Monkeycloud - in Zbrush you use polygroups - in the polygroups palette you can create polygroups by UV's and topology. Toggle the polyframe button to see the groups, then shift-control-click to hide/show different ones.

GoZ from Poser will let you choose to export body parts or materials as groups, just hit polyframe to see them.

My (limited!) understanding is that dark skin is a protective adaptation to prolonged strong sunlight, so it would make sense that it would be more reflective (so shinier) than lighter skin. The pigmentation is in the top layer of skin, the edipermis; the deeper layers are exactly the same. The reddishness in skin comes from the blood vessels in the deeper layers - one of the possible issues could be that the measurements used in Poser's SSS implementation are derived from lighter skin tones.

A specular map would definitely be needed - from what I remember, areas where bone is close to the surface of the skin tend to be more reflective, as are areas that are naturally moist or oily.

For ZBrush, a useful 20 min video on ZRemesher by Ryan Kingslien -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CVoFi2mnyhA

This topic first kicked off when a new figure was released without detailed genitalia, and without the poly density in the pubic region to enable a morph which disappointed some posters. It seemed fairly clear that it was a conscious decision by the company, and most likely based on risk avoidance.

Now there are several threads running on this subject. I look at the OP's commercial product Lali's Bits, and I assume (maybe wrongly?) that when he then opens a discussion on detailed gens that that is the level of detail under discussion. On the info page for Lali's Bits it states that "there are well over one hundred morphs and master parameters to make the vagina prop open and close nicely along with the key movements".

I'd argue strongly that porn and erotica are not the same, and that gynacological levels of detail is one of the differences. I genuinely do not understand why that level of detail would be desirable in a figure used in non-pornographic renders. Would seem like a big waste of resources.

I'm not making value judgements. I'm aware that there are figures with gens currently available. I thought that what was under discussion was something that went quite some way beyond what was already out. 

Did I misunderstand something?

Slightly trickier in the UK but I see your point :)

Though I would consider the likely media reaction, and the attitude of the general public, to be more important than any potential legal issues (if there were any that could be applied in such a situation - I have no idea about that). That could cause enough reputational damage to bring a company down, plus it would have the potential to cause damage by association on a wider scale too.

Quote - The only problem I see is being able to morph a fully detailed adult figure into a child sized figure with all the adult parts. But the thing is, that can already be done by using content that already exists. So if it were going to cause problems, why hasn't it yet?

 

~Shane

Valid question. But look at Poser now compared to 10 years, or 5 years ago. Technically it's more capable and can produce higher quality results, and overall it's easier to use. I think I'm right in saying that single-axis scaling was only fixed in SR3 for P9/PP2012, so that's relatively recent.

So my question would be, is the risk of that sort of thing happening (and I sincerely hope it doesn't) likely to increase or decrease over time?

And would the availability of easy to use figures with detailed genitalia (and I would guess that we're talking about something along the lines of Lali's Bits) increase or decrease that risk?

My query is about the people that do make the sexy images like I do, and there's a few very talented and respectable artists in this field. It's maybe a small community, but still a sizable one, enough to add a few zeros to anyone's profits. And still nothing gets sorted for us. I wanna know why?

If that's a serious question, then in my opinion it goes like this - 'sexy' images of a figure can be created with or without detailed genitals, they are not a requirement. They are though for creating pornographic images - as the definition of pornographic is "visual material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or activity, intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings".

Now, if a company creates a 3D figure with detailed genitalia then it could - with reason - be seen as facilitating the creation of pornography. That alone could have serious enough implications, but also remember that this is 3D, Poser scaling is fixed, and turned an adult figure into a childlike figure is quite simple …

So you can see where this is going. Issues like media witch hunts, commercial survivability and plain morality are more relevant to this kind of discussion than arrogance IMHO :)

The way the lighting calculates was improved in P9/PP2012 over previous versions to improve accuracy, so what worked well in P6 will look different now. If your lights are too bright, try reducing the intensity - it's at 100% now, so try 65% to start with. I'd also suggest just using the main light to start with, and getting bagginsbill's free Light Meter prop (https://sites.google.com/site/bagginsbill/file-cabinet) which is the best and easiest way to judge light intensities properly.

Another way to stop a render blowing-out too quickly is to switch on HSV Tone Mapping in the render options - in practical terms this is a rough highlight control. 

Also if you do go with the specular light setup as posted you may get unexpected results with shadows disabled. I'm not sure if you'll need it unless it's for specific effect.

If you want to add a colour tint to a render I'd also suggest trying an IDL Sphere with an appropriately coloured material on it and keep the lights white, and compare the results to using coloured lights, see which suits better.

Changing the Shadow Map Preview Size - which defaults to 512 and will go up to 4096 - does improve the look of shadows in the preview window on my system :)

Bump and displacement maps are the same - grayscale data is used to determine height. The difference is the way the map is used by the renderer - displacement will affect the geometry, bump will not. Displacement costs a lot more in render time than either bump or normal maps.

A bump map affects the surface normal based on height; a normal map replaces the surface normal with an RGB value that "can represent the z, y and z coordinates of the surface normal of the high-res mesh" (from Scott Spencer's Zbrush Character Creation). Bump and normal maps both fake detail. At least in theory, a normal map created from the comparison between a high and low-res version of a mesh should carry more accurate info than the bump - but I haven't yet seen a clear demonstration of this.

So when adding detail to a mesh with a map and the silhouette of the mesh needs to change, displacement is best - if not, use a bump map or, if you have the facility, try generating a normal map.

Note that normal maps come in different flavours too - object space or tangent space, plus different apps/renderers could have different requirements. Octane requires the green channel to be flipped, Poser does not - so a normal map that works in Poser wouldn't work correctly in Octane ....

The way I read it, the point of this thread is to demonstrate that the use of low-poly meshes and displacement maps is not always the best way forward in Poser.

For some situations it is a good strategy, but for others it isn't.

Oh yeah, the other big limitation of displacement (height) maps is that you can't do undercuts ....