I was loafing about the various stores and whatnot, and I noticed something:

Nearly all of the V4 characters up for sale were the exact same height.

Yep, some had big breasts, some had some plumpness, a wide variety of skin colors and types., and there was defnitely a lot of facial differences...

...but almost none of them touched the underlying height. The abdomens, chests, legs, etc were pretty much all the same proportion to each other, and the overall height was the same. 

Okay - so I noticed this recently, because I was mentally chewing on an odd contrast: My missus stands at 6' 2" (188cm). My ex-wife stood at 5' 2" (157cm). 

OTOH, plowing through the marketplace here, there, and other places, a quick but fairly thourogh check showed that all the damned characters were pretty much the same height. 

Yeah, yeah - "scale them!" right?

Wrong.

If you think about it, shorter folk have different proportions in skeletal structure than really tall folk. Also, everyone has differing proportions that can be reflected in the typical Poser body: Not all women (or men for that matter) have long, slinky abdomen parts. Some have what could translate to shorter chests

Real-life example: my missus and I are roughly the same height (she has me by an inch). OTOH, she's all leg (yum!) and I'm, like, all torso. My hip base is lower in altitude than hers (even accounting for overall height), and her spine is shorter than mine. It's enough of a difference that one can actually see it if you looked even halfway closely.

I can already hear the objection: "but clothing won't fit!" Well, I've done some experiments (by tinkering with the y scale on body parts), and I've found out that well-made clothing can put up just fine (at least in D|S everywhere and a dusted-off P6 install on the old Hackintosh) with a bit of tweaking in the y-scale on various parts such as abdomens, chests, thighs, shins, etc. 

So, I'm giving you part challenge, part opportunity: Make a character that is a bit shorter than usual, or a bit taller than usual (and believable!) 

Let's see if you can do more than faces, tits, and some dial-spinning. (evil grin...)

That is a chalenge I hope some one pickes up, I am a man of small stature, I'm 5' 2" and prefer to use similar in may art, it is the perspective I see the world from, and it reflects itself in my art, I was glad when Sp 4 came out and and had high hopes for D 4 but with all this genisis stuff, as a poser user I am not seing a new david in the near future or at all for that matter. SO I for one would really like and use shorter charecters.

"single axis scaling"

No not really, all that does is squish the body proportions equally, and make you wider proportionally. it is ok if you are only making a light diff but to compare a 6'2" to a 5'2" like myself id dosent quite do it. but it does work in pintch for slight height changes, just curiouse J-quick how tall are you?

Quote - "single axis scaling"

Stephanie 4

5'7" Allegedly, the way poser handles single axis scaling might be why we see less height variation. It's why a freak scaled freak 4 can't wear clothes in p7 or below, it's why steph 4's scaling is also useless in the same apps. You can unhide the scale dials in the clothes and tweak them so they match the scale dials of the figures, but the clothes just won't fit when you start to pose the figure.

Quote - Allegedly, the way poser handles single axis scaling might be why we see less height variation. It's why a freak scaled freak 4 can't wear clothes in p7 or below, it's why steph 4's scaling is also useless in the same apps.

Partly true - single axis scaling is bugged and doesn't work correctly even up to Poser 8 (on the agenda to be fixed in P9+) but Stephanie 4's scaling changes are almost all on all three axes, which works in Poser 8+ conformers.  I'm not that familiar with the Freak dials but the S4 stuff is pretty safe, in Poser 8+.

Until you find what you are looking for, there are already some usable workarounds. For example a cleverly chosen display window can somewhat hide the fact that  that V4 and V4 are actually the same size (see left illustration). Another approach would be to use appropriate footwear, almost like in real life. The vendor Arrin here for example, has some high heels with adjustable heel size, which can get you quite far (see right illustration), the same qualtity could probably reached with the various updo hairs available. DAZ also has a product that especially deals with sizes, it is called "shape of a woman" (but i did not try it), to be found at this URL:  http://www.daz3d.com/i/shop/itemdetails/?item=10325. This site's adult oriented competitor's site also has some products, that tackle the problem using a slightly different approach; just search there for "amputation" :-)

Quote - > Quote - Allegedly, the way poser handles single axis scaling might be why we see less height variation. It's why a freak scaled freak 4 can't wear clothes in p7 or below, it's why steph 4's scaling is also useless in the same apps.

Partly true - single axis scaling is bugged and doesn't work correctly even up to Poser 8 (on the agenda to be fixed in P9+) but Stephanie 4's scaling changes are almost all on all three axes, which works in Poser 8+ conformers.  I'm not that familiar with the Freak dials but the S4 stuff is pretty safe, in Poser 8+.

Which is why I specified p7 (poser 7) and below. Knowing now that steph 4 uses 3-axis scaling, does this mean that even that mode of scaling is bugged in versions of poser earlier than 8?  At the release of the figure, there was the same outcry in the daz forums as with the freak 4 that it wasn't poser compatible (if you wanted it to wear clothing, they work fine naked).  I remember unhiding the scaling dials in her and her clothing and trying to get things to fit without much luck.

Raw has a package of scale poses that come with accompanying clothing scale poses.  I don't have them, so I don't know how well they work outside of studio (I would assume they work perfectly in studio), but knowing that they existed was what inspired me to attempt the same with my Duck people.

The "shape of a woman" packages might be similar.  I forget the name of their maker. So while individual character creators have been pretty happy to leave folks the default size, there are people who have been working on packages to provide scale options to apply to those characters.

Quote - Which is why I specified p7 (poser 7) and below. Knowing now that steph 4 uses 3-axis scaling, does this mean that even that mode of scaling is bugged in versions of poser earlier than 8? 

Yes, in Poser 7 and earlier (oops yeah I see you mentioned that) scaling in conformers works badly across the board.  The non-uniform scaling problem is a little different, and isn't limited to just conformers.  And yes, these problems don't occur in D|S 3 (or 4 also I'm sure, haven't checked though).

You know? I never really thought about how Poser handled scaling. I'm used to the way D|S does it... which is kinda effortless. 

I actually do apologize for not taking that into account. I assumed that it had been fixed by now ("now" as in P6 or later).

OTOH, Poser has the taper dial, yes? I remember Anton talking about how taper and scaling go hand-in-hand in Poser (I could be remembering that wrong, but still...)

Also, what about hand-morphing the body to compensate for unwanted scale deformations? Possibly make them JCMs tied to scale?

My cr2-fu is rusty, half-forgotten and old, so I'm asking more than suggesting.

There's also a python script from D3D called Copy Scaling. I use it on older V4 Clothes that don't support the S4 morphs.

Let me give you a small idea here...

Mind you, this is D|S, so the scaling will work perfectly, as others have said Poser 8 will.

alternate ref: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/full.php?image_id=2246585

As you can see, the default Vicky on the left (with only a mat, a quick hair tossed on, and a quick bikini) stands at around 6' tall in heels, more or less (by my crappy and likely inaccurate scale). The petite Vicky on the right stands at an appreciably shorter stature - same bikini in both figures, merely clicked into place.

The diff? I cropped the yScale on the chest down to 92%, the shins and thighs down a bit, the xScale on the arms down, then I cropped the entire body down to 93% or so. 

I went a bit too short (I wound up replicating a teenager, as it was a bit of a 30-minute rush job using Laura's mesh as a rough guide to shape the V4 figure) but it should serve to illustrate what I was trying to say.

(I think I'll keep it... needs a bit of tweaking, though.)

Included is a quick render of 4 Vicky's (not nude) in a temple with a sword. Note: I am not an artist, and am still learning the software. Done in Poser 8.  Left to right 105%, regular, 90%, and 80%. Yes, it's not perfect, but throw them in the scene with clothing props and morphs, and it is better than nothing.

Feel free to ignore me. I'm a newbie here, and most everyone does.

Something to consider...

When I built my own little tweak (further up the thread), I only barely breathed on the overall body scaling. The meat of the scaling occurred in the body parts - decreasing yScale on the vertical ones (hip, abdomen, chest, thigh, shins, etc), and decreaing the xScale on the horizontal ones (shoulders, forearms mostly). 

When you attack it piecemeal like that, you'd be amazed at how little you have to scale down each part to get a huge overall shrinkage. It all adds up. :) 

It also gives you some options to more closely match the variety of real human beings... like mentioned up top, some of us are a bit over-provisioned on torso, while others have more leg proportion, while still others have more chest, etc. The petite girlish mesh up top was engineered to have more torso in proportion, so I concentrated on everything around it. 

Note that I scaled in the arm bits to prevent the poor figure from becoming a gorilla. It's usually good to have the wrists about (roughly) even with the mid-hip, where the hip joint would normally sit. Too long and you have a gorilla. Too short and you end up with a T-Rex. 

The best bet to get an eye for scaling up or down is to look at full-body images of a lot of people, preferably from the side and front. A line-up of folks would be perfect... because then you can draw horizontal lines through the hip joints, the pelvic crown (the top of where the hip bone would be), the xyphiod process (bottom tip of the sternum - whatever that's called), the ribcage bottom edge, the inside ends of the collarbones, the shoulder tops, etc. Avoid nipples (esp. on females, since they'll be all over the map). You'll notice that not only are people different in height, but they're different in proportions as well... sometimes good, sometimes not-so-good.

That's what I'm hoping the character merchies will get off their lazy butts and do. :)

I like what you did. My problem is lack of time. I have a full time job. Lack of experience and an econobox for a computer means it takes longer for me to accomplish simple tasks. (PP 2012 in the near future, more robust computer a little farther off.) Budget means all work is in Poser.

I'll try your approach, see how I can tweek it. The time it takes to scale clothes also will probably kill the deal for me. Another problem is that I know human anatomomy quite intimately, and looking at these models close up makes my skin crawl.

I despair of merchants doing anything but Vicky and Genesis in the near future.  Daz has been too profitable to give up. Antonia is generating some interest. But the market is still Vicky and a few other things.

Penguinisto, thanks for your efforts.

Quote - That's what I'm hoping the character merchies will get off their lazy butts and do. :)

Customer demand. Do you know any other peple interested?

Scaling body parts usually destroy rigging system. Best way to make limbs shorter/longer are magnets, but they must be created for each body parts (including 30 fingers parts). It is nice, because you can easy magnetize clothing, but this is terrible and boring work. You can work few weeks and sell 5 short/tall figures, or work few hours and sell 50 bombshells.

Quote - > Quote - That's what I'm hoping the character merchies will get off their lazy butts and do. :)

Customer demand. Do you know any other peple interested?

Scaling body parts usually destroy rigging system. Best way to make limbs shorter/longer are magnets, but they must be created for each body parts (including 30 fingers parts). It is nice, because you can easy magnetize clothing, but this is terrible and boring work. You can work few weeks and sell 5 short/tall figures, or work few hours and sell 50 bombshells.

Maybe it's because everybody's offering the same old thing. What makes any merchant stand out that they deserve my money.

There's a reason why a merchant like Stonemason sells so well. And you can see it in the quality of his work.

All merchants deserve your money, because they are merchants :)

Poser is a toy, not professional application. People prefer to play with breasts, then create realistic world, which they can see around.

I use scaling all the time with a combination of normal scaling and the SP4 scales. This works pretty well in PP2010 and is decent enough variation for me. And with the autoscaling clothing works without problem as well. This gives me heights from 160-190cm, which covers most adult people.

If you use the yscaling it will not bend properly in the more extreme poses, so I tend to avoid that, although in many cases it can be used without problems.

Anyway - no need for merchants to achieve this

Quote - All merchants deserve your money, because they are merchants :)

Poser is a toy, not professional application. People prefer to play with breasts, then create realistic world, which they can see around.

Depends on what you're using it for. If Poser will help me create my vision the way I envision it, why exactly do I need to spend $3000+ dollars on a "professional" app?

Quote -  Lack of experience and an econobox for a computer means it takes longer for me to accomplish simple tasks.  Budget means all work is in Poser.

No worries - I whomped that out in D|S 3, which costs $0.00 (to get it back into Poser, you grab the free DAZ Morph exporter plugin, and use that.) I used to have an old Sony Vaio Z1RA, which had a 1.6GHz P4 and 1GB of RAM, maxed out...

...it was a bit slow-going in there, but I used light/fast to get the bits I needed, then used slow/heavy to get the render results I wanted.

Quote - The time it takes to scale clothes also will probably kill the deal for me.

If you have Poser 8 or newer (or Poser 4), or D|S, the clothes will automatically scale in proportion if the underlying figure is scaled on more than one axis. The bikini in that image up there was literally clicked-in on both figures, no additional scaling needed.

Quote - Another problem is that I know human anatomomy quite intimately, and looking at these models close up makes my skin crawl.

Heh - me too, which is why I usually tweak the hell out of it first thing when I get one. :)

======================

Quote - Customer demand. Do you know any other peple interested?

Offhand, a few in this thread. Aesthetically? Probably half the planet. I guess my big gripe is that I see all this marketing copy claiming figures to be unique and special and etc... but every last one of them have basically the same body shape with a few dials spun for boobs, waistlines, and butts. 

Tell you what - build one for fun, make it a quality item, and see what happens. I'm very willing to wager that if it indeed stands out and has sufficient quality, it will probably sell like ice cream on a hot Arizona day. 

Quote - Scaling body parts usually destroy rigging system.

Actually, it doesn't from my POV. I've been doing it for years in DAZ|Studio, and the clothing follows right along with very few exceptions (those exceptions being clothing that, upon further investigation, has crappy rigging or poorly-built mesh in the first place). Folks report that Poser 8 and newer do it just fine as well (so long as the scaling is done on more than one axis, as noted above). 

Sure, it'd likely suck for Poser 5/6/7 users, but seriously? It's time to upgrade out of those by now anyway (Poser 7 came out what, just over five years ago?)

It's like EClark1894 said... Everyone makes the same old thing. Make something that stands out (and slather all the warnings you want in the README), and I bet the mofo will sell like crazy.

Make another Vicky item, someone might buy it from you,  or another Vicky item from someone else. Next time, they might buy another Vicky item from you, or from someone else.  Make something unique, and people can only buy it from you, and might be back for more.

Quote - Tell you what - build one for fun, make it a quality item, and see what happens. I'm very willing to wager that if it indeed stands out and has sufficient quality, it will probably sell like ice cream on a hot Arizona day.

If I could I would have more then 1 item in my store ;)

Anyway you are right. I created something unique (havent seen anything similar) althought quality is average (I did my best), but number of person were interested and buy. Anyway nobody can predict customer demands. I wanted to show my dynamic beds on rotica forum and nobody was intested in. I was surprized, because most theirs renders show people in bed :)

Quote - . I wanted to show my dynamic beds on rotica forum and nobody was intested in. I was surprized, because most theirs renders show people in bed :)

You misspelled "dungeon" up there.

Quote - Let me give you a small idea here...

 

Mind you, this is D|S, so the scaling will work perfectly, as others have said Poser 8 will.

alternate ref: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/full.php?image_id=2246585

As you can see, the default Vicky on the left (with only a mat, a quick hair tossed on, and a quick bikini) stands at around 6' tall in heels, more or less (by my crappy and likely inaccurate scale). The petite Vicky on the right stands at an appreciably shorter stature - same bikini in both figures, merely clicked into place.

The diff? I cropped the yScale on the chest down to 92%, the shins and thighs down a bit, the xScale on the arms down, then I cropped the entire body down to 93% or so. 

I went a bit too short (I wound up replicating a teenager, as it was a bit of a 30-minute rush job using Laura's mesh as a rough guide to shape the V4 figure) but it should serve to illustrate what I was trying to say.

 

(I think I'll keep it... needs a bit of tweaking, though.)

they could use a Corvas arm fix :idea:

P8 can't scale the Toddler properly, there's still issues with the single axis thingee.

maybe P9 has it solved?

Hehe, I was running into the same problem, I was like hmmm... I want a super tall person to stand next to a super short person.

So I morphed and scaled her and she looked great in a bikini, lol... but once I put her clothes on, nothing fit, it was like when I go shopping! Everthing is too short! So I downloaded the Copy Scaling script: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/details.php?item_id=50718

and it worked good when the character is not bending their legs, but otherwise it didn't help... So I whipped out my modeling program and made my own leg length, torso length, blah blah morphs and it worked perfectly :)

Hope you like the pic ;)

No one has mentioned that Poser 8 has the option to chose ideal height. I tried it a couple times and it scales down the models to child, teen, ideal adult etc. It works decent with the poser 8 characters, the older ones have to be tweaked.

Question, though - do the clothes also scale as well when you use that setting?

I remember the old height menu options now that you mention it - they were even present in P4. 

I just hope that Poser 9 fixes the scaling thing... :/

I also use Shaderworks Advanced Figure Manager and select the "include scales when conforming" option before conforming the clothes. It works well and all I need for my character is a spin of one of the dials in the chest area.

Quote - Question, though - do the clothes also scale as well when you use that setting?

I remember the old height menu options now that you mention it - they were even present in P4. 

I just hope that Poser 9 fixes the scaling thing... :/

I messed with that feature when I first bought Poser, and I haven't tried to use it to do a render. I am inclined to think that it would only apply to the model, or conforming clothes, maybe, since it's under the figure tab at the top of the page. I'll have to do a test and see what happens. I seem to remember it did some really weird stuff to Jessie (who looks a little too alien in her unmorphed form to begin with), but I got it to work on SydneyG2 without much tweaking.

I'll do a test render and post the results.

Yeah I like short women myself, (my fiance is 5'4" Im 6'1") I also so a lot of renders of various elves. Some taller some shorter. Mostly I leave the scale dials alone because of how V4's arms almost always break.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2194058&user_id=69584&np&np

In this render I decided I needed an elf chick with a longer torso  and longer limbs so I used the arm/leg long dials and used the Y scale dials in her hips abdomen chest and shoulders. Luckily her arms do not break at all when bent.

When I want to do stuff like this I would just use DS but my renders suck in DS and I have never learned how to use that reality thing that DS has even though I bought it sio my Poser renders arew still better than my DS renders lol.