Quote - Huh, while I can understand if you don't like the aesthetics of the face morphs, they are not poorly crafted.  What's this "rank novice" stuff?  Practically nobody's Poser face morphs are at all realistic anyway, by themselves.

Quote - you don't need to know Alice, actually.  the issue is how to add any blank, empty, hidden channels and a visible channel group  to any cr2.

That's the excess sanity I guess you don't need - a good CR2 editor (I use Dimension3D's) makes this stuff trivial, and it does mass search/replace and batch editing.  Trying to keep track of crap like which channel name in a limb matches with which channel on the Body is just a lot of unnecessary mental stress.  Copying channels from one file to another is a visual drag/drop operation, stuff like that.  Ralf's editor has saved me hundreds of hours of work and immense amounts of frustration, it's the single most useful tool I've used for building Poser content outside of my modeler and Poser itself.

ps: all the scrolling, god how I don't miss that

Actually, you can re-work a Daz mesh in ZB quite a bit and get some great realism. Take a look at the "Fygomatic" images to see how V4 heads can be very realistic.

What I am referring to is the actual sculpt of the mesh since it has a base on the V4. Anyone that knows how to sculpt will tell you there are many issues you have to work with when sculpting a Daz mesh. It is easy to see the flaws and how it is not a very good sculpt. The S4 morphs just are not convincing and it is clear it is not a very professional job. Since I have started to really get into ZB and sculpting if you know what to look for you can see these issues clearly and why many professionals like to make their own figures. Yes, Daz does have a LOT of content which is why many people use them, but they REALLY need to get some better talent to do these sculpts for any of their upcoming figures. Hopefully, they will start over and get a better artist to make the mesh.

Quote - Mari is not from zbrush.Mari is only a texturing painting program.

did Pixologic realesed any info about texturing in Z4?

Yes, I know that, as I was only referring to how ZB 4 will be re-doing their texturing process. No "official" details yet, but I am working with someone that is a master ZB artist and they work with Pixologic very closely. He was even offered a job of writing a detailed ZB learning book, such as the "Missing Manual" guides, which is BADLY needed for all 3D artists starting out. All I know is from the way the programmers have talked with some of their instructors is it will be one of, if not the best methods of texturing, including "layered texturing" processes.ZB knows full well about Mari and is going to come out with something truly great from what I am hearing, with their 10th anniversary.

In short, I can not say much, only that ZB 4 is going to be quite impressive. If you think Mari will be good wait until then and see how they stack up. I will be working with him learning this process in ZB 4 when it is finished.

It all depends on how you use the Daz mesh for how it looks. I usually do a LOT of re-working in ZB with custom sculpting to get the look I want. This works quite well for the Daz V4 mesh. I have not yet played with it in ZB but will at least take a look at the mesh design and post more opinions on it.

At first glance though, I must say it is really NOT impressive at all. In the face, it looks like it was done by a rank novice. I just don't like anything about the sculpt, it lacks much realism in my opinion. The head sculpt especially is just dreadful.

I sure hope this is not a trend for Daz as their recent figures just are not convincing at all for human realism. Anyone that has done sculpting in ZB can see the many flaws in them as well. You really have to work in ZB to get them to look good if you want something much better than just using the dials. All I can say is I hope V5 when it comes out is NOT based on anything remotely like the new Daz Kids or Stephanie 4.

Once I can work on the mesh some and see what they did I will post some more.

One thing to keep in mind is if you going to be importing your figures, props, etc. into other 3D applications besides Poser. Some of this works great in Poser, but once you import into another application, like say Vue or C4D, you may or may not have the same look since the shaders, nodes, etc. are different.

The best way I found if using another program is to do the tweaking of all the imported mat files and make sure your scene has proper lighting. Lighting is critical to how something looks and you can spend a lot of time on just that. Also, using VERY good high resolution textures is important for realism.

I have been working a LOT with ZBrush 3.5R3 and find that it a very powerful program. Everyone is waiting for version 4 which is due out by the end of September 2010 since that is Pixelogic's 10th anniversary. They are working hard on a fully revamped way of making textures. If you have seen "Mari" then you know what to expect, maybe even more. It will totally revolutionize texture creation.

I found this thread due to another one in the Vue forum and think this will help some.

If you go to the site over at e-on, you can find several of my posts there regarding "Poser Shader Tree" and other Poser importing issues. You will note that I have found several Poser importing bugs and was assigned an e-on tech person to work with. In short, I found many regarding the "Poser Shader Tree", Re-Size on importing and OOM (Out of Memory) errors. It was confirmed and documented by e-on and it affects Vue 7.5 up to the current Vue 8.5 versions. The reason is because of the code they use in Vue that is provided by Smith Micro via an SDK. This recent SDK from Smith Micro REALLY messed up some things more than it corrected. According to e-on tech, there is no way for them to fix until Smith Micro releases a NEW SDK for them to use in Vue. I asked when that may be and they have no idea and said it was up to Smith Micro.

So, in short, some of these issues you are seeing are in fact related to the bugs that I have found and reported. The shaders are known to not import correctly and e-on recommends leaving "Poser Shader Tree" turned OFF for now until fixed. Also, the re-size on import issues are hit and miss and they too have issues. Simply leave that turned OFF as well and scale accordingly.

I don't know why e-on does not write their own code for importing Poser/Daz content, but instead rely on Smith Micro. Others such as C4D have others that write code like their "InterPoser" plug-in which works GREAT. If e-on would just do it themselves or let another 3rd party do it that may be the best. But for now, these are the issues to deal with and there are indeed many.

Quote -  What version of Vue are you using? It might make a difference, not sure. I use 8.5i and I have ran into similar issue with DAZ stuff, maybe this thread will help...

[ http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2804406

](http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2804406)

I'm using Vue 8.5i as well.

Note that I do know Vue as I was the one that was working with a tech over at e-on and found several issues with the Poser imports as was described in detail over at e-on. The thread you referenced has those issues on scaling due to certain bugs I found as well and they have all been documented and sent to Smith Micro by the Vue tech I was working with. When a fix is available no one knows. All they do know is my bugs have been documented and sent to Smith Micro and it is unknown when they will fix it for them to use in Vue.

That is why I am trying to get the best results possible NOT using the "Poser Shader Tree" and such. What I was asking is for more advice on tweaking HAIR in Vue along with skin materials and render settings for the best realism to look as good as they do in Poser. I have found hair to be the most difficult to get right.

Thanks for the thoughts and replies on this. I will be trying a few of these to see what I can come up with.

In regard to the images by ice-boy, that is sort of what I am referring to, but not quite as pulled back along the hairline of the head, just "wet" hair. Those images look more like hair that has been slicked back or gone through after it was wet. If a character is under say a water spray, just getting out of the ocean, etc. then the hair just needs to be wet and not slick.

One thing I have found is you can get that wet look much better with the shorter hair figures/props than with long hair ones Most hair you buy has a lot of morphs and such built-in with makes the hair realistic. That is why I am trying to get hair like that to fall like in the morphs of the hair but be wet instead. I will try what others said here and see what I can come up with.

If anyone else would like to post results and how they set the nodes or modified the transmap that would be nice to see too. I have tried before and failed to achieve a good result, that is why I am trying to figure out how or if this can be done.

Quote - > Quote - it in Poser alone is not going to get as good of a result by any means unless you re-work the full textures in something like Photoshop.

Unless you mean doing changes with masks, I disagree.

Any Photoshop manipulation that you perform on the entire image on a per-pixel basis can be performed exactly the same by nodes.

Examples of things that are easy and identical in nodes: Levels, Curves, HSV, and all the blending ops. These are all just math formulas in Photoshop, and Color_Math nodes or Blender nodes can do any of them.

The photoshop ops you can't generally do in nodes are the ones that work with multiple pixels, such as blur, sharpen, smudge, etc.

No, what I was referring to is learning to use Photoshop is a must as there is no way to obtain the level of detail in Poser alone. I have yet to see any nodes or channels work as well just by themselves, even with the examples you have shown. If you want the best results, you are going to have to learn how to re-work textures in Photoshop.

By modifying or creating a custom skin texture you can get a level of realism that is not possible otherwise. Yes, using nodes, channels and especially proper lighting are all a requirement. All I was referring to is Poser alone can't handle it and neither can most other software programs that does not have texture painting/creation as part of the package. Creating/modifying skin textures is a must along with the other methods. Using Vue, I setup my lighting, atmosphere, re-work the textures, etc. in the program. However, getting the texture right in Photoshop, ZBrush, etc. first yields the best outcome in the scene.

Also, don't forget that Photoshop "Extended" has many useful 3D features now too.

Happy rendering.

While you can do this several different ways, as pointed out by several posters already, it is going to depend on how particular you want to be and how real you want it to look. Doing it in Poser alone is not going to get as good of a result by any means unless you re-work the full textures in something like Photoshop. Learning to use Photoshop well can REALLY help in many areas of 3D art creation and I would highly advise using it.

On a side not, another trick is you can change the light setups in Poser so they use filtered color. Hope things work out.

I agree, your tutorials for Vue are some of the best I have seen and without them it would not be nearly as worthy for me to try and learn for my use.

I was hoping too that we may soon see an updated "Vue From The Ground Up" book published since a lot has changed since the last one was written. Any thoughts or updates on coming out with a new updated book?

Also, for video tutorials, I would love to see some more basic ones teaching how to make "maps" and such for creating paths in Vue using Photoshop so you can rough out things like a forest path, river bank, city scapes, etc.

Thanks for the new videos and making them free too.

Got it, that makes sense now. I just was not sure what was going on, but now I understand. You are basically using a pointer file in the "Pose" directory to make a call to the folder name in the "Libraries" area. At first I thought these were somehow extra morphs or ones for another purpose, but that clears up my questions.

Thanks for all the replies.

Thanks, I was not sure because I don't know how they are being used. Almost all the time all directories for morphs and character are located INSIDE the "Pose" directory. In fact, those same characters are in my "Pose" directory and work just fine. In other words, the morphs for those characters are all in the Pose directory but the ones from the screenshot are not and are not the same as those in the Pose directory even though it is the same character. That is why I was not sure why those are outside the Pose directory.

Actually, it's strange because I know many have different views of what "oblong" is. If you look up the meaning, it is more like what lesbentley points to. However, I have been trying to do more what the "V4 Ultra Morphs 2" does and tried it with fairly good results.

In the end though, I think it will be easier for me to continue learning ZBrush sculpting. I just started using it and need to learn much more, but it will give me the best options around I think since I won't be limited to dials and can free-form the shape more.

Thanks for all the replies.

lesbentley -

If you want to PM me here we can exchange emails, I wouldn't mind having those because I work with lots of different face structures. Thanks.

I checked out the RDNA morphs, but did not find anything specific for an "oblong" shape morph. Maybe I looked at the wrong one but I could only find version 1 and 2 for V4 there.

When doing a sculpt in another program, making the head more oblong, will that throw off any of my other morphs I have already done? Also, will it in any way effect the way hair fits on the head since the shape of it will be changing? If so, do I simply re-apply the hair figure and conform it to V4 again. I just was not sure if changing the head shape would mess anything else up.

Thanks.