Forum: Poser - OFFICIAL


Subject: Checking Female Model Topography

santicor opened this issue on May 03, 2012 · 47 posts


kobaltkween posted Thu, 03 May 2012 at 11:13 PM

santicor - Pardon for being opaque, I'm really not feeling well at all right now.  What I'm suggesting is pretty much what you're doing.  You're trying to build for the ability to morph in definition, and you're thinking a lot about how it could and should work.  Well, in my experience, I've found actually doing the task you're designing for works better than theory to reveal flaws, no matter what I'm making.  If you want to make sure your topology works for morphs, I'd suggest testing it by building morphs.  They don't have to be final, don't have to be distributed later, and it shouldn't matter if they look kind of wonky.  They just need to give you a sense of how easy or difficult it is to build certain types of morphs for your figure.

Trying to make actual morphs will give you real world scenarios.  As I mentioned, I find that one of my biggest issues with making morphs is the ability to smooth as I go.  Certain types of poles willl make this not only difficult, but altogether impractical.  But sculpting without any smoothing is like drawing without any erasing or smudging.  I won't say it's beyond everyone (even me), but it certainly raises the difficulty level.  I wouldn't personally have thought about this issue in general, but it was a problem the very first time I started sculpting (V3).

You could also just get morph artists to test her and give you feedback about what works and what doesn't.  I'd offer myself if I had decent anatomical skills, which I unfortunately do not.  I can see basic or glaring what's a mesh problems, but they're often hard to distinguish from the limitation of my skills.

You don't need to test stuff that shouldn't be in the mesh, and should generally be handled by maps.  Anything you want to be able to dial, mix and match with different characters and textures, and interact with cloth should probably be in the mesh.  Anything that can be individual to a character and not affect cloth is probably best handled with displacement, bump, or normal maps.  For instance, rib definition and six pack abs are best as a morph, but fine muscle and tendon detail are probably best as a map.  Nipples need morphs, but the aureola can have a surface defined by displacement and bump.

Blender has the ability to make something called "Shape Keys," which is their term for morphs.  Can you do something similar in W3D?