "discovered them. LOL), but this was before we had all those fancy new tools.

I did a little joint fix for MIKI 2's shoulders but the result wasn't really worth the effort.

The problem with MIKI is also her mesh. She has fully rooted teeth and a high res mouth !
Whoever sculpted her was a genius. But a MAD genius.
You can easily get rid of 30.000 polys just by reworking her mouth !

So, after doing my "Aneta" based on the SP3 mesh, I simply moved on.

I already transferred V4's improved expression and ethnic morphs over to my V3/SP3 based figures, so I have no real need for MIKI's head anymore, either.

Problem is, I need/want a "Family" of figures.
And I don't like mixing different brands.

I'd love to see MIKI 1 "properly fixed".
Going through the mesh and reworking all the problem areas, bringing the mesh to 50.000 polys or less.
Then re-rigged from the ground up by someone like Phantom3D.

But I would also need a man and a few children of similar quality to really use her.

So I'll rather stick with my V3RR/SP3 hybrids for now.

Oh well. I thought Koji was the man for Miki, but he suffers from "James Back" when you lower his arms. LOL!