Good point Laurie. I've made drinking glasses, etc, in Lightwave-that look quite realistic-when rendered in Lightwave. And of course Poser does not have a Caustics option.

Quote - 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 face remains you have to model a slightly different sort of way for Poser.

Laurie

Quote - Good point Laurie. I've made drinking glasses, etc, in Lightwave-that look quite realistic-when rendered in Lightwave. And of course Poser does not have a Caustics option.

Nope, no caustics, no color transmission (unless you wanna jump thru hoops with the gather node), and clear glass casts a full shadow. It drives me nuts. LOL. Most ppl will hate me for this, but Poser needs completely rewritten. Heh. Until it is tho, it's what we're stuck with.

Laurie

Michelle SR2 is out, along with the new Raven character for her!!!

All the best.

LROG

Quote - 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

You missed the point entirely.

There's nothing complex about this. I'm not suggesting they make a version for each software package, so your comment about not being able to use a .max file in Poser makes no sense.

I'm talking about the OBJ file that every Poser figure uses, and the associated UV mapping and why Poser people should do it differently.

There are many reasons TO do it differently, in a way that all programs can benefit when using that OBJ file and not one reason NOT to. Not one. If you think you can find a reason why UVs should be overlapping, all crammed into one tile and sized according to material grouping, by all means let me know.

And again, my suggestions are also for the better of the Poser uses as well. If you want extreme detail in a texture, why should you settle for having to use 8K maps when you could use 4K maps or 2K maps if the figure were UVd better?

An image map uses roughly ~10 times more RAM at render time as its file size, so a 100 MB 8K image map uses ~1 GB of RAM when rendering. Wouldn't it be better to have a torso that takes up the entire UV tile so you could use a 2K map and still have great detail?

I agree about UV maps taking up as much of the UV space as possible. But overlapping uvs are common in Poser. If I have a cork and a lot of different bottles to put a cork in, I'm only gonna model and uv the cork once. But every time an individual bottle .obj is opened, the cork is gonna be on top of everything else. I don't see a problem with that.

Laurie

Quote - I agree about UV maps taking up as much of the UV space as possible. But overlapping uvs are common in Poser. If I have a cork and a lot of different bottles to put a cork in, I'm only gonna model and uv the cork once. But every time an individual bottle .obj is opened, the cork is gonna be on top of everything else. I don't see a problem with that.

Laurie

I don't know why people have so much trouble understanding UVs...

Okay, the standard UV space is 0-1, but there are also an infinite number of other tiles, call them 1-2, 2-3, 3-4, or u1_v1, u2_v2, etc.

There is absolutely no reason why Pose UVs all need to be stacked into 0-1. You could put the head in 0-1 and the body on tile u496_v127 and for all Poser knows or cares it's all still 0-1, since Poser only reads the texture information in a UV tile.

However, try to import that entire figure into ZBrush, Mudbox, Mari or Body Paint to do some texture painting, and it's not going to work, because those programs see them as overlapping UVs, not independent materials that happen to be in the same UV space. So to use Poser figures in those programs, you have to first manually move the UV groups to separate tiles or patches before importing.

If this were done when UV mapping a Poser figure in the first place, that would be one less hassle, and several more points for professionalism and versatility.

And it takes virtually no time to move a UV group to its own tile when UV mapping in any program worth its cost, Lightwave included.

It may be common in Poser, but to be honest it's just stupid that anyone did it that way to begin with and it's pointless to keep doing it that way. I suspect everyone here uses UV Mapper, which, I believe, just plops them all into 0-1 and gives the idiotic error message about UVs being out of range otherwise.

As I already stated, Poser does not care where those UVs are, as long as they're somewhere. It can't tell the difference between UVs in 0-1 or in 9-10 or anywhere else.

Try as I may, after weeks of cogitation (ooer missis) I still can't work out why RDNA is now called Michelle.  :D

The screenshot is what happens when you use a smoothing brush on it in ZBrush.

I guess forget about using ZBrush for any FBM's for this figure...

Poser does not require them to be welded. Sometimes it is a disadvantage to have them welded depending on what you want to do with the character. Single skin (welded, single mesh) characters can be used in Poser, but using them limits what you can do with them (geometry swapping, etc).

You can however export a character from Poser and weld it in the process, doing so will change the vertex count, and subsequently make the morphs useless in the process. But there is a way to get it back into Poser and correct the vertex cout/order with a creative little script. I have never used it, but it is out there and people do use it.

You can sculpt a non welded character without destroying it too. But I do not know the steps to do it in Zbrush. I would think that there is a way to do it, but there may not be.

I use Blender to build/sculpt/UV characters. It can sculpt non welded meshes and do all the other things complained about in the thread.

Thanks for the information, shvrdavid, but I've given up on the idea of using this figure in Poser. Too much work that I don't have time for. I've welded it together and am rigging a Maya version and I'll just use ptex for textures so I don't have to even bother remapping it.

It's a nice figure, and ultimately everything I do ends up in Maya or Softimage anyway, although I often prefer to use Poser and its Collada export to make things simpler and quicker.

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

Thank you, Aphrodite.  :-)  I appreciate the answer. 

You all sure know a lot about the nuts and bolts of Poser.  Interesting reading.

Oh, and as someone already mentioned the Raven character is now out, and very reasonably priced, too.  That's one thing I've appreciated about the MM products.  DNA has made them very affordable, in intro stages anyhow.  At first I had second thoughts about adding a new figure to my runtimes, thinking it'd cost an arm and a leg, but MM hasn't been that expensive at all.  I'm enjoying her very much.

I use Zbrush to make morphs for Michelle. All you need to do is, instead of using smoothing, just use one of the Polish brushes.

With all due respect, you can't blame the figure because you don't want to look for alternatives for what you're trying to do. Nor can you expect the figure made for Poser to be made in a way that will be specific to work with your pipeline - a pipeline that is quite different from a vast majority of Poser users.

Yes, it would be nice for some people if Poser content was readily made to work well with other applications. But REALITY is this: most of Poser users are hobbysts. They don't want to fiddle with what they bought to make it their way - they want to easily be able to use said content to make beautiful images. Something you buy off TurboSquid can be used in many 3d programs, true, but then you have to import, fix something in the mesh, apply the textures, fix the materials. AND any model made for Maya, C4d, 3dsMax, that has the amount of detail you see in Poser content will cost you a few hundred dollars instead of a dozen of dollars or two. Still we're trying to make a living, but our target customers aren't professionals in the field of 3d, they are hobbysts. That means we must charge less from them, but it also means we have much more potential customers.

AND that also means we make stuff ready for THEM. The way it'll work well and easy for them. If it weren't so, I wouldn't worry that I'll make materials that will look nice with standard Poser lights that still think of Poser4 tech when made - I'd make materials that would look amazing with IDL on. But then those materials would look bad for most of my customers (and chances are that any of them who dares use IDL will have enough knowledge to fix those materials for that). Thing is, we have to think in terms of "most users" when we make something, because that's how marketing works.

Not to mention that charging so little for meshes that are fully detailed, UV mapped, rigged, textured, morphed and with texture options (as far as clothes go. Just giving an example) is exhausting. We have to make many of such products a year to have an income that is near decent. I don't even accept to make my products particularly DS-ready, because my app of choice is Poser, let alone make them ready for any other app a single buyer might choose. It's right there in my product pages: made for Poser. Why should I be forced to do otherwise? Michelle even works in DS too, marvelously at that.

Now, you are entitled to not like this figure - hey, I don't like a lot of figures I have tried using! - but please, enough of going over and over again on how you don't like it. Be an adult. It was made by Poser and DS's standards and you bought exactly what was in the product page, you weren't fooled when buying it, so there's no reason to keep complaining again and again. You didn't commission this figure to have each and every one of your preferences. If you don't like it, move on.

Quote - Now, you are entitled to not like this figure - hey, I don't like a lot of figures I have tried using! - but please, enough of going over and over again on how you don't like it. Be an adult. It was made by Poser and DS's standards and you bought exactly what was in the product page, you weren't fooled when buying it, so there's no reason to keep complaining again and again. You didn't commission this figure to have each and every one of your preferences. If you don't like it, move on.

here, here!

This thread needs to return to constructive discussions.

Sorry. Gonna shush now until someone has questions I can answer. LOL

Quote -  

here, here!

This thread needs to return to constructive discussions.

Actually, the correct way of saying it would be "hear hear".

But what do you mean by constructive? In other words, you mean just say good happy things and ignore any faults?

Nobody ever improves by only hearing what's good. You don't fix the good points of anything, you fix the bad.

Quote -  

Now, you are entitled to not like this figure - hey, I don't like a lot of figures I have tried using! - but please, enough of going over and over again on how you don't like it. Be an adult. It was made by Poser and DS's standards and you bought exactly what was in the product page, you weren't fooled when buying it, so there's no reason to keep complaining again and again. You didn't commission this figure to have each and every one of your preferences. If you don't like it, move on.

Be an adult? What could possibly be more adult than having a discussion about the intricacies of something? It's not like I'm yelling and crying and screaming here.

But maybe I just shouldn't make any more comments. Clearly you Poser people have your own clique-like thing going on here, and lack of professionalism is not only ignored, but encouraged.

actually they get annoyed with ppl that barge in, tell them they're all wrong, then ignore what they are saying.

*not that you'll get that... since you are "professional" and all. must account for the rudeness and arrogance.

In what exactly was I unprofessional?

Poser market means you pay for a product as is. The way it is. Buying a Poser product doesn't include "this vendor will be at your side to make any changes to it that you would like".

Let me just put this in a comparison: say you bought a real-life shirt off the shelter. The shirt was there, with all the information - size, color, material, who made it. Then you came home, put it on with other clothes you already had, decided it was not quite what you thought it looked like, and then you try to get it exchanged but the store has a policy of no refunds or exchanges unless it doesn't fit you or has a factory defect.

Then you tell them you didn't like it. Ok, you are entitled to it, but the store can't do anything about it - you had seen this product and chose to buy it, it's against the policy to refund you (otherwise everyone would just come in, buy something, wear it for a day and then just get a full refund, right?). Then you go on an on about how this stitch should be 2 milimeters to the side, that hem should be larger, and how this light blue shade should be a navy blue so that it would look good with exactly that pair of pants you have at home. And you start saying it loudly in a way that makes it look like you're trying to convince any other shoppers inside the store to never, ever get that shirt because it's all flawed.

It might not be what you're intending to do here, really, I believe it if you say so. But it sure does look like you're nagging to either get the vendors to remake the entire figure to suit your preferences or to get other people here to not want Michelle at all. And that, in my point of view, is quite childish.

Quote - actually they get annoyed with ppl that barge in, tell them they're all wrong, then ignore what they are saying.

*not that you'll get that... since you are "professional" and all. must account for the rudeness and arrogance.

Yeah, you're absolutely right.

Apparently the Poser crowd is a little more thin-skinned than what I'm used to.

Hmmm, I wonder how far along that ignore button option has got?

All the best.

LROG

Quote - > Quote - actually they get annoyed with ppl that barge in, tell them they're all wrong, then ignore what they are saying.

*not that you'll get that... since you are "professional" and all. must account for the rudeness and arrogance.

 

Yeah, you're absolutely right.

Apparently the Poser crowd is a little more thin-skinned than what I'm used to.

Nope, just set in it's ways...lol. Way too set I think, but that's the way it is ;). You either live with it or ya don't, deal with it or ya don't. I chose to deal with it, but I still get annoyed...hehe. I think some equate new technologies with it being more difficult or harder to understand. But Poser is essentially the same as it was in Poser 4. Small changes only.

Laurie

oh they're not that thin skinned.. you just took the totally wrong approach and rubbed a lot of ppl up the wrong way. maybe if you tried talking TO them and not at/down to them? you would get further I think.

Quote - But maybe I just shouldn't make any more comments. Clearly you Poser people have your own clique-like thing going on here, and lack of professionalism is not only ignored, but encouraged.

I believe the point you are missing is, this is the POSER forum. Many of us using poser are unconcerned about other applications and how Poser materials work therein. If that makes us a clique, then I suppose we are. However, given what the majority of us do with Poser, I'm not sure it makes any difference one way or the other (to us) how the issues that seem so important to you are handled.

You have stated your views. You've not gotten the response you wanted. It happens. But restating the same position over and over is not going to make it any more acceptable in the group. It becomes trolling, and that is prohibited by the Renderosity TOS.

Quote - Hmmm, I wonder how far along that ignore button option has got?

All the best.

LROG

It's my understandng that programming is looking at it.

Let's see, 15 years online, gaming, creating, having quite a social presence online, that was me, since I was 12 to nowadays.

I've seen, many times, people reach a situation they don't like, then start complaining, first politely, then increasingly rudely. Then, when someone calls on them that they're being rude, they go something along the lines of "it's not my fault if you can't take a criticism". No, really, just being rude or annoying is not the same as criticism. Do you know who were the champions of reaching that point? Yes... 12 to 15 year olds. Always. Ever since the first time I was online - and yes, I was guilty of doing that, when I was that age. Even if it weren't childish, it's still an easy and not logical way to try to get yourself out of the spotlight of being seen as unethical.

Now really, enough of this before the mods decide to lock this thread - rightfully so but it isn't Michelle's fault. ;)

As it may have got missed in the undergrowth of other things:-

Michelle SR2 is now out at RDNA - previous buyers check your emails, new buyers will get her automatically.

The new Raven character is out for her.

And there is a new dynamic dress for her as well.

So, lets see some renders!!!!

All the best.

LROG

OH YES, SR2 is finally out! I hadn't noticed because I've had it for quite a while, was helping test it lightly.

Guys, BODY SCALES. You're gonna love this to bits. It's so easy to use and looks so smooth and works with any clothing like a dream. Go check it and play with it :D

Elf scale and the same with the clothing!!

All the best.

LROG

Yay, let the fun begin! No more all-the-models-are-the-same-height!

Quote - Clearly you Poser people (etc)

I really don't intend to engage all of this.  Basically, to me, it's Michelle offers "this, that or another" and if someone finds that it simply unacceptable or not enough, I understand and am not going to get offended or protective (at least that's not what I'm shooting for).  I do listen but I'm not going to pander or make any change without considerable thought.

I think the critiques are fine and welcome but there are very likely to be reasons that every observation or request is not going to be acted on.  Firstly is that Michelle is certainly a figure that we intend to be community friendly but it isn't an open-source community project.  The team has to carefully look at the ramifications that any change creates.  Even if it seems like a little change, it can reach deeply and affect many other things, certainly but not limited to works that have already been created for Michelle by other artists.  You don't want artists to feel that Michelle is an eternal work-in-progress to the degree where it just isn't "worth the trouble" to design for it.  I don't think that's a road that we plan to travel.

If something can be implemented so that the changes can be passed on that doesn't cause (great) confusion or trouble for end users and/or content creators then its something we are more apt to look at.  Sometimes it's also making a consideration on "how" to implement something.  What might be "easy and clear" to you might be terribly confusing for a casual user and I just can't write those folks off.

Starting your thoughts with "you poser people" is just drawing a dividing line to start with and I'm not sure that's terribly necessary.  Any place where we can all relax behind anonymity (and that's most of the web) we see all ranges of good and bad behavior.  Go anywhere and start a Mac vs. PC thread and watch how quickly that devolves into mud slinging and dead-horse beating ;)

Dang I missed out on the intro offer for Michelle, so I will have to wait for her to go on sale again to get her :(  Looking forward to trying out the scaling! Lots of support for her too, which makes it nice.

All the best.

LROG

All the best.

LORG

Now that we can change sizes etc. I would love to see a Creature Feature pack appear.

All the best.

LROG

and now LROG is addicted. Welcome to the club LOL

Quote - Now that we can change sizes etc. I would love to see a Creature Feature pack appear.

All the best.

LROG

Hmmm good point. Heheh will add to my plans list. ;)

Here is a thought.

If the character is not done to your standards, take the time to make it fit your standards, then give it freely to the community for scrutiny.

I have done that with a few characters. I don't complain about characters when they have an issue, I help fix them then give it to the community.

Doing that goes a lot further than just complaining about it ever will.

Quote - Here is a thought.

If the character is not done to your standards, take the time to make it fit your standards, then give it freely to the community for scrutiny.

I have done that with a few characters. I don't complain about characters when they have an issue, I help fix them then give it to the community.

Doing that goes a lot further than just complaining about it ever will.

Gotta check how to do that legally first. Unlike Antonia, Michelle is not open source.

Is there any particular reason why this figure's OBJ's body parts aren't welded together?

The screenshot is what happens when you use a smoothing brush on it in ZBrush.
I guess forget about using ZBrush for any FBM's for this figure...

*Poser Pro 2012 SR3 added GoZ. Does this not export a welded version of the figure to Zbrush? It should because it would be worthless if it didn't. (I haven't tested it because I use colorcurvature's Morphloader and export scripts, which work flawlessly in my experience.)

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.

*Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. You should upload some images to your gallery so people can judge whether your methods actually produce quality.

I reallly like to be able to "paint" a continuous displacement map in Zbrush-for use in Poser! Poser has already added GoZ (for export/import to Zbrush) in PoserPro2012 SR3- and Daz Advanced or Pro-has GoZ as well- so there is a trend towards interaction with other programs-used professionally. Applying the UV mapping as Another3DGuy suggests would make this connection much smoother!

Quote - > Quote -

EDIT
However, try to import that entire figure into ZBrush, Mudbox, Mari or Body Paint to do some texture painting, and it's not going to work, because those programs see them as overlapping UVs, not independent materials that happen to be in the same UV space. So to use Poser figures in those programs, you have to first manually move the UV groups to separate tiles or patches before importing.

If this were done when UV mapping a Poser figure in the first place, that would be one less hassle, and several more points for professionalism and versatility.

And it takes virtually no time to move a UV group to its own tile when UV mapping in any program worth its cost, Lightwave included.

It may be common in Poser, but to be honest it's just stupid that anyone did it that way to begin with and it's pointless to keep doing it that way. I suspect everyone here uses UV Mapper, which, I believe, just plops them all into 0-1 and gives the idiotic error message about UVs being out of range otherwise.

As I already stated, Poser does not care where those UVs are, as long as they're somewhere. It can't tell the difference between UVs in 0-1 or in 9-10 or anywhere else.

I reallly like to be able to "paint" a continuous displacement map in Zbrush-for use in Poser! Poser has already added GoZ (for export/import to Zbrush) in PoserPro201.

*You can group by material. If there are Zbrush groups for head and body, you can paint continuous displacement and export the head and body maps separately. Is there really a difference between a displacement consisting of two maps and a displacement consisting of one where the head is separated from the body and enlarged for greater detail? Either way there will be seams and scaling differences.

I've not noticed any issues using Michelle with GoZ and ZBrush.

Not that I necessarily would, I guess. Maybe I just didn't use the smooth brush on her. Or maybe GoZ manages the weld... somehow?

But it is Michelle I've been practising with in ZBrush, mostly, so far... and making FBMs for her...

...and, my thinking is, if she was good enough for Blackhearted to sculpt... and I don't think he was complaining about her ZBrush compatibility? Assuming he'd have been using that?

Quote - Gotta check how to do that legally first. Unlike Antonia, Michelle is not open source.

Neither was V4~WM. And I went strait to Daz and asked how they wanted it done.

My point was that there are better options than repeatedly bringing it up.

I have worked with many people on projects, Including one of the people involved with Michelle. They were easy to work with, and open minded about things.

I doubt it would be hard to come to an agreement on how a mod to Michelle should be released. But you would have to make the mod first, not simply complain about it.

Quote - > Quote - Gotta check how to do that legally first. Unlike Antonia, Michelle is not open source.

Neither was V4~WM. And I went strait to Daz and asked how they wanted it done.

My point was that there are better options than repeatedly bringing it up.

I have worked with many people on projects, Including one of the people involved with Michelle. They were easy to work with, and open minded about things.

I doubt it would be hard to come to an agreement on how a mod to Michelle should be released. But you would have to make the mod first, not simply complain about it.

Ah! Ok, I was just reminding. I gotta read the person's nickname before I answer too - I actually know you make stuff. LOL

Quote - But it is Michelle I've been practising with in ZBrush, mostly, so far... and making FBMs for her... ...and, my thinking is, if she was good enough for Blackhearted to sculpt... and I don't think he was complaining about her ZBrush compatibility? Assuming he'd have been using that?

AFAIK, Tate used Zbrush to make most of the morphs that are included with Michelle too.

Please click for bigger.  I think.  This is my first image post in a Rendo forum in awhile.  :-)

Note:  This was a quickie half hour render.  Due to the hair I chose, using high-definition render settings clogged the renderer, so I took them down a notch.

Edit:  The first image I posted looked a bit off color, so I adjusted the curves a little.

Quote - Aready have!!!

Elf scale and the same with the clothing!!

All the best.

LROG

Lovely elf, Richard.  I'll have to try out those scaling morphs!

You used the "Michelle Eyes" precisly as I intended Jan! I love your render. She looks great. I'm glad you enjoyed the "Raven" morph and textures.

I did something right, for once!  :-)  Thanks, Tate.  The eyes work perfectly, BTW.  And the eye colors are amazingly pretty.  Looking forward to doing a more intricate render.  Maybe next time, I'll leave off the hair, use painted hair, and that way the renderer can concentrate on bringing out the lovely tones in Raven's skin.

Again, thank you so much for the reply.  :-)  You and Team DNA have done a great job with Michelle and I'm looking forward to seeing many more add-ons for her!

Attached Link: http://forum.runtimedna.com/content.php?256-Candy-Kisses-from-Michelle-Contest