I believe it's manfromabora@gmail.com at paypal And thank you so much!

Now on the Freestuff of the month spotlight! January 2016 Freestuff Item Spotlight - V4 Dryad conforming figure

EldritchCellar posted at 11:47AM Sat, 26 December 2015 - #4245575

Cool, glad to see it finally finished. It was a long road (2 years?) from ivy generator to finished conformer. Interesting that you ended up sticking with Poser/V4 rather than a genesis/ds paid product.

Didn't have much choice. Couldn't devote the time to redo all that work to make it compatible with the most recent versions of Genesis figures. Had to get it out before it was completely obsolete rather than mostly obsolete. May try again in the future, but current circumstances dictate otherwise. For a more in depth explanation, see my journal at deviantart (manfromabora.deviantart.com)

As a hobbiest, doing this at night on a notebook on the kitchen table, V4 is the most familiar to me, and she does what I ask her to do. I have huge libraries of stuff for V4, 98% of it I've never used, will never use. I've made custom morphs and textures for her, and don't want to have to reinvent the wheel.

I've made an honest effort to learn DS, but I'm too entrenched in Poser, and having to learn new software takes time away from doing what I really want to do, create images. I've used V4 WM, and she is likeable, but haven't seen the advantage of her over V4. Yes, I know she can do these wonderful things, but I'm not seeing it. I have Dawn and her hubby/boyfriend in a seperate runtime, and have really been underwhelmed with her. Probably using her wrong.

The G2 and up are impressive, but I can get results I like (mostly) with the tools I have. Having better models will not make me a better artist. Most of a good render comes down to textures and lighting.

That's not to say that If they made V7 compatible (and stable) with Poser I would be all over her like a hobo on a hotdog.

I would have to go with these three as my top favorites:

1. Maxfield Parrish

I have about twenty of his prints (original to the era) around the house, all different, most in the original frames.

1. Alma Tadema

I try to emulate (as best I can, which isn't saying much) this man's view of what life was like (however historically inaccurate) in his ancient settings. This particular image I had plotted out to encompass a set of french doors in my house, to use instead of curtains. Love how the outdoors backlights it, giving a soft glow to the living room.

1. Alphonse Mucha

I was collecting these even before I knew what art was. A postcard I got as a kid (4 or 5) and had it taped to my desk for years. Now long since lost, but I have stacks of calendars, hard drives full, and more of this man's art. He encapsulates everything that was Art Noveau, anything else doesn't come close. IMO, please no flames, my opinion only, and it won't change.

And what the translucency shader is like without back light

and here's the nodes for the translucency

So far following this thread has been most illuminating. Using the various methods shown here, I've improved the leaf shader for my Dryad character:

The first is without translucency, using the wax like shader described in this thread

and the second is a back lit translucent shader

Still trying to work out how to dampen the translucency a bit so its not quite so strong.

Following with much interest.

Having worked something along those lines, the other problem you will run into after stretching her mouth so much, is the stretching of her skin, both the mesh and the texture. Not only will her mouth distort, but all her lower jaw and tongue. It will not look real, blocky in appearance unless you subdivide it and come up with new textures where it does stretch. 

Interesting bit of news:

A friend of mine using Daz3D did manage to make the Dryad work with Genesis 2.  He sent a quick test render to check the results. As he described it: "First let me explain something. To work with Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 you don't need any rigging at all. It works just like clothes. I converted it for genesis just by exporting the OBJ Branches out and back in and used autofit in the form of V4. That's it, and Really anyone that knows the Daz Studio software can do this."   

Primorge:

You sir, have an incredible memory. I'm flattered that you would remember such a post. Anyway, the figure has come a long ways since then, and the problem I was trying to solve then turned out to be a very basic mistake on my part, and kicked myself for many days after realizing it.

icprncss2: While using other rigs may be an alternative, the problem lies in getting the Dryad figure to match the host V4 figure precisely. The Dryad has to match V4 poses exactly, or the illusion is lost of the leaves serving to define the edge of the Dryad, and give her the ability to express emotions.

WandW: Thank you so much for the links! This looks like it will solve the problem with all the remaining (but empty) morph channels that the Dryad can't use. Thanks for the info on other rigs, but they won't work unless I make the Dryad a truly unique figure.

If memory serves, V4 Wet Skin Shader by Dburdick are maps that are applied to your character's existing maps. I've used dBurdick's Wet skin shaders in Vue quite a bit, and they do work rather well there. 

Moriador,Ambientshade,  icprncss2

Sorry all, didn't mean to confuse you. There is no black magic involved here. I neglected to mention (for selfish reasons) one other program I used, Ivy Generator by Thomas Luft. An absolutely incredible bit of software, available free, but no longer supported. Easy to use, but maddeningly frustrating to get the results you want. I guess the reason I didn't mention it is because those with more experience can probably crank out a figure in a day, (by importing the results from Ivy Generator into another program to refine the shape) where as it took me the better part of two weeks of watching Ivy grow to get the results I wanted.

It all started with a contest I entered several years ago:

http://www.cornucopia3d.com/contests.php?contest_id=28

My image took second place, but it was a static figure, and I wondered if it was possible to make the figure come 'alive', and after diving into the Poser manuals, figured out a way to make it work. Imagine my surprise when it DID work, and the Dryad came to life!

Several years back when I first started working on a Poser version, I kind of described how I was doing it here in the forums. (I can't find it now- the search feature kind of sucks) But I did write a tutorial for the winning image at cornucopia3d: http://www.cornucopia3d.com/classroom/article.php?id=140&from=makingofs

As for the length of time to get the Dryad complete from start to finish. I have to work for a living and a family to support, (wife was in an accident and is now disabled) and as a state employee I don't make a lot of money to do all of that, definitely not enough time or money to get or learn new software. I don't get much time to 'play' around, and this is probably the most amount of time I've spent online in years (being the holidays helps). yada yada yada, you all didn't came for a sob story. Basically I had to really learn how to use Poser (Before I was posing figures, exporting them out for Vue) The material room still confuses the hell out of me. Still don't like the lights in Poser, much harder than they need to be, but that's a different topic for another day.  Anyway, long story short: I took me two years to get to this point.

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** icprncss2:**"was the Dryad originally to be a conformer for V4?  Out of curiosity, did you use spline or box modelling to get the Dryad shape?"

Yes it was designed to conform to V4, but only to give her a leafy material exterior. As for modeling, I have no idea what those terms mean as I am not a modeler and don't have a modeling program. The Dryad does NOT share any mesh with V4 at all. I used her mesh to serve as the guide for her shape. I created several figures this way, including the Millenium Dragon, but that one will crash Poser unless you have a lot of RAM (it is very resource heavy)