I just had to get him. Those pictures I saw everywhere were fantastic. Now that I have him, what can I do with him? I don't see any clothes or hair. After I installed Mike, it offered to let me read the readme file, but that wasn't found. So what do we have to use with Musclebound Mike?

I haven't tried it yet but it shouldn't be too difficult to port some of Mikes clothes to this figure. I was able to get stuff to work with Massive Mike, mind you, the only things I've ported so far are apair of boots, Vicky's skirt (made a loin cloth out of it), and the Morph hair for the P4 female. They even conform (well sort of 8)). I used magnets to help shape the stuff so it fits. Also DraX said we was planning on porting some clothes himself. He's working on the body suit as far as I know. I mainly see this character's use for fantasy characters and superhero characters.

There is a small pak of clothes for him in the Daz3d store at daz3d.com Nothing special though.

I didn't see any other than the stuff for Standard Mike.

I guess I am thrown off by the newness of the character? I guess it is ok to use the regular mike textures for instance? But when I did that, his eyebrows are white. I can't figure what I did wrong.

I used Mike's boxer shorts, and well, Musclebound Mike pretty much busted out of them. I did use one of the poses for "regular Mike," and that seems to work.

Hey ron! On the eyebrows, I would guess he uses different naming conventions. You may just have to go in manually and apply the maps to eyebrows and uppereyebrows. AMke sure you have a good trans map too. Betsy

I can find no hint of anything to go with Musclebound mike.... Not even the readme file that was supposed to be opened after the install.

Thought there was one made by DRAX. i didn't get a chance to make the installer before i left. You might just email the artist and ask for one. Betsy

Heh, that's ironic. I have no readme file, so there is no contact information on Drax. Of course I most likely read emails from Drax daily on the 3DCC list, but I never see or pay attention to his email address there. So now I am left feeling a bit disappointed because I may have a defective product for all I know. And it's taking too long to sort this out.

You can find his email on DAZ's website under the brokered artist page :)

What texture are you using since MBM doesn't come with one? And what I normally get is an installer and a readme but I am on a Mac. I remember you having trouble with the vicki eyebrows and eyelashes and perhaps the same things are happening with this. If that is the Daz texture then you can use the MAT poses to get the transparancies and all. Hope that helps.

The installer has an error of some kind, and I don't think a readme.txt actually gets installed (couldn't find one anyway). However, there is a .pdf file. Search the Poser directory for Musclebound Michael Guide.PDF. He uses regular Mike textures and Mike hair. I don't think I used the MAT poses, but I didn't have a problem applying Mike textures so you probably just didn't get the settings just right (brows and lashes can be a pain in the butt). Try loading one of the regular Mikes with the texture you wanted to use and compare the material settings between the two. Once you get him the way you want him, save him to your characters with another name and you'll have a copy ready to go.

You can download a user guide from Daz: it's linked off the Musclebound Mike page in the store. If you bought MuscleMike before 13 November, you need to email Daz for an update - I think they realised they'd left out the readme and suchlike. As far as I can tell, the model takes all the regular Michael textures with no problems. Clothing is a different matter :-) but I've managed to scale some things to fit. I'm still figuring out the possibilities, but so far I'm thrilled with the product.

OK, let me state this again. 1.) I bought MBM on November 16. 2.) There is a problem with the install. I couldn't get the readme file. 3.) I looked at the update, and it mentioned some sort of problem for folks who had bought MBM earlier.,..and mentioned an important readme file that was apparently missing. 4.) I thought maybe something was wrong with my install since it didn't complete its stated mission. So something more than the readme file might be missing. Even if it wasn't, it is a defective product and should be fixed and replaced. 5.) The manual is excellent and informative if you want to do what is in the subject matter. It is totally useless to me since I am not going to create MBM characters and sell them, or make MAT poses, whatever. I just want some of the simple questions answered, and I want the product to work as it should. That means an install routine that works. This is all rather puzzling since I saw much more helpful info about MBM before I bought it. Now I am merely repeating what I said at the beginning. Maybe those of you who are trying to help didn't buy MBM?!

Okay .. To answer question by question. >Now that I have him, what can I do with him? Make pictures, you now have a set up that is perfect for Barbarians or superheros or other things. >I don't see any clothes or hair. It didn't say clothes or hair was included. As always and with most superhero things you can paint the clothes on a texture map. A clothes pack will be released later. >After I installed Mike, it offered to let me read the readme file, but that wasn't found. Have no clue about the exe way of doing things. If someone could post the readme that might be cool. Don't have it on this computer. >So what do we have to use with Musclebound Mike? To make pictures .. same as for Michael etc. What you do with him is up to you. As to the white eyebrows I still don't know if you have the MAT poses and are using them or if you are doing it manually but good luck

I usually try to provide all pertinent information up front. That is why I find this so frustrating. I assume, but was not told, that you can use Michael's textures on MBM. There must be a different way of doing things, or I must be doing something wrong when it comes to his eyebrows, lids, at least. I don't have any MAT stuff for Mike's textures. If I did, and it worked, I likely wouldn't have this problem?! So I'm doing the textures the hard way, and having troubles. I finally figured there are no clothes made for MBM right now... but some are on the way. I am excited about that. Now what to do about Mike's eyebrows/eyelids, his texture in general? And can I use hair that was made for "the regular mike?!' I'm not sure why it's so hard to answer these questions right away. I came here because others had obviously bought MBM, and were already engaged in fruitful discussions... information was being shared. And I read over those discussions before posting my own questions and concerns.

Let's see if I can somehow put this together so it makes sense: 1.) I can use the regular Mike hair 2.) I can use the regular Mike's textures 3.) Clothes and other items are on the way Remaining questions: 1.) I thought when you apply a texture that you go through and set all the current colors to white, then apply the texture. It appears that Drax included a transmap for the eyebrows.. (thanks) So it appears that whatever I did messed with that setting or something? So how do I fix that? Or how do I avoid that problem? 2.) Can you use all the regular Mike poses, or do you run into problems with the more muscular body? 3.) What other tips do I need to know about MBM, as far as handling his body, in poses, whatever?!

Drax, I no longer have your email on record....Once we'd closed the chapter on that "previous situation"....So it was my error on that part. I didn't really think MBM himself was defective and I don't think I was deceived. There were a bunch of things that happened at the same time, and I tried to convey that. As for the eyebrows, I seem to remember Mike's eyebrows are handled differently than Vicki's...and that is likely my mistake. I just don't know how to fix it. I have no MAT pose stuff for Mike's textures, so I am left to fiddle on my own. But I don't know how to do it right. I feel ok now that I know I can use Mike's hair... I can deal with the clothes somehow. Hopefully someone will come out with some freebies, or your clothes won't cost too much. I remain convinced that MBM is technologically advanced, a great product, etc. And I look forward to more of your excellent products. I told you I'd try to find money to buy MBM, and I did. And the banners remain on my site... where they will stay, unless you threaten to send MBM to beat me up. So let's sort this out, ok? You might want to tell DAZ to fix that install routine. That way another customer who has the misfortune to order on the weekend won't need to wait till Monday to find a remedy or answers.

morph manager moves the morphs darkness is a free character in freestuff and massive mike is in the store. this is what you will get from massive mike darkness and bodybuilder mike, looks like ill have to buy this one too and add his morph over to see what happens.

Ron, there were no textures in any way included with Musclebound Michael, only:
the User's Guide;
a Readme;
6 Facial Poses to activate the included face morphs;
over 60 morphs, Full body morphs, and partial body morphs located in a .cr2 file, as well as 6 new faces, and a handful of genital morphs which I opted not to advertise on the DAZ site, simply because of personal taste (No, I didn't like making them, either... though that's probably understandable)

I tried my best to make MBM the most technologically advanced Poser figure ever released (as far as the stuff that Poser's engine is capable of), and the User's Guide tries to illustrate that.

Clothing will be out soon (hopefully by the end of this coming week)

There are no different naming convertions on the eyebrows, someone else mentioned something, but posted that it was an erro they may have mad,e I believe and was able to easily fix the problem, though I'm still not sure what it was.

And Ron, we've conversed through private email more than ocne in the past, so don't even tell me you don't have my email, I'll be insulted ;-)

Remaining questions: 1.) I thought when you apply a texture that you go through and set all the current colors to white, then apply the texture. It appears that Drax included a transmap for the eyebrows.. (thanks) So it appears that whatever I did messed with that setting or something? So how do I fix that? Or how do I avoid that problem?<< As far as I can tell, all the textures and transmaps work in the same was as with regular Mike. There are a couple of additional material settings in the MBM cr2, but they don't seem to affect anything. Ron, if you're having trouble with textures, how about posting a couple of screenshots. It'll give us a better idea what the problem is. >>2.) Can you use all the regular Mike poses, or do you run into problems with the more muscular body?<< I haven't had problems so far. Pose files that include morph channels do change the figure somewhat, but most of MBM's morphs - as they're new and won't be in a regular Mike cr2 - aren't affected. I do have to tweak poses a bit to avoid body parts overlapping - this guy takes up more space! >>3.) What other tips do I need to know about MBM, as far as handling his body, in poses, whatever?!<< That depends on what sort of art you're trying to make. I'm not good at general "tips". Me - I like a subtle muscular effect to create a realistic figure. So I start by setting MBM's morphs to zero, then play with the full body morphs to get a shape I like. Then go through each body part in turn to add detail. That's the possibility I found missing with MassiveMike: working full body didn't produce great results. MBM does, IMHO. Eirian

Did you try my suggestion of loading one of your regular Mikes and comparing your material settings? Its really an easy way to figure out what you've done different. I looked at mine, and I don't have textures set for the brows or lashes. I have color settings and trans maps at 100%. I checked the M2 Mat files, and they load the same way, so try that.

Hey Ron .. I wasn't sure if you had the mat poses or not since you didn't know what they were for Vicki a while back and all that is all. I answered all the questions that were in the top posts so here goes the second batch. You can use all Mike textures on Mike including MBM ... Nothing has changed unless someone is reworking the file which wasn't done. You can use any of Mikes hair plus any of vickie's etc if you fiddle with it. Eyebrows. Set color for the eyebrow that you want. Black hair, black eyebrows, etc. No texture normally. Transmap on eyebrow, upper eyebrow and eyelashes. 100 min and max. Black ambient, reflection and highlight color. As to the poses, that was answered byeirian above .. jsut have to fix them a little because he takes up more room and they overlap slightly.

Look at the eyebrows. See the Ghosted lines? That indicates a transparency map is already being used?! I wouldn't want to do one myself would I?

Actually, that doesn't tell you that a map is being used, only your material settings can tell you that. Poser uses the pointclouds to show that a material is not 100% opaque, whether it be due to a trans map or to a transparency setting.

Oh, and Michael's original texture set came with a transmap for the lashes and the eyebrows.

OK, I went to a lot of work to put this together. Let's see if this helps us figure things out. I took screenshots of "The Regular Michael," using the map I had. Then I put that together with the settings I had made for Musclebound Mike (the ones I messed up, remember?!) What is the result? I am even more confused because it appears the Michael map uses Mikes body textures on his head. First, lets see both Mikes rendered. The first one will be Michael (the regular Mike)

Now here is what I did to Musclebound Mike (remember this is MY mistake.)

Now here is the skin body.

Here are the eyebrows. On this screenshot, I didn't give MBM any texture.. I may have changed that later in an attempt to fix the problem. It didn't work.

Here is the Skin Head. Note that the Michael Map uses the body's skin for the head texture. Isn't this wrong?

Here are the eyelashes. Again, the Michael Map uses the body texture in the lashes. Isn't this wrong?

The Michael Map uses the body texture for the Upper Eyebrows too. Isn't that wrong? So what did I learn from comparing the Original Michael Map to my own mistakes on Musclebound Mike? Nothing. Help please.

This is the Michael Map I used. I am confused about that. Does the Michael Map actually load Michael and his body? Or just his textures? Why does the Michael Map seem to be wrong, using the body textures on Mike's head? Does it make any difference that the Michael map is located under the Zygote folder, rather than DAZ folder?

The Michael Map loads the figure and the textures. It doesn't make any difference that it is under Zygote. Just the name of the company in the older days. My Michael Map doesn't use the Body textures on the head. Here is my settings and a quick render. No texture was applied except for the eyebrows, upper eyebrows and eyelashes. This is for a dark brunette setting but you could do the same for blonde by changing the material colors. Hope this helps.

OK, but you missed my point entirely. I was using a Michael map which apparently puts Mike's body texture onto his head. I thought the map was supposed to do the job correctly, so I wouldn't need to.

I stayed up late last night, and fiddled with MBM. I think I finally figured it out. Here are a couple quick renders.

I took a chance and tried one of Mike's Instant Body Suits on MBM. In essence these MAT Poses paint the texture onto the character.... No ripped clothes! And I used the Nerd 3D Backdrop tool for the background. I got that the other day, and it's fantastic.

I didn't miss the point. You missed mine. Mine works fine, no body map on head and all. Never has. As I said in the post above "My Michael Map doesn't use the Body textures on the head." I am glad you finally figured it out though.

Attached Link: http://www.ronknights.com/mikeset/index.html

For what it's worth, I went through the materials settings for the Michael texture map, and made screenshots of all of it. It might be a good reference for any other newbies out there.