Note: I realize this thread was attacked by a really obnoxious troll right at the start. That was execrable. I am simply advocating for proactive La Femme posts. But have at it if you must. I won't bash back.

operaguy posted at 2:01PM Fri, 08 February 2019 - #4345618

It is still "bashing" when you and others bring up comparisons instead of simply extolling the virtues of La Femme ... and I might say ... addressing the issues that have already arisen that will require her "fix product" cycle.

I was there. I created the first fix for V4 Arm crease in 2007. see this thread:

Click here for thread and my recent update at the bottom of page 2.

I was replying to mazzam's comments, and even quoted them to make myself clear.

Based on watching the render community for the last 20 years, the priorities for a new figure's commercial success are as follows:

• Is it free/bundled with the application
• Is there sufficient character/clothing/pose/other accessory content for it at release time, is there a consistent push of figure-specific content afterward
• Will it pose and render quickly with midgrade hardware specs
• Does it pose/do expressions naturally, does its default face not frighten children and how morphable is its mesh
• Can I easily swap in custom male/female genitalia (regardless of the figure's gender) – this last one is unfortunately a dealbreaker for a lot of 3DX commercial artists

I would strongly suggest that Rendo immediately start courting character sculptors here like Maddelirium, Sangriart, Vykhtoria, banhsua, 3DSublimeProductions, TwiztedMetal, Sabby/Seven, Freja, 3DA, LUNA3D, -Valkyrie-, and every top selling character vendor whose name I overlooked. Rendo has the stats on that, I don't. People are not in general going to develop their own characters and would much rather purchase them. The more breadth of character devs, character types facial and body-wise, the better.

duanemoody posted at 2:10PM Fri, 08 February 2019 - #4345621

Based on watching the render community for the last 20 years, the priorities for a new figure's commercial success are as follows:

• Is it free/bundled with the application
• Is there sufficient character/clothing/pose/other accessory content for it at release time, is there a consistent push of figure-specific content afterward
• Will it pose and render quickly with midgrade hardware specs
• Does it pose/do expressions naturally, does its default face not frighten children and how morphable is its mesh
• Can I easily swap in custom male/female genitalia (regardless of the figure's gender) – this last one is unfortunately a dealbreaker for a lot of 3DX commercial artists

I would strongly suggest that Rendo immediately start courting character sculptors here like Maddelirium, Sangriart, Vykhtoria, banhsua, 3DSublimeProductions, TwiztedMetal, Sabby/Seven, Freja, 3DA, LUNA3D, -Valkyrie-, and every top selling character vendor whose name I overlooked. Rendo has the stats on that, I don't. People are not in general going to develop their own characters and would much rather purchase them. The more breadth of character devs, character types facial and body-wise, the better.

And Danae! The only V4 characters I miss are Danae's London/Paris sets and Blackhearted's.

Glitterati3D posted at 12:14PM Fri, 08 February 2019 - #4345622

And Danae! The only V4 characters I miss are Danae's London/Paris sets and Blackhearted's.

I should have put an apology instead of a disclaimer. There are a large number of V4 devs who aren't currently doing Genesis characters at the moment and I don't want to call out the retired – or assume that they are no longer willing to dev for newer Poser figures, so I went with a laundry list of most recent character developers I wanted to recommend rather than just run a laundry list of everyone I've bought V4 characters from in the past. Also, I have no idea whether PAs like bluejaunte, Mousso, Deepsea, Raiya, maelwenn, Emrya, Quixotry, EmmaAndJordi etc. are exclusives to DAZ or not but they're all exceptional character artists as well.

duanemoody posted at 2:38PM Fri, 08 February 2019 - #4345624

Glitterati3D posted at 12:14PM Fri, 08 February 2019 - #4345622

And Danae! The only V4 characters I miss are Danae's London/Paris sets and Blackhearted's.

I should have put an apology instead of a disclaimer. There are a large number of V4 devs who aren't currently doing Genesis characters at the moment and I don't want to call out the retired – or assume that they are no longer willing to dev for newer Poser figures, so I went with a laundry list of most recent character developers I wanted to recommend rather than just run a laundry list of everyone I've bought V4 characters from in the past. Also, I have no idea whether PAs like bluejaunte, Mousso, Deepsea, Raiya, maelwenn, Emrya, Quixotry, EmmaAndJordi etc. are exclusives to DAZ or not but they're all exceptional character artists as well.

Yeah, I haven't been around Rendo for about 5 years, so I have no idea who is still around or who is doing what now.

Admittedly it is still early days, but we shall need variation for LaFemme; just consider how many morphs have been created over the years for V4 or for her later Genesis versions. I shall continue to experiment, but I am an amateur compared with the like of those developers who have created so much for V4 and since!

A_Sunbeam posted at 1:53PM Fri, 08 February 2019 - #4345630

Admittedly it is still early days, but we shall need variation for LaFemme; just consider how many morphs have been created over the years for V4 or for her later Genesis versions.

At this point now that ZBrush has bridges to both Poser and DAZ Studio, the workflow to create characters for any Poser/DS figure shouldn't vary that much, unless there's something I'm missing here.

I'm guessing it's not possible, since I think she's at DAZ now, but I would love a Capces morph pack for LF. It was my most-used add-on for V4 and M4.

Glitterati3D posted at 3:52PM Fri, 08 February 2019 - #4345607

mazzam posted at 12:12PM Fri, 08 February 2019 - #4345579

Having spent some time with the new figure I fine her a curious mixture of 'accuracy' and a body shape that would not past muster in an art school anatomy class. She certainly could not replace V4 who for all her flaws can be made to look like a real person. Enough different real people to populate a graphic novel. If that was not the purpose, so be it. But then I find it hard to see what everyone is so excited about. What kind of art is she actually good for? And by the way, accurate does not have to be average. Why not a base figure who is an anatomically accurate tall, slender female?

I think La Femme is extremely versatile - more so than V4 ever was. It would take a small fortune in addons to get V4 anywhere near this. Yet, this is a combination of the morphs La Femme comes with and Deecey's Body morphs.

Young & Short

Wow, that looks great. I have to get that morph pack. (It's on my wish list.)

Very happy to see more and more products for LF in the MP.

I've been using Poser and the various Vickies for nearly 20 years now. I'm well aware of exactly what Vicky 4 can and can't do, even after a decade of fixes and add-ons by vendors and freestuff providers (myself included).

I'm getting tired of the 'V4 can be anything' spiel. V4 - even the 4.2 version - can't be anything except a bizarre puffed up male body out of the box. She doesn't even come with nipples, you have to buy them separately - both the morphs and texture. Currently V4 is $30 ($50 for the interactive version which still doesn't even come close to the freedom of the basic LaFemme license) and comes with nothing but a 'demo' texture and a puffy male morph with a female face that not one person has ever used in over 10 years. Add $30 for the base texture (non-redistributable) and $30 for base morphs (again non-redistributable).

V4 has had over 10 years of polishing by mostly third-party vendors and freestuff providers (myself included), LaFemme has been out for one week. Even still, with all the $$ 'joint fixes' in the world (that nuke conforming clothing) V4 can not do this:

Part of the reason LaFemme came about is because I was sick and tired of constantly having to fix V4's joints. Half my V4 workflow was joint fixing. V4's bending is very obsolete, and anyone that is not aware of that has not used the recent Genesis figures for comparison or is looking at V4 through some seriously rose-colored glasses. I've used V4 as much as anyone here, and while there is a lot you can do with morphs and textures there are some problems that are simply not addressable with tweaks and 'fixes'. The archaic spherical falloff rigging, a 70k poly mesh full of poles that is not at all ideal for subdivision or HD morphing, etc.

This figure project started off with a group of Poser veterans realizing that Genesis is never coming natively to Poser, and Poser users are still stuck using a 15 year old figure that's starting to show its age. So we set out to build something from the ground up that uses modern rigging and all of the features available in Poser 11. This was back in Feb 2018, and everyone was working on the project for free with the intention of making this a free figure with a very redistribution-friendly license. Then last fall Smith Micro and Rendo took interest in the project and offered a little money to help move the project along. Not counting the months of free work earlier, this was about enough money for us to buy lunch and keep the lights on for the time everyone spent working on her. Everyone involved busted their ass and ended up working some crazy hours to get it finished in time for it's release. None of us make a cent on LaFemme 'purchases', our names are just on there as credit.

I was gone: I had completely uninstalled Poser and was off in D|S and doing modeling for games. This project got me back in Poser and creating for it again, and its fun.. except the part where I log in here every morning to read the latest bash post.

This is a BASE figure. A blank canvas. It's been out for one week: if you want something changed then be a little patient and someone will step up and do it, or learn new skills and try to change it yourself - it's easier than ever. The new Poser Morphing Tool is amazing, I find myself going to Zbrush less and less. The morphs and textures that come with LaFemme are completely redistributable so you can even make new characters/makeups/textures and put them in freestuff or sell them.

Most of the 'issues' being nitpicked about are actually already solved in the base figure. There are several morphs included that can fatten her fingers up, and scaling works perfectly so you can scale body parts up/down. Thigh gap? There's a post a few posts back with that addressed. You simply pose her out of her T-Pose and load the 'ThighsThicken' morph. I even uploaded a new default pose that does that for you.

Time permitting I'll gladly help provide tweaks and content, but if people want the variety of content that's available for V4 then they're going to have to be a little patient. A lot of vendors are working on new morphs and clothing and characters but creating quality Poser content is actually time-consuming as hell so the equivalent of 15 years of V4 content isn't going to appear overnight.

(doh, forgot the nudity tag)

Blackhearted, I hadn't realised this was how LaFemme came about, I'd assumed SM/rendo had commissioner her from the start. I think the poser community really does owe you and the other creators a big vote of thanks.

Thanks Tempesta3D! Your characters and textures/shader setups are top notch. I'd been using Ezskin3 and the Cycles skin shaders on all my various V4's. I tried on your Mina character and I must say I prefer your shader results! I have all your character/textures for LaFemme. Just added Diva. A few more renders to post shortly! Tempesta3d posted at 3:40PM Fri, 08 February 2019 - #4345602

Eric Walters posted at 10:08AM Fri, 08 February 2019 - #4345036

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.

This is so wonderful, it gives my geek-self a huge smile. Beautiful <3

Blackhearted-a million thanks to you and all the others involved! Your picture is worth a 1000 words. There are many fixes for V4-including V4-Weight Mapped (I was a very active beta tester on that) and Project Evolution. While they do a lot to improve V4's issues- but as someone who spent many an hour testing bending and seeing how wrong it looked- LaFemme is a HUGE improvement. " a 70k poly mesh full of poles that is not at all ideal for subdivision or HD morphing, etc." YUP! I had more fun morphing Dawn in Zbrush. V4 is a pain. Blackhearted](https://www.renderosity.com/?uid=11343) posted at 3:48PM Fri, 08 February 2019 - #4345637

I've been using Poser and the various Vickies for nearly 20 years now. I'm well aware of exactly what Vicky 4 can and can't do, even after a decade of fixes and add-ons by vendors and freestuff providers (myself included).

I'm getting tired of the 'V4 can be anything' spiel. V4 - even the 4.2 version - can't be anything except a bizarre puffed up male body out of the box. She doesn't even come with nipples, you have to buy them separately - both the morphs and texture. Currently V4 is $30 ($50 for the interactive version which still doesn't even come close to the freedom of the basic LaFemme license) and comes with nothing but a 'demo' texture and a puffy male morph with a female face that not one person has ever used in over 10 years. Add $30 for the base texture (non-redistributable) and $30 for base morphs (again non-redistributable).

V4 has had over 10 years of polishing by mostly third-party vendors and freestuff providers (myself included), LaFemme has been out for one week. Even still, with all the $$ 'joint fixes' in the world (that nuke conforming clothing) V4 can not do this:

Part of the reason LaFemme came about is because I was sick and tired of constantly having to fix V4's joints. Half my V4 workflow was joint fixing. V4's bending is very obsolete, and anyone that is not aware of that has not used the recent Genesis figures for comparison or is looking at V4 through some seriously rose-colored glasses. I've used V4 as much as anyone here, and while there is a lot you can do with morphs and textures there are some problems that are simply not addressable with tweaks and 'fixes'. The archaic spherical falloff rigging, a 70k poly mesh full of poles that is not at all ideal for subdivision or HD morphing, etc.

This figure project started off with a group of Poser veterans realizing that Genesis is never coming natively to Poser, and Poser users are still stuck using a 15 year old figure that's starting to show its age. So we set out to build something from the ground up that uses modern rigging and all of the features available in Poser 11. This was back in Feb 2018, and everyone was working on the project for free with the intention of making this a free figure with a very redistribution-friendly license. Then last fall Smith Micro and Rendo took interest in the project and offered a little money to help move the project along. Not counting the months of free work earlier, this was about enough money for us to buy lunch and keep the lights on for the time everyone spent working on her. Everyone involved busted their ass and ended up working some crazy hours to get it finished in time for it's release. None of us make a cent on LaFemme 'purchases', our names are just on there as credit.

I was gone: I had completely uninstalled Poser and was off in D|S and doing modeling for games. This project got me back in Poser and creating for it again, and its fun.. except the part where I log in here every morning to read the latest bash post.

This is a BASE figure. A blank canvas. It's been out for one week: if you want something changed then be a little patient and someone will step up and do it, or learn new skills and try to change it yourself - it's easier than ever. The new Poser Morphing Tool is amazing, I find myself going to Zbrush less and less. The morphs and textures that come with LaFemme are completely redistributable so you can even make new characters/makeups/textures and put them in freestuff or sell them.

Most of the 'issues' being nitpicked about are actually already solved in the base figure. There are several morphs included that can fatten her fingers up, and scaling works perfectly so you can scale body parts up/down. Thigh gap? There's a post a few posts back with that addressed. You simply pose her out of her T-Pose and load the 'ThighsThicken' morph. I even uploaded a new default pose that does that for you.

Time permitting I'll gladly help provide tweaks and content, but if people want the variety of content that's available for V4 then they're going to have to be a little patient. A lot of vendors are working on new morphs and clothing and characters but creating quality Poser content is actually time-consuming as hell so the equivalent of 15 years of V4 content isn't going to appear overnight.

(doh, forgot the nudity tag)

Blackhearted, thanks for posting the history of the project. I have been on projects like that, and I'm sure the meme used in software application dev applies to yours ... "The first 90% of the project takes up 90% of the time, and the last 10% of the project takes up the other 90% of the time."

A labor of love, obviously. Best of fortune for the La Femme project on Renderosity.

::::: Opera :::::

Whew! That was scary. I haven't had four V4s loaded in a scene in a long time. I must say my computer held up well, although it is begging for a glass of water right now.

::::: Opera :::::

Not even sure why I'm replying since that is not base V4. How about listing all of the add-ons and joint hacks you had to load?

The image I posted is base, out of the box LaFemme with some quick and dirty poses. I didn't even render it, just capped the workspace.

Even still, if you truly don't see the difference between those two images, then nothing on earth I post here is ever going to have any effect, so lets just agree to disagree.

randym77 posted at 7:17PM Fri, 08 February 2019 - #4345634

I'm guessing it's not possible, since I think she's at DAZ now, but I would love a Capces morph pack for LF. It was my most-used add-on for V4 and M4.

That doesn't mean anything - a number of Daz Vendors sell here.

V4:

V4 Starter bundle from Daz: $50 (base, morphs++ and standard-res skin) plus Sasha-16 weight mapping and advanced posing features. $0

Your point about a good model for Poser right out of the box for a low price is taken. I'd say that's $20, right? Free base with one skin and default morphs $0 HDmorphs $20

That would be $50 at Daz for V4. So that's a $30 difference. Additionally, La Femme has the face chips for expressions, a great feature.

However, many people already have V4Base and Morphs++, plus they just went on a massive 80% off sale, and the base was free for many years. That is water under the bridge, granted.

And yes, I can see the difference in the results. Can you?

operaguy posted at 8:10PM Fri, 08 February 2019 - #4345650

Whew! That was scary. I haven't had four V4s loaded in a scene in a long time. I must say my computer held up well, although it is begging for a glass of water right now.

It's scary, all right. ;-)

You really don't see the issues? Especially the middle poses. Second from left has her leg bent in a way a human leg would not bend. Her foot is backwards, with the sole facing back and the big toe on the outside. Her hip must be dislocated.

Second from right...her butt has exploded.

I'm liking it. I did a rough test of her with a mix of my custom morphs and BH's HD morphs. Textures (except eyes) of face and Kimono made by me. BH and the vendors who made her really did a good job here.

BTW, all the bending in the world won't help this figure go anywhere if we are stuck with the same limited content every Post V4 figure has received.

It isn't enough to just have vendors on board. They need to move out of the pin up art only mindset that has permeated Poser storefronts since V4. If all we get is a bunch of hookerware and early 20 something Caucasians, LaFemme will be just as still born as every other Post-V4 figure.

Don't need any figures that look exactly like their legacy counterparts; don't need anymore early-20's Caucasians (got 1,500+ right now). If it is Logan's Run only, it will be a harder sell.

Right now, people can do more with the golum because their is a much wider variety of content - They have kids, they have middle aged people, they have old people, they even have different ethnic groups, but no older characters of different ethnic groups (and caucasianized to the point of creepyness.) They have a wider variety of clothing (badly made for the most part - It wouldn't have passed QA back in the V3 era).

And needless to say, all of that post V4 content is a mere fraction of the content that is available for V4.

The easiest way to see if a character will fly is the amount of shoes made for it. Shoes are the key.

randym77,

Operator error on a twist is so trivial.

I'll trade my possible spin error on that foot twist for La Femme's unreal underarm, which is model error, not operator error. I could fix my pose in 1.2 seconds. How long will it take to fix La Femme's underarm?

operaguy posted at 9:22PM Fri, 08 February 2019 - #4345660

randym77,

Operator error on a twist is so trivial.

I'll trade my possible spin error on that foot twist for La Femme's unreal underarm, which is model error, not operator error. I could fix my pose in 1.2 seconds. How long will it take to fix La Femme's underarm?

I'd assumed you did that way because she looks bad if bent naturally. I have several weight-mapped V4s in my runtime (though not Sasha), and even weight-mapped, that's not a pose that works very well. Heck, I think the standard V4 handles it better than V4-WM.

Dawn bends better than V4, but LF is notably better than Dawn, at least in the poses I've tried.

ssgbryan posted at 9:25PM Fri, 08 February 2019 - #4345659

BTW, all the bending in the world won't help this figure go anywhere if we are stuck with the same limited content every Post V4 figure has received.

It isn't enough to just have vendors on board. They need to move out of the pin up art only mindset that has permeated Poser storefronts since V4. If all we get is a bunch of hookerware and early 20 something Caucasians, LaFemme will be just as still born as every other Post-V4 figure.

Don't need any figures that look exactly like their legacy counterparts; don't need anymore early-20's Caucasians (got 1,500+ right now). If it is Logan's Run only, it will be a harder sell.

Dunno about that. I, personally, like characters of all ages and ethnicities, and buy them, but I suspect hot young white supermodels are by far the biggest sellers.

Right now, people can do more with the golum because their is a much wider variety of content - They have kids, they have middle aged people, they have old people, they even have different ethnic groups, but no older characters of different ethnic groups (and caucasianized to the point of creepyness.) They have a wider variety of clothing (badly made for the most part - It wouldn't have passed QA back in the V3 era).

Well, Dawn is hanging in there. There's a male, and a kid, older characters, and lot of ethnic characters. (I just bought a bunch of American Indian morphs.)

If LF is going to be Poser's new base character, presumably there will be a male counterpart, and a couple of kids, based on previous Poser content. We'll see how much content there is for them. That's been the problem with figures included with Poser. Not a lot of vendor support.

randym77, no, i was just moving too quickly and might have had "set limits" turned off.

I won't be bending my characters like that, even remotely, so it does not really matter to me. I found my solution, after 12 years, for what I do, V4+Sasha-16.

Best wishes for everyone else to find theirs.

::::: Opera :::::

randym77 posted at 8:51PM Fri, 08 February 2019 - #4345662

Dunno about that. I, personally, like characters of all ages and ethnicities, and buy them, but I suspect hot young white supermodels are by far the biggest sellers.

Well, Dawn is hanging in there. There's a male, and a kid, older characters, and lot of ethnic characters. (I just bought a bunch of American Indian morphs.)

If LF is going to be Poser's new base character, presumably there will be a male counterpart, and a couple of kids, based on previous Poser content. We'll see how much content there is for them. That's been the problem with figures included with Poser. Not a lot of vendor support.

Last time we got kids was in Poser (7), Ben 2 and Kate 2 - they weren't supported in any meaningful way.

Young white female supermodels that are 1.8 meters tall make up more than 95% (I have actually counted) of the Poser/DS Market, but less than 3% of world population. That is why SM sold the Miki series - they were a normal sized Asian woman. There is no ability to use just 1 figure in Poser due to the lack of diversity in ethnicity and age. It is the primary reason I never standardized on 1 figure. Well, that and the fact that most vendors characters look like they are very closely related (buy 3 and you have them all) That is by no means a Poser only thing - the same can be said of golum vendors.

Another issue is will LaFemme convince vendors to actually pony up for a copy of Poser 11? Will they start to follow modern Poser standards? They have had a decade to get with the program, but based on what I have seen over the past decade, they are are unwilling to let go of the Poser 4 way of doing things.

Lack of vendor support for Poser figures is why SM added the fitting room. That toothpaste isn't getting back in the tube. I don't worry if a clothing vendor supports a new figure - clothing vendors are a nice to have component in 2019 not a requirement, outside of shoes. Shoes will show if a character is supported by vendors. They don't even have to be new shoes - golum 8 has a number of shoes that were originally made for P6 Jessi and Miki 1020. I know because I have them.

operaguy posted at 11:03PM Fri, 08 February 2019 - #4345650

Whew! That was scary. I haven't had four V4s loaded in a scene in a long time. I must say my computer held up well, although it is begging for a glass of water right now.

::::: Opera :::::

Lol

Wow if this is what you want in your renders then go nuts... What I don't get is why people who want... Well whatever the heck that is in your renders... Feel the need to relentlessly drone on about it in every new figure thread. If I go into a store and I see something I'm not keen on buying guess what I do... I just don't buy it. What I don't do, and what almost everyone doesn't do, is pester everyone within range and force them to acknowledge me not buying it. The reason I don't do this is that I know that... And please let this sink in.... NOBODY F@#KING CARES! seriously!? What's the point? What do you get out of it? Attention? Just like to tear others down?

Add on suggestion, heck I might even do it if I find the time: Better Eyebrows.

The base texture has eyebrows that seem too high. Tempesta seems to have followed the same model with her extra textures. You can kind of lower them using the brow face morphs and brow handles, but this may result in weird folds between the brow and the eyes. As a result, it seems every La Femme render looks surprised.

I've been experimenting, and it seems the best solution is to lower the brows on the face textures themselves -- tip for future character makers.

Another possible fix is to use independent brow textures and transparencies, which is usually set to invisible. If someone wants to create a set of different eyebrows, from thin to bushy, and from straight to bent, for this purpose, it would prove useful. Note: the eyebrow texture channel only needs the right eye brow. It automatically mirrors over the left eye.

meatSim, are you ranting on me? or Blackhearted? He posted that setup earlier, with La Femme saying V4 can't do it, and I'm just echoing it with V4 for contrast. Did you grok that? As I said above, I never have and never will pose a character like that. Please clarify the target and specifics of your objection. Thank you.

::::: Opera :::::

I'd like to add my two cents ... very gently, very gently.

There are already morphs out there that can help you go a long way in varying La Femme's face and body. First, the face morphs included with La Femme go a long way in customizing her face ... and I made a post about those elsewhere, because so many people were using the face chips as morphs. I'll repeat again here, though ... you can find injections for La Femme's Face Morphs and built in Body Morphs in the POSE library.

There are two body morph packages that you can purchase separately. And they actually compliment each other quite well. My La Femme Body Kit adds a lot of shape and size variations without adding a lot of muscular detail. These morphs can also be used as a merchant resource.

Combine them with Gabe's ultra fantastic Femme Fatale kit (these are not merchant resources though), which includes lots of high resolution muscular detail, and you can create a ton of amazing characters.

Here's one I've been playing with lately, but I have to work on a proper texture for her. Right now it is just the default textures with a change in the color chips for the skin, to give her a darker skin tone. This is mostly dial spins with La Femme's built in face morphs, but with a slight bit of additional shaping in ZBrush to get the look I wanted. The body shape is straight combination of "Voluptuous" from my body kit, and some of Gabe's high res detail morphs.

Just to show you she can be more than what you see "out of the box." There are LOTS of dials and morphs already available to play with.

Ohhhh, I'm liking where you're going with her Deecey. I'm liking her a lot.

Just to clarify, my nitpicks are just that and overall LF is a well developed figure, as is PE. Please no one in the dev team take my comments as a sign I don't like LF.

operaguy posted at 1:00AM Sat, 09 February 2019 - #4345669

meatSim, are you ranting on me? or Blackhearted? He posted that setup earlier, with La Femme saying V4 can't do it, and I'm just echoing it with V4 for contrast. Did you grok that? As I said above, I never have and never will pose a character like that. Please clarify the target and specifics of your objection. Thank you.

::::: Opera :::::

You posted similar poses, not with V4 but with Sasha-16, which is a complete re-rig. Still, the bending on La Femme looks far better to me.

By the way, using Sasha makes the use of conforming clothes complicated again. To use a re-rigged figure means that you have to re-rig the clothes too. Sasha-16 is a well working re-rig of V4 and fixes most of the bending problems V4 has.

But even with a better rig, V4 wasn't built for subdivision. La Femme's base mesh is very light weight, but since it works that well with SubD, it's relatively easy to add even the finest detail to the mesh, as long as your machine can handle the polygons. V4 has too many poles for that.

If you prefer V4, by all means, stick to it.

I would ask, please give the content developers some time before you demand more support and content^^ When content for her stays being released at the current rate she'll have her garderobe full soon, even with more than skimp ware. There are some very not-skimp-ware outfits available already, in fact most of them I'd rather consider good solid everyday wear like loose Shirts and sportswear (nothing really skimpy about a sport bathing suit...) And there is already more, there are 1-2 fantasy/scifi outfits, there is a medieval gown, and I think with some texturing work some of the baser clothing pieces can go a long way. So no need yet to beat the "if only she gets enough support" horse by now. Shoes are a point. Though I just now used a pair of Aery Soul shoes as propped figures with good result. I little bit of scaling and some touches with the morph tool and there you are. Well at the moment it looks like many vendors wnat her to be a success. Other as with Evolution, who also was a very promising figure in my opinion. The most crucial point for me are skins and character sets, and there LaFemmme has after a week already five very good sets plus the also very good base skin (Evolutions base skin really can't compare) so I'm in good hopes there, too, that ethnic variety may come in time (which I would like very much, too because you only get so far with texture recolouring).

ssgbryan posted at 2:27AM Sat, 09 February 2019 - #4345666

Another issue is will LaFemme convince vendors to actually pony up for a copy of Poser 11? Will they start to follow modern Poser standards? They have had a decade to get with the program, but based on what I have seen over the past decade, they are are unwilling to let go of the Poser 4 way of doing things.

I sincerly hope so. A lot of stuff sold for DAZ and Iray would work fine with Superfly if you apply the same PBR textures to the model in Poser. The Poser has subdivision as well. Genesis may not work, but places and props should.

Users and vendors should use the actual feature set. Scenes in Poser can look so much better if people start using actual tech.

La Femme is very much a leap in the right direction. All the other figures delivered with Poser had way more problems. We will see how much support the new figure gets, but at the moment, it looks like La Femme had a better start then all of the other "extra" figures.

I make 'pinupwear' because that's the type of art I make, and it's what sells. Now and then, just so my portfolio isn't solely full of 'fit caucasian pinup girls' I try something a little different, and every single time the sales are disappointing. The biggest slap in the face (and I'm not referring to anyone in this thread, just making an observation) is that often the people who most vocally demand that specific item don't even buy it once it's made. I do more than my share of charity work (IRL and 3D) and I actually have bills to pay. If I'm going to spend a month making something I'd rather it be something that I know hundreds of people are going to buy for sure than something that 'maybe' 50 people will buy, but most likely even those asking for it won't.

Poser content is incredibly time-consuming and finicky to make, and it's why there aren't that many vendors still sticking around making high quality content. It's why professionals from the industry come here, try their hand at a Poser item, realize how much work and fiddling and 'Poserizing' it's going to take to make it into an actual marketable item, and then leave. I can make and texture any clothing item in a day... it's going to take me at least a week(s) to get it functioning remotely the way I want it to in Poser, and then a week to package it, write documentation, put it through testing, render promos, etc.

That said, it's not a bad idea market for up and coming vendors to try. If I was a baker and moved into a town where there were already ten established bakeries and donut shops, rather than open an eleventh maybe I'd open a waffle house instead and be the only one in town. If you are looking to make a name for yourself then it's a viable strategy to cater to a smaller, specialized market than to drop another product into the sea of existing mainstream products.

I would (and often do) happily help people... the problem is that the Poser community is notorious for not helping themselves. Everything has to be spoonfed. I've lost count of all the times that someone has posted in the forums that they'd really like something, and I've taken a day of my own time to make it for them for free... and then they're like 'but aren't you going to conform it? I don't know how to use the cloth room' or 'thanks but it doesn't fit the breast morphs from this add-on'. I modeled a complex set to help someone a while back and they wouldn't even take the time to learn how to apply an emissive shader to it, they just said 'it doesn't work'.

When I started out I was a total Poser noob. I started making transparency maps for existing clothing items to make 'shredded' textures, then started improving skin textures, then making my own.. morphing figures.. modeling.. etc. It started out tweaking content for my own use, then creating content for my own use, and when people started asking for that content I gave it away, and when I thought it was good enough I eventually started selling it. There's totally free software (Blender, Krita, etc) and built-in tools available nowadays that blow away what was available back then.

Just the Morphing Tool in Poser has the ability to solve about 90% of Poser problems. Reshape figures/clothes, fit clothing, fix joints, flex muscles, reverse deformation, tweak morphs, make complex expressions, etc. I've been using ZBrush since it was released, but I'm hitting the GoZ button pretty rarely these days because I find the morph brush can fix things faster, and seamlessly right inside poser (and mirror in 1 click). I used to refer to it as a 'ghetto Zbrush in Poser', but it's not so ghetto anymore. If I asked for a show of hands of how many people used the morph brush in just this thread alone I suspect it would be a small minority.

As a community, people need to collectively push SM to overhaul the cloth room. The current cloth engine is 15 years old. It's 2019, dynamic cloth should work (nearly) real-time and seamlessly and intuitively in Poser. It would solve most Poser problems right away. There would be no 'Steampunk Dress for Sheila v3.2 (fits for 3 FBMs included)'. There would just be a 'Steampunk Dress'. Period. You could fit it to any figure past present and future, including any morphs, and it would drape like proper clothing should drape. You would see a much wider variety of clothing and people would take more risks regarding content.

In the meantime, the tools and shared knowledge are already out there for people to take their Poser art to the next level. There are helpful, knowledgeable people in this community that are always willing to lend a hand or at least point you in the right direction. It's just that very few people are willing to make the effort.

jartz posted at 5:05AM Sat, 09 February 2019 - #4345658

I'm liking it. I did a rough test of her with a mix of my custom morphs and BH's HD morphs. Textures (except eyes) of face and Kimono made by me. BH and the vendors who made her really did a good job here.

That is badass, and pretty much illustrates every single point I tried to make in my earlier post.

-we need more dev time on dynamic cloth and cloth room improvements, because not only does it open up one clothing item to limitless figures/morphs/poses, but it also just looks much better and more natural.

-people should try tweaking and creating content for themselves, because it's incredibly satisfying and the results are unique and stylish.

-I need to start experimenting with color/pattern more, it really makes that kimono pop. It's awesome when someone uses something you've made/had a hand in making in a way that inspires you.

ssgbryan posted at 5:30AM Sat, 09 February 2019 - #4345666

Last time we got kids was in Poser (7), Ben 2 and Kate 2 - they weren't supported in any meaningful way.

None of the "stock" Poser characters have gotten much support. Well, since Posette, anyway. ;-)

Young white female supermodels that are 1.8 meters tall make up more than 95% (I have actually counted) of the Poser/DS Market, but less than 3% of world population. That is why SM sold the Miki series - they were a normal sized Asian woman. There is no ability to use just 1 figure in Poser due to the lack of diversity in ethnicity and age. It is the primary reason I never standardized on 1 figure. Well, that and the fact that most vendors characters look like they are very closely related (buy 3 and you have them all) That is by no means a Poser only thing - the same can be said of golum vendors.

I really liked the original Miki. Her face was quite expressive, and I think a big reason was that she was modeled as Asian from the beginning. V3/M3 was pretty bad with ethnic morphs. A lot of the expression morphs would "break" the ethnic morphs (teeth showing though the face, stuff like that). I liked the idea of the G2 figures - different figures for different ethnicities.

But I think that's less necessary now. Not that I'm against multiple base figures, but looking at what people have already done with LF, it looks like she can be something other than Caucasian.

Everything to create ethnic morphs is already in the base figure. I even made a specific epicanthic fold morph (EyesAsian) so that Asian eyes would be easy. This is just 5 minutes of dialing some of the included dials, it can be refined much further and combined with the body handles, morph brush, etc.

(not a render, just a workspace screen capture)

This is why I don't understand the 'another Caucasian character' grumbling a few people posted. There are morphs to make other ethnicities and you can get a lot of skin tone variation by just tweaking the existing shaders and/or modifying the existing base texture in Photoshop and it's totally redistributable: so you could put the resulting character in freestuff or even sell it in the marketplace. In fact I'm totally baffled why nobody has done this already O_o

Miki was ok, my problem with her was SM blowing their entire figure dev budget on a baked 4' tall Asian character that you couldn't morph other ethnicities out of for a Poser market that is desperately starved for a pair of quality, flexible base figures.

Sometimes I wonder if it's something wrong with being white? Where I live, 95% of the population has pale skin - paler than the default LF skin. Nothing wrong with wanting to render what you see every day.. and some of us like to render pretty, young women! And if that's not your cup of tea, it's so easy to morph things up!

It's not wrong of course. I render many white girls, too, but I also like to render other skin tones and features once in a while. I haven't tried, but I never thought it would be a problem to morph african or asian or... features with La Femme. But just recolouring pale skins to darker tones is not as easy as it seems or will often look not just right. Thence a darker skin (from real dark skin's photos) sometime would be welcome. Please mind I'm not complaining at all that it isn't already available. I know that lighter skin tones is what comes first and after all, it's only been a week.

Agreed, dark skins just don't look 'right' if you just darken up a light skin. One thing many people probably don't realize tho, is that resources for dark skins are very scarce, at least compared to light skin, so that alone accounts for some of the disparity.

Blackhearted posted at 9:35AM Sat, 09 February 2019 - #4345678

As a community, people need to collectively push SM to overhaul the cloth room. The current cloth engine is 15 years old. It's 2019, dynamic cloth should work (nearly) real-time and seamlessly and intuitively in Poser. It would solve most Poser problems right away. There would be no 'Steampunk Dress for Sheila v3.2 (fits for 3 FBMs included)'. There would just be a 'Steampunk Dress'. Period. You could fit it to any figure past present and future, including any morphs, and it would drape like proper clothing should drape. You would see a much wider variety of clothing and people would take more risks regarding content.

This. This alone should be the primary focus of poser 12. Also hair room.

Also: At the risk of being one of those people who pesters you for specialized stuff... GND Shae was mindblowingly awesome... Any chance of a similar character for Lafemme in the future?

Blackhearted posted at 7:48AM Sat, 09 February 2019 - #4345683

Everything to create ethnic morphs is already in the base figure. I even made a specific epicanthic fold morph (EyesAsian) so that Asian eyes would be easy. This is just 5 minutes of dialing some of the included dials, it can be refined much further and combined with the body handles, morph brush, etc.

(not a render, just a workspace screen capture)

This is why I don't understand the 'another Caucasian character' grumbling a few people posted. There are morphs to make other ethnicities and you can get a lot of skin tone variation by just tweaking the existing shaders and/or modifying the existing base texture in Photoshop and it's totally redistributable: so you could put the resulting character in freestuff or even sell it in the marketplace. In fact I'm totally baffled why nobody has done this already O_o

Miki was ok, my problem with her was SM blowing their entire figure dev budget on a baked 4' tall Asian character that you couldn't morph other ethnicities out of for a Poser market that is desperately starved for a pair of quality, flexible base figures.

Miki is 5' 2" tall by the Poser scale. The average Asian woman stands 5' 2". The SM G2 series were designed as NORMAL sized people, to be used in typical every day situations. They were not designed to be used for Poser Porn. That is why we still see them in American Airlines brochures, at the local automated check out counter, etc.

If I load all of my morph sets for a G2 figure, they are as morph heavy as any fully loaded V4. What they didn't have was the extensive cottage industry of products to fix defects in the base figure than the Daz figures had.

BTW, there is a LOT more to an Asian character than the eye fold (and yours doesn't look very much like any Asian I have dated, seen, talked to, or worked with over the past half century - try getting actual black eyes, for starters). I would suggest that you look at actual Asians. The Japanese don't look like Chinese and they don't look like Koreans, who don't look like Singaporeans, who don't look like Filipinos, and I can go on and on. What vendors deliver is the idealized (from a Caucasian perspective) of what a generic Asian woman should look like. Which is why we get all of the tall, creepy, blue-eyed Asians. Or the Africans that look like Caucasians with a bad tan, rather than realistic black textures, and more creepy blue eyes. There is a reason my black goto figures are all from 1 vendor (reciecup). She can acually dial spin a realistic black character with a realistically black skin texture. I think the fact she is black helps a lot.

BTW, body proportions will also be different based on age and diet. Try dialing in a 5' 0" 90lb Filipino, or a Korean that was born before 1980 sometime - good luck. Try dialing Dusk out of his Fabio base mesh - not happening. Or try dialing in someone that is approaching obesity (i.e. your typical American). Everything goes to crap. I don't keep Rikishi and Apollo Maximus (or any other legacy figure) around out of nostalgia - If I need to get outside of a Logan's Run mindset, I need more options than are what has come in the Post V4 era.

I loved the SM G2 figures. I have hundreds of characters for them - but then I got out of the pin-up cul-de-sac after my 1st 6 months of owning Poser. By the time Poser 6 rolled out, I was ready to move on. There were 2 base line Caucasians (Jessi & Sydney) and toward the end of the G2 era we got Olivia. Bodies were the same, the heads were different. Jessi & Sydney morphs also work on Miki. Try dialing down any of these 6 foot base line figures to reach 5'2". The only one you can remotely do it with is V4 with the SP4 proportion morphs. Can't dial down the golum btw either - a full -100% gets you down to 5'6" - still too tall.

As a final observation - If I have to do all of the dial spins, make the skin textures, spend 3 or 4 hours adjusting body proportions - why do I need Poser vendors?

[bantha]

1. "the bending on La Femme looks far better to me." -- Well, radical gymnast posing, done by a newbie (me) at it, is not as accomplished, granted. At this time I won't ague the point with regard to normal character posing, a comparison which, however, is evident in what I posted.

2. "using Sasha makes the use of conforming clothes complicated again. To use a re-rigged figure means that you have to re-rig the clothes too." -- about 75% of conforming I've tried conforms to V4/Sasha, with the correct transfer of joint zones with a click, but yes, conforming clothes en-mass is problematic. La Femme would face the same problem -- however, the LF team has done a great job pre-rallying vendors to supply LF-ready conforming clothes. You have evident momentum.

3. "Sasha-16 is a well working re-rig of V4 and fixes most of the bending problems V4 has." Yes, but it is more than simply a "fix," there are innovative features as well.

4. "La Femme's base mesh is very light weight, but since it works that well with SubD, it's relatively easy to add even the finest detail to the mesh, as long as your machine can handle the polygons. V4 has [too many polys]" -- True, if that slows you down, a lighter-weight base is better.

5. "If you prefer V4, by all means, stick to it." Turns out the poly load and issues with conforming clothes do not inhibit my project/pipeline, so I will!

Thanks for being civil about this.

::::: Opera :::::

I like her. She's very morphable; you can easily make her look unlike her default face. I love the HD morphs. It's fun playing with the expression chips. I can see her becoming one of my, if not THE, favorite female figure. (Now all that's needed is a male counterpart.)

That's the result of a 5 minute dial spin. You can get black eyes by simply spending another minute tweaking the shader - I don't even have time to hit render much less go into this more.

I am not going to morph a 45 year old obese 5' tall Filipino just to prove a point. The reason you do not see more specialized characters in the store is because noone buys them. In my experience even the people who vocally ask for something in the forums don't show up on the buyers list once it's made. Maybe Rendo could set up some sortof 'crowdfunding' thing to get certain non-mainstream products made, where people pre-purchased an item and that was transferred to a vendor on completion: that could motivate some vendors to make things, but again it would be difficult to get the Poser community to even agree on what it wanted.

Scaling works perfectly on LaFemme. You can make a gnome, a dwarf, or a 5'0 tall person easily. But again it will take some dial spins, the dev team cannot possibly create every single scenario for everyone.

The funny thing is we discussed this during development, months ago. We KNEW we'd give people a figure for free and the first thing they'd do is complain that there isn't an Asian, Black, Latino or Albino version. So we made all the base textures and morphs fully redistributable so people could tweak what they like, yet here we are.

ssgbryan posted at 10:54AM Sat, 09 February 2019 - #4345692

As a final observation - If I have to do all of the dial spins, make the skin textures, spend 3 or 4 hours adjusting body proportions - why do I need Poser vendors?

Because if your interests lie outside of the mainstream then it's in your best interest to learn how to tweak content.

Well. Inspite of my own words of recolouring textures I tried this just now and recoloured the base skin into something hopefully African and Foxy into what's intended to be native american. Of course Poser is still busy with my attempt of clothing LaFemme in V4 conforming things (which worked suprisingly well and I did not even use the fitting room which couldn't cope with Aery Souls things, or maybe I did something wrong). But I will show my results when I finally came around to morph and render my recoloured LaFemmes. At the moment I'm having so much fun trying things out I can hardly wait till one image is finished to start the next lol

The gnome on V4's shoulders looks cute, btw. I think some of the next things I must try is morphing a hobbit^^

ssgbryan posted at 1:33PM Sat, 09 February 2019 - #4345692

Miki is 5' 2" tall by the Poser scale. The average Asian woman stands 5' 2". The SM G2 series were designed as NORMAL sized people, to be used in typical every day situations. They were not designed to be used for Poser Porn. That is why we still see them in American Airlines brochures, at the local automated check out counter, etc.

An overall scaling of the body scale will get you any height you need. After I applied a couple of FBMs and added my Asian Flower morph freebie head morph, I scaled her down to 82 percent and got exactly 5 foot two. And no eyes of blue! (She has a brown eyes preset in the Material folder. I used it. Problem solved. LOL)

BTW, there is a LOT more to an Asian character than the eye fold (and yours doesn't look very much like any Asian I have dated, seen, talked to, or worked with over the past half century - try getting actual black eyes, for starters). I would suggest that you look at actual Asians. The Japanese don't look like Chinese and they don't look like Koreans, who don't look like Singaporeans, who don't look like Filipinos, and I can go on and on. What vendors deliver is the idealized (from a Caucasian perspective) of what a generic Asian woman should look like.

I just posted a 360 degree turntable image of the Asian Flower head morph in the galleries but I'm not seeing it yet. I'll post a link when it becomes available. I did a lot more than the eye fold, I used morphs to shape her eyes, nose, cheeks, and lower face protrusion. The only thing I touched up in ZBrush afterward was softening her cheek shape a little. All the other face dials are built in to La Femme.

In the meantime here is a still render using the morph:

Cute and Sassy

As a final observation - If I have to do all of the dial spins, make the skin textures, spend 3 or 4 hours adjusting body proportions - why do I need Poser vendors?

There are many different types of Poser users. Some like to tinker and customize, some don't. Any poser figure created by anyone has to find a nice balance to satisfy as many people as possible.