I neglected to say thank you.  Thank you Einzelganger for the mesh pics.  And thank you 3Dream for the Miki 3 head morph.

Would someone who has already bought Miki 3 do us who are on the fence (and Smith Micro, by way of consequence) a favor - post the following image, please: from left to right, Miki 3 default, and then each of her full body morphs (with the name of each FBM below). It seems as though they have no idea how to do marketing or promos over there (except for when a new version of Poser is on the way).

I bought Miki today, installed on my Mac.

Am I seeing things, or she a bit cross-eyed?

Am I missing something or does everyone get this? Can this be avoided?

Any help gratefully received.

Here ya go. NOTE! I am rendering the beta final release candidate. There may be differences in the actual released version, but I have not downloaded it yet. If anybody sees a big difference in the final versus what I'm showing here, let me know and I'll DL and build this again.

Left to right, each set to 1.0:

No morph, AnimeBody, BodyBuilder, Emaciated, Heavy, Pregnant, Thin, Voluptuous

All have the FBM NipplesAndGenitals set to 1. It does not come in that way by default.

Thanks, I may just get her after all :)

i would buy this if i would know if there is some hair for Miki 3?

Quote - i would buy this if i would know if there is some hair for Miki 3?

She comes with two new hairstyles in the pack.

Also there is this

http://www.runtimedna.com/HCS_Miki3.html

and this

http://market.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=83485

Hope this helps

And V4, V3 etc. prop hair is easily transposed.

Quote - > Quote - i would buy this if i would know if there is some hair for Miki 3?

 

She comes with two new hairstyles in the pack.

Also there is this

http://www.runtimedna.com/HCS_Miki3.html

and this

http://market.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=83485

Hope this helps

I really like the lineup of body types for Miki 3.  This figure has some very nice morphs!  Wow!  The joint handling looks pretty standard for Poser figures, however.  :sad:  This isn't the great leap forward yet, but it looks like a pretty good figure.  I think I may have to go in for one, once the money settles after the holiday.  :thumbupboth:

What is up with that hip bend, that looks terrible.  The knee and elbow bends aren't very good but wow, that hip bend is awful.  I see some bad mesh intersection at the neck too.

Quote - What is up with that hip bend, that looks terrible.  The knee and elbow bends aren't very good but wow, that hip bend is awful.  I see some bad mesh intersection at the neck too.

I was wondering the same thing. I dont know who they have rigging for them but he/she sucks at it, and needs to move out of the way and let someone who knows what they are doing get in there.

Actually I see problems at the ankle, toes and collars too.  Are those pics from Poser 7 or something, or does the figure bend like that in P8?

Haruchai is using P8 I notice. But she shouldn't break that bad even in P6. Love the expressions textures and mats though.

Edit: My earlier post seems a bit mean. I dont intend to be mean just honest. I will buy the figure anyway just because I support Poser and I like Teyons work in most cases. But I have to say that the rigging in the Poser figures is soo very poor. I have often wondered if the rigger is not purposesly sabotaging the figures, I just don't understand how anyone on a professional level could possibly be that bad at their job. Come on if it was anywhere else they would have recieved their pink slip already.

Quote - Haruchai is using P8 I notice.

I have also now got Poser Pro 2010 (just not updated my sig) and tried her in both to make sure it wasn't program specific.

Anyone else seen this? If so how did it get through testing?

Not intending to do a lot of nude renders but still......

Nude or not, if the rig has problems then conformers will have the same problems (since they must use the same rig, for the most part).  Those bad bends are not the kind of thing you should fix with JCM, those are coming from bad joint configuration.

(tbh both of these look more natural than that Miki 3 knee)

The changes that need to be made to the rigging (P4-PoserPro 2010) are really so very simple and basic. (JP's)

You know through these past years since I have been working with Poser I keep the hope. Stiff upper lip and all that. Cheering for the home team..... I tell people things like "I think we will see something better in the figures in the future." I make excuses for the poor bending. I constantly back Poser over similar progs, cause I know its not the progs fault. Things will get better....

There comes a time though when I just have to face the music, things are not going to get better. Because for whatever reason SM will not get someone in there to do the job. I love Poser, and I am sad. Weight mapping would be great, but it will solve nothing if the figures still have bad JP's.

Please SM, please take pity on your customers. I am heart broken.

hangs head and shuffles off to bed to dream of what Poser could be.

Quote - There comes a time though when I just have to face the music, things are not going to get better. Because for whatever reason SM will not get someone in there to do the job. I love Poser, and I am sad. Weight mapping would be great, but it will solve nothing if the figures still have bad JP's.

I assume that a certain (lower than I'd like) standard of quality is being held for Poser figure joints.  I guess most Poser and Daz users don't care about good joint handling very much.  Each new figure is neither too much better than nor too much worse than any existing figure.  They all live up to the current Poser standard, settle for meeting expectations rather than exceeding them.  :sad:

I'm hoping all of the recent discussion about weight mapping will at least make people notice the quality of bending on their figures.  If people start to notice, maybe they'll start to want something better and the acceptable standard will change.

In the meantime, you seem more level-headed about bad joints than I've often been.  :lol:  Before Antonia came along, I used to try to improve joint handling myself.  I'm not good at it, and the current joint system is more art than science, hard to learn.  More than once Cage lost his temper and things were broken.  :lol: 

It is an art I suppose.  A mechanical sort of art, much like figuring out the gears to keep the planets rotating in order on a solar system model. Antonia.. she  is a great one.  :)

Combined Miki 3's texture with a V4 shader (by Maskedit) and a V3 dynamic kimono.

Quote - Nice Japanese lady combing her hair ?

Combined Miki 3's texture with a V4 shader (by Maskedit) and a V3 dynamic kimono.

Why did you use that shader instead of the one that comes with Miki3?

Quote - It is an art I suppose.  A mechanical sort of art, much like figuring out the gears to keep the planets rotating in order on a solar system model. Antonia.. she  is a great one.  :)

Agree. I moved Antonia back in my start-up scene.

Why did you use that shader instead of the one that comes with Miki3?

While other vendors offer high quality textures too what they are mostly lacking are shaders such as Maskedit's which are the best I have encountered so far. Maybe a question of personal taste.

Unfortunately his products are no longer available if I'm not mistaken.

PS : would somebody please make ordinary panties for Miki 3 ?

That's a beatiful shader from Maskedit. I don't think I've heard of that vendor - do they have anything famous I can go look at, a website...something?

This is my own skin shader on Miki 3. There will be this version, a light and a dark skin version. Nice!

However, did find a link to a (no longer sold) product page :

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=20971

Render : Miki 2 using one of his shaders and (converted V4) textures. The dragon is not part of that texture, only playing around with various settings of the blender node.

Are you in Poser 8 or Pro 2010?

Note: I'm asking because

1. I get better results than that. I think your lighting is off.

2. I wrote the Miki3 shader for SM.

3. VSS works even better than what you have, or the Miki 3 shader. SM didn't want to publish a complicated shader so they forced me to keep it simple.

4. If you are in Pro 2010 and you enable render GC, you'll see an unbelievable difference.

NOTE: Programmers count from 0. grin

1. P8, only a quick render using a single white light with raytrace shadows and ambient occlusion.

1) The result still looks too greyish for me. Maybe the result of "keeping it simple" ?

1. I Should try VSS once. Did you sign the evil kind of papers still allowing SM to keep you from releasing a complicated shader ?

2. Would someone offer me an upgrade to Pro 2010 please ?

Well I'm pleasantly surprised at my new toy L And she does come with a lot of stuff when you consider the price - less than $14 if you use that coupon code at the top of the forum here ;)

I like her and I think she bends ok (what I've seen so far at least)

There's some problems with the shirt, the FBMs doesn't work (not the Miki3 morphs at least) but .. you can dial them in manually so it's no biggie. 

Actually IMO her biggest "problem" is her ears, they lack details! But the rest of her is cute and she does look Japanese to me ^^

The ears bug me, too. Same as Sydney and what's her name from Poser 8. It isn't just a lack of detail - it's odd.

Cool! I don't know if you found the discussion of this, but when I made those light sets I made the IBL's way too hot. Cut the intensity of them in half.

And you're using the PR3 shader, right? Don't use the older ones. They are bad. Bad I tell you!

I made a tool that helps a lot for getting light levels right. It's the BBLightMeter. It's a prop you put in the scene and render it - the rendering of the prop reveals if you have too much light (it turns red) or not enough (it turns black). When things are just right, it makes big white circles that slightly overlap.

It has two parts - the inner measures diffuse light and the outer measures specular light.

It's here:

http://sites.google.com/site/bagginsbill/file-cabinet/BBLightMeter.zip?attredirects=0&d=1

Read why you want it here:

 http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=3642925&ebot_calc_page#message_3642925

and follow links from there.

No it's not right. The yellow means close to too much. When you see it on half the light meter, it is to much. A  touch of yellow is OK.

Any orange or red is bad.

And in order to see some 3D, you really want some contrast - light from below should not be near solid white like that. You want the upper part of the disk to have more white than the lower part.

Also, notice the specular ring is black. That means you're using only IBL and getting no specular effects. I wondered about that - it being VSS there should be some nice shine on the skin. But somehow the specular lighting is gone. That's why the skin looks dry.

IBL only affects diffuse lighting in Poser. We use other lights to balance. Sometimes we make an infinite or a spot with less Diffuse_Color in it, perhaps even 0 (black). Such a light (black diffuse) is called a specular-only light.

We have to use IBL for fast global illumination, but used alone it produces that dry look. You want to balance it correctly with specular-only lights. That's why the BBLightMeter is so great. If things are in balance, the ring and the disk will look about the same. If one is white and the other is dark, it is not balanced.

When I submitted those original VSS light sets, I didn't yet have a full grasp of this - that's why they are not so good. I should get my ass in gear and delete those and provide good ones.

In some cases, you want a little over exposure - to get that outdoor blazing sun look. Also, if you enable HSV Exponential tone mapping, it is impossible to overexpose, and so more red is acceptable.

It's been a while since I did some Poser 8 style rendering (i.e. without render GC) but I just did a little tweaking and see that good results are possible with "simple" shaders.

This is the standard Miki3 Basic skin, rendered in Poser Pro 2010 but only using P8 features.

I made adjustments to the lighting and the tone mapping that are pretty simple.

Today is a busy day for me at home, but perhaps tomorrow I will have time to post some details.

Here I enabled IDL and the color of my sky and ground is actually being used instead of some arbitrary colors in an IBL image.

This is the same shader and IDL is on, but with render GC enabled instead of HSV ETM.

Here:

1. Render GC is off

2. Using VSS shader instead of Miki3 Basic.

3. VSS shader tweaks: Shine=.3, Diffuse Reflectivity=.8, SSS=.3.

4. Using IDL

• VSS shader, no modifications.

• single infinite white light, raytrace shadows (shadows = 0.5), ambient occlusion (0.4).

For only a slight visible improvement IDL takes way too long to render in P8.

Quote - From my photographic memory (which makes only blurry pictures) I remember seeing a message announcing the vendor quit producing and selling Poser stuff because of his Real World chores taking too much time. There is/was no personal website either I think. A great loss for the Poser community.

However, did find a link to a (no longer sold) product page :

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=20971

Render : Miki 2 using one of his shaders and (converted V4) textures. The dragon is not part of that texture, only playing around with various settings of the blender node.

Okay, NOW I remember MaskEdit! Great work by them! I thought I recognized the name somehow! So yes, I agree this was one of the great ones. It's a real shame their stuff is gone. If he'd advanced into using SSS I think he'd dominate the marketplace.

Quote - Your totally black disc doesn't agree

You have it under the roof? In shadow?

Agree the picture looks good - never seen the meter misbehave in the past.

You have it under the roof? In shadow?

No, it's in exactly the same position as before (at her right hand). Slighty in front of the building. Rendering pitchblack.

What's funny, to show you the disc's position I moved camera and light and now the disc does behave, even showing a "correct" lighting. 

I'm making a character about the japanese and crows. Here is a low quality render of the dynamic Crow Cloak(yeah...I know its a lame name, shad up! lol)

OH! Also: about the skin texturing thing in POser, has anyone found a good use for epidermus, subdermal, and SSS maps?

I made use of them for this character, but...it just seems like a waste of rendering power because Poser insists on putting these horrible bands of color where a smooth gradient should be whenever I use SSS and raytracing(never above a 3 value). Either my computer sucks(yes, its a office-type laptop thats over a decade old) or Poser doesnt do SSS well.

Poser doesn't do Sub Surface Scatering.

Oh Poser does SSS all right. In spades!

Check out some of my gallery for some SSS pics and this product I made that uses SSS to shine light through skin(lava skin, but still! LOL)

Kenya: China

Kenya: China Expansion

Admittedly, I don't get much problems from Poser and SSS when I use a control map, but just adding SSS via the Material Rooms auto-add node...issues.

Ah well can't have everything!