If I understand correctly, you are talking about switching UVs on the fly. I see how that could be more practical than my idea, but I'm particularly interested in converting the actual texture maps.

If you need a potential use case, other than using old textures on new figures: I've been reading through this thread (temporarily switching from Kafka's Collected Works to Antonia's Collected Works for my lunchtime and bedtime reading) and was reminded of bagginsbill's request to make a "height map" for the legs and feet to be used in stocking textures. I created one by creating a throwaway UV map in which the y-position in world coordinates was used as the V and making Poser render on a square using the regular UV map for the positions and let the new UV map drive the color. Not sure if that makes sense, it is certainly a bit convoluted. The point is: the technique could also be used with one-off UV maps that drive special effects, which one wouldn't want to put on the figure at render time.

In the meantime, Antonia seems rather amused at how much time I spend on minute anatomical details.

She is coming on well!

As for using Poser to do texture transformations without any code you may be interested in the Face Texture Converter. I made it for face textures but I believe it could be used for full body also provided the cutting topology of the target is not too different from the topology of the source. My target was PE, and the skin cutting topology of that figure is quite different from the usual sources. I do recall there were two skin layouts for Antonia?

I have been trying to use MD for texture transformation; cutting panels from the source template and pinning and sewing them on 'boards' in the target skin layout. It should work, in principle, but my endeavours were not a huge success because I did not have the patience required to get a good fit. Also wrinkling was difficult to avoid.

Ah yes, that seems pretty similar to what I had in mind, with the extra twist that it would transform from one figure to another. So I think my version would be somewhat easier to get working. I've only skimmed your description, so obviously I would have missed all the interesting details. But I'll definitely get back to it if I end up attempting something like that myself.

Yes, Antonia comes with my original layout plus the one MikeJ made with more experience and better tools, and of course the V3 mapping you've mentioned.

Are you going to make movement and shaping morphs for the Hooha? I've made some in the past, just recently actually lol. I won't post any images. It's part of a project that I've been nitpicking at for the past few months. I'm rather proud of it actually, though it's on a toon figure. Not that I'm into Renderotica type stuff but I like the weird details of "there for completionists" sake. I've been reading forum posts over at 'rotica and there's a consensus that La Femme might be more "palatable" lol if she had a more elaborate gens. It's really no secret that Poser and DS figures often find themselves in such situations. Not sure about your stance on this but it's a subculture you might make a nod to with Antonia. As an option ;)... apparently there's quite a booming trade for Genesis naughty bits.

Speaking of which, there was an artist named Poseidentech that used to make really elaborate "anatomically correct" character and detail morphs for V4... I have most of his character sets, which included also extensive/obsessive boob morph options. Anyway, he used to have his own site, not sure if it's still up, and he had animations of his genital movement morphs on V4. Pretty weird and hilarious, like phonemes but down yonder.

Not to mention Lali's bits (which I have) and the full version of Project E (which I still want to buy), and Sasha of course... which, considering recent developments, is MIA.

There is one thing though. Is your gen morph HD, standard, or geometry switching? There reason I ask is I'm seeing a weird artifact in your render that looks a bit like an unwelded vert. I'll have to take a look at the topology of Antonia to see the mesh density in that portion of the hip. Was just curious.

Blew the dust off my Antonia stuff today.

Found I stilll had a dev version, proper working, rigged with the arms in 'A' pose: AntoniaA. Added a pose dial to let her pushing her back into default Antonia pose with the arms in despair. I made it primarily as an avatar for use in Marelous Designer and apparently removed everything that is only ballast in a clothing model: face stuff, fingers bones, toes. Garment files I had for her were time-stamped 2013 somewhere. took one that was built on actual garment patterns ('il modelismo')
Great thing we now have alembic and FBX import and export. Made a simple dress model, cheated a bit skipping the sleeves for today, put it through the Fitting Room leaving the skirt as one object, no thigh bones. I mainly wanted to see if the fitting room was happy with the bone topology of hip being child of waist rather than the other way round. Fitting room was happy.

Converted some V4 hair with the Prefitter, let her strike a common pose:

Maybe it's a seam.

Sorry FVerbaas... crosspost.

primorge posted at 7:20PM Sun, 01 August 2021 - #4424347

Are you going to make movement and shaping morphs for the Hooha?

Movements, most certainly not, at least not any time soon. Shaping, I don't know. It bothered me that her default shape looked like an open wound with the default texture, and the built-in "labia detail" morph wasn't much better. Basically, when I built Antonia I wanted just enough detail "down there" - just as anywhere else - to make here look lifelike in regular renders, not necessarily extreme closeups and such. A simple solution for nudes is to close up the outer labia and give her in "innie". Nothing wrong about those, they can be quite pretty. The latest image in my gallery is an example where I did that. But while I was trying out lo-res Antonia with Poser's "new" subd capabilities (new in the sense that Poser didn't have those when I originally made Antonia), I decided to try what I could do about a plausible "outie" with however few polygons the lo-res mesh has there.

primorge posted at 7:42PM Sun, 01 August 2021 - #4423068

"Nice work, primorge! The second one is half-way to an Antonia alien character."

Looks out of this world. ?

primorge posted at 7:53PM Sun, 01 August 2021 - #4424352

There is one thing though. Is your gen morph HD, standard, or geometry switching? There reason I ask is I'm seeing a weird artifact in your render that looks a bit like an unwelded vert. I'll have to take a look at the topology of Antonia to see the mesh density in that portion of the hip. Was just curious.

I think that's definitely a texture seam there, but not because of geometry switching or such. I first tried to shape the labia on the default Antonia at subd level 1, which Poser did not take well to. Then later I decided to try out lo-res Antonia which, as a reminder, is the original mesh, the "regular" Antonia just being subd level 1 of it made for a pre-subd Poser world. In theory, she should work exactly the same if I increase the subd level in Poser by 1, as long as I don't try any of the morphs made for the regular figure.

For the most part she does, but this little texture artifact pops up. So I'm presuming whatever we did in order to map the lo-res UV-mapping to the regular figure does not match exactly what Poser does at the seams, which I presume were worked out for this texture on the regular figure.

Does that make any kind of sense?

@FVerbaas: that's a nice dress. I need to get back to my MD practice. Also probably find a good source of sewing patterns. :-)

Nod posted at 9:24PM Sun, 01 August 2021 - #4424359

primorge posted at 7:42PM Sun, 01 August 2021 - #4423068

"Nice work, primorge! The second one is half-way to an Antonia alien character."

Looks out of this world. ?

Thanks nod. I actually have a better version half complete. I fixed the eye scaling so it's not so fish eyed, that is the scaling doesn't cause the eyeballs to move as much outward. I think it looks better. I'm in the midst of resuming my La Femme stuff pretty obsessively but I plan on returning to Antonia in due course and finishing that, including some simple painted textures suitable for a Grey. I'm thinking a cute sexy grey for Antonia. Should be fun and easy, Antonia is a pleasure to work with. Thanks for the compliment :)

Hi odf. I think you should at least make a lip length difference morph. And you're right innies are rather pretty too, in a sculptural forms way, if that makes sense. I just purchased Anime Girl for La Femme and it includes a rather pretty innie morph. In any case what you've done looks good and is sufficient for pin up nude renders for sure. In my own personal projects I tend to go down these strange detail rabbit holes that I snap out of a few weeks later and say to myself "why did I do all that?" But usually I'm glad I did. Alot of times the consequences can be... lurid or surreal, but that's part of my schtick. I'm good at that kind of thing. I do take a looong time to finish stuff though, but I've always been that way with art, it's why I never really had the patience for gallery contracts or commercial art. Or being told what to make lol. It takes as long as it takes, how I want to make it, and that's the fun parts... it's the whole point. Process.

Anyway, I'll stop blitzing you with chatter for a bit, I do enjoy discussing this stuff though so thanks for indulging me.

Oh, yes. One more thing... I've encountered texture problems with subdivision before, seems like mostly with textures that don't have a wide bleed margin at the uv shell borders. Also texture filtering can play a role in that, crisp or none is usually how I go. It could be any number of things really. Sometimes it's just in preview. I've also encountered faceting of gradients in textures when subdivision is applied, in eye shadow gradients for example. It's subtle. Something to look out for if painting makeups.

@primorge: I'd been suspecting that there's not enough of a bleed margin there in the texture, but I'll check the filtering as well.

I do have to say that I find all the shapes the labia, especially the inner ones, can make quite fascinating. So I wouldn't put it past myself to one day gather up a bunch of references and try to replicate them via subdivision sculpting. :-)

It would have to be subdivision sculpting because I just didn't put that many polygons there. And it would also require me to fully embrace asymmetry.

We're spoiled for references nowadays :-D... might I suggest MetArt, very high resolution lol.

That would be an entirely off-topic discussion, so let's just say that I've got my sources.

Something else occured to me. Every time I've encountered texture problems with subdivision it was while doing so on a low poly figure. Stands to reason that the mesh shrinks a bit when subdivided and less so as the resolution increases. As you know, if you subdivide a cube it becomes a rough sphere (unless edges are set to hard), additional steps aren't as drastic of a change. Just figured I'd mention that, subdivision will be more forgiving to a higher base resolution seems like. Less of a shock. You've probably noticed the effect that subdivision in wings has on mesh UVs that were done on a low resolution mesh, once you subdivide the existing UV edges become more rigid and angular, it sometimes results in a bit of texture stretching or distortion. I know very little about the inner workings of Poser subdivision and how it handles UVs under such conditions but the mesh does contract or shrink. Might be the problem.

True! I've been reading up on my discussion with MikeJ on how to get UVs that support both the lo-res and the regular mesh. Not sure what the final conclusion was yet, but it seems the gist of it was to optimize for the regular mesh while ensuring the seams are compatible with lo-res.

The thing is, that render uses the lo-res mesh with three levels of subdivision, so in a perfect world any distortion present in the lo-res should have been fixed by that. That's why I'm saying that Poser must be subdividing UVs differently than we "predicted".

Perhaps having edges set to hard while subdividing minimizes this distortion in the UVs, I haven't tested that but it's easy enough to test outside of Poser. Generally if I UV something at low poly and subdivide, running a relax can clear up any distortions. Usually that's not necessary though. Sometimes a relax can cause additional problems. I would think that a sophisticated subdivision algorithm such as OpenSubdiv (what Poser uses) has systems in place to counteract UV distortions so it's puzzling.

It probably does, and that might well be the problem. You have to remember that the UVs were made 12 years ago with whatever was state of the art back then.

odf posted at 12:51AM Mon, 02 August 2021 - #4424372

The thing is, that render uses the lo-res mesh with three levels of subdivision, so in a perfect world any distortion present in the lo-res should have been fixed by that. That's why I'm saying that Poser must be subdividing UVs differently than we "predicted".

It's the initial subdivision that's the shock to the low poly UVs. The distortion is baked in I imagine at the first subdivision, further steps wouldn't correct it. I don't think it's about steps or amount but the initial shock. Just guessing.

I think the safest solution is a medium res figure with enough UV "skeleton" to handle it. I've never seen any problems on denser meshes.

If you take a look at La Femme for instance, that figure was designed with Poser Subdivision in mind. It's a low medium mesh. In my eyes more medium. I haven't looked extensively at Blackhearted's HD morphs but from an initial look at his new HD morphs for the Anime girl set I'm seeing morphs intended for 1 or maybe 2 levels of subdivision. I'll have to look closer but I don't think anyone has truly done any high frequency stuff with figures and subdivision in Poser. It's just not practical. Because of this having a low poly figure with the expectation to "fix and add/detail" with subdivision seems shortsighted. Strictly from a user friendliness standpoint. You lock out content creators from morphing options at the base resolution and the subdivision burden is too great on a Poser scene to truly take advantage of the functionality. Probably best to build at medium resolution for the most flexible user experience, at this point hardly anyone is going to be adding more than 2 levels of subdivision in a typical Poser scene with dense hair models and props and scenery. It's a bog.

Would you mind traveling back in time to the year 2005 and giving my past self that tip? While you're at it, maybe also tell DAZ not to model V3 in low-res and subdividing it once for Poser?

More seriously: as I said earlier, I'm pretty sure we optimized the UVs for the regular, mid-res version, well aware that they wouldn't work perfectly on the lo-res. We didn't do it the other way round because of course the mid-res was to be the standard one to use. My plan back then was to use the lo-res figure, undivided, as a background figure. I still can't see what's wrong with that.

I like to model in low resolution, so I find having the lo-res figure around very practical. I used to do that for all my morphs and then transferred them to the regular figure. If I revive my old scripts, I can still do that. Doesn't mean I'm necessarily proposing pushing lo-res figures to end users.

The nice thing about not having any ambitious ideas about making the next big Poser figure is that I can just play around and have fun and not worry what's a good idea for the larger Poserverse.

Nah. You misunderstand me. My little diatribe wasn't aimed at Antonia, I've only used the medium res version and I don't consider the low resolution version really "The" Antonia. And besides how could you have known? Or anyone for that matter. Actually I was kind of more complaining about La Femme... probably because that's the figure I've really been working with since moving from Poser 8 to 11. I wish La Femme had been modeled with a bit more musculature edgeflow, and just a bit higher poly count. Her Body is hard to morph, for me at least, at base resolution... and though she doesn't have the musculature baked in she does have a very distinct body shape that's hard to get away from. There are things I like about the mesh though and there were some clever choices in the design. La Femme also has some interesting dials and tech built in, probably mostly Nerd's work. I'm not a fan of sculpting with the morph brush and subscribing to Zbrush doesn't fit sensibly into my budget, it would be paying 40 dollars a month for one feature... GoZ. All of my modeling, painting, and sculpting needs are comfortably covered inexpensively with my current toolset. At half that price. Mudbox and photoshop costs me 20 a month, and Blender is free. I don't think that people who use Zbrush for mostly Poser content work use most of the features that Zbrush has packed into it really. I know I wouldn't.

In a perfect world we could use any sculpting tool with Poser subdivision.

And merely as a placating gesture, I like Antonia's modeling/shapes more than La Femme's. Hope this doesn't hurt anyone's feelings, I'm trying not to bash creator's choices of why they did things or their preferences. It's just the personal perspective of one user. People can be pretty harsh and inconsiderate with their commentaries about such things, as we've seen in the past quite a bit. And still do.

Ah, okay! I didn't realize at all that you were complaining about La Femme. Honestly, I haven't tried to do anything with her, just noticed that her default shape is, let's say, surprising.

I do confess that I was toying with the idea that maybe it was time to make my low-res figure "the" Antonia. But that was just me being excited at Poser now having subd. And at any rate, I can be as shortsighted as I like when it's just about myself. :-) But I get you now. When it comes to building a figure to drive content and draw users to a particular software, there's a lot to take into consideration, and well, Poser under its various owners doesn't have the best track record in that respect.

If you take a figure like LaFemme, in the common full (head to toe) view at usual gallery image resolution you will be surprised how far you can reduce the polygon density before you see the difference even in stills. In animation even more so.

Regarding that little texture artefact, I believe this is the culprit:

Ah. Looks like it. Easy 5 second fix with the clone stamp. I started painting that simple skin texture for Antonia, I'll take a look at that part of the UVs in a bit after I've had my coffee, fortunately I have off today so I can zone out on Poser stuff.

Yep, no biggie! I might go and fix it in case I do more renders with the low-poly mesh before I make a new texture.

I should probably also reacquaint myself with some of the other textures I have that work on Antonia, if only for inspiration. There were at least two made for the old UV mapping, plus of course all the V3 textures.

Creating lip textures on Antonia is a lot trickier than I'm used to. The lip UVs are separated from the face. Makes blending a little more difficult, even with painting tools. I generally like to paint and then refine in photoshop but the layers of the lips don't rest directly above the face. Just not used to that kind of set up. So what I've done is taken a seamless skin tile and used it as a pattern in photoshop and flood filled the skin texture in. Then I created some occlusion maps to create some subtle cavity over the skin texture via a multiply. Then I go into Mudbox and 3d paint in variety of detail and fix any seam issues. I'm painting the initial textures standard flesh color so I'll have all those traditional layers to colorize and detail for creature skins, specifically alien skins or whatever. I just started so I haven't even gotten to the detailing yet. Still basically a flood. Despite the difficulty with the lips I think the harshness of the texture transition is mostly due to the topology of the lips rather than the blending, which looks pretty good on the flat files. I think a bit of a smoothing morph to loosen up the tight edge loops around the lips will improve that hard edge, particularly that hard transition around the bottom lip.

The plan is to use a hybrid procedural/image based bump solution. Image based for the lips, brows, and some larger skin details blended with a turbulence for the overall skin... either with a math add or a blender. I've gotten pretty good results using this method for painted textures in the past. For the eyes and brows I already have a bunch of brushes and maps that I've created in the past so those parts will be easy.

I also added a couple of more eye morphs (rotate) and an improved enlarge eyes morph.

Some very initial preview shots...

Nice work, primorge! Yeah, the separate lip island had been mentioned as problematic by a number of people, but it seems that the folks who were making textures at the time decided they could live with it. Supposedly the advantage was that one could put more detail into the lip textures that way.

I stayed out of those discussions, at least as far as I've read so far. If I remember corectly, my original UVs (in AntoniaA) don't have the separate lip island, but they've got a number of other unusual seams.

I also remember that back in the day bagginsbill was quite interested in procedural skin textures with some painted maps to drive the effects. I don't quite remember what became of those ideas.

No. There's plenty of room for detail for sure. Also shouldn't have any problem creating a spec mask for the lip and head material transition. It just needs a soften morph. Very easy. There's nothing wrong with the set up, just not used to it. If I had my druthers and it were my figure I would have left the lips as part of the head uv and not even had a seperate lip material. Problem with leaving the lips as part of the head is it's a right PITA to unwrap. It's excruciating... so I can totally understand why this method was chosen.

odf posted at 7:41PM Tue, 03 August 2021 - #4424468

I also remember that back in the day bagginsbill was quite interested in procedural skin textures with some painted maps to drive the effects. I don't quite remember what became of those ideas.

Those ideas live on lol.

I wonder if the hard edge on the lip might be an artifact of making Antonia in low-res and subdividing her. I needed to ensure that outline does not shift when I go to higher resolution, but in doing so also may have prevented it from getting enough smoothing. Or it's just a remnant from Antonia's early and more stylized days. :-)

It's just a couple of edge loops being very close together. I wouldn't even sweat it. I did notice that the included templates for Antonia were shot from the low res version. Probably I could have found medium res versions (snow sultan perhaps, or 3dream), but I just used mudbox. It generates a transparent template layer overtop paint layers when you bridge channels to photoshop. There's a bit of juggling though with mudbox, it's UDIM by default. Older figures are overlapping UVs...

With overlapping UVs I usually just chop figures up into sections that contain transitions between uv islands and consolidate into 1 material. Simple enough matter to combine the various layers and blend in photoshop.

Sometimes that's not even necessary, it can get confusing with various disjointed texture layers from stacked. I really like UDIM though.

There's probably a way to convert to UDIM and back, which would be ideal really. I think UVMapper pro can do this. It's no longer for sale though. It reminds me to look into a solution for that. Mudbox has a paint over overlapping feature but it can be a little wonky, a bit of dissection is just easier for me.

Sorry about the blitz of text but I did have one question... why does the Antonia 1.2 WM have it's own obj file? There's no difference right? Is just for convenience of standalone distribution?

Back when I made the original UV mapping for Antonia, I experimented a bit and found that Poser was quite happy with UDIM. Not all tools were, though, if I remember correctly, which is a real shame.