AmbientShade posted at 4:34 PM Wed, 22 June 2022 - #4440224

@Primorge: Yes, he's UDIM'd. I highly dislike stacked UVs. Such a pain to work with, but a necessary evil years ago.

One of his older mesh versions did have the traditonal "dentures" model for the mouth, with individually modeled teeth. The amount of additional geometry it added was insane, especially for something that's rarely seen, and they weren't even that detailed. I'm sure it would be a small task for someone to create individual teeth and parent or rig them if they really wanted to.

Interesting that your layout is presented in Blender... man there are some really terrific paid add ons for Blender, UV Packmaster and Retopoflow are very good. But drifting here.

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

I said it then and I'll say it now: lookin' good ;). I don't use Poser anymore, but I'm glad people are still creating for it. And it's nice to see someone concentrating on a male for a change. LOL.

Laurie

So, scratch that last bit from last year. Guess I was in a mood. Or something stupid.

Orion is back on.

Been working on him pretty extensively the last several weeks.

Stress test on his joints.

More to follow.

...Since you were curious about getting control props to play nice with morphs, a query you had on the 11 technical forum... I'll give you my thoughts here, seeing how the question relates to your figure dev.

Yes it can be done. I did it years ago with a breast morph pack I made for LF. Simply morph the chips into position as desired for the relative morph and apply the match centers command including the bone and prop in the calculation. In this example I morphed LF's breasts and con props. The con props are shown visible, opaque, and red with the origins for the props displayed in this animated demo image... as you can see prop's origins follow the new position relative to the morph

Hope this helps ;)

However, I've noticed that a morphed control props position doesn't seem to have much bearing on the actual deformations derived from its bone. At least with simplistic things such as breast morphs. A facial rig control system might be a bit more sensitive to such things... I haven't experimented further.

One final note about something you said in that same thread...

"Well while working with the visibility issue, I realized that each prop has a dial for all the morphs that are created in the body once it's been set up as a control prop. They don't actually do anything that I can tell but the dial for it is there. So I'm thinking it's possible to move them into position for each morph. Rather manual and tedious but I'll test if it works that way. Then maybe at some point it will be automated."

While I can't see your file(s) what you describe is familiar. It's also something most people seem completely oblivious to. Whenever you invoke the Spawn Full Body morph command a local empty morph target is created in each actor of the figure, even if not relevant to the morphs involved actors. For instance if I baked down several morphs (in this example involving the chest, abdomen, and collars) to a FBM called 'Inhale' via Spawn command I would end up with an empty dial named 'inhale' globally across the figure in all actors... of course the relevant dials in chest, abdomen, and collars (including the master in Body) will function as expected. The best part is that the empties also propagate to any parented props on the figure, a control prop for instance, including the goal and center of mass props (parms for such accesible via selection in the hierarchy).

This might be the matching named dials you're seeing in your control props that 

"each prop has a dial for all the morphs that are created in the body once it's been set up as a control prop. They don't actually do anything that I can tell but the dial for it is there."

Something to be aware of to offset a potential wild goose chase, depending.

Never mind, read the first post, I think my dream man is here finally.  So the genital set morphs down to a "bulge" so that's cool.  How does this translate when making clothing for him though?  I guess if the penis isn't rigged with too many bones when shrunk down to a nub like that may not play against clothing creation.  

I do worry about support for him with L'Homme, Dusk 2.0 and even M4 (still getting SOME support).  

He looks yummy!  Love the layout as his face looks like a dream to morph, as does his body.  I take it he's set up for Unimesh natively or is it Poser Native skinning? 

Ooh this is very very exciting news!!  I am so looking forward to seeing this finished.  I was sad when i thought it had been abandoned.  Happy now.

Biscuits posted at 9:30 AM Wed, 22 June 2022 - #4440204

How awesome to see you creating again Shane!

The huge advantage is polygons do not age! ;)

From experience I know that if you been out of the workflow for awhile, one tends to have to re-invent your own wheel basically, it’s relearning your old routine and the nitty gritty all over again.

And so I honestly believe continuing on a previous project is an even bigger feat then starting it for the first time.

I know one thing though…it definitely can be done, if there is still some old love lingering, the spark can be enlightened again!

So in my perspective, it’s an accomplishment to start-up again.

I wish you lots of fun, luck and fortune with Orion.

I shall not ask if Venus is out of the attic too…..oh oops now I kinda did…lol ;)

I've been working on them off and on the whole time, just sort of in the shadows. And of course, Venus is always part of the project.

For a base figure, this is nearly perfect. Not too developed that it can be morphed into nearly anything. Making a base figure a little too detailed can be a mistake if it's meant to be morphed, so unlike others in this thread, I think your first effort was developed enough that it would be more difficult to make it look like much more than the base figure ;). Hope that made sense. ;)

Yes, I've been trying to make them attractive yet generic enough to be easily modified into most whatever. Of course good morph sets go a long way towards that end too. And things will evolve over time.

I'm just glad I didn't rush to release early on, as looking back at my older work, wow was it bad, lol. At least imo. I'm never truly happy with any of it, to be honest. Even now. But I'm trying to learn not to let my perfectionism prevent me from moving forward. Easier said than done.

One final note about something you said in that same thread...

"Well while working with the visibility issue, I realized that each prop has a dial for all the morphs that are created in the body once it's been set up as a control prop. They don't actually do anything that I can tell but the dial for it is there. So I'm thinking it's possible to move them into position for each morph. Rather manual and tedious but I'll test if it works that way. Then maybe at some point it will be automated."

While I can't see your file(s) what you describe is familiar. It's also something most people seem completely oblivious to. Whenever you invoke the Spawn Full Body morph command a local empty morph target is created in each actor of the figure, even if not relevant to the morphs involved actors. For instance if I baked down several morphs (in this example involving the chest, abdomen, and collars) to a FBM called 'Inhale' via Spawn command I would end up with an empty dial named 'inhale' globally across the figure in all actors... of course the relevant dials in chest, abdomen, and collars (including the master in Body) will function as expected. The best part is that the empties also propagate to any parented props on the figure, a control prop for instance, including the goal and center of mass props (parms for such accesible via selection in the hierarchy).

This might be the matching named dials you're seeing in your control props that 

"each prop has a dial for all the morphs that are created in the body once it's been set up as a control prop. They don't actually do anything that I can tell but the dial for it is there."

Something to be aware of to offset a potential wild goose chase, depending.

AmbientShade posted at 4:34 PM Wed, 22 June 2022 - #4440224

Yes. Not terribly difficult to create surrogate teeth, or even an extract and retopo set of dentures for more elaborate fangs and tusks... Though the feelings about such a thing are subjective I suppose, depending on the creator.

Interesting that your layout is presented in Blender... man there are some really terrific paid add ons for Blender, UV Packmaster and Retopoflow are very good. But drifting here.

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

Tusks you say?

This is also Orion:

Granted, not Poser-ready. Not yet anyway...

VERY nice! Me likey. He's cute.

Edited to add, the medieval reenactor in me feels compelled to point out that this is not how chainmail works, though. It wouldn't follow the torso shape like this; it would follow gravity and just hang down from the widest point.

But I'd buy the whole package anyway.

Haha, thanks Elena.

Older project, was never really intended for Poser, but could be. Posed in Poser and Go-Z'd to Zbrush for detailing. Just an example of mesh versatility. Details can be converted to normals and displacement. Does superfly do normal maps? Or displacement maps? I always get confused on that, I thought there were issues with one or the other. I spend more time working on shapes than I do textures and renders and its hard to keep up with all the threads and info on these topics.

Superfly does normals,  no microdisplacement. Recent tutorials explain where PBR maps go quite well.

Wow, I thought you had dropped Orion and Venus, but am glad that you're back in the game to finish both figures and release them to an unsuspecting public. I can't wait to get both in my runtime! You have so much talent and these figures will be an asset to us Poser users. Please post more renders when you can!

Superfly can handle normal maps comfortably and as Rhia474 stated no microdisplacement.  But you can perform displacement with subdivision and a node hack.  Depending on how you approach PBR mapping and shaders, you have 3 options at your disposal to optimize close to realistic renders.

Interesting, bookmarking so I can keep up with the developments. 

i do hope you're able to complete them at least by the end of the year... they'd make excellent holiday gifts...

Giana posted at 12:30 AM Fri, 24 June 2022 - #4440305

i do hope you're able to complete them at least by the end of the year... they'd make excellent holiday gifts...

Orion will be ready soon. At least a base/vanilla version, and some clothes and morphs. With updates to follow.

Probably best to approach it that way for now, as adding all that I intend to do is probably a bit unrealistic and has a lot to do with the long delay.

I would say much on this topic, however, suffice it to say that I am looking forward to the release of your figures. They look great in the tantalizing previews you have shared, and if I knew how to model, I for one, would be supporting them from day 1. 

structure posted at 4:58 AM Fri, 24 June 2022 - #4440308

I would say much on this topic, however, suffice it to say that I am looking forward to the release of your figures. They look great in the tantalizing previews you have shared, and if I knew how to model, I for one, would be supporting them from day 1. 

You could PM me your thoughts if you'd like.

That goes for anyone else.

I'm working full time on this for the time being, so it should progress much faster than before.

Just an fyi for those wondering.

Thanks for the info.  I’m interested as well.

Count me in as interested as well. 

Another stress test pose. Trying to get his shoulder maps to behave without JCMs. Very frustrating.

Ignore the seam lines, just due to a few minor changes in UVs.

He looks very good.  I like the way the penis looks, very natural.  The L'Homme one is kinda ugly I had to do some morph magic to it to make it look "right" to me!  LOL 

RAMWorks posted at 7:13 PM Fri, 24 June 2022 - #4440331

He looks very good.  I like the way the penis looks, very natural.  The L'Homme one is kinda ugly I had to do some morph magic to it to make it look "right" to me!  LOL 

I tried to put as much realism into Orion's as possible. There's a total of 8 bones in the whole kit and plenty of geometry to do whatever you want with it. And if you don't want it at all, just leave it in its "off" state. There's really no reason for them to still be snap-ons.

And yes, for anyone wondering, Venus will get the same treatment with her lady bits.

Bravo

RAMWorks posted at 7:13 PM Fri, 24 June 2022 - #4440331

He looks very good.  I like the way the penis looks, very natural.  The L'Homme one is kinda ugly I had to do some morph magic to it to make it look "right" to me!  LOL 

I think L'Homme's was adapted from one of the older Poser males.

I tried to put as much realism into Orion's as possible. There's a total of 8 bones in the whole kit and plenty of geometry to do whatever you want with it. And if you don't want it at all, just leave it in its "off" state. There's really no reason for them to still be snap-ons.

And yes, for anyone wondering, Venus will get the same treatment with her lady bits.

AmbientShade posted at 8:14 PM Fri, 24 June 2022 - #4440334

....

And if you don't want it at all, just leave it in its "off" state. There's really no reason for them to still be snap-ons. ...

And yes, for anyone wondering, Venus will get the same treatment with her lady bits.

Ladies' bits, depending on the geometry definition may have same problem but at a lesser degree.  

Problem may be avoided by using a separate figure optimized for collision.

Yea but Apollo had an actual hole that had to be covered with a geometry shield of sorts that I think Anton addressed.  This figure is fully closed according the author above so I don't think dynamics should be much of an issue  

It has nothing to do with holes. Same effect can be seen with ears.  It is facets with their normals pointing away from the direction where you want the clothing to be within a distance under the skin comparable with or less than the length of the edges of cloth facets. Collision objects should normally be convex. Of course on a human shape one has to make compromises and cloth-on-human simulators are tunes to cope, but the less locations where the desired position of the fabric is not clear on facet-vertex level the better.   In my collisin avatars I usually take out all internals and 'spandax' all extremities.

There is one issue there though. When dynamic clothing is used, defined male bits tend to 'catch and eat' the pants garment locally and leave the figure in a less than decent state. I played a bit with Apollo Maximus and found he was notorious for 'letting the dog out'. 

My understanding was that in the "off" state the laddie bits would be smoothed out like in the wireframes in the first post of this threat. Shouldn't that fix that problem?

odf posted at 6:42 PM Sat, 25 June 2022 - #4440367

FVerbaas posted at 2:26 PM Sat, 25 June 2022 - #4440360

There is one issue there though. When dynamic clothing is used, defined male bits tend to 'catch and eat' the pants garment locally and leave the figure in a less than decent state. I played a bit with Apollo Maximus and found he was notorious for 'letting the dog out'. 

My understanding was that in the "off" state the laddie bits would be smoothed out like in the wireframes in the first post of this threat. Shouldn't that fix that problem?

The advantage with a repel prop is that you still see a visible bulge compared to putting it in the off state.

...or there could be 2 morphed off states. One as a bulge and one as flat. Circumvents the need for faffing with a dynamics shield.

I'm curious about the merchant resource aspects of the figure. Wouldn't it really be something if it included a basic texture resource that was usable for both commerce and freebies. Unprecedented. Many people that create characters for Poser figures might not have the tools or the skills (or whatever) to create a complete and viable human texture for their freebies. Not to mention the amount of work that entails. It's a stumbling block with every Poser figure I've ever seen. You might say "well then that would step on the toes of those that are trying to create paid products for a figure" to which I would say that competition is a healthy thing and the more the merrier. The cream will rise to the top regardless. It would definitely garner a more wide ranging support out of the box. Something to consider.

>>>> I'm curious about the merchant resource aspects of the figure. Wouldn't it really be something if it included a basic texture resource that was usable for both commerce and freebies. Unprecedented.

Not unprecedented. Poser's Pauline and Paul meshes as well as textures were usable as merchant resources. L'Homme and La Femme base textures can also be used as merchant resources.

That being said, glad that Orion and Venus have been resurrected. Always liked these two figures.

>>>> I'm curious about the merchant resource aspects of the figure. Wouldn't it really be something if it included a basic texture resource that was usable for both commerce and freebies. Unprecedented.

Not unprecedented. Poser's Pauline and Paul meshes as well as textures were usable as merchant resources. L'Homme and La Femme base textures can also be used as merchant resources.

That being said, glad that Orion and Venus have been resurrected. Always liked these two figures.

Oh waitaminute. This is Deecey right?

So you're saying that LF/LH's textures can be used in freebies? Long pause.

DCArt posted at 9:54 AM Sun, 26 June 2022 - #4440383

>>>> I'm curious about the merchant resource aspects of the figure. Wouldn't it really be something if it included a basic texture resource that was usable for both commerce and freebies. Unprecedented.

Not unprecedented. Poser's Pauline and Paul meshes as well as textures were usable as merchant resources. L'Homme and La Femme base textures can also be used as merchant resources.

That being said, glad that Orion and Venus have been resurrected. Always liked these two figures.

For freebies? Afraid not. At least with LH/LF... I'll have to do some digging through the manual and ReadMe's for Paul and Pauline, but I'm pretty certain it's as I stated. Have you ever seen a freebie for LH/LF that includes a derivative of the bundled textures?

primorge posted at 10:01 AM Sun, 26 June 2022 - #4440385

Oh waitaminute. This is Deecey right?

So you're saying that LF/LH's textures can be used in freebies? Long pause.

I just turned 70. Dem synapses don't work as well as they used to. LOL

I recall Blackhearted erroneously stating that the textures could be used for freebies during a long ago argument with someone.

Further looking into it I found that it was the base morphs that are ok for freebies. Textures and Body Kit (yours) strictly MR derivative commercial redistribution.

I'm curious about the merchant resource aspects of the figure. Wouldn't it really be something if it included a basic texture resource that was usable for both commerce and freebies. Unprecedented. Many people that create characters for Poser figures might not have the tools or the skills (or whatever) to create a complete and viable human texture for their freebies. Not to mention the amount of work that entails. It's a stumbling block with every Poser figure I've ever seen. You might say "well then that would step on the toes of those that are trying to create paid products for a figure" to which I would say that competition is a healthy thing and the more the merrier. The cream will rise to the top regardless. It would definitely garner a more wide ranging support out of the box. Something to consider.

TheAnimaGemini posted at 10:09 AM Sun, 26 June 2022 - #4440389

primorge posted at 8:18 AM Sun, 26 June 2022 - #4440380

I'm curious about the merchant resource aspects of the figure. Wouldn't it really be something if it included a basic texture resource that was usable for both commerce and freebies. Unprecedented. Many people that create characters for Poser figures might not have the tools or the skills (or whatever) to create a complete and viable human texture for their freebies. Not to mention the amount of work that entails. It's a stumbling block with every Poser figure I've ever seen. You might say "well then that would step on the toes of those that are trying to create paid products for a figure" to which I would say that competition is a healthy thing and the more the merrier. The cream will rise to the top regardless. It would definitely garner a more wide ranging support out of the box. Something to consider.

Depends on from where you use your base textures. Painted from scratch , could be done. From scanned human like Texture XYZ , no. They forbid to redistribute their textures like this.  Even the commercial ones . Also other sites as well too. 

Well that finds a flaw with my logic, yes.

It's interesting that Blackhearted has a photo texture resource available on the market here that states that derivatives can be used in commercial and freebie endeavors. I purchased it and have used it a tiny bit. Quite handy. A shame that he never followed up with any more sets...

OK. For clarification. The Poser 11 EULA lists Pauline, Paul, La Femme, and L'Homme as "Vendor Resources" (see page 13 of Poser 11 Ref Manual). What it DOESN'T designate is whether or not that applies to commercial and non-commercial use. 

Looking further in the "Content License" starting on page 16, it says "Vendor Resources may be used to create derivative works based on the Figure Files, Geometry, ro Texture Maps.I don't see any mention of commercial vs non-commercial in that Content License section. 

Geting back to Orion, though, my only request is if Shane decides to go the route of providing textures as merchant resources, would be awesome if there was a hairless option. It's hard making changes to all that hair you guys have LOL

OK. For clarification. The Poser 11 EULA lists Pauline, Paul, La Femme, and L'Homme as "Vendor Resources" (see page 13 of Poser 11 Ref Manual). What it DOESN'T designate is whether or not that applies to commercial and non-commercial use. 

Looking further in the "Content License" starting on page 16, it says "Vendor Resources may be used to create derivative works based on the Figure Files, Geometry, ro Texture Maps.I don't see any mention of commercial vs non-commercial in that Content License section. 

Geting back to Orion, though, my only request is if Shane decides to go the route of providing textures as merchant resources, would be awesome if there was a hairless option. It's hard making changes to all that hair you guys have LOL