primorge posted at 8:14PM Tue, 03 August 2021 - #4424476

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?

I'd assume so. I'm not at that part of the thread yet. :-) Also, I wasn't particular involved in the whole WM re-rig and Antonia Standard Edition business.

Speaking of templates, remind me that I should compare templates for the lo-res and full-res UV maps at some point. :-) I'd be interested to see how much difference there is in the boundary shapes. From memory, it couldn't have been more than a pixel or two at practical texture sizes, but as we've seen with the little white dot on lo-res Toni, that can be enough. :-)

Everything is becoming UDIM compatible now. Stacked is on it's way out. La Femme and Dawn 2 are UDIM, additionally blender and substance just incorporated UDIM. Deecey told me that Poser has been UDIM compatible for a long time.

For 4096 I use a bleed margin of at least 8 pixels. Might be overkill but better too much than too little. For all I know 8 might be too little lol. Seems to work though. I think actually the bleed margin settings in mudbox are multiplication, have to check that. In any case my margins are pretty big. Hang on I'll show you a margin on my above head texture WIP with a template overlay. Let me go to my computer.

Good to know! Note to self: convert Antonia's UVs to UDIM before texturing her.

See my edit above

Lol, I really need to use the quote feature more. Things get confusing when we cross-post.

So it turns out my bleed margin settings are some ridiculous amount. Like... 48? Lol. But they're 4096 maps so it doesn't look like much. Haven't encountered any margin shortness seams, most of my fixing is matching floods/tiling differences between islands with cloning.

I do a lot of tidying up of my maps borders via cropping and selection sets so everything looks nice so the above isn't a raw out of mudbox paint layer, and it's on it's own transparent layer. But that's a neat reasonable margin. I hate sloppy maps.

Little update to the painted textures. Fixed the lips a little, I think they look better, and added some minor pores detail with a 1 pixel dodge and burn. A single tiny mole. The brows are going to be easy, the lash trans I think I'm going to repurpose some unrestricted V4 lash alphas, no way I can hand draw Lash trans well. I think I'm going to work on her lids next. Image is just the maps plugged into diffuse. No specular.

Isn't this moutborder to sharp?

(this is a photograph)

Just to point out, yes that is a photograph ADP. A blurry grainy one. Here's a not blurry photograph of a womans lips...

In all seriousness though, it's a problem with Antonia's lip topology. Not really a problem, just how it was modeled. The lips are modeled with a very tight edge around the lips at default. So any map is going to look like it has a hard edge. I explain this earlier in the thread, you probably didn't read that though.

Here's the edge loops around Antonia's mouth. See how tight they are?

This causes a hard edge. In Poser smoothing an edge loop close to another will cause polygons to render with a hard edge. Further apart, a softer edge..

Here's the lip map that I made, see how blurry the edge is?

Here's the same map in the image you said looked too tight, but this time with a smooth morph applied to soften the edge. Better? It's not the map. It's the model. ;)

What you're seeing with the default lips is a complaint some people have had about Antonia's lips in the past. It just requires a morph to fix. It's exacerbated by the mouth UVs being on a separate island also I think. Just requires a little extra work to fix. Hope this has explained things.

I'm seeing all these marvelous ways to improve Antonia which is exciting BTW. Are there any plans to share these new morphs?

Yes. The morphs and textures, and a sci fi character. The textures, though not photorealistic, might be useful for character creation. I'll include all files as a layered psd and the character finished textures by themselves. They'll have the same license as Antonia, so maybe useful as a resource. Additionally all the morphs as injection files. Same license.

I speak only for myself though. I imagine odf will share his morphs.

That would be so nice, thank you. Between the two of you, there is some renewed, sparked interest in the model. Some outfits can be converted from other models with Evilinnocence which I'm getting the hang of adopting the settings for her.

Cool hborre. I like crossdresser too. I was surprised at the results. Sometimes not perfect but fixable and perfectly serviceable for making art.

The stuff I wrote above was hastily written before and while at work. I'm home now and just wanted to clarify something. There's absolutely nothing wrong with the way Antonia's lips are modeled. From my understanding the figure was subdivided from a lower poly version, so what seems like an exorbitant amount of tight loops around the lips are a result of that. Of course odf could have deleted a couple of loops on the subdivided version but this probably would have been detrimental to his morph transfer process. Obviously odf modeled the figure's shapes in a way that he found aesthetically pleasing, such as the lips, it's his Poser Figure after all. He probably didn't consider the effect of those extra loops because he was seeing his model as he intended it, not through the lens of other's preferences. He's said as much earlier in the thread. If those shapes are not to an individuals liking, or you want something different, they're easy enough to modify, as I have shown. There's no one figure to fit everyone's preferences out of the box, as far as I know. Thankfully we have many figures to choose from and the freedom and free resources to mold them according to our vision.

Just discovered this for Antonia... https://www.sharecg.com/v/63485/browse/11/Poser/98-Expressions-for-Antonia-Standard

I won't bother creating any expressions, that's covered for sure.

@primorge Thanks for explaining the sharp edge on the lips. Like I said, possibly not a conscious decision on my part but rather something that fitted well with Antonia's original stylized look that never bothered me enough later to update.

You know I've been reading through this thread a bit and there are some serious heavy hitter Poser folks that have been involved with this, makes my humble efforts feel a little foolish in a way.

Also thanks for reminding me of that expression set. I've been playing with the built-in expression morphs I made, and found them a bit tricky to use myself ten years later. It seems very easy to make Antonia look rather goofy. Maybe I could claim that that's just her character. Anyway, I'm not sure if that's a limitation of my morphs or if I just need to learn to use more subtle dial settings. I've had some successes getting her to make the expression I wanted, but that toothy smile in particular that seems so popular has so far eluded me.

At any rate, will study those expressions and see what I can learn from them.

I'm also curious if you ever got the feeling during that time that the thing had gotten out of hand. Or out of control in a way. That it might have made you feel shuffled to the side. I know it's a strange question, but it's a valid one to ask an artist about a popular creation.

@hborre In general I'd like to share anything I make that looks like it could be of interest to others. But I'm mostly just exploring, so I don't really have any specific plans yet in that direction.

regarding the expression set, I haven't looked at it yet but I'm pretty confident it's good. Die Trying made some really comprehensive morph sets that were quite popular. You're fortunate.

I'm not familiar with Die Trying's work, so that's good to hear.

primorge posted at 7:37PM Thu, 05 August 2021 - #4424655

I'm also curious if you ever got the feeling during that time that the thing had gotten out of hand. Or out of control in a way. That it might have made you feel shuffled to the side. I know it's a strange question, but it's a valid one to ask an artist about a popular creation.

But getting shuffled to the side was part of my evil plan. cackles

Maybe I'll give you a more detailed answer later, but now it is time for my regularly scheduled maintenance work on this flesh husk, and after that I need to start winning my bread for the day.

Lol. Earning. I don't know about winning, at least in my case. Back to painting the inner mouth... it came out good. I like painting fleshy capillaries though.

An amusing thought just occurred to me, namely that the work on Antonia is my one experience in project management. I've never actually had that situation at work where I was heading up a team. Not that I'm claiming that that's the correct collective noun for Poser developers, mind you. :-D

primorge posted at 12:22PM Fri, 06 August 2021 - #4424594

What you're seeing with the default lips is a complaint some people have had about Antonia's lips in the past. It just requires a morph to fix. It's exacerbated by the mouth UVs being on a separate island also I think. Just requires a little extra work to fix. Hope this has explained things.

Just to have it said: I did a lot with Antonia back then. It was only a few months ago that I deleted the entire Antonia folder from my workstation.

And just to show what I meant, a screenshot (reduced to the essential) of my current work in Blender. On the left a section of the texturemap, on the right the preview:

(No, that's not Antonia :))

Lol. Well done ADP. I've seen some of your Blender stuff elsewhere. Nice lip map, especially the little wrinkles around the vermillion border. Not crazy over the iris maps but it's probably the angle. Is that photo based textures? I'd love to figure out a way to fake the Downy little hairs on a woman's skin... like this. Not a good resolution example but...

Now that I feel like crap about my janky textures lol ;)

The above is work in progress. Far from ready. The preview is Eeve. Not Cycles (it looks far better rendered with Cycles).

I'd love to figure out a way to fake the Downy little hairs on a woman's skin.

It's called "Vellus Hair". I have it for Genesis 8.1. Was in the package.

Here is a video how to do it in Blender for any figure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtSXNLWahco

Correction: Vellus Hair was part of the Victoria 8.1 package I bought as I started using DAZ Studio.

That's some great work on the lips, adp001. Sometimes I wonder were I'd be today if I had spent all that time developing Antonia to properly learn some more powerful 3d software and practice my sculpting and texturing. :-)

"Krita" is fine for doing texture work. I'm using my 15" HP Convertible as a graphicstablet with a pen. Worls also fine with Blender for some tasks.

Krita, yes. Heard of it, never tried it out.

odf posted at 9:56PM Fri, 06 August 2021 - #4424743

Sometimes I wonder were I'd be today if I had spent all that time developing Antonia to properly learn some more powerful 3d software and practice my sculpting and texturing. :-)

Actually, I do textures rather rarely. It's a thankless business. When you're done with one, you've already seen enough of the figure, or you need another one and you can start all over again.

Sculpting has also lost its glamour for me. With ZBrush, Blender and various other tools, any reasonably talented beginner can show off amazing things in no time. Youtube is full of them. Not to mention all the specialized sites, where you can find everything from the simplest flower pot to all possible and even impossible creatures. Some of it in amazing quality.

People with real talent hardly stand out. And all the special talents that were needed for sculpting years ago, or the required knowledge, are now considered more like ballast.

The chance that you - if you had focused less on Antonia - would have been lost in all the noise is pretty high. So at least you got a high score on Renderosity for the Antonia thread :)

Right now, I'd rather wrap my brain more around the depths of wxPython and why this stuff doesn't work the way I want it to :)

You are assuming that fame is what I'm after. What if it were simply skill?

odf posted at 11:42PM Fri, 06 August 2021 - #4424749

You are assuming that fame is what I'm after. What if it were simply skill?

Ahhh – no, not really. Was more thought as a joke.

:-)

odf posted at 11:53PM Fri, 06 August 2021 - #4424749

You are assuming that fame is what I'm after. What if it were simply skill?

Who needs skills? I just saw a video on Youtube called: "Blender: Become a Pro in one hour!".

(also meant as a joke; I'll get out of here now and leave the stage to Antonia again)

I think I've been away from Germany for too long. My spidey sense for dry humor is not that great anymore. :-D

My new evil plan is to get this set of basic undies done before my trial license expires and figure out how to turn them into proper Poser garments.

You are talking Marvelous Designer, right? If you want some slopers (blocks;Schnittmüster) for her drop me a site mail.

Cool, thanks so much!

Here you go:

https://www.renderosity.com/filelocker/55447/download?key=7451

Thanks, downloaded! That looks great on her.

https://www.renderosity.com/filelocker/55448/download?key=229

Avatar as used for some garments. Frame 0 is A-pose as used by MD, Frame 30 is zero pose. Kept slight leg spread as this is more natural for pose.