As far as Fverbaas' observation goes, it's easy to create a morph for the breasts that emulates a spandex. Sort of like the figure is wearing a clingy tshirt. I've made this on a few occasions, frequently before a retopo when I want to extract a geometry to create a dynamic shirt. I create the spandex between the breasts and completely flatten the navel into the surrounding mesh. This could easily be included in your utility morphs.

primorge posted at 5:38 AM Tue, 23 August 2022 - #4443190

Glad you figured it out. That's not the issue I was having, mine was the morphs appearing less refined than I originally made them in the sculpting software. Sort of like it was dumping a subdivision level or something, like it was at the proper level but the results were as if at a lower level. I didn't do any further testing because SudD morphs weren't a priority at the time. I'll do some tests and post what I come up with.

A likely way around it is to create some fixed deltas, see where that makes Poser move the points, and from that create an atlas of sorts that can be used to transform world space deltas into the form that's needed to create the correct morph. I think that atlas creation might be quite slow and involve some writing and loading of intermediate files, but maybe it could be done once for each figure and then the loader could stash the atlas away for future use. Something to try one day, when I feel adventurous.

Antonia's critical point regarding automatic grouping was the strake between the breasts, where garments that do not have a recess between the breasts and spans from bust point to bust point. The garment then is at some distance from the chest facets while the normals of the facets of the breasts point across it. I recall some cases where the fitting room generated grouping did not have a line of chest facets separating the facets of the left and right collars.

One way around this is a spandax morphed donor figure.

Well, if I change the geometry file anyway, maybe I could modify the collar groups to that they don't include the breasts. If I understand you correctly, that would help with the auto-grouping of clothes?

Example. Spandex to retopo extraction...

Yeah, I think a spandex morph would also be useful.

To clarify what I see happening with a subd morph when a body part is set to "subdivide separately from figure." The image on the left shows unmorphed Antonia at subd 2, the one on the right a test morph I made in Blender and loaded into Poser with my script, the middle one what happens to the test morph when I subdivide the eye separately. If you look closely, you see the smoothed out remnants of the lower one of the two ridges I made, which happened to align with the subd mesh and thus get baked down. The upper ridge on the other hand is completely gone.

This might still not be the same problem you're seeing, primorge. Just one to watch out for when working with subd morphs.

How is this for a new breast topology? I'll need to fix her edge loops and underboob shape a bit after the mod, but that shouldn't be too hard.

How is this for a new breast topology? I'll need to fix her edge loops and underboob shape a bit after the mod, but that shouldn't be too hard.

Working on a subd-proof two-shell eye for Toni: 

And a quick beauty shot at sub-d 1 with one old and one new eye. Identifying which is which will be left as an exercise to the reader.

Both eyes are using the same materials.

Like in Antonia's original eyes, the iris is currently set back from the sclera, but otherwise flat. I seem to remember word on the street being to make it slightly concave. Can anyone confirm or deny?

And a quick beauty shot at sub-d 1 with one old and one new eye. Identifying which is which will be left as an exercise to the reader.

Both eyes are using the same materials.

Slightly concave is the preference just like human eyes.  As for PBR, some users are incorporating a glass shader as opposed to a glossy one for eye work.

Leave the iris flat. It's easier to morph a convex/concave from a flat than vice versa. Concave is a hack to give the illusion of refraction. Not necessary. A tiny bit of conconvity is fine, otherwise it's just more of a PITA.

I'm hoping you welded the iris to the sclera... Creating Iris morphs are nearly impossible, or extremely more difficult, otherwise. Having unwelded parts to an eyeball makes 0 sense. It just introduces problems and solves none. 

Remember something, these are Poser figures, not Humans. While its good to always try and emulate what goes on in a human body anatomically and surface for better realism, often times in practice the results just won't work or be unnecessarily complex. They're 3d models. More like cartoon simulations that have to obey a different set of rules than what might seem right from a human anatomy perspective. Just my take on it.

Point taken.  I do agree with the iris morph though, no need to overcomplicate a feature that won't be noticed in an average scene.  V4 has a morph builtin for the iris.

hborre posted at 9:30 AM Thu, 25 August 2022 - #4443311

Point taken.  I do agree with the iris morph though, no need to overcomplicate a feature that won't be noticed in an average scene.  V4 has a morph builtin for the iris.

Here's a better view of what I currently have, mesh-wise. Yes, the iris is welded to the sclera, and the cornea is extended to go all around. I think the outer iris should probably be slightly concave with a gentle rim in order to catch the light correctly. But honestly, I have no strong opinions as far as eye construction is concerned. As long as it's easy to do and I can get decent renders out of them, I'm very open to suggestions.

ETA: And yes, I realize that rim around the iris is by no means gentle yet.

Specific questions:

- Should I make the pupil flat rather than receding? I’m guessing the answer is yes, given the points made above.

- Are the little square grid caps okay for morphing or do we prefer a big ole pole in the center?

The current version in a SuperFly render (both eyes new this time):

hborre posted at 8:28 AM Thu, 25 August 2022 - #4443305

Slightly concave is the preference just like human eyes.  As for PBR, some users are incorporating a glass shader as opposed to a glossy one for eye work.

I've been using it for a while and think the reflection is more realistically rendered.  It bothered me that many average scenes populated with people show very reflective eyes which is not the case, IMHO.  It should be just enough but not glaring.

There's a lot of questions...

The eye mesh you show above is just about perfect in my opinion. Plus you have the cover completely enclosed, which I like very much and you rarely see. In fact both the cover and eyeball both look water tight which is great. It's a little thing but covers certain situations you might not expect.

I prefer a receded pupil like you have in your image. It doesn't effect any realism and makes morphing a lot easier; octopus, rectangular, and star shaped pupils are easy to make with such a pupil.

The square grid is much much better than the pole. I'd say the topology you have for all parts is about ideal, at least for my preferences.

As far as the hard rim goes you can just slide those loop a bit further apart from each other. It can be done as a morph but it's probably best to bake that softness into the base topology before you UV.

Very well done odf, perfect imo really.

The only problem I can see you having with that kind of configuration is it makes UV mapping more difficult. Just as long as the frontal is completely flat UVs, you can get away with some distortions at the back. Obviously it might bother a perfectionist but it's tricky to get it done without a bit of stretching (sometimes quite a bit actually). If you can manage UVs that are at the lower range of stretching or distortion I'd be mightily impressed.

odf posted at 2:24 AM Fri, 26 August 2022 - #4443369

hborre posted at 8:28 AM Thu, 25 August 2022 - #4443305

Slightly concave is the preference just like human eyes.  As for PBR, some users are incorporating a glass shader as opposed to a glossy one for eye work.

For the cornea, I'm using this shader that you taught me. Since the cornea covers the whole eye, I'm hoping it will take care of all the required glossiness.

Just my 2-cents:
I have tested your solution with my Sasha19 (a weightmapped Vic4) and that give the left part below.
On the right part: Ghostship's  explaination (a fewdays ago: using a Blinn node)

The result: we can also see point-like lights, which disappear using Gloss or Glass nodes.

I have seen that post and I do not totally disagree with the node arrangement.  But if you examine the Blinn reflectivity, the setting is unrealistically too high for organic material like the eye.  That value should be slightly lower; for portrait renders, it is good enough to have that hint of catch-light, a sparkle to the eye.  It really comes down to artist preference and how you want the image to render.

I have seen that post and I do not totally disagree with the node arrangement.  But if you examine the Blinn reflectivity, the setting is unrealistically too high for organic material like the eye.  That value should be slightly lower; for portrait renders, it is good enough to have that hint of catch-light, a sparkle to the eye.  It really comes down to artist preference and how you want the image to render.

primorge posted at 11:22 AM Fri, 26 August 2022 - #4443375

Very well done odf, perfect imo really.

This kind of modeling is really easy to do in Blender. Also, I built these from Antonia's original eyes, so the existing UVs should basically still work. I wasn't going to touch the UVs at this point unless I had to.

Toni's new breasts after some mesh surgery, more mesh surgery to copy the topology changes from her left breast to her right breast, some smoothing and reshaping, and an extra round of emergency mesh surgery after I noticed that the previous surgery had messed up the UVs.

And a render with new eyes and breasts:

Geometry changes so far:

- brows removed

- toe caps removed

- eyes rebuilt

- breasts retopologized

I don't want to make too many further changes at this point, lest I trigger my perfectionist streak and end up faffing about with mesh and shape changes ad infinitum. I am debating though if I should take the opportunity and add a few strategically placed polys to her vulva while I'm at it.

If I do that, I might not be able to share any pictures of that work here, seeing as the TOS explicitly forbids genital-centric imagery. I'm not sure if that's restricted to gallery renders and maybe crotch shots of mesh WIP would be acceptable, but better err on the side of caution. If a mod happens to read this, feel free to weigh in.

I mispelled purposes lol. Makes it sorta more funny, "puposes"... I crack myself up :D

Primorge your post has been removed because it was a Terms  of Service violation.

No Physical arousal [This includes but is not limited to]: no images of an erect penis/ no “implied” erection through clothing/ no images showing the inner portion of the vulva or vaginal area.

Any image that is exclusively depicting genitals or breasts is subject for review or removal.

Please refrain from posting images like this.

Ok sorry. I figured the gens wasn't open so it might pass. I understand. No more naughty bits.

Thank you,  we dont allow images like that in the gallery either, inappropriate for Renderosity.

Check.

I'm curious though if it's allowable to, say, link to a folder on my drive that contains demo images. Not pornographic of course. Just mesh stuff. No sexual contact. Although probably that wouldn't fly either. I mean on the very rare occasion if it were relevant to a topic?

Just curious.

No links either please. You can sitemail your friends a link. 

Ah well. I understand. I thought that one image came out nice for a toon render. C'est la vie...

Sorry for the trouble, and I appreciate you responsiveness.

Unrelatedly, if anyone wants to see mesh WIPs for an, umm, ergonomically-shaped sci-fi device I am working on for Antonia, shoot me a sitemail.

I was hoping more to see an uncomfortable Lovecraftian aquatic horror but...

To be perfectly honest, I don't want to even start imagining what kind of issues Lovecraft had with vulvas. From what I hear, that person's mind was the biggest horror of all. But I was talking pre-sculpt here, so shape-wise it's more in the camel-toe Barbie stage right now.

Anyway...

Here's a quick side-by-side render of the current vs future Antonia, with the corresponding mesh parts. We can't really see those extra edge loops, but even just knowing they exist is so exciting.

You may have noticed that Toni's looking slightly cross-eyed in the "after" shot. That's because I've seen the light and modeled her new eyes pointing forward rather than at a slight outward angle. So much easier to work with. The actor coordinate system will also be axis aligned, of course. The anti-cross-eyed fix can easily be done with a dial.

Hmm, come to think of it, I may have to give her an eye-direction actor now, so that I can still have her look straight at the camera via "point at." Ah, sigh! It never ends.

You may have noticed that Toni's looking slightly cross-eyed in the "after" shot. That's because I've seen the light and modeled her new eyes pointing forward rather than at a slight outward angle. So much easier to work with. The actor coordinate system will also be axis aligned, of course. The anti-cross-eyed fix can easily be done with a dial.

She’s looking good so far.  

I think I'm done with the topology changes, so I had another go at transferring Antonia's existing rigging in the fitting room. Looking pretty good, as far as I've checked so far.

- Groups have carried over nicely except for the eyes which had some of their polys assigned to the head. I don't know a software that's good at editing poly groups directly except maybe Wings (but honestly, I can't remember, it's been too long), but there are workarounds.

- The jaw WMs look good except for the usual isolated vertex out of place on the upper lip, which I can fix very easily.

- JCMs mostly look good, but will need a tad of cleaning up. Probably not too much work, so I'll have a go at it even though eventually I'd like to weight-map the figure and dial down JCM usage to a minimum.

- Other morphs seem to generally transfer well, including the expression morphs. But I might reload those from OBJs anyway, just to be on the safe side.

I think that's everything. Here's a test render:

For the real transfer, I'll start with a stripped-down version of the Antonia 1.2 CR2 and add details back by and by using whichever method works best for the task at hand.

After some juggling between Poser, Blender and the Unix sed program, I now have an OBJ with the new mesh and the correct grouping. So in particular, the eyes can now move about without exploding. I've also had a closer look at the JCMs and it seems that they're only a bit off at the body part seams. Should be an easy fix.

Looking good!  Will this model be released?