as for the project itself:

I have a ton of prior obligations and unfortunately do not have the time to give it the support and attention that it needs. I still have Anastasia clothing in the pipe, GND4 stuff thats been on the back burner since 2008(!), and also Tyler stuff that needs to be finished ASAP in time for his impending release.

I'm in the process of transferring everything over to RDNA and the My Michelle team, and they can finish things up and give it the support that it deserves. The project is in great hands.

cheers,
-Gabriel

And support from Xurge!

Medieval Royalty Gown for Michelle

Nice!

Quote - And support from Xurge!

Medieval Royalty Gown for Michelle

Nice!

 

Oh, sweetness!

 

 

@Blackhearted: It's a pity you don't have time to finish this yourself, but it's understandable. Yes, it'll be in great hands at RDNA!

((O.O))

Wow, thank you Blackhearted for showing more previews. I damn near yelled "OMG!" because those previews are so good.

Best of luck with all the deadlines, much succes with Tyler and all the rest of your large assortment of projects.

From all that you've described in the works you're avatar is going to have a bit of smoke rising off it too.

As always your stuff looks great.  Its really awesome of you to share this little project like that too.  Thanks.

 

Quote - as for the project itself:

I have a ton of prior obligations and unfortunately do not have the time to give it the support and attention that it needs. I still have Anastasia clothing in the pipe, GND4 stuff thats been on the back burner since 2008(!), and also Tyler stuff that needs to be finished ASAP in time for his impending release.

I'm in the process of transferring everything over to RDNA and the My Michelle team, and they can finish things up and give it the support that it deserves. The project is in great hands.

cheers,
-Gabriel

Holy smokes that is beautiful!!

Very nice Gabriel - many thanks! :thumbupboth:

I don't have time to read through this whole thread so I'll just cut to the chase here:

Does anyone have any wireframe screenshots and how many polygons does this figure have?

But I really need to see wireframes before I buy, so who do I contact if nobody posts any?

 

Tnaks! =)

69426 polys     

71420 verts

.

.

Thank you very much, Afrodite-Ohki! Looks good.

you're welcome ;)

There are also wire shots on the product page.

Well I bought the figure.

It looks good, but I just have one question - who the hell UV mapped this figure and does he even know what he's doing?

See the screen shot from UV Layout. The body UVS are somewhat warped and distorted, morso than they need to be, not to mention that's an appalingly small amount of texture space to give to the body and arms and legs. No wonder the texture looks blurry in a render.

But the eyes are huge. Makes no sense.

Not just that, but UV Layout reports 1816 polygons that are not UV'd and Mudbox gives an error that it has an incomplete UV set, which of course, it does.

The non-mapped polygons all appear to be around the teeth.

 

Sloppy. Sloppy and just bad planning. The body, limbs and hands and feet take up a ridiculously small percentage of the available UV space. WHAT were they thinking? Nobody UV maps a figure like that.

I guess I'm gonna have to do it all over again myself. It's worth what I paid for it just for the OBJ and the rigging, but unless they redo it in a way that makes sense I'll never be buying any textures.

I did the UV work. In my defense I had to make the model, make the UV's, Paint new textures from scratch, Build a rig, build the morphs. I really tried my best. I know I'm not perfect at all aspects and, UV's are a weak-point. I did really try though. I also thought I kept the price reasonable for a figure I spent well over a year creating.

Wow, that was just... wow. Do you gain anything by saying stuff like that to people?

I was the one who came to Tate to mention some things I didn't like in the UVs. Ask him if he found me offensive. :( are you even aware that he made Michelle's mesh and most of everything else of hers single-handedly? You can't expect a single artist to be great at everything. |:

You are welcome to say you didn't like it, but after your "sloppy", "just bad planning", "who the hell did it", "did they even know what they're doing" and "ridiculous", I just feel tempted to ask you if your mother taught you any politedness at all - I'd say worse, if I didn't remember Renderosity's forum rules.

 

Instead, I'm just gonna quote Netherworks on this: where's YOUR human figure? It might have better UVs than Michelle's but I'm willing to bet it would have worse a-lot-of-other-things.

Quote - I did the UV work. In my defense I had to make the model, make the UV's, Paint new textures from scratch, Build a rig, build the morphs. I really tried my best. I know I'm not perfect at all aspects and, UV's are a weak-point. I did really try though. I also thought I kept the price reasonable for a figure I spent well over a year creating.

 

Oh, well I'm not gonna go off about it anymore and I apologize if I came off rude about it. I was angry at first and I could have been a little more tactful about it.

You did a pretty good job with the modeling, I'll say that, but seriously... man you should have gotten someone to help with the UV mapping or at least looked around at how people generally do it.

The warping isn't that  big of a deal, but the lack of attention to relative polygon scale is something you need to think about next time around, not to mention allocating enough space for areas that are going to need detail.

Well UV mapping and texturing are my thing and I can make this usable for myself at least in a couple of hours, plus I was planning on using it in Softimage and Maya anyway.

I'm surprised there haven't been people raging about this. Well unless there have been and I just haven't seen it yet. I'm even more surprised RDNA allowed this to go to the store. It makes me think twice about buying anything from them again, that's for sure.

I'm not upset anymore though, really and I'd still buy it again even knowing what I know now. If I were planning on using it in Poser it would be a different story, but I have to do this sort of thing all the time  so it's not a big deal.

But again, congrats on a nice modeling job!

 

.

It's fine. I always say people are entitled to their opinion. Even when they choose to be brutal about it. I'm a big boy, I can take a hit. :D I can only say I did the best I can do and, ask anyone that owns Michelle. I'm sure a lot of them will tell you that myself and Joe are constantly working to improve Michelle too. Soon SR2 will be out and I think folks are really going to like it! :D

Quote - Well I bought the figure.

It looks good, but I just have one question - who the hell UV mapped this figure and does he even know what he's doing?

See the screen shot from UV Layout. The body UVS are somewhat warped and distorted, morso than they need to be, not to mention that's an appalingly small amount of texture space to give to the body and arms and legs. No wonder the texture looks blurry in a render.

But the eyes are huge. Makes no sense.

Not just that, but UV Layout reports 1816 polygons that are not UV'd and Mudbox gives an error that it has an incomplete UV set, which of course, it does.

The non-mapped polygons all appear to be around the teeth.

 

Sloppy. Sloppy and just bad planning. The body, limbs and hands and feet take up a ridiculously small percentage of the available UV space. WHAT were they thinking? Nobody UV maps a figure like that.

I guess I'm gonna have to do it all over again myself. It's worth what I paid for it just for the OBJ and the rigging, but unless they redo it in a way that makes sense I'll never be buying any textures.

That's how Poser figures are normally mapped to be honest. Body on one uv and Head on the other and eyes on another. Maybe you're just not familiar with Poser figures? The Daz figures are mapped the same way.

Laurie

tate, you handle a critique amazingly well. It's not like any of us work for Pixar so things are not going to be perfect and that's ok. I always wanted to make my own figure from scratch and admire those who see it through to completion.

 

• hands tate a cookie *

Quote - That's how Poser figures are normally mapped to be honest. Body on one uv and Head on the other and eyes on another. Maybe you're just not familiar with Poser figures? The Daz figures are mapped the same way.

Laurie

 

No Laurie, it's not how Poser figures are mapped, to be honest, and it's not how any figures are supposed to be mapped.

Look at the screenshot again. I'm referring to the size, the percentage of the 0-1 UV space that the body and legs and arms take up. It's less than 50% of the available space.

To put that in realistic terms, it means that a 4K map made with that UV will allocate roughly 1K to the entire body, which obviously means that any details in small areas will be very pixellated.

I've been using Poser on and off since 1999, and I've been using XSI and Maya professionally since 2004, and I've never seen any figures mapped this way, except for low res models for games. A UV mapper always tries to use the maximum available space, in the case where overlapping UVs aren't an issue, and the DAZ figures are no exception.

DAZ uses separate materials for the Body, Limbs and Face, for the reason that the UVs on the OBJ are all overlapping in one patch. It's the only way you can make that work without using multiple patches or tiles, and the face, torso and limbs are all UV'd to take advantage of as much tile space as possible.

Although to be honest, overlapping UVs aren't really the way to do it either. Not anymore, now that computers are more powerful. It's just that for whatever reason Poser users are stuck in the old ways. And it becomes a very serious problem when trying to use programs such as Mudbox or Mari to paint textures - you have to either split up the model first or put each material into its own UV tile... but that's a whole different subject altogether and not relevant here.

But I'd rather not argue about it, and anyone can find out tons of information out there about how UV mapping is supposed to be done and why it is the way it is, and you won't find any professional texture artists anywhere relegating important texture areas to such a small texture percentage UNLESS thay HAVE TO fit it all into one tile, such as for a game model which can't utilize overlapping UVs, in which case it doesn't matter since they're also using low res textures. But even there, in those cases modelers try to split up a model so as to use entirely separate maps.

The head is okay and somewhat typical though. There's not much you can do when you have so much width, although, for example, in V4 the face is cut out separately to do away with that extra space for the sides of the head, so you can get more texture detail into the face.

And look at the size of the fingernails compared to the hands. The fingernails get roughly as much space as the breasts. This means that you can get far more detail into the fingernails than the hands, but it also means that a close-up shot of the hands may show a nice fingernail texture, but a blurry and pixellated and feature-lacking hand.

And the same goes for the eyes. They're huge and done right. Although again, a close-up shot of the face would mean not enough detail possible in the face, but with extreme detail in the eyes.

 

Honestly, all that needs to be done is for the body and arms and legs to be scaled up in size. That red you see in my screenshot is Headus UV Layout complaining that the relative size of those parts is too small in the tile, and the blue indicates parts that are too large, relative to the polygon area of the model as a whole.

.

Well I guess I can't edit my post above, but I just had a look at the Alyson model... so much wasted space, so little texture space allocated to more important areas.

Well maybe this IS how Poser people are doing it these days, although the way DAZ does it is more conducive to getting more texture detail. Which, incidentally also means more bump, normal and displacement detail as well.

 

.

While its likely that I would have mapped the figure differently (but that's MUCH more because I have my own way of doing things - many of us are solo workers) and it could be shifted to take advantage of more whitespace, I'm not seeing a huge loss of detail at render times.

Of course I'm also not rendering a 1000x1000 image of a nose either ;)

But anyways, I understand your critiques and your feedback is appreciated :)

Fabtastic Gabriel! Looks very realistic!

Quote - as for the project itself:

I have a ton of prior obligations and unfortunately do not have the time to give it the support and attention that it needs. I still have Anastasia clothing in the pipe, GND4 stuff thats been on the back burner since 2008(!), and also Tyler stuff that needs to be finished ASAP in time for his impending release.

I'm in the process of transferring everything over to RDNA and the My Michelle team, and they can finish things up and give it the support that it deserves. The project is in great hands.

cheers,
-Gabriel

I was wondering who was going to finish the BH morph pack.  I've been looking forward to its release.  I love My Michelle.

About the UVs...if tate mapped this in Lightwave...well, LW is a great program and I love it.  But unless you use the FI (I think) UV mapping plug ins (and the ones I have work only with version 7.5), its UV mapping capabilities leave something to be desired.  Maybe they've improved in V11.  I don't know...I stopped upgrading at V10, got Silo, and now I use LW for stuff I can't do in Silo.

Anyone who has UVLayout is gonna be spoiled by the end of the first day of use...that program is so great.  Tate, if y'all could get your hands on a copy of that -- for service releases -- it would practically do the UV work for you.  :-)  I'm not sure how the textures that've been made so far for My Michelle would work with UV revision, however.  Guess they'd have to be updated.

And please, I'm not trying to start an argument with anyone and I am NOT criticizing tate's work!  No way, no how.  I remember when I UV mapped in LW though.  I thought I was doing ok until I got UVLayout. 

Still, My Michelle has great skin...she has a striking transluscent skin I've not seen on any other character.  Maybe that's due to shader work.  I don't know enough about that to make a judgment.  And she has fantastic potential, has come a long way since her release, and it looks like she's already becoming something of a standard.

Note:  Whew...that Xurge surely can model clothing!!!  Reckon he does tutorials?  :-)

Jan, I had already offered to remap Michelle. But for reasons of already released products, and user confusions, it was decided to leave the mapping as it is.

Quote - I was wondering who was going to finish the BH morph pack.  I've been looking forward to its release.  I love My Michelle.

About the UVs...if tate mapped this in Lightwave...well, LW is a great program and I love it.  But unless you use the FI (I think) UV mapping plug ins (and the ones I have work only with version 7.5), its UV mapping capabilities leave something to be desired.  Maybe they've improved in V11.  I don't know...I stopped upgrading at V10, got Silo, and now I use LW for stuff I can't do in Silo.

Anyone who has UVLayout is gonna be spoiled by the end of the first day of use...that program is so great.  Tate, if y'all could get your hands on a copy of that -- for service releases -- it would practically do the UV work for you.  :-)  I'm not sure how the textures that've been made so far for My Michelle would work with UV revision, however.  Guess they'd have to be updated.

And please, I'm not trying to start an argument with anyone and I am NOT criticizing tate's work!  No way, no how.  I remember when I UV mapped in LW though.  I thought I was doing ok until I got UVLayout. 

Still, My Michelle has great skin...she has a striking transluscent skin I've not seen on any other character.  Maybe that's due to shader work.  I don't know enough about that to make a judgment.  And she has fantastic potential, has come a long way since her release, and it looks like she's already becoming something of a standard.

Note:  Whew...that Xurge surely can model clothing!!!  Reckon he does tutorials?  :-)

I've been using UV Layout for about 4 years now and yeah, you're right about its UV tools. You may have noticed my screenshots from an earlier reply were from UV Layout.

Even so, it does leave some things to be desired. Ideally I'd like to have a cross between Headus UV Layout and Maya's UV Texture Editor. UV mapping in Lightwave is just pure agony, IMO, no matter what plugin you use, except for the simplest low poly objects. Lightwave is a great program, but Modeler is seriously behind the times and its OpenGL response is abysmal compared to most 3D programs nowadays, particularly with  wireframes views, such as what you have to work with when UV mapping.

Anyway, yeah the shader skin looks really quite good, and yaeah, that is a result of the shaders, not the textures.

However, obviously textures play a huge role in any figure's appearance and Michelle could look so much better with better UV mapping. Not just the relative size of the UVs, but also ther's a significant amount of distortion and even some overlapping, such as in the nostrils.

Sure you can use 8K textures to get more detail, but that can quickly eat up all your RAM if you're using several textures, plus diffuse value maps, displacement, bump, specularity and so on. This is exactly why professional mappers try to utilize the maximum texture space available - so as to not have to use massive textures just to be able to get the necessary detail.

The Poserpro figures have the best UV mapping in the industry. Period.
One single texture map and everything is on it and very user friendly, and extremely good lay-out.

On a side note.
Poser is NOT limited in texture size.

One 8192x8192 texture is all you will ever need to put a magnificent texture on.

I frequently use these 8192x8192 textures and the quality increase is HUGE.

 

Happy Posering
Tony

Quote - The Poserpro figures have the best UV mapping in the industry. Period.
One single texture map and everything is on it and very user friendly, and extremely good lay-out.

On a side note.
Poser is NOT limited in texture size.

One 8192x8192 texture is all you will ever need to put a magnificent texture on.

I frequently use these 8192x8192 textures and the quality increase is HUGE.

 

Happy Posering
Tony

 

There is nothing good about UV mapping a figure where everything is overlapping, ask anyone who has tried to paint a Poser figure in Mudbox, ZBrush or Mari. If you want to paint the whole figure at once, first you have to move each material group into its own tile, so you end up with materials at coordinates like u1_v1, u1_v2, 1001,1002, and so on.

Also, as I already pointed out, while an 8 K texture does give great resolution, for one thing it seriously eats up RAM when you have to use several 8K texture maps each for diffuse, spec,bump, normal, etc. Ask a 32 bit Poser user how well that works out when the textures for just one figure are using 4 GB of RAM at render time.

But for another thing, with properly mapped figure you can use 8 K maps to get in extra extreme detail; you shouldn't have to use them just to be able to get in normal detail.

Quote - Jan, I had already offered to remap Michelle. But for reasons of already released products, and user confusions, it was decided to leave the mapping as it is.

That was nice of you!  :-)  But I am not complaining about My Michelle's UV mapping.  Being a LW user, albeit sometimes now, I remember its...well 3DGuy said it better than I could.  So I guess I was just saying that if tate did the UVs in LW, he had his work cut out for him.

My Michelle is a lovely model.  She's fun to model for, also!  Again, I surely wish I had some of Xurge's talent.  :-)

Again, no complaints, no arguments, just observations...please, don't anyone take what I said the wrong way.  Isn't every model something of a WIP?  I mean, look what DNA has done with V4 -- the weight mapping.  And look at ironman's great smoothing morphs.  If everyone had said "Oh, she's perfect, leave her alone," we wouldn't have weight-mapped V4 or tools to make her look nicer.

Look what BH has done with Alyson2, also.  His Anastasia and Tosca's Melody really make Alyson2 shine!

And I expect BH's morph pack for MM will be as amazing as we expect it to be, or more so.  Everytime someone adds something to a model, we all benefit.  So the UV suggestions might be something to consider in the future...or not.

On the subject of wishlists for UVs...I wish some genius would find a way to transfer UVs from one model to another, without the tediousness of hand revision...moving vertice after vertice.  I wonder if it could be done with a Python script. 

Keeping an eye out for BH's Redux!  And Tate's new Raven at DNA, too.  (Sigh...see where all my money goes?)  :-)

Note:  I had no idea that 8000+ texture maps were used!  I thought the highest anyone went was 4096.  That's interesting.  I've been finding 4k texture maps limiting but that's because I let UVLayout pack the map and probably don't chop my model up to make the best use of UV space.  Skirts, for instance, are nice to leave in one piece, if possible, and make into rectangles even though that does distort the texture.  But if someone wants to use stripes, that's the only way I know to map a striped skirt.  (Not a UV expert here.)

 

 

 

 

It wasn't DNA who weight mapped V4, it was the folks at Poser Place. RDNA just offered her a home. ^^ So much so that V4 WM is under a cathegory of figures at RDNA's store called Poser Place.

And yes, Michelle is a delight. I'm loving to model for her, she has such a good body shape for this. She's neutral yet cute. Also, her JCMs are few and simple, so it's not a great annoyance to rig for her.

(And she made me dare to try weight mapping too. I must say I'm hooked)

Quote - It wasn't DNA who weight mapped V4, it was the folks at Poser Place. RDNA just offered her a home. ^^ So much so that V4 WM is under a cathegory of figures at RDNA's store called Poser Place.

My mistake.  And apologies.

Quote - And yes, Michelle is a delight. I'm loving to model for her, she has such a good body shape f0r this. She's neutral yet cute. Also, her JCMs are few and simple, so it's not a great annoyance to rig for her.

I'm lazy...I use Obj to Cr2 and just adj the jps.  But the only garment I've made for MM has been dynamic, so I can't comment on conforming for her.  (Turns red)

Quote - (And she made me dare to try weight mapping too. I must say I'm hooked)

I weight-mapped a few pieces using the CCTs in DS4APro (before I switched back to Poser) -- at least I think the items for Genesis were weight-mapped -- so I don't know what weight-mapping in Poser is like.  That's one thing I'd have to read the manual for or at least a tutorial.  Maybe Fugazi will decide to do a tutorial on weight-mapping clothing in Poser.  I love his tuts!!!  Love 'em even more when they appear on Prime.  ;-)

No need to apologize. Nobody's forced to know that ;) I just know because I was very involved with Poser Place at the time, because of Antonia.

 

That's not lazyness. Actually, I think that everyone who does NOT use a tool to simplify the process of making a conforming figure is quite a bit masochist LOL

 

Right back at you, I know nothing of DS's Weight mapping... honestly I don't know anything of DS's anything xD

where do you get melody from?

I can't find her in searching the store here.

Love esther

@Another 3D Guy

I partially agree But.... I live in 2012 with Poser9 @ PP2012

Using Specular maps, and bump maps,normal maps are from the past school.

All you really need is ONE single good diffuse map.

And one single diffuse map at 8192x8192 driving the rest of the nodes, is far LESS RAM consuming than the old school technique where you need multiple maps and different maps for spec, bump or normal.

PS; as they are both "fake", I never use a bump or normal map.

I posted a RAM and user friendly material room setup a while back.
I'll try to link to it when I find it back.

 

Click to enlarge.

Starting from upper right: the texture map, increased in size to 8192x8192, desaturated some 10% and sharpened twice.

From there I add A Math_Substract function to get a inverted map to go into  the Displacement-Blender input_1

Result? =>  Brows and public hair get most displacement.

Input_2 from this Displacement blender goes to the Turbulence.
And blending is set to 0.5 and here I can control the mix if needed..

From Alternate_Specular to the Specular-Blinn node where I reduce the Specular_Color using the Blinn-Color-Blender.

The Blinn-Color-Blender gets input_1 from the texture. => Brows, lips, public hair stay with less Blinn.
Input_2 goes to turbulence and is blended at 0.1

Specular-Blinn Reflectivity itself is driven by the texture again (output from the hvs node).

Quite a simple setup, and it gives me lots of control over the Displacement, and over the Alternate_Specular.

The link did not work, so here is the same explanation for a mat room and user friendly setup.

Have a nice day.

@vilters:

Clearly you have different opinions and you are entitled to them.

I however completely disagree. :-D

Past, present, or future. 1+1=2

Bump map is fake => Past, present, or future.
Normal map is fake => Past, present, or future.

99.9% of all specular maps provided are just grayscaled diffuse maps.
The only thing they consume is more RAM. Delete them.
And no need to add them anywhere as Poser can make those internally with a node from the diffuse map if needed/required.

Drive a Blinn node from a blended diffuse map instead.

The only thing doing something in 3D space is a displacement map. 
Drive a displacement (as in my eample above), with a blended node from the same diffuse map.

 

Very controllable, very user friendly, and very predictable results.

Happy posering.
Tony

Quote - Using Specular maps, and bump maps,normal maps are from the past school.

All you really need is ONE single good diffuse map.

The problem is color intensity of a texture map doesn't always give you correct values for a bump map. Wrinkles are dark in color as are things like pores, skin creases and lip furrows. Invert your texture and these become 'hills' instead of 'valleys' in your bump which is obviously wrong. And of course, if you don't invert, you get valleys where things are dark like hair, pimples, blackheads etc which is again wrong. If you really want to extract a bump map from your color texture, you need to selectively extract detail from it, then level it to appropriate bumpiness, invert as needed, then mix it all back into a single bump/displacement map, all of which is very hard to do with the poser material room alone. It's easier to just have a separate map that you can further enhance with hand painted detail.

And specular maps have very little to do with colors or bumpiness. They should almost always be painted by hand because they don't need any detail, only soft clouds of 'oil' on your skin. The detail automatically comes from the bump map when rendered.

Thank you, Aphrodite.  :-)  My foot has a knack for going in my mouth sometimes, and sometimes I don't even know it's there.  Glad I didn't offend.  Antonia is a great figure, too.  I got some of DNA's morphs for her and really got into playing with at her one time. 

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/melody-for-alyson-2/95182 

Ester, link to Melody.  Hope it's ok to post in this thread.  She's an Alyson2 character and since BH did Anastasia, which Melody will work with, maybe it'll fit.  If not, I'll be glad to remove it.

Really cool, reading all the different opinions and looking at all the info.  vilters, I'm saving your post as "favorite" on list to reference.  Are we allowed to use or modify your setup?  Don't know how it'd work with clothing but I like the idea of one map.  Sure would save Runtime space. 

8192 texture maps!  That opens new doors.  

Learning a lot from this thread and the different opinions.  That's a bonus...when I came, I just wanted to check out the progress on BH's character.  :-)

Edit:  question that may be OT but hopefully not, since maps have the floor.  Are SSS maps hand-painted, or is SSS added in MAT Room and/or with plugs like EZSkin?  Just curious...

 

 

 

> Quote - Thank you, Aphrodite.  :-)  My foot has a knack for going in my mouth sometimes, and sometimes I don't even know it's there.  Glad I didn't offend.  Antonia is a great figure, too.  I got some of DNA's morphs for her and really got into playing with at her one time.  > >   > > Ester, link to Melody.  Hope it's ok to post in this thread.  She's an Alyson2 character and since BH did Anastasia, which Melody will work with, maybe it'll fit.  If not, I'll be glad to remove it. > > Really cool, reading all the different opinions and looking at all the info.  vilters, I'm saving your post as "favorite" on list to reference.  Are we allowed to use or modify your setup?  Don't know how it'd work with clothing but I like the idea of one map.  Sure would save Runtime space.  > > 8192 texture maps!  That opens new doors.   > > Learning a lot from this thread and the different opinions.  That's a bonus...when I came, I just wanted to check out the progress on BH's character.  :-) > > Edit:  question that may be OT but hopefully not, since maps have the floor.  Are SSS maps hand-painted, or is SSS added in MAT Room and/or with plugs like EZSkin?  Just curious... > >  

Hi Jan, and esther,

On the Melody fits...she can wear my At The Office freebie just fine.  Just load Anastasia first, then load the Melody head morph and she can were anything that fits Anastasia.

Here's Melody wearing Poserworld's Vienna Dress for Anastasia with some of ParrotDophlin's lovely materials.

 

Wow, that's one impressive dress, and Anastasia is lovely in it.  I've never shopped at Poserworld.  Oh, my, I know I'll check it out now...

BTW, Glitterati, your freebie for Anastasia is amazing!  Just downloaded it and left a comment and rating.  Thank you very much for the info and jeez, that image is gorgeous.

Whew...I'll never get anything done today at this rate.  :-)  This sure is more fun than washing clothes though.

 

SSS in Poser doesn't usually use maps to control it. It can, but I've never seen anyone do it properly yet.

 

 

In any case, about maps: I tend to paint my specular, bump and displacement maps. Granted, when it's for skin I start those with a grayscale version of my diffuse map, but then I add a lot of info to it by painting grayscale over it. For cloth textures I just paint from scratch. And yes, those things DO work better than going purely shader work with the diffuse, and going shader work with the diffuse works better than having bump maps that are just a grayscale of the diffuse map.

 

HOWEVER... I didn't know Poser could go past 4096x4096. I've had it give me error messages before when I tried. Hmmm gotta try now. In any case, one can easily make 8000+ px maps for the diffuse, and lower for bump, spec and displacement maps. And as far as I know, normal maps aren't all too useful in Poser - aren't those just to add detail to low-res meshes?

IMO you can safely ignore normal maps in Poser cause they don't really offer anything over bump maps for the average Poser artist.

Quote - Past, present, or future. 1+1=2

Bump map is fake => Past, present, or future.
Normal map is fake => Past, present, or future.

99.9% of all specular maps provided are just grayscaled diffuse maps.
The only thing they consume is more RAM. Delete them.
And no need to add them anywhere as Poser can make those internally with a node from the diffuse map if needed/required.

Drive a Blinn node from a blended diffuse map instead.

The only thing doing something in 3D space is a displacement map. 
Drive a displacement (as in my eample above), with a blended node from the same diffuse map.

 

Very controllable, very user friendly, and very predictable results.

Happy posering.
Tony

 

You know what though - You've found a way that works for you and works for you in Poser, and that's great.

However, your argument is based entirely on what you want and what works for you. While it's great for your work, you're essentially saying you support denying others the possibility of more options.

My simple suggestion to UV map the model(s) in a more conventional and industry standard manner allows everyone to do as they see fit; it expands the options, rather than limits them.

And not just for Poser, but for use with other apps as well. I get the impression all you use is Poser, but spend some time trying to use these figures in Maya, Softimage, 3ds max, Mari, Mudbox, ZBrush and so on and you'll quickly see how they could all be done better, and in a way that makes them perfectly compatible for all programs, not just Poser, and also without even slightly limiting or changing, or otherwise adversely affecting their usability in Poser.

IMO, it's about time the Poser people started doing things a little more conventionally, rather than just for what's good in Poser.

And the kicker is, it doesn't take any more work to do it in a way that makes it better all around. It's just a matter of knowing what to do and planning it all out for the sake of versatility in options.

I'd add that as Poser becomes more and more industry standard (and it is quickly becoming that what with GI, weight maps et al) poser merchants will really have no choice but to follow industry norms - simply because industry norms evolved after gruelling RnD in complicated projects and are usually the most flexible, powerful and efficient ways to do stuff. There is little point in reinventing the wheel here.

Well, since we are selling to Poser USERS we make for Poser. If you want stuff that'll work in anything else, perhaps you should shop at Turbo Squid. It only makes sense. Then you're sure that you're getting what you want rather than something that's marketed as "for POSER". The bulk of this market is hobbyist users. Sure, it's always a bonus when something works in other programs, but almost everything in the Rendo MP is listed as for Poser or for Poser and DS or a combo of the two. I can't use a .max model in Poser. Even if I buy it. I understand this when I buy.

Laurie

3Dguy

You've said much of what I wanted to say-diplomatically! UV mapping in a more conventional manner does indeed make sense-it might even make it more likely that people using the "rest of the world's" programs would buy and use these characters.

I've already said that I LIKE making detailed CLOSE up renders-having the face take up so little of the available UV space-does not lend itself to that purpose.

Vitters: why does the face take up so little space on that map? Also-why not use SSS-it really does add a lot to realism. Can you post some renders of this character using this set up? You re-sized the map? Interpolation softens the image and sharpening can add artefacts. Do you SEE improved realistic detail afterwards compared the the 4000 pixel version?

 

You know what though - You've found a way that works for you and works for you in Poser, and that's great.

However, your argument is based entirely on what you want and what works for you. While it's great for your work, you're essentially saying you support denying others the possibility of more options.

My simple suggestion to UV map the model(s) in a more conventional and industry standard manner allows everyone to do as they see fit; it expands the options, rather than limits them.

And not just for Poser, but for use with other apps as well. I get the impression all you use is Poser, but spend some time trying to use these figures in Maya, Softimage, 3ds max, Mari, Mudbox, ZBrush and so on and you'll quickly see how they could all be done better, and in a way that makes them perfectly compatible for all programs, not just Poser, and also without even slightly limiting or changing, or otherwise adversely affecting their usability in Poser.

IMO, it's about time the Poser people started doing things a little more conventionally, rather than just for what's good in Poser.

And the kicker is, it doesn't take any more work to do it in a way that makes it better all around. It's just a matter of knowing what to do and planning it all out for the sake of versatility in options.

I forgot to say: people that make content for Poser are inhibited by Poser's limitations. I wish we weren't! LOL. My first impulse is to make something that will look correct in Luxrender for instance. For that, a glass needs thickness and a separate mesh for the fluid. Can't do that in Poser. Firefly won't render so many layers of refraction, correctly. So we need to cut the mesh up, make the liquid part of the inside of the glass and add a cap. Then it looks believeable. But it won't transfer over well to other software. That's the reality we live in. Until SM brings Poser up to snuff, that's what we have to work with. If I made something industry standard, it would look like shit in Poser. See the problem?

Now, BB will chime in and contradict everything I just said. LOL. But the fact remains you have to model a slightly different sort of way for Poser.

Laurie