When I first started (midway through P6) I got the BugBox butterfly wing set.  It previewed fine, but when rendered it showed a lozenge pattern of darker/lighter areas.  The Bugbox set was made for P4 and P4 Pro Pack.  As of P5, Firefly now perceived the orientation of polygon normals, and it turned out that the Bugbox wings had normals in adjacent polygons facing opposite directions.

     The defect was always there in the mesh, but P4/PP was blind to it, whereas P5 and P6 saw it.  Ticking the normals forward box in the material room is a quick fix, and I still use and enjoy the Bugbox set.

     The stock DAZ figure David (and others) do not show this issue.  JoePublic's highly modified mesh does show it.  The mesh defect was not apparent in earlier versions of Poser, but the fact remains that PP2014 SR1 is only revealing a defect which is present in Joe's modified mesh.

     That said, you can bet that SM are investigating the SR1 Firefly build, looking for any bugs specific to this.

     If you wonder "wouldn't it be better for Firefly to ignore normals orientation?", consider that some recent rendering features -such as SSS- need to consider normals, since they must calculate whether the light is entering or exiting the mesh.

     So, what do you say we all just relax a bit, have a glass of chilled merlot, and wait to see what the SM skunkworks comes up with?

There is no "defect" in my mesh.

If it were, they wouldn't have worked pefectly fine for the last 13 years, including PP-2012 using SSS, GC and IDL and weightmapping.

Poser just unilaterally changed the rules. (Again)

My modifications consist of a lot of morphing using DAZ morphs, Poser magnets, Wings3D, ZBrush and the MorphBrush and a thorough re-rigging using Poser's native rigging tools.

The only mesh modification was to stitch V3RR's head on David 3's body to get a lighter mesh without loosing body detail.

I used PML as well as Posers' native Wavefront exporter/importer to move the geometry between apps.

The default DAZ morphs still all work, so not a single vertex was changed.

The problem is currently looked at and I'm confident it will be as quickly and thoroughly solved as V4's magnet issues were.

So there is no need for doing the blame-game or any spin doctoring.

I'm currently not in the best of moods, so just let the readers decide what conclusions to draw about the facts I presented.

Poser broke it. Poser will hopefully fix it.

If the issue can be fixed by a slight modification to my meshes or adjusting my workflow, I'll happily do that to enjoy the current (and future) improvments Poser will introduce.

That's currently all there is to say.

EDIT: Joe- I just read your last post. Feel free to ignore mine-but the question holds.

I've found unimesh-subD Level 1 to render faster than Traditional Skinning with Smoothing turned on in the render settings.

I am wondering why you don't simply switch BACK to Poser Traditional Skinning for morph transfer. And unimesh for rendering? I changed an object (clothing) to unimesh- test rendered with different levels of SubD- then changed it back to Poser Traditional- moved a set of morphs to the clothing, conformed and rendered with Traditional skinning, and then test rendered with Unimesh skinning and subD. No problems! Since I seem to be able to do so I am wondering why it is not working for you.

Am I missing something?

Quote - All figures set to "Unimesh skinning":

The thighs are perfectly smooth again.

But now ColorCuvators PML stops working and what will the new skinning do to other tools I use to maky my figures ?

Do you have a similar worklow to JoePublic? If you mutiply export and import objects to Wings3D- it might crop up.

I use Zbrush for my morphs- and have not seen any render issues with objects morphed and and re-imported to Poser2014

Quote - this is seriously making me rethink purchasing pp2014 right now.

.<!!

 A chilled glass of Merlot sounds good! Seachnasaigh- with a name like that I assumed you were in Ireland using a Gaelic name! I've been calling you "Sean" because my odds of spelling seachna.... are small.

Quote -      When I first started (midway through P6) I got the BugBox butterfly wing set.  It previewed fine, but when rendered it showed a lozenge pattern of darker/lighter areas.  The Bugbox set was made for P4 and P4 Pro Pack.  As of P5, Firefly now perceived the orientation of polygon normals, and it turned out that the Bugbox wings had normals in adjacent polygons facing opposite directions.

     The defect was always there in the mesh, but P4/PP was blind to it, whereas P5 and P6 saw it.  Ticking the normals forward box in the material room is a quick fix, and I still use and enjoy the Bugbox set.

     The stock DAZ figure David (and others) do not show this issue.  JoePublic's highly modified mesh does show it.  The mesh defect was not apparent in earlier versions of Poser, but the fact remains that PP2014 SR1 is only revealing a defect which is present in Joe's modified mesh.

     That said, you can bet that SM are investigating the SR1 Firefly build, looking for any bugs specific to this.

     If you wonder "wouldn't it be better for Firefly to ignore normals orientation?", consider that some recent rendering features -such as SSS- need to consider normals, since they must calculate whether the light is entering or exiting the mesh.

     So, what do you say we all just relax a bit, have a glass of chilled merlot, and wait to see what the SM skunkworks comes up with?

(Eric Walters) 

Quote - Seachnasaigh- with a name like that I assumed you were in Ireland using a Gaelic name! I've been calling you "Sean" because my odds of spelling seachna.... are small. 

       Be glad I didn't use a surname from the Welsh line.    Seachnasaigh is pronounced shock'-na-sigh;  it means deflect (a blow) and counterstrike in Irish.  That's Galway (the last stronghold of the seachnasaigh) in the background of my avatar.  After the last Irish kingdom fell to England, my Irish/Danish forebears left for America.  My Scottish/Norwegian line (descended from Robert the Bruce {"thistle"} and from the black Douglas) did likewise.  Much of my blood is of the old Welsh (the remnant of the original Japhethites who lived in Albany before the Anglo-Saxons.   When the English took over the colonies (New York used to be New Amsterdam), my folks crossed the Allegheny mountains to live free.

     This doesn't imply an enmity for Britain;  we are ardent allies, and more respectful of Churchill and Margaret Thatcher than are most Brits.  We just don't want to be subjects.

  Celt and Viking:  a volatile combination!

Seachnasaigh WOW! You know your history farther back than anyone else I know! Quite an interesting reply-thanks! I've Irish/Scots/Norwegian/English ancestory myself-but I've not a clue of the ancient history. I have heard of your famous ancestors-I've an interest in history.

Eric

Quote - (Eric Walters)  > Quote - Seachnasaigh- with a name like that I assumed you were in Ireland using a Gaelic name! I've been calling you "Sean" because my odds of spelling seachna.... are small. 

       Be glad I didn't use a surname from the Welsh line.    Seachnasaigh is pronounced shock'-na-sigh;  it means deflect (a blow) and counterstrike in Irish.  That's Galway (the last stronghold of the seachnasaigh) in the background of my avatar.  After the last Irish kingdom fell to England, my Irish/Danish forebears left for America.  My Scottish/Norwegian line (descended from Robert the Bruce {"thistle"} and from the black Douglas) did likewise.  Much of my blood is of the old Welsh (the remnant of the original Japhethites who lived in Albany before the Anglo-Saxons.   When the English took over the colonies (New York used to be New Amsterdam), my folks crossed the Allegheny mountains to live free.

     This doesn't imply an enmity for Britain;  we are ardent allies, and more respectful of Churchill and Margaret Thatcher than are most Brits.  We just don't want to be subjects.

  Celt and Viking:  a volatile combination!

Quote - "What mesh is that in the .jpg  ?"

3rd Gen DAZ mesh. Modified, of course, but nothing extraordinary.

Both figures are custom sculpted (DAZ morphs & ZBrush), re-rigged and one is weightmapped, the other not.

Must have something to do with normals, as it happens on the raw object file, too. I tried to smooth it out and do some other tricks I have, but it was persistant.

Doesn't happen on "vanilla" David 3 for example, but of course this is way beyond my tolerance threshold for "Poser Peculiarities".

Especially as there was no other performance improvement or flaw fix whatsoever for me. (Tested render speed several times)

Well, SR1 is supposed to fix standard V4's exploding butt, but I didn't bother checking after discovering this. If I really feel the insatiable need to use V4, I either use V4WM or one of my own custom V4s anyway.

:-(

V4's exploding butt??

V4's buttocks in PP-2012 and earlier:

Why do you think we got an SR1 so quickly ? ;-)

she lost her rondeur?

i deleted all the magnets off Vicky and G2 figures, when i learned M4 didn't have any.

in 32-bit p7, seemed to speed up my preview window when rotating cameras.  if i lost some bewb posing, never missed 'em.  :)

MistyLara

Her glutes are fully recovered now. She can sit down and take a break- after fighting the dragon in the temple.

Quote - she lost her rondeur?

i deleted all the magnets off Vicky and G2 figures, when i learned M4 didn't have any.

in 32-bit p7, seemed to speed up my preview window when rotating cameras.  if i lost some bewb posing, never missed 'em.  :)

And I'm happy to say that the shading errors that plagued my figures have been resolved, too.

The problem was some crumpling/folding of the double layered pube-trans geometry that must have happened when using the DAZ "pube-gone" morph twice or more times over the years.

The geometry was tucked away out of sight in the buttocks, so there never was a need to see this as a problem. (I'm a bit OCD, but not that OCD to worry about the shape of hidden geometry.)  ;-)

And up to now, Poser didn't care, either.

After some "de-crumpling" and straightening the geometry, Poser was happy again.

My thanks goes out to vilters for pointing me into the right direction.

(And to netherworks for giving moral support. )  :-)

Glad you got it sorted out!

Quote - And I'm happy to say that the shading errors that plagued my figures have been resolved, too.

The problem was some crumpling/folding of the double layered pube-trans geometry that must have happened when using the DAZ "pube-gone" morph twice or more times over the years.

The geometry was tucked away out of sight in the buttocks, so there never was a need to see this as a problem. (I'm a bit OCD, but not that OCD to worry about the shape of hidden geometry.)  ;-)

And up to now, Poser didn't care, either.

After some "de-crumpling" and straightening the geometry, Poser was happy again.

My thanks goes out to vilters for pointing me into the right direction.

(And to netherworks for giving moral support. )  :-)

It's good to know that Poser has become more picky about this sort of thing.  Glad it's sorted.

Well, I am just very glad Vilters was able to save the day and that you can return to enjoying Poser!

I wanted to share with you the assessment that I received only a short while ago: the bad (crumpled) geometry combined the SR-1 fix to avoid artifacts when rendering with reflections in certain geometry is what caused the issue to be more visible than in older versions of Poser.

So it has nothing to do with facilitating Sub D or whatnot.  I just thought you might what to know the conclusion that they came to. :)

That's good news; I was beginning to think it might be an NSA...back door... :lol:

Quote - That's good news; I was beginning to think it might be an NSA...back door... :lol:

Not sure that they should be looking at Vickys backdoor anyway, after all she is American isn't she.  Which Poses another question, "Are they looking at my characters?" As she is an American working in the UK.  I mean I don't let her use the phone but she is on the Internet a lot.

Quote - And I'm happy to say that the shading errors that plagued my figures have been resolved, too.

The problem was some crumpling/folding of the double layered pube-trans geometry that must have happened when using the DAZ "pube-gone" morph twice or more times over the years.

The geometry was tucked away out of sight in the buttocks, so there never was a need to see this as a problem. (I'm a bit OCD, but not that OCD to worry about the shape of hidden geometry.)  ;-)

And up to now, Poser didn't care, either.

After some "de-crumpling" and straightening the geometry, Poser was happy again.

My thanks goes out to vilters for pointing me into the right direction.

(And to netherworks for giving moral support. )  :-)

Cool.
ya going to make some custome meshes with Rex n Rox ?

Quote - she lost her rondeur?

i deleted all the magnets off Vicky and G2 figures, when i learned M4 didn't have any.

in 32-bit p7, seemed to speed up my preview window when rotating cameras.  if i lost some bewb posing, never missed 'em.  :)

May I ask, how did you go about deleting all the magnets?  Did this screw up any morphs?

Klebnor

This of course worsens her bending so you'll need to fix her afterwards by creating additional JCM morphs to compensate.

(If you're serious about this, best to delete then also her original JCMs in Poser so you can start fresh. The various commercial "Fix" morphs available are based on the original rigthat includes the magnets, so they aren't really any help.)

Depends how picky you are about anatomical correct joints.

I deleted the mags from a low res 17k LOD copy of V4, and for standing around in the background she still was fine.

Klebnor I would also be interested in that question. I don't like the magnets either and I think M4 poses better, but is there a problem with deleting them?  Like a downside?

OK, here we go again. LOL.

Older figures with conventional rigging had their limitations.
Most content creators (including the big 2, SM and DAZ) improved the rigging with magnets and JCM's.

Now, both have gone to W-Mapping but . . . . . . . . . "forgot" to remove the magnets and JCM's.

Let me state this very clear.

If you know how to W-Map and Bulge map a figure, you do NOT need magnets nor JCM's.

How to?
Open the hierarchy editor in Poser and REMOVE all magnets and JCM's.

In PP2014 => Goto  => Figures => Merge All Zones To Weight Maps

Your conventional rigged figure is instantly transformed into a W-Mapped figure.

**Check the bending of all joints.
**
Open the Joint editor to correct any bending problems.

"Paint" the W-Map to correct any bending problems.

And if REQUIRED???? Paint the bulge map.

Done.

Quote - OK, here we go again. LOL.

Older figures with conventional rigging had their limitations.
Most content creators (including the big 2, SM and DAZ) improved the rigging with magnets and JCM's.

Now, both have gone to W-Mapping but . . . . . . . . . "forgot" to remove the magnets and JCM's.

Let me state this very clear.

If you know how to W-Map and Bulge map a figure, you do NOT need magnets nor JCM's.

How to?
Open the hierarchy editor in Poser and REMOVE all magnets and JCM's.

In PP2014 => Goto  => Figures => Merge All Zones To Weight Maps

Your conventional rigged figure is instantly transformed into a W-Mapped figure.

**Check the bending of all joints.
**
Open the Joint editor to correct any bending problems.

"Paint" the W-Map to correct any bending problems.

And if REQUIRED???? Paint the bulge map.

Done.

 

 

 

If you want realistic bending, like JoePublic, Zev0, and myself, who make figure morphs for figures have said, you need JCMs.

It's not that hard to make. Weightmapping alone will not do that and you will not achieve the proper (and sometimes anatomically correct) bending by pulling out JCMs just because you don't like them.

Weighmapping only helps with bending, but doesn't totally correct it. JCMs gives you more control over how that bend will look. Besides if you change the the figure with a custom full body morph, changing the weightmap to fit that new shape will not be an option.

Quote -

May I ask, how did you go about deleting all the magnets?  Did this screw up any morphs?

They can be deleted in Scene Fixer; load V4 in an emty scene, go to Delete Many, select Other, and there they are...

@ Male_M3dia

Part of making a full body morph is to check the bending.

The "trick" is to start off with a good clean mesh, and optimise the bending of the "base" mesh.

Then while making your custom "partial" or "full body morph" to Cross-check your morph with the existing optimised W-and Bulge map of the base mesh.

Adapt the morph, but do not adapt the W-and Bulge map to your morph.

If you have to adapt the W-and Bulge map to your morph, the initial map was not as good as you thought it was. (Or the moprh was not as good as you thought it was.)

Happy Posering.

Quote - @ Male_M3dia

Part of making a full body morph is to check the bending.

The "trick" is to start off with a good clean mesh, and optimise the bending of the "base" mesh.

Then while making your custom "partial" or "full body morph" to Cross-check your morph with the existing optimised W-and Bulge map of the base mesh.

Adapt the morph, but do not adapt the W-and Bulge map to your morph.

If you have to adapt the W-and Bulge map to your morph, the initial map was not as good as you thought it was. (Or the moprh was not as good as you thought it was.)

Happy Posering.

That still will not give the correct bending, especially across extreme morphs and doesn't take in account any future morphs because if you're optimizing the weightmap for the base mesh, as soon as an extreme morph is applied you're going to have to correct it. Also in light of some people wanting to weightmap current figures where the mesh is already set, I don't think what you're offering would be helpful as the mesh may not be "clean".

The most people will be able to do is to weightmap their figures as best they can to the base mesh and as new morphs are applied the will check that shape across a wide range of poses and if there any areas that are problems, a JCM can be dropped in places such as the hips and thigh areas where a bulge map wouldn't correct how the area between the thighs and pelvis area looks when seated or crouched.

Attached Link: David WM Download

A very smooth basic shape with a very low res simple "fishnet" type of topolgy that just circumscribes the default shape will indeed need very few (if any) JCMs.

A highly sculpted figure with an elaborate edgelooped high res mesh (That means areas of varying density across the mesh) will need JCMs both to smooth the mesh as well as to force it into the desired shape. Weight- and Bulgemaps can only move a vertice in-or out. A JCM can move a vertice in any direction so you're even able to create undercuts.

There is also a huge difference whether you want a Poser figure to be just a stylized representation of a human being, or whether it needs to be a perfectly realistic model of a particular human.

Anyway, apart from the DAZ default JCMs (Ellbows, kneecaps), the only JCM I made for David-WM was to smooth the buttock/crotch bend.

I said I won't mind if anyone wants to improve and then re-destribute him, so if anybody feels adventurous, try to make him bend just as well (or better) without any JCMs. (The poses shown here are supplied in the download)