I may have to pick your brain about that later, esther. :) There are a couple of utilities that would certainly come in handy that way!

I just always want to point it out when someone does provide great mac support, in part because it's generally not advertised enough when someone does (and for the most part, we're used to just assuming things won't, which is a shame and probably gets some great products overlooked).

Also, an important thing to note -- some have mentioned the existing texture transfer tools on the market. Those? PC only. Mac users (hi there! waves frantically) are shut out there unless we install Windows (no offense, but also no thanks). The crew at Blacksmith3D and realityPaint have been VERY good to both mac and PC users and provided stable options for both platforms. While it may not be relevant to the majority out there, it is intensely so to some of us! grin

I would absolutely be interested. Since I use (and highly recommend) realityPaint, I would love to see this included in the feature set. Using the similar transfer brush already has been a lifesaver, and this functionality would be magnificent.

I would suggest V4 -> Dawn; V4 -> Alyson for initial transfers. (I don't have a suggestion for the third off hand, as Genesis can load V4 maps, as can Genesis2 with an add on that make the current transfer tools in realityPaint work nicely across that character group. :) )

I'd love to see this functionality as a part of realityPaint, or potentially as a 'plugin' for realityPaint to integrate into the workflow that could also be a standalone for this function for those who don't currently use the software or don't have a need for it beyond the transfer cabilities. (But you should use it, folks. You really, really should! It's good stuff.)

Quote - Exactly.  Some people love recreating real people and objects, others prefer to create what ifs.

Personally, I prefer creating what ifs.  I don't recreate a specific person, but create one that is representative of the people around me or in paintings/photos/film/tv or what I imagine a fantasy/otherworldly figure to look like.

This is really beautifully put, and is my take on it also. :)

It's possible enough to create 'clones' of really real people in this medium. It's also possible to make depictions of things that aren't, or could not be. Personally, I find the ability to depict the latter pretty dang valuable artistically! If we as human beings weren't interested in idealized forms or 'impossible' beauty from time to time, we probably wouldn't have half the use for photoshop that we do in realms far beyond this medium. ;) (Though I'm also in agreement that the 'buy my product and you, too, can be impossible in real life!' grinds my nerves camp.)

From experience with pre-release items and peeks behind many a curtain (important note: elsewhere(s), not at Hivewire, I have no clue there), I'd say Fringewood's assertions are very much in line with what I've seen and been involved with in the past.

I know it takes me roughly 2-3 weeks to produce a character set; it can sometimes take considerably longer, sometimes much less time if things happen to flow 'just so'. (Pathetic note: I also have zero life outside of work, so I might work longer hours than someone who has to tend kids or a different dayjob or, you know, does things other than poke 3D apps with their time. ;) )

Seemingly simple clothing items may take roughly the same amount of time, as what is 'simple' visually is not always equally simple in terms of function or code-side complexity. Big or complex clothing sets? I've seen those take up to half a year. (I wouldn't necessarily expect to see that kind of thing at public release time for precisely that reason.)

Agreed with Connie and Pendraia; for product creation it's pretty much the way to go. Distribution? Not so much.

Distribution is a different animal, and for content creators, the psd approach is extremely limited, particularly when it comes to something like brows, where people tend to want a variety of options. If you're talking about 'to prepare the product', vintorix, it's one thing; if you mean what the end user is delivered, it's another entirely. As a content creator you must be prepared to deal with the difficulties and eventualities inherent to both.

Pre-compositing all potential options on something like 'multiple brow types' isn't feasible beyond 1-4 color/style choices really at the most, which is less than what many end users want out of a product that promises versatility in this regard. (I've done blender/shader-based brows, transmap brows on brow geometry, and composited images with brow variations personally in charsets over the years; I have specific experience with all of the above to know precisely what I'm talking about on this one. ;) )

If you have supporting maps for bump/displacement/etc., it adds further to the file requirements. That's where shader-based approaches, or brow geometry with transmaps or grown hairs for mixing up the possible color choices and face map styles become valuable assets. They can be used in place of otherwise almost entirely redundant maps that also bloat an end user's runtime.

Quote - No- it is Photoshop that is papa.

Neither mix brick nor blending nodes is the correct way to do it IMO, except possible at the concept stage. Sergio Martinez(Xurge) showed at the seminar he held the 8 and 9th June how he organized everything with the help of one big Photoshop master file (well two actually). All orderly and distinct placed on seperate layers

Material areas, borders, bump, displacement, ornamental patters, even down to stiches, everything had its own layer and could be manipulated and changed with a click. (blend styles as well as displacement). That made blender and mix nodes look like a toy. And the finished maps could be used in any application, not only Daz and Poser. Its all about being organized.

This is how I have seen texture sets developed, but I've never seen one that uses this approach past the testing stage. The resulting file sizes are beyond what it would be in the interest of a marketplace to distribute as a product at a certain point. I often have face map PSDs over 1G -- per file -- with 2-3 and sometimes more of them in use before a product is complete, for example, to produce the necessary jpg/png/tiff files.

Waste 3G of an end user's hard drive with a single charset, and you'd better have a lot more to show for it than just the diffuse color head maps alone! I don't know any content marketplace that would be willing to drop the $$ on file transfer costs for their site that would be required for even low sales volume of a product of that description (even 3G, not just 3G in psds of head maps ;) ), and the cost would likely be considerably higher for the end user as well as a result.

I'll quietly chime in that I'm fond of transmapped brows also. :) It's nice to have the option available.

It may be possible (for someone who can model, that person is not me) to make a conformer for the brow region. I haven't read through the entirety of the thread to see if some of the auto-follow or morph-helping features are in play to know how potentially easy or hard this would be to fit to any included morphs, but brows are in an area where you'd really want to hope that's the case, since most head morphs (shapes and expressions) would be in play there.

Without a conformer or brow geometry, Poser can handle this with masks and blender nodes, but depending on how wild any potential makeup on the face is, you may end up with a bit of a blend line if the differences are fairly stark. Likely not something you'd notice at a distance, but may be visible in some close up renders. DS has the shader bricks  -- which sadly I know less than nothing about -- and the Layered Image Editor (L.I.E.) that could probably manage it quite well. The way L.I.E. works has changed a bit in recent versions from its 'original' form; I used to be able to offer some advice on 'the old version' but will admit to being somewhat at a loss with its more recent incarnation.

(I'm working blearily through the holiday. Somebody grill a hot dog in my honor, maybe? :) )

As for the clothes, you make 'em. ;) I'm not a small gal, but I have absurd proportions, more so when doing the corset thing, which yes, sometimes I do. (It's actually gloriously good for my back.)

Also, definitely planning to take a peek at her when she's available. :) I'm willing to give new gals a try (and still have an Alyson skin to finish up some day when I'm not so backlogged, for I am sloowwwww) and think those lashes look like they're going to be a lot of fun. Mwahahahaha. evil grin

I ran into nightmare render times until Fisty recommended it -- so trust her as the brains behind that one, she knows her stuff! :)

This tip saved my sanity for DS4 and hair with raytracing: apply the ubershader2 over it, do the 'alt click to preserve current settings' trick if you can. (I forget the exact key sequence, but someone more conversant in DS can likely chime in.)

You can actually leave raytracing on for the hair -- but turn off AO in the surface settings. It's way down toward the bottom of the list with US2, I believe. It's often the AO on hair that makes it utterly murderous on render times in DS4 in my experience. Raytracing stings a bit, but not like the AO does! :)

This may be a bit of a diversion, but since I think the thread has become something potentially very useful for the figure projects currently in progress out there...

...how do you use figures in your renders? Are they mostly full-body images? Crowd scenes? Nudes? Face shot portraits? Some figures or features are better suited to some uses than others, for instance.

Edit: yup, I know I have some GNDA stuff in the works, and am working with a few others on things as well. There's some mention of it in Lyrra's thread. :)

That's already in the works. :)

There was a notable attempt to avoid a 'call out names' style post, which is I think where things went a bit sideways. We have a pretty good idea of where to go from here. :)

Knowing a bit about the reasons behind the original post since I work with Connie -- though I can't elaborate beyond 'looking at what might take off figure-wise to support for content creation collaborations' -- I know it's not for a community figure project. :) At this time, we're attempting to look at additional figures to support that work natively in Poser, and trying to determine what may prove profitable enough to support considering the time investment the team working on this stuff puts in to any given product.

Community input, great! Absolutely neccessary! Community figure project cattle call? ...no, not in this instance, and no slight is intended toward projects that are in any fashion. :)

Different colors -- or different shapes, which is also very helpful. :)

I've done a lot of charsets with the brow body part, though now it's hit or miss. (If I think it adds something and the result is better quality, I will, if not, I don't.) Even being one of the people who has often included it, I managed to get reamed up one side and down the other when I didn't include browless versions of all the (40-odd) head textures. laugh So that brow thing... yeah.

With the many map versions option, you end up getting reamed twice as hard for file size and 'wasting all our hard drive space'. ;)

It's also something that can be done via blender node, but that requires more technical know-how to allow for the potential versatility it offers than many customers have (or are willing to fuss with if they want a click-and-render solution, which most seem to want).