Rosemaryr, I am ignorant about MD assets. Are the .obj items usable like any other, to import in, fit to the model, and generate simulations in the Poser cloth room? Are the top and pants each fully welded mesh?

Yes, you may use the obj files as you please.
Both the top model and the pants model are fully welded, thin meshes.
But they are in quad form, which is a bit better for modelers who like to make/alter the base mesh for their own garments, rather than tri-polys which are a bit better in cloth simulations. (Quads tend to 'bend' oddly in cloth simulations.)
I can add tri-poly versions, if you want to put the mesh into the Poser Cloth room, if you want. (I have done that in the past, but got a lot of questions about "do you have quad mesh?", so I thought I would preempt that point.)
You can check out the rest of my offerings over at ShareCG to see that I have done Poser-ready clothing for the Cloth room before.

The point in providing 'slopers' (a clothing term referring to a fitted garment, that is used as a base, to make alterations and design changes) was to let others add their own design style, and have their garments start from a fitted size and shape. It is why I jumped all over MD when it first came out: I wanted to make clothing that no-one else was making, for figures/shapes that no-one else was using.

This is a character, not a pinup. Rendered in "brush style." Facial structure from dials, no Poser morph brush, let alone zBrush. I'm posting this simply to show that interesting characters can be spun up from just the morphs included in La Femme.

::::: Opera :::::

La Femme looks like a better, improved Pauline to me. Hmmm....

operaguy posted at 4:02AM Sat, 02 February 2019 - #4344984

Hilarious. I have (I'm sure) over-worked the cornea morphs again. In this render, the lashes are reflecting as if floating in front of her eyes.

Iris flat: 2.40 Cornea left and right optics -.800

Blackhearted, can you give me some ideal settings, or tell me if you think this 'effect' is from something else?

::::: Opera :::::

I think you're getting hung up on the optics thing. It's just there for very fine adjustment of the shape in case anyone wants to mess with that and IOR. Just leave it alone :) Also IrisFlat 2.40 - sweet baby Jesus, at 1.0 it's as flat as a pancake. 2.4 would be bulging outwards like a goldfish. I hate dial limits but it seems I need to start putting limits in to protect you guys from yourselves ?

Eyelashes are supposed to show up in the reflection, I think the reason you may have them all over the place is you seem to be using IBL or have light coming from below in addition to your big area light.

This is lit with just area lights similar to the scene I uploaded here.

I purchased LF on the 29th, my account says there was an update on the 31st. Were all three zip files updated or just a certain one?

Only the first one. The pdf manual was updated.

Blackhearted, don't put the limits. Let us crazy people learn from errors.

You are correct, it was a second light emitter that was causing the problem. I am now using only area lights with no other emitters.

Optics: "Just leave it alone" Do you mean 'don't even inject the cornea prop(s)' or 'inject them, but set to zero'?

Rosemaryr, thank you for your intelligent reply and information.

The triangulated version of the two .obj's mesh would be most welcome, and I'll do an animation right away. It occurred to me I could just sub-divide, that would end up with triangles, but with a twice-as-heavy mesh, right?

I agree that tri-poly is better for the cloth room.

Thanks!

::::: Opera :::::

operaguy posted at 6:12AM Sat, 02 February 2019 - #4345025

Blackhearted, don't put the limits. Let us crazy people learn from errors.

You are correct, it was a second light emitter that was causing the problem. I am now using only area lights with no other emitters.

Optics: "Just leave it alone" Do you mean 'don't even inject the cornea prop(s)' or 'inject them, but set to zero'?

I mean leave the optics dial alone :)

I've managed to put La Femme into my Star Wars render stream. Using Blackhearted Hi Def Morphs and the Mina character. Blue Twilek at the sea. :-) I will look forward to someone making some SciFi and or Fantasy clothing.The bikini is BlackHearted's Signature. My previous favorite figure was V4- Weight Mapped- La Femme is a clear improvement! Kudos to the creators! Blackhearted- Please put out more morph packages! Fantastic work.

operaguy posted at 8:50AM Sat, 02 February 2019 - #4345026

Rosemaryr, thank you for your intelligent reply and information.

The triangulated version of the two .obj's mesh would be most welcome, and I'll do an animation right away. It occurred to me I could just sub-divide, that would end up with triangles, but with a twice-as-heavy mesh, right?

I agree that tri-poly is better for the cloth room.

Thanks!

::::: Opera :::::

Okay. It'll take about a day or so to get it up. (Got some other things planned for today, I'll have to work on it tonight.) It'll be listed as a Poser Cloth room item, with the same name, over at ShareCG.

Hmmm... I have a little problem, perhaps someone can help me: I have to use unusual high render settings to get rid of grain for LaFemme. But I'm not sure if it's due to the shader set (SSS with refracted eyes), the light (from blackheart's Superfly Studio) or something else.... but usually I have the following render settings: Pixel Samples 14 with branched Path tracing and diffuse samples 5, glossy samples 3, transmission, sub surface, volume and ao samples 2, Mesh light samples 15. That has been more than sufficient in most cases so far but not now. I've been going up to 24 pixel samples and more and still have slight grain on some skin areas (especially in the shadow). Seeing as this is a SSS skin shader would it perhaps be wiser to increase the subsurface samples instead of the whole pixel samples thing? Or anything else? I'm not using progressive refinement because that doesn't work well with branched path tracing and without it I have slightly different colours. Indeed I have seen many LaFemme images, even in promos, with grain so I thought perhaps her shader settings require different treating?

Varnayrah, one of the promos for the La Femme product "Ammy Hair" showed target settings. See below. Not that I have an answer to the graininess. I am a FireFly person.

Thank you, but oot doesn't use branched path tracing here, so I'd think my settings are even higher than that. I could have a look at those clamp samples and filter glossy settings though.

edit/ after looking at those promos - they have the grain, too.

Here's some playing I've done with Le Femme. Don't think there's much grain so I included the render settings.

Graininess is usually a result of your lighting. If I were getting a lot of grain, I would start by turning up my main light a bit, or if you have one light that is pointing at where you are getting the grain, turn that one up. Start by turning up the intensity of one of the lights and experiment.

Blackhearted posted in a thread on here that he plays with his lights all the time to get a better render. I used his here for this image, but also played with a couple to get them where I wanted.

Thanks, Rosemaryr and no hurry, of course!

You are very generous in your sharing. Gratitude.

::::: Opera :::::

Thank you, RedPhantom and Glitteraty. I'll definitively try both ways. In my present case, I can't turn the lights much higher without overexposing the skin - I'm using Tempesta's Mina, which is very light. But for future images I'll remember this. For now I do get better results with indeed turning up the subsurface samples. If it's usually lightning that's causing the grain, then perhaps it's due to the fact that I've never used area light much (because of many outdoor scenes) but the Superfly studio consists mainly of area lights as far as I see. That's a sweet render, btw!

Varnayrah posted at 2:54PM Sat, 02 February 2019 - #4345057

Thank you, RedPhantom and Glitteraty. I'll definitively try both ways. In my present case, I can't turn the lights much higher without overexposing the skin - I'm using Tempesta's Mina, which is very light. But for future images I'll remember this. For now I do get better results with indeed turning up the subsurface samples. If it's usually lightning that's causing the grain, then perhaps it's due to the fact that I've never used area light much (because of many outdoor scenes) but the Superfly studio consists mainly of area lights as far as I see. That's a sweet render, btw!

Just want to link in Blackhearted's comments about lighting for superfly: https://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/?thread_id=2930755&page_number=3#

@4344767

Well, I got through my Saturday chores sooner than expected, so the Poser ready outfit is now up at ShareCG. Look for my (same) user name, and this file is called "LaFemme Basic Tunic and Pants for Poser" (should be at the top of the gallery listing). I have a runtime ready folder with the items as smart-props, ready for the cloth room, as well as the vanilla tri-poly OBJs in the zip file as well, for those who like using other programs besides Poser.

Varnayrah posted at 2:18PM Sat, 02 February 2019 - #4345042

Hmmm... I have a little problem, perhaps someone can help me: I have to use unusual high render settings to get rid of grain for LaFemme. But I'm not sure if it's due to the shader set (SSS with refracted eyes), the light (from blackheart's Superfly Studio) or something else.... but usually I have the following render settings: Pixel Samples 14 with branched Path tracing and diffuse samples 5, glossy samples 3, transmission, sub surface, volume and ao samples 2, Mesh light samples 15. That has been more than sufficient in most cases so far but not now. I've been going up to 24 pixel samples and more and still have slight grain on some skin areas (especially in the shadow). Seeing as this is a SSS skin shader would it perhaps be wiser to increase the subsurface samples instead of the whole pixel samples thing? Or anything else? I'm not using progressive refinement because that doesn't work well with branched path tracing and without it I have slightly different colours. Indeed I have seen many LaFemme images, even in promos, with grain so I thought perhaps her shader settings require different treating?

I don't render with CPU, ever, but I just tried a render with these settings and it came out glass smooth. I probably could have went down to 16-18 samples.

Keep in mind that the eyes with refraction needed to be Area-Rendered with transmission bumped up.

Some of your bounces - like diffuse - are way too high. The only time I've noticed needing more than 2 diffuse bounces was when I was specifically testing it in a small test scene with Red/Blue spheres right beside each other in a tiny room bouncing colored light all over the place, but this scenario is unlikely to happen in the typical Poser gallery render.

If you have the option to render with GPU you really should be taking advantage of that. I can't see any 'color' difference between the two - perhaps you had different settings set and that was influencing your result. My results were identical, but with GPU rendering being about 2-3x faster.

Hello.

I've been exclusively a Poser user since 2007 and I finally bought Poser 11 for La Femme. Very happy! Extremely well done! What a joy to see all this new Poser stuff in the store too.

My first impression upon completing my first render of her is that her skin is absolutely gorgeous right out of the zip. The most beautiful I've ever seen on a base figure.

I already bought a couple character sets, some clothes, and poses .... but what I'm really hoping for are makeup overlays. Very dark eye makeups.

Thank you very much!

Best wishes,

James

Close up. Mina character with dial turning, Blackhearted's experimental eye prop corneas. HD morphs by Blackhearted. Lekku props (ShareCG?). Envirosphere2 and HDR lighting with 1 light (Sun).

Grain free Render settings as follows-from my viewing of SM's tutorials on Superfly rendering- setting the bucket size to 256 does NOT make faster renders. I set to 32 or 64. Screen Shot 2019-02-02 at 4.48.21 PM.png

Eric, please what are you setting for IrisFlat and CorneaOptics?

Thanks for the screen shot of your settings. Does it give grain free renders on closeup of skin?

Also, this is a dead link: http://poserplace.phantom3d.net/V4.2WM/V4.2WM.html

Rosemaryr posted at 7:24PM Sat, 02 February 2019 - #4345061

Well, I got through my Saturday chores sooner than expected, so the Poser ready outfit is now up at ShareCG. Look for my (same) user name, and this file is called "LaFemme Basic Tunic and Pants for Poser" (should be at the top of the gallery listing). I have a runtime ready folder with the items as smart-props, ready for the cloth room, as well as the vanilla tri-poly OBJs in the zip file as well, for those who like using other programs besides Poser.

Got it. Animation rendering now, I'll post it tomorrow. I put a black silk material on the top.

:: og ::

Hi Operaguy, If I understand it correctly- Blackhearted's Cornea prop corrects for the Iris convexity. I set the "Optics" to 0.5. I'm in render right now-I'll double check for you. Yes-no grain in render. But that also has to do with the lighting. My Twilek was rendered using Envirosphere with HDR files-as lighting- along with one distant light. One important tip is to make sure the hdr is blurred-. For instance, if there are bright spots-say the sun in the HDR image-it will cause speckles in the render-unless you blur the HDR. I don't know HOW to remove the Phantom link from my post footer. Any idea how?

operaguy posted at 8:48PM Sat, 02 February 2019 - #4345085

Eric, please what are you setting for IrisFlat and CorneaOptics?

Thanks for the screen shot of your settings. Does it give grain free renders on closeup of skin?

Also, this is a dead link: http://poserplace.phantom3d.net/V4.2WM/V4.2WM.html

Eric Walters posted at 10:53PM Sat, 02 February 2019 - #4345082

Grain free Render settings as follows-from my viewing of SM's tutorials on Superfly rendering- setting the bucket size to 256 does NOT make faster renders. I set to 32 or 64. Screen Shot 2019-02-02 at 4.48.21 PM.png

That's certainly true for CPU rendering but it's the opposite for GPU rendering. Maxwell does pretty good with 256, Pascal loves a bucket size of 512 or more depending on the scene. If I'm rendering with my 970 I tend to use 384 and I usually stick with 512 with my 1070 or if I'm using both cards to render a scene.

I used to always go with a bucket size of 256 on my 1070 but after trying 512 my renders started finishing 4-10 minutes faster for larger scenes.

Eric, look in your account settings, perhaps that phantom link is in your signature.

I'm under orders from Blackhearted to not touch optics on cornea, so I'm not. I'll try your settings, but I'm only using area lights inside a box or dome, and no HDR lighting.

:: og ::

Im really in two minds about this. Blackhearted's images do look good but for me the problem is not so much the corneas (though there is a weird curving off shape above the eye in a couple of the product renders). The mouth area in many of the renders is the elephant in the room. The default mouth shape just doesnt look realistic. Im not saying that the face cant look realistic if you work on more morphs, but you have to work against the basic nature of the figure

crowbar posted at 6:50AM Sun, 03 February 2019 - #4345101

Im really in two minds about this. Blackhearted's images do look good but for me the problem is not so much the corneas (though there is a weird curving off shape above the eye in a couple of the product renders). The mouth area in many of the renders is the elephant in the room. The default mouth shape just doesnt look realistic. Im not saying that the face cant look realistic if you work on more morphs, but you have to work against the basic nature of the figure

Its a base figure, there are 35 different mouth/lip morphs and 8 face chips included by default that you can combine to get mouth shapes/expressions easier than any other Poser figure.

You just can't please everyone. If I made ultra-defined, stylized lips then people would be complaining about that. No matter what design decision you make there's always someone that's going to complain that it's not to their tastes. FFS my HD morphs are like a 140lb crossfit athlete and you have some chronic complainers using the 'anorexic' word again ?

I specifically had to hold back and keep the default body and face as 'neutral' and smooth as possible so that it would be easy to morph in any direction -- not just the direction I would go with it. Not everyone likes my style of figure, and believe me you wouldn't want that baked into the base since you'd have to de-morph that any time you wanted to morph the figure. With certain legacy figures the default shape is so distinctive and so baked-in that even after extreme morphing you can still 'see' it under the surface.

The ball is in the community's court now to create characters suited to different tastes. We even made the built-in morphs and textures fully redistributable so it's even easier to create characters. I'll definitely be making more morphs and characters, but those will be going in a direction I decide and I can guarantee those won't be to everyone's tastes either.

I really appreciate all the deep thought and the time expended by the developers of LaFemme

(soapbox on)

Regarding the nit-picking, No product developer of any product from software, to any retail product, to a poser figure, can anticipate all the various uses and setting combinations of any new product they create. In my lifetime I have created hundreds of mechanical products that have endured for over 40 years. Most if, not all have been revised over time based on customer feed back. How many updates have been released to fix problems for either the operating system or the web browser you are using to read this thread? Lots!

In the Poser world the most popular figure in recent times is V4. I think some of you are all forgetting there was the original Victoria 4.0. Then version 4.1 . Followed by version 4.2. We as a group didn't cast Victoria 4.0 aside because of flaws discovered that Daz didn't know of when Victoria 4.0 was released. And again even when 4.1 was released. We pointed out the flaws and waited for Daz to react.

Going back to the mechanical products I have developed over the last 40 some odd years, I craved constructive criticism.

There is a motto that goes something like this. You can please most of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time.

I am not a fan of Studio's interface at all. My hope is that the clothes, shoe, hair and character product developers get behind LaFemme and that causes a resurgence of the popularity of Poser. And that the product developers behind LaFemme react to constructive criticism and improve her in ways they did see or know about on the day she was released.

Very few if any products as complex as a 3D character are ever prefect on initial release. If they were there would never have been V4.1 or V4.2.

(soapbox off)

Thank you all for your advice on render settings, it's highly appreciated! I think I have now a good balance between acceptable speed and quality as base settings I can work from for more specific needs. Else... I really think LaFemme all over is generic enough to have a really good base figure, one that can be an athlete or a tiny fairy or whatever. Her base form is perhaps more on the model side (=not as realistic as evolution), but than I really like the variety in my runtime. And I've only started scratching at the surface of all her possibilities. Way to soon to start moaning lol So thank you for bringing her into being - I really really hope that she gets lots of support even when the first excitement is worn out. About the lips - the shape is nice, I think, and can be morphes easily to liking. What I don't like sometimes is when the lips asge appears to sharp on the texture without blurring or fading the edges a bit. But that's a matter of texturing, not the base figure.

Varnayrah posted at 8:11AM Sun, 03 February 2019 - #4345112

About the lips - the shape is nice, I think, and can be morphes easily to liking. What I don't like sometimes is when the lips asge appears to sharp on the texture without blurring or fading the edges a bit. But that's a matter of texturing, not the base figure.

I think that's often more a case of the lip material zone having a different shader, or the texturer making a sharp transition from the lip:face materials. I actually wanted to make the lip and face materials one continuous material zone and include a variety of lip masks (with proper edge transitions) in case someone wanted to do a different gloss lip shader, for example... but I was voted down and we went with the traditional separate Lip material zone. Imagine how many people would be complaining now if we went with my idea? ?

Rather not lol Yes, maybe it's in the material settings, but sometimes I notice on textures, too, that the lip's edges are too sharp. That's not La femme-specific, mind you. Can happen with any base figure. But that's easily to be dealt with, so no complaint from me about the base figure there! Really, I am grateful that she's there. And it seems I shouldn't type English when having the flu. I shudder before all the typos I can't edit out any more.

Blackhearted posted at 10:12AM Sun, 03 February 2019 - #4345116

Varnayrah posted at 8:11AM Sun, 03 February 2019 - #4345112

About the lips - the shape is nice, I think, and can be morphes easily to liking. What I don't like sometimes is when the lips asge appears to sharp on the texture without blurring or fading the edges a bit. But that's a matter of texturing, not the base figure.

I think that's often more a case of the lip material zone having a different shader, or the texturer making a sharp transition from the lip:face materials. I actually wanted to make the lip and face materials one continuous material zone and include a variety of lip masks (with proper edge transitions) in case someone wanted to do a different gloss lip shader, for example... but I was voted down and we went with the traditional separate Lip material zone. Imagine how many people would be complaining now if we went with my idea? ?

Everyone who I individually talked to missed the head morphs completely until I reminded them to use them.

La Femme comes with a great deal to play with and get to know, with just the base morphs. Add in Deecey's and Blackhearted's morph sets and you could be spinning dials for days already!

As for her mouth, I like the default shape and size. I don't care for her mouth in the Smile morphs unless I dial in some of the face chips with them - make her eyes smile, make her cheeks respond to the mouth movement. No more "dead eye" models smiling. I am anxiously awaiting some expression poses - I just suck at posing and am lazy so I'll be happy to add them to my growing La Femme collection.

Animation of a La Femme character with Rosemaryr's dynamic top ....

It's a slo-mo of her "getting ready for some football."

Click here for animation, 2.5MB

Thanks for your generous gift of mesh, Rosemaryr!

::::: Opera :::::

I feel that anyone criticizing the default of any model has the responsibility of posting one or more of their renders, showing the unique character they created by spinning dials. And then they should make a freebie of their great face morph.

::::: Opera :::::

The chips take some getting used to if you're accustomed to V4 and her ilk. I was really confused at all the props that load with this figure, and didn't have a clue what they were for. (I guess I should have read the instructions.) That's probably why people think there aren't many morphs.

randym77 posted at 12:48PM Sun, 03 February 2019 - #4345137

The chips take some getting used to if you're accustomed to V4 and her ilk. I was really confused at all the props that load with this figure, and didn't have a clue what they were for. (I guess I should have read the instructions.) That's probably why people think there aren't many morphs.

Actually, look in the Pose folder. There are face and body morph injections for La Femme in there. Over 140 face morphs, and 23 basic body morphs. In general, use the face chips for expression and animation, and use the face MORPHS for character development.

operaguy posted at 12:50PM Sun, 03 February 2019 - #4345132

I feel that anyone criticizing the default of any model has the responsibility of posting one or more of their renders, showing the unique character they created by spinning dials. And then they should make a freebie of their great face morph.

::::: Opera :::::

NIce! Face morphs are always fun to use in small increments to combine together for new characters.

Man, she becomes an obsession fast! And oh my God does she bend.

Time hasn't permitted me to start doing scenes with her yet and I still have to buy the morph packages, but I got to play with some dials.

Very unique and beautiful! Super fun!

FireFly render .....

Nice! She reminds me of Ma Farrow in her younger years.

Deecey posted at 4:02PM Sun, 03 February 2019 - #4345138

randym77 posted at 12:48PM Sun, 03 February 2019 - #4345137

The chips take some getting used to if you're accustomed to V4 and her ilk. I was really confused at all the props that load with this figure, and didn't have a clue what they were for. (I guess I should have read the instructions.) That's probably why people think there aren't many morphs.

Actually, look in the Pose folder. There are face and body morph injections for La Femme in there. Over 140 face morphs, and 23 basic body morphs. In general, use the face chips for expression and animation, and use the face MORPHS for character development.

Thanks, Deecey. I did find the injectable morphs, but it wasn't clear to me what the difference was.

Tempesta's textures, face morph by me. I like her, although the expressions are very different, need to practice more.

Great work, thanks to everyone envolved.

I wish La Femme well.

For me she is overly complex with horrible plastic Barbi legs and feet. She takes far too long to do simple work with and is a nightmare to pose realistically... finding the bits through endless menu's and then having to fiddle with each lip or eyebrow end. If you want to spend hours and hours on a single image she is great and her level of minute movement detail amazing. I was really hoping for something that would blow me away. Well she does... but not in a good way for me personally. She is already in the "unusable box" and that's not good. This is one of the problems with new poser figures. They are totally over complex and not simple to use. The number of times I need to bend her little toe is once in a blue moon... what I need is a single dial to make her smile lopsided not freeky. This is what brings me back time and again to V4. I can do in 10 minutes what takes me 10 hours in other figures with no improvement in result.

For me its back to V4 as La Femme is totally unworkable in my workflow. :( I am genuinely sad about this.

Been playing with her this afternoon. One of my favorite poser scripts is D3D Perfect Skin SSS Lite, which makes Superfly renders faster and better. If you use this script, too. Edit "Perfect Skin SSS.fig" and add the following lines: in the [!!!MATERIAL!!!] section add: lafemme1 = lafemme in the [!!!NAME!!!] section add: lafemme = La Femme then add the following lines at the bottom: [lafemme] skin = Lips SkinHead SkinLimbs SkinTorso nail = Fingernails Toenails mouth = Gums InnerMouth tongue = Tongue teeth = Teeth eyewet = InnerEye pupil = Pupil eye = Iris sclera = Sclera cornea = EyeSurface trans = Eyelashes ( = line break)

I noticed right away that the eyes and mouth seem big on the default model, I don't really have a problem with this as it helps demonstrate the face controls, and the included sliders can adjust this. Hint: If you like larger pouty lips, select each of the 6 control nodes on the lips and set the y-scale to 125%.

The biggest noticeable flaw that can't be fixed yet is the armpits. Generally when you bend the arms to the side, there shouldn't be a gap in the armpits.

Animation of a La Femme character with Rosemaryr's dynamic top ....

Looks like the figure animates easily enough ( commons sense rigging no doubt),

poser really needs a new IK foot pinning system to avoid that foot sliding :-(.

I bet she would really shine in Iclone Pro with our Maya human IK system and the ability to imbed procedural animation within a figure for easy right click retrieval and mixing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55kIU2DCk3o&feature=youtu.be