I recently asked for votes to decide what figure to work on next. I let the voting run for a bit over a week and it seems that you the forumites would msot like to see improvements to the Millenium dog. https://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/?thread_id=2894540&page_number=2#msg4232187

Well I've had a look at the Mildog LE (free version), the mildog (pay version) and the Classic Canines collection of maps.

I also crosschecked the existing mildog morphs with the AKC's list of top 50 dog breeds.

Issues I see: The mildog needs helps with many bend areas

The mildog needs scaling dials and the existing breed MOR's hooked up with suitable scaling per breed

The classic canine maps need bump and disp maps as well as shaders that take advantage of new render features

The Mildog is made with the head as one piece, it really needs a jawbone added, which can be done without altering the geometry but will need a new cr2

To create some shaggier breeds, two sets of conforming furs in medium and long need to be made

Some breeds will need specialized displacement maps for coats (Airedale, classic cut poodles, scotties)

con - Since the Mildog version with the morphs is pay only, and has no INJ channels , the additional morphs will need to be added via a readscripting method (don't worry, end users don't even know its happening)

con - I'm not about to make a bunch of conformers free. if I make those, I will make them and the longhaired breeds as a commercial product

Possible approach for this project:

part 1 - make the joint fix morphs, scaling morphs and added jawbone on the free mildog LE. Make any added morphs for smooth coated breeds from the top 50. make this part a freebie

part 2 - Go over the Classic Canines map and MOR set and create new shaders for the coats, as well as a new cr2 with altered morphs to incorporate the changes in part 1, adding scaling to the Classic Canines morphs as needed. Again by doing this with readscripting, the end user will not need to decode anything or even know its happening as long as they have pay version of the Mildog installed. Without the morphs installed, the readscript will do nothing exciting and act just like part 1. Free part

Part 3 - Make the new conformers for long haired breeds (golden retrievers, poodles, scotties, saluki, etc). Make the morphs for longhaired breeds. Make two readscripted cr2's , one to work with the mildog LE and one for the Part 2 adjusted cr2. New maps for all breeds. This will be a pay product, and probably in the 10 to 15 range.

Possible issues: stacking readscripts can be fiddly. Adding a new jawbone will be troublesome and may need weightmapping, which would restrict usage of the ImprovedMilDog to newer versions of poser. Making new maps for all the covered breeds, original morphs and any I add.

Anyone have anything to add that they think should be addressed about this figure?

For information: the AKC list of top 50 dog breeds. http://www.akc.org/news/the-most-popular-dog-breeds-in-america/

I would also be adding Saluki, whippets, greyhounds, Italian greyhounds, irish wolfhounds, dire wolf, hyenae, wolves, foxes, african wild dog and the thylacine.

Lyrra

attached are a pair of test renders - one is the mildog white wolf map as is, and one with shader setting shamelessly nicked from EZSkin2 and fiddled with.

With all of the needed work you have discussed, wouldn't it just be better to create a new dog character. I believe that the current MillDog is well past it's prime and is extremely dated, I have tried to use the dogs in renders, however they always look rather fake. I feel that spending the time fixing something that is at it's core is broken is wasted time. Just my thoughts. I would really like to see a new dog with expanded features and make use of a real bone structure.

I have a few models -- coyote, wolf, bear -- that use Poser's dynamic hair for fur, and the results are excellent. It seems that would be the way to go, rather than make conformers. The downside being that it's probably more work to make convincing fur (especially for umpteen different breeds) out of Poser hair, and it does take a million years to render if you use IDL.

white wolf don't even resemble a wolf in my opinion looks more like a dog

Yay!

i like the ideas you have they sound good and would improve the looks of Mil dog

Good Choice, Lyrra!

A free version and a pay version seems like a fine plan. I have wondered if DAZ has a Dog 2 in the works. I think that's an argument against doing a brand new dog, unless you thought it would be fun for its own sake, of course. Knowing DAZ, any new dog would cost a lot more than what you're estimating for your pay version.

Lyrra posted at 6:32AM Tue, 06 October 2015

I would also be adding Saluki, whippets, greyhounds, Italian greyhounds, irish wolfhounds, dire wolf, hyenae ....

Do you have a specific species of hyena in mind? I currently have a vested interest in the spotted hyena and aardwolf, myself.

dynamic furs - yes they are possible. but would only be usable in poser and frankly are a pain in the butt to set up for distribution. Plus of course the load-n-render users panic and flee when you say 'dynamic'.

Making a new dog - the goal here is to take a model that is nearly unusable these days and make it look better. Certainly I could make a whole new mesh, and some day I probably will but right now I have this thing with 30 maps already so I might as well shine it up. Plus this gives me the chance to really see what is going on with the model, what works and what doesn't, which will help me later when I go to make my own.

White wolf - the TEXTURE is the white wolf texture shown on the unmorphed dog mesh. Not the wolf morph, so yes it does look like a dog. If it didn't I would be worried! The point was to look at what newer shaders would do to the existing maps. I nicked the EZskin shader base and copy pasted it over tot he mildog and slid the dog maps in. You can see the fur surface is very different, it could benefit from a proper bump map. The mouth, teeth and eyes also render very differently. I think new eye maps are needed, but the teeth look lovely

Dog 2? - I have no idea, but at this point I can presume that if they had one it would be DAZ Studio only with resource eating DSON files for poser. I think I'll pass. Possibly Hive might make one, which I would be interested in seeing, since they did such a great job with their horse. But at the moment this is the dog I've got, so I'll see what I can make of it.

LD - I said 'hyenae' meaning the whole phyla. That means making a basic hyena ratio bodyshape as well as any morphs needed for specific morphological characteristics (spinal ridge, etc). These could then be used to spin up MOR settings for specific hyenae subtypes. I'm not going to make one thing, when I could make tools to make ten things with the same amount of effort :) After that its a matter of taking a base tawny coat and adding the spots as needed for the coats. Presumably one could use these morphs for fantasy canids as well as prehistoric. (wargs? giant war dogs?) I intend to make the thylacine as well, even though its a marsupial, since it seems to have a cult following.

Am I the only person who bought the alien dog / alien cat morphs and maps from Poser Pros a zillion years ago? I found them tucked away in my animals folder. I'm going to make new mats for them as well, but probably won't make a freebie with those unless more than 3 other people have the morphs lol

LD has asked for Aardwolves and Spotted Hyena. Does anyone else want to make a request for a canine that isn't on the AKC list, or already mentioned by me?

Any python scripters watching? I'd love to talk to you about a dial-a-spot python script and a dial-a-mutt python script (texture and morphs respectively)

LM

Predatron's Warhound (at Daz) could be morphed into a Hyena rather easily I think. It's a good mesh. Curious why the addition of a jaw actor would require WMing, but I don't have the dog so I don't know what the topology is like. How about an articulated tongue, does it have this? I'll have to track down the LE and take a look, I think the only canine types I have are the WarHound, the basic Poser Dog, and the Gargoyle Hound...I have more werewolves! Lol.

The mildog appeared to have been modeled with its mouth closed. This makes adding new rigging to it problematic at best. Honestly I don't know if it is possible to add a jaw bone to it to make opening the mouth rigging instead of a morph, but it's worth looking at. Currently the mouth open, howl and etc are all done with morphs. It may not be possible to set up a traditional ball-and-stick rigged bone to open the mouth without breaking the teeth and tongue.

The easiest method of course would be to assign the lower jaw, teeth and so forth to a new group and add the bone for that, but this would a) break every existing morph and b) mean the improved dog with new obj would require RTEncoding so 90% of users would flee in terror rather than read directions, open a program and click three times.

I did look at the warhound but I don't own it. I think I have the gargoyle hound around someplace ... that is another one that could use new shaders :) who has time?

I'm not sure about an articulated tongue, I'm pretty sure its all morphs as well. That again would require regrouping, new bones, and RTEncoding et al.

LM

Whatever approach you ultimately take on this project, Lyrra, I'm willing to contribute morphs, ERC code, and config files for lipsync compatibility with Poser's Talk Designer, DAZ Studio's built-in lipsync tool, and Mimic. If you want them.

LD I have to confess I know very little about lip syching in poser. I'm presuming you need specific phoneme morphs, movements and so forth?

Breed report Of the top 50 dogs - there are 22 smooth coated breeds, 13 medium and 13 longhaired

plus a handful of each kind that I intend to make anyways : greyhound, whippet, saluki, corgi, afghan hound

I've sorted out another 150 or so dog breeds into short medium and long hair plus six weirdos - show clip poodles, shar-pei, pulik, irish water spaniels, komondor and chinese crested

I'm not going to make all of those, but there are many breeds that won't need special morphs or coats, so those will just need morph spins and easy enough to include. The weirdos like the mop dogs and chinese crested might be out of luck though...

First step though is seeing about that jawbone and then fix morphs/joint corrections

LM

Lyrra posted at 1:10AM Thu, 08 October 2015 - #4232642

LD I have to confess I know very little about lip syching in poser. I'm presuming you need specific phoneme morphs, movements and so forth?

A good variety of phoneme morphs are necessary to make the various mouth / lip shapes. If the jaw is rigged for movement, ERC code can be combined with morph channels to take advantage of that.

Talk Designer uses face pose files (.fc2 or .fcz) for emotional display. With animal characters, posable elements like ears or whiskers can be utilised along with brow movement to create more expressive animations.

A figure-specific config file (written in .XML format) is required to tell the Talk Designer which body parts, channels, and face files to use.

Well the jawbone isn't looking very possible. Due to the way it was modeled its being pretty impossible to get in there and zone the lower jaw parts cleanly. I'll try weightmapping, but it might have to stay with the morphs it already has.

In theory I could open the dogs mouth with the morph, smooth out the issues, export it and bring it back in and add the jawbone then. But at that point the users would have to RTE decode the obj and we all know how that ends (badly)

However the ears zone nicely so I'll be adding ear bones, for more expression there, and probably adding ezpose controls to the tail and possibly torso and neck as well

note to self: when modeling creatures, model the mouth open and the eyes halfway shut

LM

First section of bend fixes - head and neck

Before and after shot, with bend fixes, default map, low quality render

LM

and now with rigged ears. a quick expression test with existing morphs on the mildog LE. again, default tetxure, low res render.

I'm about done with the bend fixes. Well, they could maybe use some coding since right now you have to manually dial them, and there are quite a few

before and after pictures with three poses

Dogs express so much with ear position, I was always surprised how little the mildogs ears could be moved

LM

Progress thus far on Part 1

MilDog Le with new ears rigging, and about a hundred bend morphs

To Do

Add erc to bend morphs, add scaling dials

Try to rig jaw again, this time with poser10 wm and or capsules

Make any new smooth coated dog breed morphs needed

while I'm gathering reference images and compiling lists of breeds, are there any fantasy breeds of canines people would be interested in?
for the kitsune fanciers I'll add textures for LD's bushy tail to match the fox coats so you can add as many as you like

I can't really think of any other fictional dog breeds .. Grims I suppose from Harry Potter but seem to be a black irish wolfhound kind of thing, Dire Wolves which are extinct not fictitious. Is there a canine looking pokemon? I seem to recall seeing one.

It looks like Corgi's may have two dials - one for Cardigan and one for Pembroke as the main differences are the ears and tail

Shortly I will be asking for testers with the mildog LE and/or regular Mildog, with any version of poser, to assist in testing the readscript for part 2 and progress on Part 1. I've had to adjust the smoothing zones on some joints to allow for better scaling and so forth. This will help on extreme bends and scaling for the legs and tail for example. Boy, but dachsunds and corgis have short legs.

In the meantime I will continue talking to myself. LM

Lyrra posted at 4:11AM Wed, 14 October 2015 - #4233639

Is there a canine looking pokemon? I seem to recall seeing one.

Lucario and Zoroark are quite popular, though they're more anthro than you'd probably like for this project.

Also: Houndoom Arcanine Furfrou Vulpix Mightyena Herdier

You're not talking to yourself. There are lurkers like myself with great interest in this project.

I like what I see so far. Thank you muchly, Lyrra.

Looks VERY good!

thanks for the data LD ... looks like they would best be handled by their own addon set much later, if at all. I'm amused to see certain breed classes though, an obvious terrier type, a sighthound type, and so forth. Arkanine was the one I was thinking of, big orange fluffy thing.

waves at the lurkers It is nice to know that people are interested in this mad project. A certain amount of feedback is nice, even if its just dog pictures lol Or more usefully I guess, pictures you've done with the mildog and discussing what issues you had with it that you think need help. As we all know some bend issues only show up in certain poses, and I sure can't test everything.

todays exciting task .. finding more reference pictures for medium fur and then long fur breeds. I'm getting ref's for all of them now, to make sure I haven't missclassed any breed. yay google.

I ran into this picture the other day ...

http://www.deviantart.com/art/War-dog-and-friend-124919130

There aren't all that many mildog conformers around are there. I think the sled dog set, and a guide dog harness thing. Would anyone be interested in making a fantasy tack set like the picture? and possibly say a dog cart harness (yay victorians), and a modern military gear set?

LM

I've been thinking about making a guide-dog harness, since one of my characters has a seeing-eye dog. And I still need to finish that pet collar with the optional spikes and all those geometry-swapping tags.

While you were looking up reference pics, did you run across the chupacabra? That or an emaciated zombie-dog might make an interesting morph.

Oh, by the way, I've just re-downloaded and re-installed Mimic 3 Pro (though not Poser yet). I had forgotten that the MilDog LE is included in the package.

Geometry swapping is a nuisance. I'd almost say you might be better of making the tags as smart props, so the user can swap them in and out as needed or use on other collars. Since I've been doing renders for print images I've been doing a lot of kitbashing, so I tend to have an eye for 'how can I reuse this' now.

I always thought the chupacabra was more goatlike? perhaps I'm mistaking it for some other cryptid. All the pictures look a lot like a dog with extreme mange. Might not even need a map, just some grotty looking skin shaders. Ditto for zombie dog. I'm not sure if the mildog has an emaciated morph, if not I should add one.

I must say there is a whole run of toy breed dogs which are all small, fluffy, white and fairly interchangeable. Think anyone will mind if I kind of merge them together into 'small fluffy anklebiter' ? lol

I have run into a small snag .. I have the ears rigged on the milDog LE, but apparently readscripts don't handle splicing in new rigging. Which means either I lose the rigged ears or the Mildog version will need to have its cr2 encoded. And if I'm going to go to all the trouble of encoding the MilDog then I'm going to go ahead and group and rig the jawbone. Which means I ought to rig the jaw of the mildogLE so the morph dont break. Which means encoding that too.

Ah decisions.

And in other news .... I found the plot!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plott_Hound

LM

I meant to ask about the ears earlier ... do they have body handles, or will users need to select the ears via the actor menu?

I can provide body handles, if you wish, along with a quick lesson in how to add them to the cr2 as external obj files so you won't have to regroup and encode the blMilDog.obj.

LD the ear handles currently have no geometry, so yes you have to grab them from the actor list. And yes, I already know how to add external geom file calls if needed, but .. right now the readscript process is the issue as it won't transfer new rigging. Since that's a program level thing I think that plan is sunk.

My options are - A) no new rigging but a transparent 'user doesn't see it readscript' to deal with the mildog LE/Mildog (morphed) issue B) rigged ears, regrouped and rigged jaw, but an encoded obj, which the user will have to bestir them selves to unpack at setup for both versions

I did have one bizarre idea which is 90% most likely to crash poser in an exciting way, but I'm going to test that tonight.

As it is to get the legs short enough for corgis and dachsunds I'm going to have to edit the smoo zones on the legs as currently they crumple when the Yscale is reduced severely. I already had to adjust the tails smoo, and the neck crest smoo, so it wont be the first joint edit on this beasty.

In other news Tibetan Mastiifs are slightly terrifying - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibetan_Mastiff

LM

Great to see some work being done on the MilDog...is this just for Poser Lyrra? Or would some parts of it work in DS also?

oldingr posted at 5:37PM Fri, 16 October 2015 - #4232517

With all of the needed work you have discussed, wouldn't it just be better to create a new dog character. I believe that the current MillDog is well past it's prime and is extremely dated, I have tried to use the dogs in renders, however they always look rather fake. I feel that spending the time fixing something that is at it's core is broken is wasted time. Just my thoughts. I would really like to see a new dog with expanded features and make use of a real bone structure.

Chris over at Hivewire has mentioned making a dog when he gets chance...they did a great job with Harry(the Hivewire Horse) it's the best horse I've seen so far.

Well thus far most of what I've set up ought to work in DS, however some things wont. For example I'm not entirely sure how well ds will respect the scaling dials I've made. The new shaders of course are poser specific so if someone wanted to set up DS versions that would be a good thing. It is possible to set up a DS only version of the scaling but frankly I'm not terribly interested in supporting DS.

The bend fixes and all the morphs ought to still work properly as will the erc coding in the bendfixes once I've made it. That is all poser 4 era technology, and at its heart DS is poser4 era compatible, so it should be fine. Anything past poser 4 tech and DS gets sulky ... bumpmaps, displacement, shaders, etc etc.

I've had less time to work on this, between making goth christmas card renders for zazzle and having a cold. But I will eventually get there. Just going through all the dog breeds and finding reference pictures for them took a good long while.

LM

Lyrra posted at 7:13PM Fri, 23 October 2015 - #4233737

thanks for the data LD ... looks like they would best be handled by their own addon set much later, if at all. I'm amused to see certain breed classes though, an obvious terrier type, a sighthound type, and so forth. Arkanine was the one I was thinking of, big orange fluffy thing.

waves at the lurkers It is nice to know that people are interested in this mad project. A certain amount of feedback is nice, even if its just dog pictures lol Or more usefully I guess, pictures you've done with the mildog and discussing what issues you had with it that you think need help. As we all know some bend issues only show up in certain poses, and I sure can't test everything.

todays exciting task .. finding more reference pictures for medium fur and then long fur breeds. I'm getting ref's for all of them now, to make sure I haven't missclassed any breed. yay google.

I ran into this picture the other day ...

http://www.deviantart.com/art/War-dog-and-friend-124919130

There aren't all that many mildog conformers around are there. I think the sled dog set, and a guide dog harness thing. Would anyone be interested in making a fantasy tack set like the picture? and possibly say a dog cart harness (yay victorians), and a modern military gear set?

LM

Lyrra I think the big dog with the armor was the very popular Roman Mastiff the Roman Legions brought into battle. There are a few breeds actually banned by US Gov for import but don't remember what they were but found them on Goolge. All big rough looking dogs. When the MilDog came out someone made an Irish Wolfhound kit for it and I believe it was a freebie I got at DAZ. But I never got to install and use it until recently. I looked for it among my thousands of archive CD but with no luck. I love that breed so it would be great to include it if possible. In fact not too long i started a thread here begging for someone with skills who thrived on challenge to create a good war armor for the bulkier MilDog breeds. None jumped in thought someone did create an armor for the LE dog which looks more like a second skin in the store. We also need aside from the DAZ puppies, a full morph set to reduce the dog to a just born figure. I have been trying to make one for my own use and it sucks! In line with that realistic teats and after birth belly morphs for the prospective mother dog to feed her young with. I needed to make a Romulus and Remus image for a client and would have greatly needed these items for the image. Had to do a sheitz load of post work to get the end results. Good snarl/growl morphs. No matter hw much time I spend on these expressions they never come out right. :(

I would love to test this when you get ready. Never done it but i have the full MilDog and all morphs and breed textures for it if that helps.

I did get the WarHound but am frustrated there was no extended support for it after release. Though a fun product to work with, like every other one shot product out there through the years, It would have loved more accessories for it and more character morphs. Definately needs more good textures. Needed to make a white Warhound for an idea i had after seeing that last LOTR film with the big white war dog ridden by that nasty one handed orc. But the closest i could come was pale gray. Yuch!

Little_Dragon posted at 9:45PM Fri, 23 October 2015 - #4233766

I've been thinking about making a guide-dog harness, since one of my characters has a seeing-eye dog. And I still need to finish that pet collar with the optional spikes and all those geometry-swapping tags.

While you were looking up reference pics, did you run across the chupacabra? That or an emaciated zombie-dog might make an interesting morph.

Oh, by the way, I've just re-downloaded and re-installed Mimic 3 Pro (though not Poser yet). I had forgotten that the MilDog LE is included in the package.

I asked for a guide dog harness a few years ago and someone made one. It is out there somewhere. Check here in the freebies section or over at sharecg.

opinion time guys:

Should I leave the maps as is?

Or should I take the opportunity while I am regrouping and rerigging to remap the eyes? currently this is a one map beastie. the eyes are fairly small and thus don't get much detail. If I remap them to the gen4 standard full square map format, then there will be loads more detail. I'm not sure if anyone actually cares about this. It will make existing maps not work on the eyes, although any v4/m4 eyeball maps probably will.

Is there any reason to leave this at one map? do gamedev guys care?

Are there are other map changes anyone is desperate to see? The mapping on this is pretty good, despite its age. There are some very small ares of distortion on the top of the head, genitals, tail base and paws. I might be able to reduce the distortion on the areas, but that in turn would effect all existing maps. Possibly not worth the small improvement at the cost of breaking so much existing work.

Once I get the last of these structural issues sorted then the project will flip into high gear, morphs are pretty fast to make. But I need to get the rigging and groups sorted, so I can convert the existing morph over to the new obj. Then its a matter of going through my pile of dog ref images one by one and making each breed, with any new needed morphs, spinning up a MOR setting for it and coding that with the suitable ERC stuff to make one dial per breed. (because I want to dial a greatdane/Chihuahua/basset hound mix, don't you?)

This will result in both improved handling on the existing dog morphs, the new dog breed morphs, plus a stack of pbm dials which can be used to spin up your own breeds.

However you guys are going to have to decode both the LE and full versions to deal with the new obj file. Sorry. It takes two clicks, you'll just have to read the directions and cope with it :)

In other news I have had a bunch of dev work on a new figure suddenly pop up so I have only 'free' time (evenings, weekends) for this project so it may take a little time. Since I'm not getting paid for this, y'all just get to cope. Sorry :)

while I'm at it .. would anyone put cash into a patreon thing to fund the Improvement series? for which the patrons would get input into what figure to improve and how, and everyone else would get shiny new updates for old and one shot figures (like the wardog). I don't mind working on oddball figures, it can be a challenge and a lot of fun, but the main market is all about TheNewestGirl and her knickers which gets veeeeery boring. Niche figures don't get much in the way of sales, so its not profitable to work on them much. (seriously, flipping burgers would get me 3x the money per hour. very sad) A patreon thing would pay for some of my billable hours and such products would not have to rely as much on my freetime and being in a good mood.

LM

Lyrra posted at 12:25PM Sat, 24 October 2015 - #4235045

opinion time guys:

Should I leave the maps as is?

Or should I take the opportunity while I am regrouping and rerigging to remap the eyes? currently this is a one map beastie. the eyes are fairly small and thus don't get much detail. If I remap them to the gen4 standard full square map format, then there will be loads more detail. I'm not sure if anyone actually cares about this. It will make existing maps not work on the eyes, although any v4/m4 eyeball maps probably will.

Is there any reason to leave this at one map? do gamedev guys care?

Are there are other map changes anyone is desperate to see? The mapping on this is pretty good, despite its age. There are some very small ares of distortion on the top of the head, genitals, tail base and paws. I might be able to reduce the distortion on the areas, but that in turn would effect all existing maps. Possibly not worth the small improvement at the cost of breaking so much existing work.

Once I get the last of these structural issues sorted then the project will flip into high gear, morphs are pretty fast to make. But I need to get the rigging and groups sorted, so I can convert the existing morph over to the new obj. Then its a matter of going through my pile of dog ref images one by one and making each breed, with any new needed morphs, spinning up a MOR setting for it and coding that with the suitable ERC stuff to make one dial per breed. (because I want to dial a greatdane/Chihuahua/basset hound mix, don't you?)

This will result in both improved handling on the existing dog morphs, the new dog breed morphs, plus a stack of pbm dials which can be used to spin up your own breeds.

However you guys are going to have to decode both the LE and full versions to deal with the new obj file. Sorry. It takes two clicks, you'll just have to read the directions and cope with it :)

In other news I have had a bunch of dev work on a new figure suddenly pop up so I have only 'free' time (evenings, weekends) for this project so it may take a little time. Since I'm not getting paid for this, y'all just get to cope. Sorry :)

while I'm at it .. would anyone put cash into a patreon thing to fund the Improvement series? for which the patrons would get input into what figure to improve and how, and everyone else would get shiny new updates for old and one shot figures (like the wardog). I don't mind working on oddball figures, it can be a challenge and a lot of fun, but the main market is all about TheNewestGirl and her knickers which gets veeeeery boring. Niche figures don't get much in the way of sales, so its not profitable to work on them much. (seriously, flipping burgers would get me 3x the money per hour. very sad) A patreon thing would pay for some of my billable hours and such products would not have to rely as much on my freetime and being in a good mood.

LM

Albino. THis is not just white but white with pink showing beneath the fur in particular areas like ears, around the lips nose and mouth belly and genitals and red rim eyes ans very pale eye parts coloration. In fact i have tried making my own from some of the white textures and failed miserably (even worse for the black WarHound if you can imagine). In fact not only for the dog but all the animals DAZ has released especially that crazy beautiful DAZ Donkey! Also, Lynn fixed her beautiful old Bovine set and re-released the whole set FREE here in the free poser forum. But she could not address the stretching of the textures especially on the face of the animals for health reasons. I would pay for having that set of beautifully made creatures brought up to more modern Poser render standards. Fixing the nose of the bulls to make it more realistic and re-texturing it all.

Another beautiful character DAZ and the community have grossly overlooked is the old Zygote Centaur. I have seen someones great efforts at remapping and rebuilding parts of its old body and it looked spectacular. That would be another item I would pay for if done right. Because I have these deep rooted desire and none of the skills to bring them to fruition I shamelessly BEG to see the stuff so I can HAVE it to PLAY with! LOL I just throw ideas and long self absorbed longings at the wall and hope they stick.

I have to say that posers new tools like the Morph Brush and Dependent Parameter Editor really make some of this work much easier. For example to make the bend fix morphs I literally bend the parts I need, and then paint a morph right in place to fix the issues. Then I write down my bend values and use the dependent parameter editor to teach it that when part X is bent to rotation Y then Morph Z needs to be at 1. and tada! all done in poser in a matter of 2 minutes.

It is possible although difficult to alter image colours via shader mojo in poser, but generally its better to go and adjust them in pshop. Unfortunately for my purposes, editing and redistributing existing textures is a no-no. So I can either do map tricks in poser, add maps like fur bump/disp or make all new maps. Alibinos though would need to be a full new custom map. I've done an albino for the milhorse and the trick is to make the hairless skin layer first and then add the hair over top to get the right translucency. Many years ago I made the acquaintance of a very peculiar veterinarian. She herself was an albino and she had collected various albino animals. Feeding time on her tiny farm was very very surreal. It did give me a chance to look up close and personal at a bunch of albino animals of all sorts.

Most of Roxie's morphs took longer for aesthetic reasons. For example the Olympic Muscle morph took some time and many pictures of really terrifying women and honestly I've seen better poser muscle morphs done. But I think it's decent enough for the two people who will use it and be happy it exists at all :)

Thanks btw for reminding me to add a teats morph if I can. I've stuck it into my todo list. I've already made some squish morphs for the boy dogs parts for floor contact and the like. There has been some requests of girl morphs for the LE dog, but that morph is already included in the dog starter pack morphs and I do try not to make a free item that directly competes with a commercial product. I feel thats rude.

I haven't seen the old zygote centaur in ages. I used to have it, but I'd need to dig around for my old cds. Chances are I've lost it though. There is a new one, sagytyrros? something like that, at DAZ. The base figure is um .. not terribly attractive , but there are some nice character morphs for it. And seeing what BH did for alyson2 with the anastasia morph, you should never completely discount any base mesh unless its actually nonfunctional.

I'll hopefully be putting in a few hours work on the dog today and tomorrow.

I'm going to look at the patreon thing and see if I can figure out how it works. If anyone has used it as a creator I wouldn't mind talking to you a bit about some of the back stage details like file distribution and the like.

LM

Hi Lyrra

I have the Sagitarios. It isn't a bad mad figure but the faces are dreadful. I picked up the whole kit-and-dapoodle and even with the add-on faces pak the faces suck. The hands are really too big and w/o a size adjust morph are a pain but the functions are otherwise ok. Needs some boy parts but I have worked that out. I love that Zygote Centaur and considering when it was made it was a nice character.I hope you can find it. If you bought it I am sure DAZ can be convinced of re-sending it to you. I do that sort of thing with them all the time. I don't know if you remember the old Zygote Gremlin? They remapped it and fixed those weird feet and redistributed it for free for a short time to previous owners after I begged them. I remember the same thing might have happened when I started that Loooong thread there in the forums about the old Zygote Centaur and how they had abandoned a perfectly good model. Some folks wanted to work with it so, if I remember correctly (and please don't quote me here because my head on longer works) for a short time they re-released it via the thread so everyone would have a copy to work with to contribute to the group effort of reworking it. Of course though there was a nice group participation in the thread and a lot of promises as usual in most of these group flare-up it all fizzy-fizzed. I was crushed.. Funny...I was going to ask about the squish morphs for the dog but was a bit shy about that, didn't know what you would think! :) You mentioned Girl morphs what is that? I don't remember any girl morphs for the MilDog? I remember the morph to make the boy parts disappear but I don't recall any girl parts appearing in their stead?

Did you have any thoughts on the Bovine Set by Lynn? After reading your last post I assume that will be a no-can-do though if Lynn was asked she might agree. And here is Lynn's

http://www.lynescreations.com/lynesfree2.htm

You know if all this does work...ANY of this....and the sets look good I wold be interested in paying for a new improved expansion pak for a good price. The Dogs, the Sagitarios, The Bovines, Zygote Centaur.

Are you familiar with Mankahoo's work? His store name here is Ali and he creates some wonderful hair products. But on his web site ONLY he has some beautiful figures. A Centauress named Cindy that though beautifully crafted desperately needs some character morphs, body and face morphs and some new texturing options. I have tried re-texturing her but he mapped her so the horse and human body parts are one mesh which is a pain. Here is his addie if you are interested:

www.mankahoo.com/

You mentioned muscle morphs and morphs for who and Roxie's morphs? What Roxie's Morphs? Not familiar with either. Commercial products or freebies?

I know Lynne, in fact I contacted her before starting this project, just to check and see if she had anything planned for the mildog (sadly no). So when I have time I can ask her about some of her sets. I actually bought some when they were new, and I've been downloading them now as she puts up the free versions. However this one and my other (paying) work will take some time.

I did a little net diving and I found the centaur thread via the wayback machine, but the files alas are gone.

Cindy looks very sweet and the mesh looks good. So I could probably do a lot with her given the time. That is one of the reasons I'm considering a patreon thing, mostly to fund buying figures like that and the naga lady also on that site. It is something to think about.

Roxie is the poser 10 female figure. I recently made a large Improvement set for her, my second such set. It includes bend fixes, scaling dials, aging dials, baby and male morph, and so forth and so on. You can do a lot with a decent base mesh if you are willing to push at it a bit. It would take me a couple weeks to do the same treatment for a figure like Cindy I think.

Roxie working thread: https://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/?thread_id=2892798

The release thread: https://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/?thread_id=2894334

My first improvement project was for Jessi1 - http://www.sharecg.com/v/73646/view/11/Poser/Jessi-1-Improved She seriously needed help on bend issues, but was a sweet figure aside from that

Although it is nice to work with a group on a co-op project, unfortunately many forumites are, shall we say, volatile personalities. I find it easier to do the main part of the work myself, and then anyone else who wants to can make support or additional files that can be launched separately. This way if one person gets frustrated or has an attack of Real Life and leaves with all their toys, then the whole project doesn't suffer. In the case of Roxie I know that a few other people are working on RI compatible support items for the figure now, and if we are lucky more will show up soon.

LittleDragon has already volunteered to set up some mimic and lipsynching/animation stuff for the mildog once I have it more together. And I think someone else mentioned additional morphs. I'm perfectly happy if other people want to make addons for it. I figured that one I had the base maps done in pshop I would release those psd's as freebie-use-only MR's ( backwards I know) just to encourage more free skins be made.

I'm perfectly happy if people want to send me morphs, skins, poses or whatnot to roll into the project main release files - but they can feel free to release them on their own as well.

LM

My last post was a very poor example,(being it didn't include a mill dog at all...lol) here is an example of the work I have done to the textures thus far...

fritters56 - looking pretty good! perhaps a smidge on the shiny side. Something has happened to the nose. I'm guessing you used displacement ? I've only done a tiny bit of fiddling on the shaders so far. I figured for the smooth coated and short coated breeds I am going to make a shared displacement and bump map for surface detail. I experimented a bit with dynamic fur but I'm not terribly happy with any of my results.

Unfortunately the existing maps are all pretty small by todays standards. Unless the original artist kept larger psd files and is willing to resave them out (very very doubtful) I will see what I can manage with shaders, and then make some of my own maps to get more detail in there.

Still arguing with the jaw rigging. Theres never enough time in the day is there?

LM

I forgot to add a bit of displacement to the nose to make it equal out, I am looking forward to playing around with your work...

I've no idea if I got this thing set up right ...

https://www.patreon.com/LyrraMadril?ty=h

and now I'm going to go and coax the new obj for the dog into poser and get this jaw rigging done finally

LM

aha! got it

I had to not only regroup the jaw, but re position it in the obj and lengthen it so it matched the top jaw.

So both LE and full versions will have RTE coded files

Anyone making (or who had made) morphs effecting the head will need to convert them to the new obj grouping and shape to use them on the Improved version. sorry guys.

benefits - now has fully rigged ears with groups, and fully rigged jaw with group

Costs - RTE coding files needed for distribution, breaks all existing morphs (I'm converting everything that comes stock). Some existing morphs are being deleted as no longer needed )open mouth, howl, etc)

LM

I have not given up on the mill dog, while true it's close up days are just about gone, I keep fighting to use them just one more time. Yes those eyes, the jaw, the paws all need major over hauls...But who can resist wanting to use them just one more time....

Is the Mill dog worth saving? I simply say this....

well I've gotten all my erc hooked up for the bend fixes. I think.

Before and after on the same pose.

LM

Hey Lyrra I think I mentioned the dog armor somewhere on one of my unforgiveably long posts here (so sorry!) Found this image which I think would be a good sample. Also, adding a simple padded/quilted matching saddle to throw over the armor as a smart prop would be sweet.

fritters56 posted at 6:22PM Mon, 26 October 2015 - #4235328

Is the Mill dog worth saving? I simply say this....

nice image.