That's pretty cool to see her first incarnation. She has come a long way.

Thanks Stewer, I will check it out when I get back home. Im such a noob when it comes to light settings etc.

I agree with BB that the lacrimals may be a little wide. I think the flat part could be scaled inward about half way ( just the flat part ) or maybe even less. It really is just a bit wide on the eye. I agree about the ears being a little thick ( particularly the upper part and where it rolls over ) and they kind of have a detatched look where they meet the head when looking at them from behind, but she doesn't have those perfect looking CG ears and I do like that alot.

Im really very impressed with the topology, proportion and shape of Antonia. A+ outstanding.

Cheers,
JB

Phantom
Im my best James Earl Jones "Vader" voice...Impressive!!!

ODF
I know wings3D and blender will use hard/soft edges but for poser you have to bevel things a bit to keep hard edges ( because of the the way poser smooths things ) AFAIK. Im probably misunderstanding what you're talking about here. Are you worried about harder edges not transfering over from low to high-res? Possibly making morphs alot different from low to high-res? If that's what your talking about I don't think it will matter too much.

I will probably only do morphs for the higher res one. I want to make some general shaping morphs for specific regions like hips-x, nose-y, and some FBM's such as BodyFat etc. Just general morphs that combine and reverse well, but I would also like to make a few very defined ( not necessarily muscular etc. )  complete character morphs that sort of stand alone and don't reverse or mix as well with other defined characters but still mix with the general shaping morphs and I know the low-res one will not support the defined morphs much, so Im thinking I may just do morphs for the higher-res one. Did that make sense? Lol.

Cheers,
JB

Just Box select any Island(s) you don't want to move and (p-key) pin the whole island(s). Then you can select a center vert(s) to pin on the one Island you want to re-unwrap. You can also pin just the corner verts and it shouldn't move. Hope it helps.

Cheers,
JB

Impressive skin texture. I must admit I was fooled at first with the pic showing the head. I thought it was textured as well until I read your post.

I really like that your not adding specular highlights, shadows etc...I think some texture makers get carried away in detail and add too much photo reference into the texture which of course has specular highlights and shadows. It winds up looking off with different lighting than the references. I prefer a basic texture with subtle variations and let shaders drive other effects.
You can always add more detail to a base texture if need be. Not so easy the other way around.

Doh!!! I guess I could have answered one of my questions. I somehow forgot that brad has multiple handles on the hip. 

I picked up Bloodsong's book on secrets of poser creation about 6 months ago. I haven't tried any rigging though mainly because of time restraints ( and rigging scares me time wise ) but I do want to learn how to rig eventually. Im still ( noobishly) learning how to model and UV map. Im getting pretty decent at it but I don't have the time to learn it all. I'll get there one day one baby step at a time.

I have wondered about this idea for quite some time. I noticed that some of the rigs in Blender have handle geometry for intuitive facial animation. So I was thinking could this idea be translated into Poser. Can a bodypart have more then one bodyhandle in poser? If so I think it would be really useful but I really don't know if it would be worth the trouble. I think one of the reasons it would be great besides the obvious is often when you dial up a combination of morphs on a character for a specific look you often find something is a little off like an eye corner could be rotated a little more etc. So you have to use magnets or make a seperate morph to fix it. with bodyhandles ( atleast in theory ) you could make an adjustment basically in realtime without having to make a morph fix or go through the pain of setting up carefully placed magnets.

So here's the idea. 24 Facial Handles

**5 Brow handles
**BrowCenter>BrowLeft>BrowRight>EyeBrowLeft>EyeBrowRight
**4 Eye Handles
**EyeInnerLeft>EyeOuterLeft>EyeInnerRight>EyeOuterRight
**6 Nose Handles
**NoseBridgeUpper>NoseBridgeLower>NoseCenter>NostrilLeft>NostrilRight>Septum
**4 Lips Handles
**UpperLip>LowerLip>LipCornerLeft>LipCornerRight
2 Cheek Handles
CheekLeft>CheekRight
2 Jaw Handles
JawLeft>JawRight
**1 Chin Handle
**ChinCenter

I like to know if...
A. If such a thing is possible ( Multiple bodyhandles on one body part ).
B. Would it be resource friendly or would that many handles be really CPU intensive and head into Daz magnet bloat-Lag territory

What do you think? Would it be uber cool or just not worth it? I would love to have a feature like this but in the end I don't know if it would be worth the trouble.

Here is a pic of a face I made in blender and I photoshopped some handles on to illustrate the idea.

Hey Mike

You may already know this but an easy way to preserve your materials if Zbrush eats them is to
load what ever changes you make on the already mat/grouped original in poser.  As long as it's just sculpting ( not sub-d or geometry) changes your good. I do this alot when making morphs with Blender ( It eats materials too Lol ). In poser just load your sculpt on the original mat/grouped version as a morph target dial it to 1.0 then export. Use the export option "Include existing groups in polygon groups". You can also use uvmapper to get groups back as well.

Kewl! Can't wait to try her out and make some morphs.

Interesting rig. Here are some observations. I realize it's still Wip but you said you wanted feedback so here goes.

The neck looks fine to me but the head bends have alot of sharp distortion. The collars need to be used sparingly to avoid what I would call soft distortion. This is true for most poser figures so I think yours are better than most.

Shoulders, Arms and ForeArms can cause sharp distortion when using Rot-X. Rot-Z has some problems as well but not as much as Rot-x. Rot-X and Z do need work but if you use each part sparingly it's not really as much of a problem. Rot-X from Shoulders to hands is the weakest part of the rig IMO.

Rot-Y has possibly some of the best bends I have ever seen. Being able to move the arms straight in front of the figure without it collapsing/distorting the chest/deltoid/Lat areas is something just about every figure has big trouble with but you rig does it really well.
It aint perfect but it's really really well done. The best part of the rig IMO or atleast close to how good the 2nd hip bends.

The Chest,Abdomen and hip all look fine to me.

The 2nd hip could take some getting used to but it is impressive and powerful for natural movement and posing. It's quite interesting that the hip and upper thighs are one group. I know nothing about rigging but I can see that is the main reason it bends so well in that area. I could be totally wrong but it just seems to me that's the reason it bends so well there ( that and JP's of coarse ).

The legs
With IK on, the heel moving with the legs when twisting the leg/shin is a bit odd. Fine for stills realistic I suppose but not so great for animation.

I only checked out the higher-res one so far. Over all it's an impressive rig that has a lot of potential over other figures if posed right. He can look bad if not posed right but alot of figures can look bad even when posed at thier best in the more difficult for poser positions.

I think I like the minimalist approach you posted best. Your names look fine to me. I especially like how you added Nails in front of toe>fingers. I don't really see the advantage of adding numbers in front. It's actually mildy annoying to look at ( my brain wants to look for Skin,Nails,Eyes etc.) and the numbers get in the way. Doesn't really matter I guess.

I think maybe you should add a true cornea. I don't really see the point of a full eye surface ( is it for teary eyed shaders and such?)

You are correct about Blender only allowing 16 materials. I think they may allow for more in a future release because it's one of the main things on people's wishlist and complained about often.

Quote - "or even in New Orleans, who are STILL waiting for government help."

Ambitious people from New Orleans, the ones who fended for themselves, had jobs and new homes within weeks of the hurricane in New Orleans.

Take a lesson from them, if you can get on a computer to type about comic book collections then you have the means to create an account on Guru.com or getafreelancer or rentacoder to find projects in writing, 3D design, or other things you can easily manage.

Don't even go there! You watch too much BS news. There are many people like me who lost thier homes and jobs for trying to do the right thing and not take advantage. You really have no clue. The truth is most decent hard working people got the shaft end of story. Unfortunately that's not the story that's told because the media would rather prey on negativity for ratings.

Joe keep a positive attitude. Do you have any distant relatives or friends you could stay with for a while? You could look into finding a homeless shelter http://www.homelessshelterdirectory.org/  or some kind of faith based organization in your area You may be able to collect unemployment atleast until you can get back on your feet again. I was going to suggest government assistance but when I googled it I saw this.  http://www.lahomelessblog.org/2008/06/keep-your-car-or-receive-government.html  I doubt it applys to all states but I would be wary of asking the gov for help.

Looking good Mike. Very natrural bend for a very natural lady. It looks like quite a few people want to do morphs for her :) I will do a set in PZ2/pmd format. ODF do you have a planned morph list? I want to make a collection based on whatever you don't include to complement yours morphs. She looks like she will be fun to sculpt on. Btw what is the final polycount?

Hi ODF
The mappings coming along really good. I like that you moved the seam up under the jawline. I don't think I commented on the earlier part of this thread but here are my views on it and I think you have done an outstanding job.

I love that you made her on the lighter side it has far more advantage over bloated hi-res meshes as long as the topology is sound for both rigging and morphs. Im of the opinion hi-res meshes ( rigging experts feel free to correct me if im wrong ) often have more deformation problems than ( well placed topology ) lighter meshes.  Im not a fan at all of embedded magnets on figures. This seem to be the wave of the poser future but I'd rather not ride that wave ( makes my system slow to a crawl). I don't know much about the pros and cons of JCM's but from what I can see of mike's rigging they probabaly aren't needed. I do wonder if it will hinder future expansion such as clothing? Im curious to know though.

 I find morphs work better on lower-res models because you get less pinching etc. when a morph is dialed up extremely high. Lower res opens up a lot of possiblites for general shaping morphs because ( if designed well ) they can reverse better giving you unlimited possible shapes. Morphs dialed at even fairly low negative values usually look horrible on higher rez meshes. More variety is always good Not to mention it's easier to build up a respectable collection of morphs in less time.

I notice some figures come out of the box with too defined features ( like bone surfaces and defined muscularity for instance ) that are usually hard to get rid of if you need a smoother more natural look and can even be a problem with rigging deformations across body part seams. Knee caps, wrist bones etc. tend to look really bad when bending if thier too defined on the default mesh. I think it's better to handle those areas with morphs. On the other hand if you go too low-res you will have to do some creative morphing or displacement if you want a more defined look. I think it's good to have the default look slightly smoother than what would be considered realistic but still have just enough resolution and good topology to support more defined looks. Adding extra res just for the sake of extra res seems sloppy and amateur to me. I am a big fan of making every poly, edgeloop, how things flow etc. actually count instead of just adding more density which seems to have more problems and is less versitile IMHO.

Anyway I find it facinating making the most out of the least. I'll take effeciancy over bloat anyday. Keep up the good work.

Happy Holidays :)
JB