dke opened this issue on Sep 24, 2002 ยท 5 posts
dke posted Thu, 26 September 2002 at 10:39 AM
Hi Styxx. "DMesh, the Musculature Based Organic Modeling program" that is also at the site, is in a bit of a flux at the moment. The link to the registration page (which has the price,) is temporarily disabled. Version II was released some time ago and sent to all registered user's. Development is currently at version 2.52, with the version III release scheduled for late this year or early next. However, there are some negotiations under way to integrate the DMesh modeling principles and code into a larger mainstream 3D programs, along with the subsequent conversion to a plugin that can be used with other high end apps, since it does have numerous features not yet available even in some of those apps. For example, form-fitting, (and/or conforming) clothes can be made in the old version 1.0, although 1.50 was better if you want to use external obj's (ie Poser bodys) instead of DMesh built ones. Hair and fur was in version 1.80, along with our Super-Strand Hair Texturing capabilties, which allows you to texture the hairs from folicle to tip on an individual hair basis. And of course, creating Musculature Based morph targets was the whole point of the program, so that feature is fully available in the eariiest version 1.00 release. These are something like the Poser Magnets, except that you can create actual muscles instead of using a little blob/sphere to drag vertices around. DMesh stands for Deformation Mesh, so it does most of the things you would expect as far as deforming meshes and creating morph targets. Things like displacement mapping and layered model building are all integral components, along with several manual editing features that were added in version II. If that's all a bit confusing, :) and since a picture is worth a lot more words than I can type, have a peek at my store and gallery images for exact examples. I used DMesh for EVERYTHING in my store and gallery images. From the body parts in the gallery, it should be pretty noticable what can be accomplished using musculature based modeling. So at present, the exact direction for the version III release is a bit indeterminate. But to 'finally' answer your question :) the registration price for version 1.x was $50.00, version 2.x was a little more than that, and version 3 will be more again. There are upgrade paths for all those, but pending the finalization of current negotiations, we temporarily disabled the registration page(s) until we come to an agreement on how future upgrades will be handled. That's about as much as I can/should say in a public forum, but feel free to contact me direct if you desire additional details.