If Daz isn't willing to bring Hexagon up to date, they should hand it off/sell it to someone who will.  The UI is one of the best I've seen (and light years ahead of Blender or Wings). We don't need another "all in one"/"Swiss Army Knife" type application like Carrara or Blender has become. We need a solid basic modelling/UV mapping/sculpting programme that supports other 3D software like Studio, Poser and Vue.

I'm not interested in a progamme that can do everything as for one, this usually means compromising the individual features so it doesn't become unweildy or prohibitively expensive, and second, I like many others already have a lot invested in my 3D toolset and have no need for redundant features.  The one component that is missing in this equation is a well designed stable modelling application.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, Daz has a potentially powerful trio of interconnected  progammes - Studio, Hexagon, and Bryce - that could become a powerful 3D suite.  Each on their own, is superior to the different "rooms" in Carrara as they focus more in depth on the specific tasks: Studio as the core for morphing, posing, rigging, and animation, Bryce for large scale ecosystem and environment generation, and Hexagon for modelling, UV mapping (and hopefully) sculpting.  This type of modular approach would be more powerful and efficient in the long run than trying to cram everything into a single application. 

This is how Blender should have been configured rather than the overly unweildy programme it has become.

Quote - > Quote - if Daz took a few months to devote some time and effort to cleaning up and updating Hexagon They could have a very nice powerful modelling tool that would be worth the original price it sold for five years ago

The tools used to program Hexagon are old now.  Hexagon still needs to have a revamp done to it, to get its code compatible with today's operating systems and programming libraries and compilers.  A total and complete re-write in other words.  wxWidgets (Hexagon's GUI) wasn't being updated for the newer C++ compilers in use.  It's finally been updated since 1998 (yes, wxWidgets was old when Hexagon was first released), so the newer Microsoft Visual C++ compilers for the newer Windows environments can finally be used to do a re-write of Hexagon (instead of just pasting a hack here and there in its old existing code).

...if Daz took a few months to devote some time and effort to cleaning up and updating Hexagon They could have a very nice powerful modelling tool that would be worth the original price it sold for five years ago (which I beleive was something like 140$).

What needs to be done is:

Squash the remaining bugs like those that cause the application to freeze up without warning.

Give it 64 Bit support (which might clear up a lot of memory related issues and make the smoothing tool actually useful)

Streamline processes (like the aforementioned select and drag of verticies) and update tools

Fix the UV mapping tool so it's useable

Add sculpting either as a feature or a future plugin.

If not, then find a company who is interested in updating and supporting it and sell it to them or make it open souce.

...Andrew's proposal was shot down in flames at the last Blender conference.  Some of the negative feedback I read to his proposals from fellow members in the Blender community was incredibly caustic and insulting.  Some of the comments I read would make a longshoreman sound like a kid in Sunday school. These are people who consider themselves "professionals". 

I have been told that the reason longtime core members of the user community don't want such changes to the UI because they are afraid they would interfere with their workflow. Even the head of the Blender foundation came out and said it is not the foundation's interest to attract new users, but rather, to support those who have already been using the application for years.

...excuse me?

Makes it look more like some exclusive fraternal club than an open souce software community.

One member made it sound as if having to scale the sheer cliff that is the learning curve for Blender's UI, was akin to a of "rite of passage".

Don't expect any "radical" changes to Blender anytime soon.

Quote - > Quote - Blender used to be primarily a modelling application. Now it is trying to be more of a freeware version of 3DS which makes it all that more complex and cumbersome to learn as it's UI really doesn't look (or work) much different than it did back in the 4.4 days.

They're actually re-visiting the UI... Andrew Price has put forth some excellent suggestions on how to make Blender more accessible.

So, don't give up on Blender quite yet.

I invested in Silo way-back-when, not realising it was going to be abandonware. Too bad they make it Open Source, and maybe make a Linux version. Besides crashing a lot, it did have some good features.

...yeah from what I understand reading on other forums it has become "abandonware".  Guess it beacame Nevercenter's "Hexagon".  Sad, in that it appears more stable than Hex and has a UI that doesn't require a graduate degree in Cryptology to understand (Blender).

Being only a modelling application is what attracted me to look into it (and years ago into Hexagon). I have other softwares for rigging, surfacing and rendering. This means the programme's focus is devoted solely to the task of modelling rather than supporting other features. 

Blender used to be primarily a modelling application. Now it is trying to be more of a freeware version of 3DS which makes it all that more complex and cumbersome to learn as it's UI really doesn't look (or work) much different than it did back in the 4.4 days.

Yeah it's too bad there appearently will be no future devlopment of either Silo or Hexagon (Hex has seen one minor update in the five an a half years I've had it and that was a beta back in 2011).  Seems Daz is more content to develop and push Carrara, support an expensive pro grade modelling/sculpting application (ZBrush), as well as a new "pseudo modeller" (Curvy3D), than a good basic easy to use and stable dedicated polygon modelling application.

...thanks for the heads up, haven't been able to try it with her yet. too many other projects in the backlog.

Quote - personally I love autofit most things work fine with a bit of knowledge. The main problem is dresses and I use the bridge to hex and a touch of the smoothing brush to create a fix for that. I was able to convert the dress from v3 to genesis and many other items with satisfactory results. I think for Dawn to really take off with ds users we will need to have at least projection templates so people can transfer the rigging to new items more easily.  

...SickleYield also has a utility out that helps with skirts and footwear. Very useful.

As for cloth dynamics, that is still unfortunately a closed door for Daz users. 

...what better way to ekep the royal heir safe when taking him or her for a stroll in Hyde Park.

Thank you.

Quote - Ok, 8 more days till Dawn!

...hmmm by my rekoning it's in 3 hours and 49 minutes.

..ohhh, That Dawn...Silly me. 

Quote - > Quote - > Quote - yes, cups A to E from what i could see in the video

...that's better than Vicky4.  When I dialed her brest size down to that level, the areola and nipple mesh started to distort badly.  Evne the with the base Genesis female had similar difficulty when reducing breast size.

I Don't know if V4 is obsolete now or not
but I do know Zev0 could make morphs for her.

...oh there were eventually fixes, though only through purchasing of additional character content (Thorne/Sarsa & Jamminwolf) and finally, Steph4 and the NPMs.  Vicky4 was not meant to be turned into a teen However, as Daz had no interest in developing a Gen 4 version of Luke & Laura, had to make due with what was available at the time.

Thankfully there was GenX which let me bring a lot of those morphs and shapes over to Genesis, and after that, Thorne/Sarsa's YT5s.

Quote - yes, cups A to E from what i could see in the video

...that's better than Vicky4.  When I dialed her brest size down to that level, the areola and nipple mesh started to distort badly.  Evne the with the base Genesis female had similar difficulty when reducing breast size.

Quote - Finally, a figure with breast shapers defined by cup size, that is great to see.

 

:D

...so does she go all the way down to "A"?

...hmmm 503 error already...

...reminds me of one christmas long ago when our mum bought us this neat 1/32nd scale slot car set (with a high banked curve) and in less than a day our uncles broke one of the cars before we even got a chance to play with it.

...considering that fabiana has expressed interest in supporting Dawn, could a "Druscilla Goth" type character be a possibility?

Quote - > Quote - Why not try common sense for a change? For the first Daz cannot stop anyone from making an V4 clone. For the second If Daz do not provide a V4 clone themselves they will literally by lynched..that is all there is to it.

Soon you will see Dawn content sold in Daz store.

 

I wouldn't count on that.  I could be wrong, but the atmosphere there doesn't seem to lean toward friendliness for Dawn.  I haven't seen anything over there about Dawn, but I've heard a lot of posts were deleted that referred to Dawn.  They're pushing Gen2 Female and V6.  They lost a couple of big names, one of whom was firmly involved in the PC for many years.  I don't see warm and fuzzy feelings for Dawn coming any time soon.

Like I said, I could be wrong.

Dana

...I have to agree based on my own experience of having posts and even replies to posts which referenced Dawn being deleted.

That said, Yeah I know I'm a bit late to the party here.  Was just steered here from another forum.  Haven't read all 126 pages (first came into this back in the "20s" where morph creation was being discussed).  From what I saw in the pre-promo email and early pics posted in the forums here and on another site, I am very interested. 

My one concern is how far can the morphing limits be pushed before the mesh starts to distort.  This was an ongoing issue with Vicky4 as well as the base Genesis Female whereby if the breast size was dialed down past a certain point, far the mesh would collapse in on itself. For my work I need to be able to create teen and more petite characters. 

For Gen4 it requried using Thorne/Sarsa's characters (Tommi and seveal fey), Jamminwolf's characters with different age shapes (like Tindra Thompson), and/or the NPMs for Steph4 to for improved breast sizing morphs.

For Genesis I was able to port these over via GenX to an extent but the real breakthrough was Thorne/Sarsa's Young Teens.

My question is would it be possible for one (say, like myself) to create custom morphs for Dawn that could in a sense turn her into a more petite or teen figure without having to wait for a separate character to be released? Would clothing also need to be modified to accept the new moph limits?

(BTW they still need spell check here as FFs spell checker doesn't work).

Quote - ahhh kyoto.. marvelous designer has baffled me from the start.. even with a ton of tutes to follow.  everything i try to make looks like crap

...as I used to work in a theatrical costume shop I find it very intuitive compared to using a conventional modelling programme. I understand the language of seams, darts, & hems, far better than verts, welds, and tessellation.

Now that I have a system which can support cloth dynamic simulation without running out of memory, I can totally dive into it.