I was just wondering if there is any news on the development of new male figures for Poser.  Now that M5 has been released by Daz I am especially anxious to have a new male figure (or two) for Poser.  Has anyone heard anything?  Any news on the ETA of Sixus' HumanZ figures?  Just wondering.  

I doubt we'll hear anything until something is ready to go.

Laurie

Cooper said he would tell when he had more info.

tate was working on something, and phantom had brad and then tony, but yes, I haven't seen much sign of them yet...

All men went back home undressing in front of a mirror.

Comparing their tanned body shapes with the Male5 promo renders.......

ha-ha-ha-, sorry, could not help it.

This was too nice to let go by...... LOL.

Perhaps they all faltered and fled in the face of THIS

Cheers

Ha-ha- Wolf, I looked, and I think I have a problem . . . . . with my mirror.. ;-)

Or?
My mirror has a problem with me???

I am ending mine, I hope soon you can get it, and I hope that soon will not be a "daz" soon...LOL

I bought M5, who I find to be rather similar to M4--but not exactly like him.  I was a little dissapointed with the Genesis Gens.  I will be doing some M5 pictures, I just want to be able to use Poser without having to port Genesis out to it.  So I guess right now in Poser I'll be working with M4 and F4 and dreaming of some new male models that don't look like they've been christened with the ugly stick.

The guys are hiding behind the 4th wall.

adh3d I didn't know you were working on making a man did I?  where are the previews?  lets see some hype around here before he arrives!!!

Love esther

PS he better not be a stick figure or an emoticon etc

I read this thread on my bus into work this morning, driving through an onslaught of torrential rain... and now guess which international hit song from 1982 is stuck on perpetual loop in my head ;-)

It's Raining Men?  Except for the fact in the Poser World it's not raining men at all--I'd say there was a male figure draught.

Yup... that classic pop tune by the Weather Girls' had faded in my head... but now, there it is again ;-)

With all the Poser-centric replenishment of both male and female figures apparently in the works... and on various fronts too... both in terms of backwards-compatible revamps of the core favourites (Poser Place's V4WM... already here... and hopefully soon to follow, M4WM) and new and/or upgraded figure content from SM... and on top of that I understand that Phantom3d and ExistentialDisorder each have new male figure projects on the go too...

...exciting times ahead I think... I hope... for Poser.

I am looking forward to the impending revelations!

Having to sit on my hands in anticipation though... but same goes for the render that I'm hoping will have completed by the time I get home tonight :-)

As it happens, that render is a composition featuring one male figure and, I think it was, nine females...

The poly's must be cheap this time of the year.
:-)

Quote - The poly's must be cheap this time of the year.
:-)

Indeed... funnily enough there is also a plethora of parrots in my pending render, largely thanks to the just-ending 50% sale on of the entire Songbird Remix series...

...pretty polys...

;-)

I think that older figures are still viable options, but there seems to be ten V4 items released for every one M4 set.  I wish we could somehow persuade Anton to release the updated version of Apollo--but I don't think we'll ever see that unfortunately.

Looking forward to some nice figures (male and or female) in the 15.000 poly region.

If everybody is building high res??
They are gonna have few sales each.

THE hole in the market is Low poly.
For years and years we are left in the cold in this area.

12 to 15.000 would be ideal.

Daz has some low poly male and female figures that actually look very good and can be used in Poser.  Actually I've considered buying them myself because they are good looking and have many clothing, hair, beard, and expression options.  Check out Low Rex Lorenzo at Daz.

There's been several new women on the scene this year, I can't remember how long there has been since a decent new 3rd party male figure has been released--not counting monsters.

Forgive my probable naivety on this matter...

...but it would be good if each figure came with both a high poly and low poly version perhaps??

If that were the case, could they share the same bones?

It seems like everyone wants very high resolution stuff now--I know that Poser used to come with some lower res figures (there are some in the past generations)--unfortunately their maps or lack there of make them virtually unuseable except for in distance shots.  People used to complain that M1/M2 and V1/V2 were too low poly--so you might be able to use them for your lower poly needs if you don't slap on super high resoltion maps.

I have Loretta and Lorenzo.
They are very polyvalent but have other issues like a zillion materials......required for the purpose of the figures but otherwise a users-friendly-nightmare.
Making these figures only usable for the purpose they where build for.

THE best Low Poly figures are the PoserPro Lo Res male and female.
And I am morphing the hell out of those at 7500 and 8000 Poly's each.
Once you put the eyes in the correct position, they are extremely morphable.
But 7500-8000 is a tad on the LOW side, and I am the first to admid that.

Unfortunately, the Medium Resolution of these figures are completely useless.

Something in the 12.000 Poly region would be ideal.
And NO, not all in the mouth, ears or navel area. :-(

"It's Raining Men?  Except for the fact in the Poser World it's not raining men at all--I'd say there was a male figure draught."

May I ask What kind of CG  Chracterwork you Do?

I am quite curious as to why you literally need Different poser male Figures instead of just morphing M4 's or whomevers face& body into different characters and dressing them in various outfits.

I mean that is the poser paradigm is it not?

Cheers

Quote - "I am quite curious as to why you literally need Different poser male Figures instead of just morphing M4 's or whomevers face& body into different characters and dressing them in various outfits.

The same could be asked of the need for multiple female figures.

Short answer: because different meshes are capable of acheiving different results.

I also think that poser figures and their "collectors" are not unlike BJDs and their collectors, just for different reasons. 

~Shane

Great answer, Ex!

Wolf...

Not everyone shares your level of talent for sculpting polys.... especially inside of Poser. I'm with you... I can make anything I need out of M4... especially if he were weight mapped, but you and I are not everyone. It is far easier to load several different figures than to make different characters from the same figure.

Let's not pick on those people who choose to do it that way.

I currently have V4, Miki3 and Antonia Polygon, plus the SM bundled female figures, including Alyson2 in my runtime.

It certainly seems useful to me to have all those different base female figures, in order to choose slightly differently optimised starting points.. depending on... and often to help inspire, perhaps an end result.

On top of that, I have a variety of morph and texture pack characters for those base figures.

Again, I use each of these as a starting point for a different result...

To compare with the Songbird Remix package I mentioned that I just bought... that has various different base bird models... one for Parrots, one for songbirds, one for Game birds etc... morph poses then adjust each base to be any number of compatible bird species.

Yes, the body shapes of different bird species vary probably significantly more than humans... arguably. Hence the requirement in that Songbird product.

Perhaps that range of base models is not so necessary for portraying different humans (with a reduced amount of effort). We're only one species after all.

But it seems to be fairly useful to me to have those slightly differently structured human base models...

Similarly it seems to generally be better to have different base models for males and females, adults and children, etc?

I guess, in contradiction to the above, is the idea behind the unimesh design concept, which I understand underpins the Daz gen4 figures? ...which I guess is a design model that is ultimately, I think, about portability of UV mapped textures?

There are limits both ways I guess... portability of peripherals (clothing, textures) one way and flexibility to fundamentally change the appearance, the other way?

EDIT: Cross-posted here with ExistentialDisorder... what he said ;-)

Certainly one can morph figures to obtain new looks, but sometimes it's nice to have something new that one can use right out of the box for a new look.  If people did not want new figures to use for renders, then we'd all be still using M1 & V1 as well as Dork and Posette.  M5 was just released for Daz and people are really getting into him.  I don't think I'm much different than other people in my desire new materials and since Genesis doesn't transfer to Poser easily I would like some new, original, weight mapped, Poser Male figures to use in Poser.

@wolf
Want a reason why we do not use M4?
We "rarely" use V4?
Well, I did use her once this year, to test something.

Want ONE reason?
I"ll give you multiple;

1. Too many Poly's.
2. Too many material zones.
   User friendly means, less Poly's and less material zones.

We X-Y-Z morphers NEED room to move in.
We need room between the poly's to morph.

That is the one thing Genesis is good in. Less Poly's... OEF! 
Genesis can do what he/she does because of the less dense mesh and the exellent poly distribution.

1. Textures; I prefer all on ONE texture.
   Take the texture in an application and work on it being sure the whole map get the same changes.

And that map can be as big as required for Poser that is not limited to 4096x4096 texture maps.

i think it also has a lot to do with style. different figures simply have a different artistic style to them, however subtle it may be, which is evident in even the multi generations of daz figures. 

it doesn't matter how much your morph a figure, it's still going to be recognizably different than another figure in the end - 9 times out of 10 at least. Because each mesh has a specific design to it that is unique to the original artist's style. 

On a side note:

if everybody is building 100.000 Poly figures?
What will Poser's speed do when it gets subdevision in some future version?

Ever tried to run a cloth sim over a 100.000 poly base figure after it has been subdevided?

You"ll cry to the sky why Poser is sooo slow...

Well, sorry, you asked for it, and you got what you asked for.

Quote -
What will Poser's speed do when it gets subdevision in some future version?

It will be dealt with when that feature is developed. For the time being, I am all for the results that the high poly models give me.

Let tomorrow take care of itself.

I may be missing a point here, but I always thought the obsession with low poly count came from Poser's inability to use more than 2 Gigs of Ram. Since I went to 64 bits, I've NEVER had poly count be an issue in one of my projects.... and they get pretty complex with 7-10 characters and fully modelled enviroments.

Quote - On a side note:

if everybody is building 100.000 Poly figures?
What will Poser's speed do when it gets subdevision in some future version?

Ever tried to run a cloth sim over a 100.000 poly base figure after it has been subdevided?

You"ll cry to the sky why Poser is sooo slow...

Well, sorry, you asked for it, and you got what you asked for.

I saw a post by ice-boy the other day, where he'd created a low-poly figure, for personal use, by using Blender's shrink-wrap feature.

He was conforming that to V4/M4 or "whoever" and then doing the cloth sim to collide with the low-poly figure instead of the actual higher poly figure... seemed like a neat trick?

The main point being:

Different figure resolutions for different reasons.

I morph extensively in all 3 directions; X-Y-and Z..
The less Poly's to move, and the more room I have, the better the morphability.

Dense meshes are pretty-pretty hard to morph out of their default shape. There is no freedom and mostly the rigging breacks up. => less of a problem with lower poly figures.

As I wrote before; Genesis can do what she does because of her less dense mesh and because of the exelent poly distibution.

If you are pleased with the default shape of your figures? No reason to morph then.

I have 6 power horces of PC's to work with.
For computing power, I do not care for mesh resolution. Poly count can go through the roof for my part.

As a X-Y-Z morpher however?

Obviously we all have different requirements
I am primarily an animator.

I do not do still portraits or nudes of any kind
unless it is part of some medical human anatomy paid illustration for a paying client.

As such constantly,buying new content and doing nothing but ,rendering it and posting the renders in forum web galleries is a pointless exercise for me at least.

So I only need a few poser figures that can
Accept mimic animation for lipsynch
and have relatively" standard  poser rigging" to accept motion files from my vast library.

that being the case.
Apollo Max was quite useless for my work as it did not meet any on the above requirements.

So for my work:
James
Koji
kojiG2
Jessie
V4
M4
V3
M3
In all of their variations are more than sufficient.

I also have a few "toony" nonhuman figures like Daz's Chomper the robot and a few other third party 'toon" type figures but they all must be easily made to walk&talk

Cheers

I never did go for the unimesh concept. Figures look more unique when sculpted from the ground up, not sharing meshes. I do agree that the ability to share uvs is a bonus, but not enough to make the unimesh appeal to me. Same meshes have the same problems, like the ugly elbows and shoulder bends, which all the unimesh figures share.

Laurie

I really want to comment on this but it will start an argument I'm sure, so I'm not going to. 

All I'll say is that less polys do not equal more morphability. It equals less. Edges do not bend. 

"but not enough to make the unimesh appeal to me. Same meshes have the same problems, like the ugly elbows and shoulder bends, which all the unimesh figures share.
"

I honestly have not even looked at V4WM ,as I have no need for it, but has not the Weight mapping  solved the "joint issues" of the unimesh figures??

Cheers

Quote - Forgive my probable naivety on this matter... ...but it would be good if each figure came with both a high poly and low poly version perhaps??

If that were the case, could they share the same bones?

DAZ has done that.  They had "RR" (Reduced Resolution) versions of V3 and M3, and maybe others.  The RR versions could use the same clothes and textures as the regular versions.

And yes, I think it was a good idea. 

I am quite new to using Poser... and I've only just got hold of a computer that could potentially render animation near the quality I'd like to... if I'm going to do that. I'd certainly like to have a crack at it.

However, is weight mapping not reasonably beneficial to posing figures for animation?

I had thought this was one of its merits perhaps? e.g. more fluid movement?

;-)

Quote - I saw a post by ice-boy the other day, where he'd created a low-poly figure, for personal use, by using Blender's shrink-wrap feature. He was conforming that to V4/M4 or "whoever" and then doing the cloth sim to collide with the low-poly figure instead of the actual higher poly figure... seemed like a neat trick?

Kirwyn did that, way back in Poser 5 days.  He created "proxies" of V3 and other figures, that were super low-res.  They were for dynamic hair calculations.  They were meant to be parented to the figure, used for dynamic hair calculations, then deleted.  They worked really well.

And IME, dynamic hair is something where poly count is still a huge issue, even with the latest and greatest version of Poser and state of the art hardware.  If the hair sim isn't working right, chances are it's a memory issue.

Not all of us are comercial artists, for many of us this is a hoby.  I have had my artwork published in magazines and did a story in a comic book once, my eventual goal is to be able to get paid sometimes for some of my artwork.  I have yet to find a nitch where I can get some paying work, so have allowed my art to be published for free to gain exposure.  One day I hope to be able to market my own Tarot Deck, but it's a very big project.

Wolf359 whatever satisfaction I personally get out of creating images is akin to people who keep sketchbooks and paint for their own personal pleasure.  It's like people who play video games, or collect figurines--I collect 3D models because I like them and enjoy playing with them, and yes I agree with Existential Disorder, each figure does have it's own sense of type of look no matter how you texture, morph, and dress them.  That's one of the reason's I'm excited about the Sixus HumanZ figures--they are a bit stylized and not completely realistic--therefore they are different and will be exciting to work with.

I really need to change my name. lol

Quote - I really want to comment on this but it will start an argument I'm sure, so I'm not going to. 

All I'll say is that less polys do not equal more morphability. It equals less. Edges do not bend. 

ED...

This really interests me, and I want to hear what you will say. They statement that low poly figures will morph better than high poly seems counter intuitive. I don't model, so I don't know.

I will moderate to keep tempers and snide comments in check. Please proceed. You have official sanction! 

Well E.D. I'm very excited about what you are working on and can't wait to see more previews.

Quote - > Quote - I really want to comment on this but it will start an argument I'm sure, so I'm not going to. 

All I'll say is that less polys do not equal more morphability. It equals less. Edges do not bend. 

ED...

This really interests me, and I want to hear what you will say. They statement that low poly figures will morph better than high poly seems counter intuitive. I don't model, so I don't know.

I will moderate to keep tempers and snide comments in check. Please proceed. You have official sanction! 

 

Well, I can tell you :P. Lower poly does NOT morph better. In order to make a good morph you need polys. A larger, less distinct morph can get away with fewer polys but for fine morphs like around the eyes, the lips, etc you have to have resolution. Like anything else, there is a balance as to what are too few and what is too much.

I suppose low poly does have it's advantages, but on todays machines, higher poly models can do with no problems. Unless I'm rendering a crowd, I want higher resolution. I get pissed when I can see jaggy bends ;).

Laurie

"However, is weight mapping not reasonably beneficial to posing figures for animation?

I had thought this was one of its merits perhaps? e.g. more fluid movement?"

Hi Weight mapping has nothing to do with animating the character that is more a function of how well the Ik solver functions and the applications keyframe editing abilities.

The best system of animation is a NON linear one where you can smoothly mix different motions
Here is an Example with the nonweightmapped v4
MOTION MIXING

Cheers

Sometimes the low poly/high poly argument looks like a couple of guys shouting "Ford Focus!" and "Ford L 9000!" at each other.

Surely neither option is superior in all, or even most circumstances.

Basically, I'll elaborate on what Laurie said.

A polygon is made up of 3 or 4 edges - the face is the surface between those edges, the vertice is the point that connects the edges together to make a triangle, or a quad. 

The face and the edge cannot bend. They can only be manipulated based on the positioning of the vertices that join them together.

All a morph does is translate the vertice(s) in space from one X, Y and/or Z position to a new X, Y and/or Z position. The edges do not bend. They can be lengthened or shortened, but they will always be a straight line between two vertices.

If you want a cube to become a sphere, you have to add more edges and vertices in order to have more surface space (faces) to shape the sphere. Does that make sense?

Following that pattern, you will always always always have more faces in a figure's face than in any other area of the body. Typically, the face will generally make up at least 25% of a models total poly count. Usually more like 30%, maybe even more, depending on how animated the face needs to be.

Joints need more geometry (multiple polys) in order to obtain smoother bends. Mouths and eyes need more geometry in order to open and close and create facial expressions. 

This is basically how polygon models work.

SubD's are somewhat different. It's a different algorythm that creates SubD's (catmull-clark) than polygons, but basically speaking, it's still polygons that make up subDs. The difference is, that the subD mesh is divided dynamically, while polygons are divided manually. If you think of a cube being stretched into a shape, as a subD surface, it will automatically divide itself equally as the cube is stretched and pulled, while a polygon cube has to be divided "by hand". The geometry lines you see on a subD surface are generally considered a control cage. Those are the lines you see and manipulate, but in between them are tons of lines (edges and verts, if you will) that you don't see. They're still there, you just don't see them. (I'm sure a nerd will come along and crit this paragraph - i'm writing in laymens terms)

D|S uses subDs. Poser uses polygons. 

I consider subDs as being a hybrid between NURBS and Polygons

Some argue that subDs are better than polygons. Others say polygons are better than subDs. The benefit of polys over subDs is that polygon models can be fully optimized. If your poly budget is strict, you can put every poly exactly where you need it down to the last vert on a pinky toe and leave them out where you dont. You don't have that option with subDs as their division is always equalized between edges.

Personally I think that its really just a matter of personal preference. Some people love working with NURBS. I can't stand them, i think I'd rather pull my teeth out with pliars and gargle with rubbing alcohol after each one than to have to build a human figure using nurbs. However, nurbs, just as subDs, have their purpose and can be much faster in certain situations, and provide a much smoother surface. 

Most people model using polygons, and when everything is said and done, when you render your scene, everything gets converted to polygons, because that's what render engines understand. Polygon models export as polygon models. SubD's and NURBS get converted to polygons first and then exported as polygon models. 

Feel free to ask anything that's confusing about this. 

~Shane

I don't know how subD's handle dynamics (cloth, hair, etc).

It's been a while since I worked with subDs, but from memory, I don't think subDs can create flat planes. I could be wrong on this. But if that's (still?) the case, then polys would still have to be used to create dynamic cloth, which needs triangulation to really work well.

Kind'a just thinking out loud. If I get bored enough I'll research it.

~Shane 

You have just validated what I thought but had no knowlege to prove. It will be interesting to see if there are any other opinions (hopefully, presented as fully, calmly, and respectfully as ED's messages.)

Outside; the origional PoserPro Lo Res figures
Second from outside; Morphed
Insides:  Area render

8000 Poly's each.

The female is done, male is a WIP, but its bedtime here.

Rendered with Posers smoothing.

Click to enlarge.

Have a nice day, and happy Posering.
Tony